Play Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Each of our passions, even love, has a stomach that must not be overloaded. We must in everything write the word 'finis' in time; we must restrain ourselves, when it becomes urgent; we must draw the bolt on the appetite, play a fantasia on the violin, then break the strings with our own hand. The Wise man is he who knows when and how to stop.

I don't think I shall ever forget my first sight of Hercule Poirot. Of course, I got used to him later on, but to begin with it was a shock, and I think everyone else must have felt the same! I don't know what I'd imagined — something like Sherlock Holmes — [...] Of course, I knew he was a foreigner, but I hadn't expected him to be quite as foreign as he was, if you know what I mean. When you saw him you just wanted to laugh! He was like something on the stage or at the pictures. [...] He looked like a hairdresser in a comic play!

Agatha Christie

Thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.

William Shakespeare

Why should we make account of time, or of magnitude, or of figure? The soul knows how to play with them as a young child plays with graybeards and in churches.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tis the privilege of Art Thus to play its cheerful part, Man on earth to acclimate And bend the exile to his fate.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is in conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life; and if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice. The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up.

Michel de Montaigne

I did a bond tour during the Second World War... We were raising money, and we played Boston and Philadelphia and most of the big cities. And we got to Minneapolis. There wasn't any big theater to play there, so we did our show in a railroad station. Then I told the audience that I knew a girl in Minneapolis. She was also known in St. Paul, she used to come over to visit me. She was known as "The Tail Of Two Cities." I didn't sell any more bonds, but eh... they didn't allow me to appear anymore.

I don't understand writers who have to work at it. I like to play. I'm interested in having fun with ideas, throwing them up in the air like confetti and then running under them.

But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask; why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

John F. Kennedy

The greatest wisdom is to make the enjoyment of the present the supreme object of life; because that is the only reality, all else being merely the play of thought. On the other hand, such a course might just as well be called the greatest folly: for that which in the next moment exists no more, and vanishes utterly, like a dream, can never be worth a serious effort.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Why should I play the Roman fool; and die On mine own sword?

William Shakespeare

For the road to world peace and freedom is still long, and there are burdens which only full partners can share—in supporting the common defense, in expanding world trade, in aligning our balance of payments, in aiding the emergent nations, in concerting political and economic policies, and in welcoming to our common effort other industrialized nations, notably Japan, whose remarkable economic and political development of the 1950's permits it now to play on the world scene a major constructive role.

John F. Kennedy

I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

When I got married, Allah's Apostle said to me, "What type of lady have you married?" I replied, "I have married a matron' He said, "Why, don't you have a liking for the virgins and for fondling them?" Jabir also said: Allah's Apostle said, "Why didn't you marry a young girl so that you might play with her and she with you?

Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere.

Henry David Thoreau

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it.... The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all.... When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world.

When men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; when Truth and Error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.

Benjamin Franklin

New feet within my garden go,
New fingers stir the sod;
A troubadour upon the elm
Betrays the solitude. New children play upon the green,
New weary sleep below;
And still the pensive spring returns,
And still the punctual snow!

Emily Dickinson

Hamlet: No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i' the world.
King: What do you call the play?
Hamlet: The Mouse-trap.

William Shakespeare

This play…was first offered to Cibber and his brethren at Drury-Lane, and rejected; it being then carried to Rich had the effect, as was ludicrously said, of making Gay rich, and Rich gay.

Of gay's The Beggar's Opera

So Einstein was wrong when he said, "God does not play dice." Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.

Stephen Hawking

One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn't even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.

Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.

The day may dawn when fair play, love for one's fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair.

Winston Churchill

But taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought — before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others.

Albert Einstein