Most of us today have grown so commonplace that we cannot see the extraordinary save in the exceptional. The early Tea Masters apprehended the profundity of normal things. . . . [They] found a profounder beauty in the practical art born to answer the immediate needs of life than in the fine arts born to beauty's sake alone. They did not seek beauty apart from actual living. They found the highest and noblest aspects of beauty in the articles close to life.
— Soetsu Yanagi, Take This Job and Love It by Matthew Gilbert