Play Quotes - Page 27

• A smart girl is one who knows how to play tennis, golf, piano -- and dumb.

  Marilyn Monroe

  Girl, Smart, Golf

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• Silence, that inspired dealer, takes the day's deck, the life, all in a crazy heap, lays it out, and plays its flawless hand of solitaire, every card in place. Scoops them up, and does it all over again.

  Patricia Hampl

  Crazy, Hands, Silence

  Patricia Hampl (1993). “Virgin Time”

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• if you play the numbers game and become obsessed with it, as so many in Hollywood are, sooner or later you have to face the depressing fact that if you are number one the only place you can go is down.

  Doris Day

  Success, Depressing, Numbers

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• If a play is good and you're effective in it, you suddenly hear a silence that is loud, and that moment makes the whole schmageggy business of an actor or an actress worthwhile, because you suddenly know that they are human beings like you, who are receiving something from you.

  Shelley Winters

  Silence, Receiving, Actors

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• Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavor to keep women in the dark because, the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Dark, Tyrants, Mind

  1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, pt.1, ch.2.

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• The Federal Building's large Ceremonial Courtroom, reserved for show trials, is veneered in executive teak. Bench, counsel tables, jury boxes, entrances, and exits -- all are as formally arranged as an Elizabethan stage. Only the drama is shapeless, at least to those of us who have never seen a trial before. We see only random movements, sequences, comings and goings, no form or agenda apparent. To us the action is less like watching a play than watching an aquarium.

  Shana Alexander

  Drama, Aquariums, Agendas

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• Women as a class have never subjugated another group; we have never marched off to wars of conquest in the name of the fatherland. We have never been involved in a decision to annex the territory of a neighboring country, or to fight for foreign markets on distant shores. These are the games men play, not us. We want to be neither oppressors nor oppressed. The women's revolution is the final revolution of them all.

  Susan Brownmiller

  Country, War, Fighting

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• A little work, a little play, To keep us going - and so, good-day!

  George du Maurier

  Good Day, Littles

  George du Maurier (2015). “Trilby”, p.287, Booklassic

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• The natural impulses of every thoroughbred include his sense of honor; his love of fair play and courage; his dislike of pretense and of cheapness.

  Emily Post

  Honor, His Love, Natural

  Emily Post (1945). “Children are People: And Ideal Parents are Comrades”

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• I never like to play for myself, and that is why I don't own a grand piano. To play for yourself is like looking at yourself in a mirror. I like to practice; that is to work at a task. But to play there must be an audience. New things happen when you play for an audience. You don't know what will occur. You make discoveries with the music, and it is always the first time. It is an exchange, a communion.

  Hephzibah Menuhin

  Music, Piano, Mirrors

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• Sometimes, when I play music, I feel as if I am giving life. ... It isn't just notes on the paper anymore: you are recreating the thought, transmitting it. It becomes shareable, but it can never be kept. You go through and at the same time you let go of the experience. That is part of the wonder of music: it can never be kept; it is ephemeral and at the same time enduring.

  Hephzibah Menuhin

  Music, Letting Go, Giving

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• [At age 76:] A good life is like a good play -- it has to have a satisfying and exciting third act.

  Ethel Barrymore

  Good Life, Age, Life Is Like

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• War is an old, old plant on this earth, and a natural history of it would have to tell us under what soil conditions it grows, where it plays havoc, and how it is eliminated.

  Ruth Benedict

  War, Earth, Soil

  Ruth Benedict (2011). “An Anthropologist at Work”, p.370, Transaction Publishers

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• I feel inauthentic at a party. ... Going to a party is a 'low' activity - the authentic self is compromised, fragmented - one plays 'roles.' One isn't fully present, beyond role-playing. One doesn't (can't) tell the full truth, which means one is lying, even if one doesn't literally tell lies.

  Susan Sontag

  Truth, Lying, Party

  Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.317, Macmillan

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• In a mystery, you must play fair by giving all the clues, but disguise them by immediately distracting the reader with something else.

  Joan Lowery Nixon

  Giving, Mystery, Clue

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• Golf is recognized as one of the more difficult games to play or teach. One reason for this is that each person necessarily plays by feel, and a feel is almost impossible to describe.

  Bobby Jones

  Golf, Games, Impossible

  Bobby Jones (1966). “Bobby Jones on Golf”, Main Street Books

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• Nature listening stood, whilst Shakespeare play'd
  And wonder'd at the work herself had made.

  Charles Churchill

  Listening, Wonder, Made

  Charles Churchill (1892). “The Poetical Works of Charles, Churchill”

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• The stage I chose--a subject fair and free--
  'Tis yours--'tis mine--'tis public property.
  All common exhibitions open lie,
  For praise or censure, to the common eye.
  Hence are a thousand hackney writers fed;
  Hence monthly critics earn their daily bread.
  This is a general tax which all must pay,
  From those who scribble, down to those who play.

  Charles Churchill

  Lying, Eye, Exhibitions

  Charles Churchill, George Gilfillan (1855). “The poetical works of Charles Churchill: with memoir, critical dissertation, and explanatory notes / by the Rev. George Gilfillan”, p.43

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• It is not the man who is beside himself, but he who is cool and collected,--who is master of his countenance, of his voice, of his actions, of his gestures, of every part of his play,--who can work upon others at his pleasure.

  Denis Diderot

  Men, Voice, Gestures

  Friedrich Melchior Freiherr von Grimm, Denis Diderot (1815). “Historical & Literary Memoirs and Anecdotes, Selected from the Correspondence of Baron de Grimm and Diderot with the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, and Many Other Distinguished Persons, Between the Years of 1753 and 1790”, p.68

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• The classical city promoted play with careful solicitude, building the theater and stadium as it built the market place and the temple.

  Jane Addams

  Cities, Temples, Building

  Jane Addams (2016). “The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets”, p.10, Youcanprint

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• If you let anything infringe on your writing time, it will. And you won't get the writing done. Taking one day off can cost me five days of getting back in the mood. Going out to lunch can cost me anywhere from five hours to three days. And for me it's not worth it. For my own sense of well-being I have to finish my work before I can play.

  Danielle Steel

  Writing, Lunch, One Day

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• But alas for the dreams that round us play! / For the plans of mortal making! / And alas for the false and fickle day / That looked so fair at waking!

  Phoebe Cary

  Dream, Disappointment, Fickle

  Phoebe Cary, Mary Clemmer (1876). “The Poetical Works of Alice and Phoebe Cary”

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• All tragedies deal with fated meetings; how else could there be a play? Fate deals its stroke; sorrow is purged, or turned to rejoicing; there is death, or triumph; there has been a meeting, and a change. No one will ever make a tragedy - and that is as well, for one could not bear it - whose grief is that the principals never met.

  Mary Renault

  Grief, Fate, Sorrow

  Mary Renault (1974). “The Mask of Apollo”

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• The perpetual stream of human nature is formed into ever-changing shallows, eddies, falls and pools by the land over which it passes. Perhaps the only real value of history lies in considering this endlessly varied play between the essence and the accidents.

  Mary Renault

  Real, Lying, Fall

  MARY RENAULT (1966). “THE MASK OF APOLLO”

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• A cat is, by and large, sophisticated and complex, and capable of creating three-act plays around any single piece of action.

  Gladys Taber

  Cat, Creating, Three

  Gladys Bagg Taber (1948). “The book of Stillmeadow”

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