Play Quotes

“I didn’t mind because I had my own boxes —beautiful boxes that I’d imagined, created, and designed. My boxes were full of endless possibilities! ”
― Kim Hebert, In the Land of Boxes

“Let me stay where the sun shines ever so brightly in the sky—where I can be who I am, carefree.
Boxes, boxes, so many to choose from! Some are given to us; some were always there to begin with. Some are taken away from us. Choices, choices . . . so many choices!
However, at the end of the day, you get to choose the boxes you want to keep. The ones that make your heart beat. Whatever they may be, you decide.
Never let anyone steer you away from who you are meant to be.”
― Kim Hebert, In the Land of Boxes

“I would never be happy if I could not be graceful and humble about what I can achieve.”
― Kim Hebert, In the Land of Boxes

“I could see the world under golden skies of confetti. ”
― Kim Hebert, In the Land of Boxes

“If water could be shaped like clay, then swimming ducks would be master sculptors. If I were to commission a statue of myself, I'd hire splashing ducks at play.”
― Jarod Kintz, Ducks are the stars of the karaoke bird world

“Most adult geniuses are more playful than most children.”
― @Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Teachers should encourage students’ creativity. That means that it’s okay for class to get a little wild sometimes. You can’t have creativity without getting a little wild sometimes. That means in our classrooms we should hear lively discussions, insightful debates, engaging conversations, exchanges of ideas, and informative play.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr

“Most adults make adulthood seem like a disease that is caused by a deficiency of playfulness.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Though the birds scolded, the foxes snarled, and his own kind drove him away, Tarka had many friends, whom he played with and forgot – sticks, stones, water-weeds, slain fish, and once an empty cocoa-tin, a bright and curious thing that talked strangely as it moved over the shallows, but sank into the pool beyond, sent up three bubbles, and would play no more.”
― Henry Williamson, Tarka the Otter

“[We can use] play as a means to enhance neuroplasticity and explore novel situations, regardless of age.”
― Andrew Huberman

“Our species is obsessed with play: we are either participating ourselves or watching others play for us.”
― Patricia B. McConnell, The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs

“When her kiss transforms the Beast, she is furious.

'You should have warned me! Here I was smitten by an exceptional being, and all of a sudden, my fiance becomes an ordinary distinguished young man!”
― Fernand Noziere, Three Gallant Plays

“Swimming ducks are water sculptors. Their artwork takes shape in the form of play.”
― Jarod Kintz, Ducks are the stars of the karaoke bird world

“And all the parts of me that are ugly and lonely and horrible and sad will be the parts of me that other people hold close to themselves and fine a secret resonance with, and about which they say to themselves: I know that thing too, when I'm all alone that's how I feel too. And even if nobody says those words out loud, right then, we will be feeling the same feelings so strongly that we will forget that we aren't of one body, one mind, one tenuous heart. And if it isn't my play, then I will still be part of that collective witnessing organism, still be a single cell within a warm and gazing animal. It's the sort of feeling that becomes a constant longing. It's the sort of longing upon which you build an entire life.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“I am king over my ducks. What does that mean? That means they get to eat and drink and play, and give no thought to where their food and water comes from, and I have to deliver both regularly, while also worrying about protecting them and keeping them absolutely safe.”
― Jarod Kintz, Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.

“The view we take in the following pages is that culture arises in the form of play, that it is played from the very beginning. Even those activities which aim at the immediate satisfaction of vital needs--hunting, for instance--tend, in archaic society, to take on the play form. Social life is endued with supra-biological forms, in the shape of play, which enhance its value. It is through this playing that society expresses its interpretation of life and the world.”
― Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture

“The artist is the lover who showers essence on the world.”
― Victor Shamas

“Who steals my purse, steals trash.”
― William Shaekspeare

“Play is a simple yet effective tool to create a safe environment to explore and take risks”
― Begoña Pino, Join the Playful Revolution: How to Bring Creativity and Play to the Workplace

“Playing may be easy, but playing the right way is not.
("Interpretations," A Cultural History of the Theatre in the Middle Ages, ed. Jody Enders, (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 136.)”
― Glending Olson

“From the reed flute streams a melody....
cut from the agony of deeps....
for carved are the holes...
and thus emerges the flute from a reed........
as the ache that enters your deeps...
turns your heart to the sweetest flute...
and you become a vessel
for a music that fills this earth...
every longing is played by the reed flute
into the breeze....
as agony cut you in pieces..
.there flew your achiest of aches....
but now the reed flute has you smiling
playing the sweetest melody on your lips....
for they come not through the flute...
but from your soul. of the deeps...
as in agony you turn to the note of ecstasy ....
for though your heart is torn asunder...
yet altered are they in the reed notes....
as the flute lets the notes play with the winds....”
― Jayita Bhattacharjee

“Life is not a pleasure nor a play.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair? My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone? My love, my love, my love, if only you could have known.”
― Mary Zimmerman, The Secret in the Wings

“Watching the game in life is assuming that I cannot play the game, and so I will watch others do what in reality I could do if I simply dared to get out of the stands.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“There's more than just our playful nature that suggests eternal youth has played a role in our evolution. One of the most defining characteristics of humans is our creativity, our willingness to try new things and new ways of interacting with our environment -all traits normally associated with youth.”
― Patricia B. McConnell, The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs

“Gray notes that the tendency of kids to introduce danger and risk into outdoor free play, such as when they climb walls and trees, or skateboard down staircases and railings:

They seem to be dosing themselves with moderate degrees of fear, as if deliberately learning how to deal with both the physical and emotional challenges of the moderately dangerous conditions they generate... All such activities are fun to the degree that they are moderately frightening. If too little fear is induced, the activity is boring; if too much is induced, it becomes no longer play but terror. Nobody but the child himself or herself knows the right dose.”
― Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt

“Gray notes that the tendency of kids to introduce danger and risk into outdoor free play, such as when they climb walls and trees, or skateboard down staircases and railings:

They seem to be dosing themselves with moderate degrees of fear, as if deliberately learning how to deal with both the physical and emotional challenges of the moderately dangerous conditions they generate... All such activities are fun to the degree that they are moderately frightening. If too little fear is induced, the activity is boring; if too much is induced, it becomes no longer play but terror. Nobody but the child himself or herself knows the right dose.

Unfortunately, outdoor physical play is the kind that has declined the most in the lives of American children.”
― Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“Life is not a game, the God is playing with us.
It is only us, who are either playing, or, forgot how to play, or,
don't want to play at all.”
― Mahendar Singh Jakhar

“I wouldn't play the game if I couldn't win.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“Vigorous physical free play-- outdoors, and with other kids--is a crucial kind of play, one that our evolved minds are "expecting." It also happens to be the kind of play that kids generally say they like the most. (There is also a good case to be made for the importance of imaginative or pretend play, which is found not only in less rambunctious kinds of indoor free play but often in rough-and-tumble outdoor free play as well.)”
― Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure