Play Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Let me, in closing, put my position in a nutshell. When I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having these rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service. So far as possible, the reward should be based upon service; and this necessarily implies that where a man renders us service in return for the fortune he receives, he has the right to receive it only on terms just to the whole people.

Theodore Roosevelt

We are not children twice, as the saying is, but for ever; the difference is that we play bigger games.

Seneca the Younger

It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.

Michel de Montaigne

Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.

William Shakespeare

It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young ambition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday's the beginning hour.

Apparently with no surprise To any happy Flower The Frost beheads it at its play — In accidental power — The blonde Assassin passes on — The Sun proceeds unmoved To measure off another Day For an Approving God.

Emily Dickinson

The energy requirements for interstellar travel are so great that it is inconceivable to me that any creatures piloting their ships across the vast depths of space would do so only in order to play games with us over a period of decades. If they want to make contact, they would make contact; if not, they would save their energy and go elsewhere.

The interpretation of constitutional principles must not be too literal. We must remember that the machinery of government would not work if it were not allowed a little play in its joints.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Bad is the trade that must play fool to sorrow,
Ang'ring itself and others.

William Shakespeare

Old age: the crown of life, our play's last act.

An English traveller relates how he lived upon intimate terms with a tiger; he had reared it and used to play with it, but always kept a loaded pistol on the table.

The God of War will see fair play-he's often slain that wants to slay!

Children must be under authority, and are themselves aware that they must be, although they like to play a game of rebellion at times. The case of children is unique in the fact that those who have authority over them are sometimes fond of them. Where this is the case, the children do not resent the authority in general, even when they resist it on particular occasions. Education authorities, as opposed to teachers, have not this merit, and do in fact sacrifice the children to what they consider the good of the State by teaching them "patriotism," i. e., a willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Bertrand Russell

I wish to boast that Pygmalion has been an extremely successful play all over Europe and North America as well as at home. It is so intensely and deliberately didactic, and its subject is esteemed so dry, that I delight in throwing it at the heads of the wiseacres who repeat the parrot cry that art should never be didactic. It goes to prove my contention that art should never be anything else.

George Bernard Shaw

If we would have our citizens contented and law-abiding, we must not sow the seeds of discontent in childhood by denying children their birthright of play.

Theodore Roosevelt

After nightfall the face of the country seems to alter marvelously, and the clear moonlight only intensifies the change. The river gleams like running quicksilver, and the moonbeams play over the grassy stretches of the plateaus...The Bad Lands seem to be stranger and wilder than ever, the silvery rays turning the country into a kind of grim fairyland.

Theodore Roosevelt

But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are "on" concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.

So - here I am in the dark alone, There's nobody here to see; I think to myself, I play to myself, And nobody knows what I say to myself; Here I am in the dark alone, What is it going to be? I can think whatever I like to think, I can play whatever I like to play, I can laugh whatever I like to laugh, There's nobody here but me.

One thing at a time, is my motto - and just play that thing for all it is worth, even if it's only tto pair and a jack.

Looking for God—or Heaven—by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare's plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters or Stratford as one of the places. Shakespeare is in one sense present at every moment in every play.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

To borrow a simile from the football field, we believe that men must play fair, but that there must be no shirking, and that the success can only come to the player who hits the line hard.

Theodore Roosevelt

I feel the same truth how often in my trivial conversation with my neighbours, that somewhat higher in each of us overlooks this by-play, and Jove nods to Jove from behind each of us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sometimes we go to a play and after the curtain has been up five minutes we have a sense of being able to settle back in the arms of the playwright. Instinctively we know that the playwright knows his business.

Wilde: I shall always regard you as the best critic of my plays.
Tree: But I have never criticized your plays.
Wilde: That's why.