Play Quotes

“Wit now would be to insult the night, nature itself, the jasmine scent, the moonlight; one glimpse of the heavens and their infinite spaces reveals the absurdity of our artifices. What scares me is that the alchemy we share may fail to distil true love, the real, the rare, wasting its time on fanciful pastimes while our sophistication destroys our dreams.”
― Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

“That’s because we misunderstand play itself, casting it as exuberant, silly, a frippery that signals to us that our children are still young enough to have not yet turned their minds to more weighty endeavours. But play is serious. Play is absolute. Play is the complete absorption in something that doesn’t matter to the external world, but which matters completely to you. It’s an immersion in your own interests that becomes a feeling in itself, a potent emotion. Play is a disappearance into a space of our choosing, invisible to those outside the game. It is the pursuit of pure flow, a sandbox mind in which we can test new thoughts, new selves. It’s a form of symbolic living, a way to transpose one reality onto another and mine it for meaning. Play is a form of enchantment.”
― Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

“Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.”
― Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia

“But this is ruin! New waves breaking in
To wreck us, ere we are righted from the old!”
― Euripides, Medea

“The English word 'illusion' is almost always used as a translation for the Eastern word 'maya'.

Ordinarily, the word 'illusion' means unreal, but that is not its true meaning. It comes from a Latin root, ludere, which means to play.'Illusion' simply means a play, and that is the real meaning of maya.

Maya does not mean illusory; it simply means playful: God is playing with Himself. Of course, He was nobody except Himself, so He is playing a hide-and-seek with Himself. He hides one of His hands and tries to find it with another hand, knowing all the time where it is.”
― Osho

“Glad to see you woke up ready to play, Nesta.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A ​Court of Silver Flames

“The player is always trapped in his own play but he must never allow the spectators to suspect this, they must always think that he is free. Thus the great art of the player is not in showing but in concealing.”
― Barry Unsworth, Morality Play

“I no longer understand anything literally. I cannot wait until I wake up, whereas earlier I could not wait to fall asleep. I have been made to speak. I have been sentenced to reality. - Do you hear it? (Silence.) Can you hear? (Silence.) Psst. (Silence.)”
― Peter Handke, Kaspar

“Oh my darlings,
they tell you you’re born with a precious pearl.
Truth is,
it’s a disaster to be a girl.”
― Anne Carson, Norma Jeane Baker of Troy

“Let the girl run and shout as much as she will- it is a sure sign of health, and as natural to a happy child as frisking is to any young animal full of life. Tomboys make strong women”
― Louisa May Alcott, Eight Cousins

“I always have been that way ...
would rather dare, try, make mistakes,
fall down and screw up
than spend any time stuck in an image
of what it is to be good and/or right 
and/or strong and/or perfect...

I'd rather be the fool.”
― Shellen Lubin

“In play, the person establishes an umbilical connection between self and world.”
― Siri Husvedt

“De populaire spreekwijze drukt dit duidelijk uit in de woorden: het gaat niet om de knikkers, maar om het spel, in andere woorden: het finale element der handeling is in eerste instantie gelegen in den afloop als zoodanig, zonder directe betrekking op wat daarna volgt.”
― Huizinga Johan, Homo Ludens

“This made a pattern of movement and gesture very effective and it provoked laughter, which is a welcome thing as saving from silence, but also frightening when there are many laughing together -- it is then a sea with strange tides. Players swim in the rise and fall of it and if they lose the mastery they drown.”
― Barry Unsworth, Morality Play

“Women need time and space to play - particularly when we work so hard”
― Helen Lewis, Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights

“ما همه نوشدارو در دست می‌میریم!”
― Bahram Beyzaie, سهراب‌کُشی

“The external ego believes (and because of its dominion over our modern lives, most of us believe) that the only way to get things done is through physical effort. It believes in a stark world where fun and play are a waste of time and therefore should be left to children. It glorifies that classic line “no pain, no gain”, then in its quiet moments shakes with fear over what it believes to be its inevitable death as a purely physical organism, and whimpers as it contemplates its stark and painful existence.”
― John Kreiter, Create A Servitor Companion

