The Great Game Quotes

The great game of life is not about money; it is about doing your best to join the battle to build anew our communities, our nation, and our world. ~ Jack Bogle

How can a man follow the Way or the Great Game when he is eternally pestered by women? There was that girl at the Akrola by the Ford; and there was the scullion's wife behind the dovecote
not counting the others
and now comes this one! When I was a child it was well enough, but now I am a man and they will not regard me as a man. Walnuts indeed! Ho! Ho! It is almonds in the Plains! ~ Rudyard Kipling

There is no War on Terrorism; it is The Great Game speeded up. The difference is the rampant nature of the superpower, ensuring infinite dangers for us all. ~ John Pilger

I ... allowed my memory to journey back to the days when I was a boy of ten, full of health and optimism, when my wonder at the great game of living had yet to give way to disillusionment at its shabbiness. ~ Ruskin Bond

In Tsurani culture, forgiveness was simply a less shameful form of weakness than capitulation. ~ Raymond E. Feist

There was nothing worse, Veppers thought, than a loser who'd made it. It was just part of the way things worked – part of the complexity of life, he supposed – that sometimes somebody who absolutely deserved nothing more than to be one of the down-trodden, the oppressed, the dregs of society, lucked out into a position of wealth, power and admiration.
At least people who were natural winners knew how to carry themselves in their pomp, whether their ascendancy had come through the luck of being born rich and powerful or the luck of being born ambitious and capable. Losers who'd made it always let the side down. Veppers was all for arrogance – he possessed the quality in full measure himself, as he'd often been informed – but it had to be deserved, you had to have worked for it. Or at the very least, an ancestor had to have worked for it.
Arrogance without cause, arrogance without achievement – or that mistook sheer luck for true achievement – was an abomination. Losers made everybody look bad. Worse, they made the whole thing – the great game that was life – appear arbitrary, almost meaningless. Their only use, Veppers had long since decided, was as examples to be held up to those who complained about their lack of status or money or control over their lives: look, if this idiot can achieve something, so can anybody, so can you. So stop whining about being exploited and work harder.
Still, at least individual losers were quite obviously statistical freaks. Yo ~ Iain Banks

Coaches and headmasters praise sport as a preparation for the great game of life, but this is absurd. Nothing could be more different from life. For one thing sports, unlike life, are played according to rules. Indeed, the rules are the sport: life may behave bizarrely and still be life, but if the runner circles the bases clockwise it's no longer baseball. ~ Barbara Holland

Traumatic events can be compared to facing a demon pitcher on the baseball diamond. Life tells us we have to take a swing at the ball, but engaging this demon comes with consequences. If you make first base, you'll feel the need to sleep. Not so bad. Second, you'll want to forget it all happened. Don't we all? But third base brings the onset of madness and if you step off the plate there's only death. In the great game of life, sometimes it's better to strike out than hit a home run. After all, you can relax in the Dugout with friends until you're ready to knock the demon out of the park."

Alexander Rollins, Keystrokes ~ Michael Gardner

Thank you," she whispered. "I promise I will not interfere in Court business again."
"Oh yes, you will."
Zouelle looked up to see her uncle regarding her with a sad little smile.
"You decided that you were ready to start meddling in the great game. I really hope you were right, Zouelle, because once you start playing it you can never leave. You are in the game now, my dear. There is no going back. ~ Frances Hardinge

Chumaka ended with a quotation from a play that Jiro favored. " 'Small acts partner small houses and small minds'. ~ Raymond E. Feist

Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: it teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it to one degree or another.
(Harry Dresden's internal monologue in White Knight) ~ Jim Butcher

In Kafka we have the modern mind, seemingly self-sufficient, intelligent, skeptical, ironical, splendidly trained for the great game of pretending that the world it comprehends in sterilized sobriety is the only and ultimate real one – yet a mind living in sin with the soul of Abraham. Thus he knows Two things at once, and both with equal assurance: that there is no God, and that there must be God. ~ Erich Heller

All the great game show hosts have a signature 'look,' from Bob Barker's year-round Brazil Nut-hued tan to Monty Hall's oversized lamb chop sideburns. As the host of IFC's new comedy game show 'Bunk,' I, too, have worked to develop a style signature by being the first man or woman in TV history to host every show in my bare feet! ~ Kurt Braunohler

Informants can be helpful, but they are never infallible. All tools can break, or be turned into weapons. ~ Raymond E. Feist

He likes to humble our foes by making them seem ridiculous. As he said to me the other day, 'Kill a man, and you cede him honor in the eyes of the gods. Laugh at him and you shame him'. ~ Raymond E. Feist

We've just lost our way, that's all. But what if you could give us a chance to do better? Just one chance? One single move in the great game of history? What's your best shot? What would you consider to be the greatest mistake in world history and, more to the point, what single thing would you do to prevent it? ~ Ben Elton

I'm sorry. I know how much players have to focus, and I know not to be a distraction. I just got caught up in the moment, in the great game, in your terrific pitching."

But I felt a need to explain more.

"Look, Jason, I love baseball. I love the crack of the bat hitting the ball. I love the seventh-inning stretch and singing 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game.' I love eating hot dogs and standing for the singing of the national anthem. I love doing the wave. I love Kiss Cam. I love that the game isn't over until it's over.

"I love the thrill of a home run and the disappointment of an out at first. I love the way a batter stands at the plate and the catcher readies himself to receive the pitch. I love watching the pitcher windup. I love sitting in the stands and feeling like I'm part of the game.

"And tonight, watching you pitch, I forgot that I'm only a small part - the spectator. Watching you, I felt like I was in the game, out on that field with you. You're out there on the mound, living a dream that so few people ever experience.

