Play Quotes

Train children not by compulsion but as if they were playing.

Where there is happiness, there is found pleasure in nonsense. The transformation of experience into its opposite, of the suitable into the unsuitable, the obligatory into the optional (but in such a manner that this process produces no injury and is only imagined in jest), is a pleasure.

In the true man there is a child concealed who wants to play.

We are not meant to be perpetually solemn: We must play.

To play so as to be relaxed and refreshed for work is not to play, and no work is well and finely done unless it, too, is a form of play.

You don't need Little League. You don't even need nine kids. Four is plenty-a pitcher, a batter, and a couple of shaggers. You can play ball all day long. My kids used to try to get me out there, but I'd just say, "Go play with your brothers." If kids want to do something, they'll do it. They don't need adults to do it for them.

I have fun with ideas; I play with them.

It just happened that we did [Fences] seven years ago on Broadway. Scott Rudin brought me August Wilson's original screenplay for it, and I realized I hadn't read the play. So I read it. Then I realized that Troy (my character) was 53 - and I was 55 at the time. I realized I better hurry up! I might be too old!

I know no other way to associate with great tasks than as play: as a sign of greatness, this is an essential presupposition.

Play is the highest from of research.

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.

It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.

Eternity is a child playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a child.

Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.

You get to know someone better by playing for an hour than by talking for a year.

I speak and the child plays: who can be more serious than we are?

The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all.

An hour of play is worth a lifetime of conversation.

Poetry is play. I'd even rather have you think of it as a sport. For instance, like football.

When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all.

Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds.

The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It is therefore short-sighted to treat fantasy, on account of its risky or unacceptable nature, as a thing of little worth.

And when they played they really played. And when they worked they really worked.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

The human need to play is a powerful one. When we ignore it, we feel there is something missing in our lives.

Men are nuts. Young men are crazy. We all love toys. I'm toy oriented. I write about toys. I've got a lot of toys. Hundreds of things. But computers are toys, and men like to mess around with smart dumb things. They feel creative.

There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty.

Did you ever fly a kite in bed? Did you ever walk with ten cats on your head? Did you ever milk this kind of cow? Well, we can do it. We know how. If you never did, you should. These things are fun and fun is good.

Children who are decked with prince's robes and who have jeweled chains round their necks lose all pleasure in play; their dress hampers them at every step. In fear that it may be frayed, or stained with dust, they keep themselves from the world and are afraid ever to move. Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keep one shut off from the healthful dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right of entrance to the great fair of common human life.

When you play the game for fun, it's fun. When you play it for a living, it's a game of sorrows.

Don't do anything that isn't play

To stimulate creativity one must develop childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition.

The Universe is the game of the self, which plays hide and seek forever and ever.

When I see birches bend to left and right... I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

Day Play We play all day. Night Fight We fight all night.

Play needs direction as well as work.

Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces in a game. Kingship belongs to the child.

To escape boredom, man works either beyond what his usual needs require, or else he invents play, that is, work that is designed to quiet no need other than that for working in general.

But what is work and what is not work? Is it work to dig, to carpenter, to plant trees, to fell trees, to ride, to fish, to hunt, to feed chickens, to play the piano, to take photographs, to build a house, to cook, to sew, to trim hats, to mend motor bicycles? All of these things are work to somebody, and all of them are play to somebody. There are in fact very few activities which cannot be classed either as work or play according as you choose to regard them.

I wasn't really a work-conscious type of person. I was a player. I loved to play sports.

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

Not by force shall the children learn, but through play

This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

I like to fill my tub up with water, then turn the shower on and act like I'm in a submarine that's been hit .

For youth, everything is sport.

A moody child and wildly wisePursued the game with joyful eyes,Which chose, like meteors, their way,And rived the dark with private ray.

There is a good deal of excellent research on child's play. It has shown conclusively that through play, with the freedom of action it allows and the stressless environment in which it occurs, children discover, relate to and define themselves and their world. ...It is, therefore, paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play.

Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game.

The fools standpoint is that all social institutions are games. He sees the whole world as game playing. That's why, when people take their games seriously and take on stern and pious expressions, the fool gets the giggles because he knows that it is all a game.

You find out that the universe is a system that creeps up on itself and says 'Boo' and then laughs at itself for jumping.

Watch a man at play for an hour and you can learn more about him than in talking to him for a year.

If we would have our citizens contented and law-abiding, we must not sow the seeds of discontent in childhood by denying children their birthright of play.

When work becomes play, and play becomes your work, your life unfolds.

Men should learn to live with the same seriousness with which children play.

The most important part of education is right training in the nursery. The soul of the child in his play should be trained to that sort of excellence in which, when he grows to manhood, he will have to be perfected.

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.