Play quotes
12.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside play — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Although words exist for the most part for the transmission of ideas, there are some which produce such violent disturbance in our feelings that the role they play in the transmission of ideas is lost in the background."
"X + Y + Z X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut."
"Honestly, I have had to live like a high priestess in this show. It is a very, very lonely life. When you work the way I work - that means hard - there's no time for play."
"My eyes, those sluts, those whores, would play no more."
"One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions."
"A play's an interpretation. It is not a report. And that is the beginning of its poetry because, in order to interpret, you have to distort toward a symbolic construction of what happened, and as that distortion takes place, you begin to leave out and overemphasize and consequently deliver up life as a unity rather than as a chaos, and any such attempt, the more intense it is, the more poetic it becomes."
"The Greeks used to use the same stories, the same mythology, time after time, different authors. There was no premium placed upon an original story, and indeed, Shakespeare likewise. A lot of people wrote plays about great kings. They didn't expect a brand-new story. It was what that new author made of the old story. It is probably the same now. We disguise it by inventing what seem to be new stories, but they're basically the same story anyway."
"I like to hide behind the characters I play. Despite the public perception, I am a very private person who has a hard time with the fame thing."
"They said, 'You have a blue guitar, / You do not play things as they are.' / The man replied, 'Things as they are / Are changed upon the blue guitar.'"
"Where shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly 's done, when the battle 's lost and won"
"All I do is play music and golf - which one do you want me to give up?"
"Play the game for more than you can afford to lose... only then will you learn the game."
"If you would be a leader of men you must lead your own generation, not the next. Your playing must be good now, while the play ison the boards and the audience in the seats.... It will not get you the repute of a good actor to have excellencies discovered in you afterwards."
"Even today, skiffle is a defining part of my music. If I get the opportunity to just have a jam, skiffle is what I love to play."
"I knew he would never play for Wales ... he's tone deaf."
"The aeroplane is an invention of the devil and will never play any part in such a serious business as the defence of the nation, my boy!"
"I really like the stuff that is very absurd and very real at the same time. I think Anton Chekhov is the greatest comedy writer of all time. I think he would make a great addition to The Office staff. If you look through Chekhov plays there is a lot of awkward pauses in there. His mixture of pathos, absurdity, truthfulness and whimsy is just mixed together perfectly."
"Contemporary American psychiatrist It is a happy talent to know how to play."
"God has created the world in play, as it were."
"If it's enough money, I'll play the North Pole."
