Stephen Potter Quotes

13 Sourced Quotes

A good general rule is to state that the bouquet is better than the taste, and vice versa.

Stephen Potter
If you have nothing to say, or, rather, something extremely stupid and obvious, say it, but in a 'plonking' tone of voice – i.e. roundly, but hollowly and dogmatically.

Stephen Potter
There are those who believe that the sole duty of the poker gamesman is to build up his reputation for impenetrability and toughness by suggesting that he last played poker by the light of a moon made more brilliant by the snows of the Yukon, and that his opponents were two white slave traffickers, a ticket-of-leave man and a deserter from the Foreign Legion. To me this is ridiculously far-fetched, but I do believe that a trace of American accent – West Coast – casts a small shadow of apprehension over the minds of English players.

Stephen Potter
In lawn tennis mixed, the basic chivalry move is to pretend to serve less fiercely to the woman than to the man. This is particularly useful if your first service tends to be out in any case.

Stephen Potter
What is gamesmanship? Most difficult of questions to answer briefly. "The Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating"—that is my personal "working definition."

Stephen Potter
"Yes, but not in the South", with slight adjustments, will do for any argument about any place, if not about any person.

Stephen Potter
The theory and practice of gamesmanship; or, The art of winning games without actually cheating.

Stephen Potter
Remember the basic rule. Make friends with your caddie and the game will make friends with you. How true this is. It is easy to arrange that your guest opponent shall be deceived in to undertipping his caddie at the end of the morning round, so that the news gets round among the club employees that your opponent is a no good, and the boys will gang up against him.

Stephen Potter
In our small chess community in Marylebone it would be mock modesty on my part to deny that I have built up for myself a considerable name without ever actually having won a single game. Even the best players are sometimes beaten, and that is precisely what happens to me.

Stephen Potter
Talk of the "imperial decay" of your invalid port. "Its gracious withdrawal from perfection, keeping a hint of former majesty withal, as it hovers between oblivion and the divine Untergang of infinite recession."

Stephen Potter
How to be one up - how to make the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly.

Stephen Potter
Cogg would suddenly stand stock still. "Listen," he would say. Some feeble quack would be heard from the willow beyond the pond. "That's an easy one to tell. The frog-pippit." Then he would add, As a safety measure, "As I believe they call it in these parts."

Stephen Potter
Just as there are O.K.-words in conversationship so there are O.K.-people to mention in Newstatesmanship.

Stephen Potter