Playing Chess Quotes - Page 3

• Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with children's play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in "playing" chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for.

  Northrop Frye

  Children, Work, Thinking

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.145, University of Toronto Press

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• The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations. The least satisfying of desires. A nameless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess.

  H. G. Wells

  Passion, Artist, Men

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• I feel like I'm playing chess underwater. The pieces keep floating away. I don't know where things are. I can't figure out tomorrow.

  Jerry Spinelli

  Underwater, Floating, Pieces

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• Ralph... would treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player.

  William Golding

  Player, Decision, Trouble

  William Golding (2016). “Lord of the Flies: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.89, Penguin

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• Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.

  David Hockney

  Moving, Race, Drawing

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• Playing chess is more athletic than artistic. Champions are more concerned with victory than beauty: it's war with occasionally graceful kicks.

  Jennifer Shahade

  War, Athletic, Champion

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• One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes.

  Scarlett Thomas

  Girl, Reading, Writing

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• I spend hours playing chess because I find it so much fun. The day it stops being fun is the day I give up.

  Magnus Carlsen

  Giving Up, Fun, Hours

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• Two monks sit facing, playing chess on the mountain, The bamboo shadow on the board is dark and clear. Not a person sees the bamboo's shadow, One sometimes hears the pieces being moved.

  Bai Juyi

  Autumn, Dark, Winter

  Bai Juyi, “On The Lake (1)”

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• It's hard to explain what happens when jazz and punk fuse with a violin twist but it works. Probably because Anson Choi takes off his shirt while he's playing the saxophone. Whoever's not chatting up a Cadet or a girl from Darling House or playing chess with the guys is watching the band. I turn into a groupie.

  Melina Marchetta

  Girl, House, Guy

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• I would certainly end up forever crying the blues into a coffee cup in a park for old men playing chess or silly games of some sort.

  Charles Bukowski

  Coffee, Silly, Men

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• Riding a bike works your legs but not your brain. Playing chess works your mind but not your body. Climbing brings it all together.

  Pat Ament

  Climbing, Brain, Mind

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• We've seen computers play chess and beat grand masters. We've seen computers drive a car across a desert. But interestingly, playing chess is easy, but having a conversation about nothing is really difficult for a computer.

  Hod Lipson

  Play, Car, Desert

  "Robot-To-Robot Chat Yields Curious Conversation". "All Things Considered" with Robert Siegel, www.npr.org. September 1, 2011.

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• Firstly, there no such person as Death.
  Second, Death's this tall guy with a bone face, like a skeletal monk, with a scythe and an hourglass and a big white horse and a penchant for playing chess with Scandinavians.
  Third, he doesn't exist either.

  Neil Gaiman

  Death, Horse, White

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• When I started out playing chess as a kid I thought I should be world champion. As a kid you have no idea what that means and you only sort of picture it. It is hard to imagine that I waited all those years and it happened in a late stage of my career.

  Viswanathan Anand

  Mean, Kids, Years

  "Devil's Advocate: Viswanathan Anand on mind games". CNN-IBN interview, en.chessbase.com. May 13, 2008.

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• The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish.

  Joseph Heller

  Player, Games, Interesting

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

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• It's not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess. It's that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse's office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs.

  Jon Stewart

  Nurse, Office, Balls

  "Jon Stewart Gets Fed Up: Dems Set The Bar So Low They’re Tripping Over It" by Dan Abramson, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 21, 2010.

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• It was not until I got my first job, at the University of Washington in Seattle, and began playing chess with Don Gordon, a brilliant young theorist, that I learned economic theory.

  Douglass North

  Jobs, Firsts, Brilliant

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• You know, also I, you know, I was on those birth control pills and my breasts were like, they hurt... and, you know, it was like they blew up like. You know, they wouldn't fit into any of my dresses. I had to quit taking those birth control pills... This was like - I mean they were like, I thought they should be photographed really... So they were, for immortality. (On being photographed nude playing chess with Marcel Duchamp at Duchamp's 1963 retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of Art.)

  Eve Babitz

  Hurt, Art, Mean

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• I had thrown my body in for art... I had thrown myself into this game for art. You know, I was not a very good artist. But this was, like, one thing I could do. (On being photographed nude playing chess with Marcel Duchamp at Duchamp's 1963 retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of Art.)

  Eve Babitz

  Art, Games, Museums

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• I love the competitive aspect of it [business]. It's like playing chess. Why do people play chess? Knowing the realm of moves? Even when you get to be a chess master, there are other chess masters you want to beat or outperform. And to me business is just a sport that I love to compete in; a continuous intellectual challenge that really motivates me.

  Mark Cuban

  Sports, Moving, Play

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• I was a professional chess player in Romania, but only a small-time master. When I came to France, I continued playing chess for many years: I played tournaments in numerous countries with mixed results. I wrote and published a book - La Défense Alekhine and translated two others from Russian. I taught chess in schools; I earned more money through chess than through literature.

  Dumitru Tepeneag

  Country, Book, School

  Source: therumpus.net

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• When I was a kid, I really liked playing chess, which is pretty geeky; I just enjoyed it - thinking, exercising my mind. And I found computers to be like an eight-hour day chess game.

  Michael Birch

  Kids, Exercise, Thinking

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• 

  These young guys are playing checkers. I'm out there playing chess.

  Kobe Bryant

  Funny, Basketball, Sports

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• I got arrested for playing chess in the street. I said, it's because I'm black, isn't it.

  Milton Jones

  Funny, Humor, Black

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