19th-century Chess Player Quotes

José Raúl Capablanca

Paul Morphy

Howard Staunton

Siegbert Tarrasch

Richard Réti

Chess never has been and never can be aught but a recreation. It should not be indulged in to the detriment of other and more serious avocations.

In order to improve your game you must study the endgame before anything else; for, whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middlegame and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame.

José Raúl Capablanca

We should praise, rather, the courage of the player who, relying only on his intuition, plunges into a brilliant combination of which the issue does not appear to him too clear.

Eugene Znosko-Borovsky

All lines of play which lead to the imprisonment of the bishop are on principle to be condemned.

Siegbert Tarrasch

The world is not likely to tire of an amusement which never repeats itself, of a game which today presents features as novel and charms as fresh as those with which it delighted, in the morning of history, the dwellers on the banks of the Ganges and Indus.

The beauty of a move lies not in its appearance but in the thought behind it.

Aron Nimzowitsch

It is a delight to watch a young and gifted chess player. To him have come no sinister experiences; to him continual carping care is foreign. Therefore he loves the attack and the bold sacrifice; for theirin lies the shortest way to his ultimate objective.

The Pawn moves only one square at a time, and that straight forward, except in the act of capturing, when it takes one step diagonally to the right or left file on to the square occupied by the man taken, and continues on that file until it captures another man.

Howard Staunton