“If we had time, we would play.' His hands tightened on my waist. 'But we don't have time, Princess.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire

“Perhaps the most costly disassembly in which our culture has been engaged is the disaggregation of life itself into work, play, learning, and inspiration. Each of these aspects of life has been separated from the others by creating institutions for engaging in only one at a time, excluding the other three as much as possible. Businesses are designed for work, not play, learning, or inspiration. Country clubs, theaters, and sports stadiums are designed for play, not work, learning or inspiration. Schools are designed for learning, not work, play, or inspiration. Museums and churches are designed for inspiration, not work, play, or learning. However, one of the most important products of systems thinking is the realization that the effectiveness with which any of these four functions can be carried out depends on the extent to which they are carried out together, in an integrated way.”
― Russell L. Ackoff, Re-Creating the Corporation: A Design of Organizations for the 21st Century

“Life feels like a movie or a play to me. And all of you and me are together performing the scenes and acts.”
― Avijeet Das

“I think Geertz missed a trick. He made the boundaries of deep play too solid. I see deep play everywhere, expressed in infinite ways. It captures, for me, a quality of attention that is unexpected in adult life, and which we barely even recognise in children. That's because we misunderstand play itself, casting it as exuberant, silly, a frippery that signals to us that our children are still young enough to have not yet turned their minds to more weighty endeavours. But play is serious. Play is absolute. Play is the complete absorption in something that doesn't matter to the external world, but which matters completely to you. It's an immersion in your own interests that becomes a feeling in itself, a potent emotion. Play is a disappearance into a space of our choosing, invisible to those outside the game. It is the pursuit of pure flow, a sandbox mind in which we can test new thoughts, new selves. It's a form of symbolic living, a way to transpose one reality onto another and mine it for meaning. Play is a form of enchantment.”
― Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

“Of the three genres of literature, drama is the loudest. You can't converse with it secretly.”
― Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

“WELL, I’M SUFFERING INSIDE! Anytime I see someone caring or sharing, I burn up inside with envy. You know why I feel comfortable only around the collapsed, the broken, the inebriated, the helpless and poor——‘CAUSE IT LOOKS LIKE WHAT I FEEL INSIDE!”
― Karen Finley

“This combination of parody and seriousness reflects the contradictions of an era in which we find ourselves confronted with both the urgent necessity and the near impossibility of initiating and carrying out a totally innovative collective action-an era in which the most serious ventures are masked in the ambiguous interplay between art and its necessary negation, and in which the essential voyages of discovery have been undertaken by such astonishingly incapable people.”
― Situationist International (English Section)

“To invite play is to spark the imagination and see beyond that which exists to that which is possible.”
― Jenny Hahn, Creative Flow: Tap and Express Your Juicy Essence

“CHARLIZE. Chocolate covered skittles.
AGENT. You're sure. That sounds... disgusting.
CHARLIZE. Yeah I'm sure! Chocolate covered skittles or I walk.”
― Ian McWethy, Bad Auditions by Bad Actors

“I am emptied through shallow breaths.
Muscles tighten in my chest.
I think I am a fool dressed up in king’s chamber,
holding a four-leaf clover.”
― Zaineb Afzal, Spare Change

“To be a maximally happy human is to immerse oneself in perpetual play across countless life domains. Life is too serious not to play.”
― Gad Saad, The Saad Truth about Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life

“My ability to be playful serves as a pressure relief valve from the otherwise unbearable, ugly realities that I deal with on a daily basis. It is part of the homeostatic mechanism for retaining my sanity.”
― Gad Saad, The Saad Truth about Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life

“Play is such a fundamental feature of the human spirit that it is used as a tool in psychotherapy, an are that typically involves an exploration of the roots of mental suffering. Hence, even in the darkest of circumstances, the desire to play manifests itself.”
― Gad Saad, The Saad Truth about Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life