Quotes on Games

Friends of mine said later that they had been riveted by a postgame television close-up of Wade Boggs, sitting alone in the dugout with tears streaming down his face …. I suppose we should all try to find something better or worse to shed tears for than a game, no matter how hard it has been played, but perhaps it is not such a bad thing to see that men can cry at all.

How you played in yesterday's game is all that counts.

Even today, when an Aboriginal mother notices the first stirrings of speech in her child, she lets it handle the "things" of that particular country: leaves, fruit, insects and so forth. "We give our children guns and computer games," Wendy said. "They gave their children the land."

Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventure. Let the noon find you by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.

For pleasure you can read the games collections of Andersson and Chigorin, but for benefit you should study Tarrasch, Keres and Bronstein.

But the enemy has the move, and he is about to open his full game. And pawns are as likely to see as much of it as any. Sharpen your blade!

Here and there in the ancient literature we encounter legends of wise and mysterious games that were conceived and played by scholars, monks, or the courtiers of cultured princes. These might take the form of chess games in which the pieces and squares had secret meanings in addition to their usual functions.

Weaknesses of character are normally shown in a game of chess.

Friends are helpful not only because they will listen to us, but because they will laugh at us; Through them we learn a little objectivity, a little modesty, a little courtesy; We learn the rules of life and become better players of the game

We're beating a lot of poor teams. So what? We won a lot of games last year, too. Will Horace and Bill still be playing at this level in the playoffs...Can Pip keep it up?

Leave the fishing-rod, Great General, to us sovereigns of Pharos and Canopus. Your game is cities and kings and continents.

If you are weak in the endgame, you must spend more time analysing studies; in your training games you must aim at transposing to endgames, which will help you to acquire the requisite experience.

When baseball is no longer fun, it's no longer a game.

My proudest moment? Every Friday morning when I look at the board at Celtic Park and see my name on the team sheet for tomorrow's game.

To my surprise I found that when other top players in the precomputer age (before 1995, roughly) wrote about games in magazines and newspaper columns, they often made more mistakes in their annotations than the players had made at the board.

I claim that nothing else is so effective in encouraging the growth of chess strength as such independent analysis, both of the games of the great players and your own.

Football's the biggest game in the world. America's the greatest sporting nation there is. To play some part in putting those two things together: why wouldn't I be excited about that?

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with a few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. Physically it is extraordinarily arduous, and morally it is killing...You get your happiness where you can. You reach a point where you're at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you're the luckiest person on earth. Why? Because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish

Winning games, titles and championships isn't all it's cracked up to be, but getting there, the journey, is a lot more than it's cracked up to be.

If you take five white guys and put 'em with five black guys, and let 'em hang around together for about a month, and at the end of the month, you'll notice that the white guys are walking and talking and standing like the black guys do. You'll never see the black guys going, "Oh, golly! We won the big game today, yes sir!" But you'll see guys with red hair named Duffy going, "What's happenin'?"

THE POET A moody child and wildly wise Pursued the game with joyful eyes, Which chose, like meteors, their way, And rived the dark with private ray: They overleapt the horizon's edge, Searched with Apollo's privilege; Through man, and woman, and sea, and star, Saw the dance of nature forward far; Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times, Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes. Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below, Which always find us young, And always keep us so.