"I'm sorry, sorry that tonight I ruined the moment for you."

He was staring at me intently. I'd just bared my soul. Why didn't he speak? What could he possibly be thinking?

My nerves stretched taut.

"Say something," I demanded.

"There's nothing else to say," he said in that quiet way he had.

Then he lowered his head and kissed me. ~ Rachel Hawthorne

And of course the reason the Enlightenment has taught us to trash our own history, to say that Christianity is part of the problem, is that it has had a rival eschatology to promote. It couldn't allow Christianity to claim that world history turned its great corner when Jesus of Nazareth died and rose again, because it wanted to claim that world history turned its great corner in Europe in the eighteenth century. "All that went before," it says, "is superstition and mumbo-jumbo. We have now seen the great light, and our modern science, technology, philosophy, and politics have ushered in the new order of the ages." That ~ N. T. Wright

Jerusalem is a festival and a lamentation. Its song is a sigh across the ages, a delicate, robust, mournful psalm at the great junction of spiritual cultures. ~ David K. Shipler

Well, the whole trick to doing an independent film, is to keep great pace and momentum. You're shooting maybe three times as many scenes in one day that you would on a big, luxurious budget on a luxurious schedule, and you try not to sacrifice quality for that. Things are just compressed, but essentially the same. ~ Kevin Kline

Why is it so much easier to talk to a stranger? why do we feel we need to disconnect in order to connect? If I wrote "Dear Sofia" or "Dear Boomer" or "Dear Lily's Great-Aunt" at the top of this postcard, wouldn't that change the words that followed? Of course it would. But the question is: When I wrote "Dear Lily," was that just a version of "Dear Myself"? I know it was more than that. But it was also less than that, too ~ David Levithan

I am not an anti-Semite! I have a great respect for the Jewish people. ~ David Icke

I should like a great lake of ale, for the King of Kings. I should like the family of heaven to be drinking it through time eternal. ~ Brigit Of Kildare

Protestantism has the method of Jesus with His secret too much left out of mind; Catholicism has His secret with His method too much left out of mind; neither has His unerring balance, His intuition, His sweet reasonableness. But both have hold of a great truth, and get from it a great power. ~ Matthew Arnold

I think 'Elbow' were considered successful even before [2008's] Seldom Seen Kid because we were living off the band. We have a great manager who keeps our coffers topped off, and we give ourselves a sensible wage with a view to having three fallow years between records. We always make sure we have enough money to make a record and not be pressured time-wise. ~ Guy Garvey

Thus in a single phrase I can define the great illusion concerning 'love' in this world. It is the effort to join reality with the apparition. ~ Yukio Mishima

You can have a great time on a film and the chemistry can seem great but then you look at the finished film and it just doesn't quite gel, something doesn't quite work. ~ Guy Pearce

I would love it if anyone gave me the job of adapting 'The Great Gatsby,' but nobody ever does. ~ Andrew Davies

The great liberation of imaginative writing is that you're not held back by the facts. ~ Gerald Vizenor

Now, some people might look at something and let it go by, because they don't recognize the pattern and the significance. It's the sensitivity to pattern recognition that seems to me to be of great importance. It's a matter of being able to find meaning, whether it's positive or negative, in whatever you encounter. It's like a journey. It's like finding the paths that will allow you to go forward, or that path that has a block that tells you to start over again or do something else. ~ Jonas Salk

Adele is great because she promotes the idea of being happy as you are. ~ Martine McCutcheon

King Edmund of East Anglia is now remembered as a saint, as one of those blessed souls who live forever in the shadow of God. Or so the priests tell me. In heaven, they say, the saints occupy a privileged place, living on the high platform of God's great hall where they spend their time singing God's praises. Forever. Just singing. Beocca always told me that it would be an ecstatic existence, but to me it seems very dull. The Danes reckon their dead warriors are carried to Valhalla, the corpse hall of Odin, where they spend their days fighting and their nights feasting and swiving, and I dare not tell the priests that this seems a far better way to endure the afterlife than singing to the sound of golden harps. I once asked a bishop whether there were any women in heaven. "Of course there are, my lord," he answered, happy that I was taking an interest in doctrine. "Many of the most blessed saints are women."

"I mean women we can hump, bishop."

He said he would pray for me. Perhaps he did. ~ Bernard Cornwell

As for us, we who do not believe what these women believe, but live like them by faith, never could look without a sort of tender and religious awe, a kind of pity full of envy, at those devoted beings, trembling yet confident-those humble yet august souls, who date to live on the brink of the great mystery, waiting between the world closed to them and heaven not yet opened; turned toward the daylight not yet seen, with only the happiness of thinking that they know where it is; their aspirations directed toward the abyss and the unknown, their gaze fixes on the motionless obscurity, kneeling, dismayed, stupefied, shuddering, and half carried of sometimes by the deep breath of Eternity. ~ Victor Huge

When I saw the first I couldn't believe I was in another great movie that would be made into a trilogy. This movie is quite visible and I think it will stand the test of time. I think kids and parents will love this movie for a long time. ~ Orlando Bloom

And perhaps there is none, no morrow anymore, for one who has waited so long for it in vain. And perhaps he has come to that stage of his instant when to live is to wander the last of the living in the depths of an instant without bounds, where the light never changes and the wrecks all look alike. Bluer scarcely than white of egg the eyes stare into the space before them, namely the fullness of the great deep and unchanging calm. But at long intervals they close, with the gentle suddenness of flesh that tightens, often without anger, and closes on itself. ~ Samuel Beckett

Certainly not! I didn't build a machine to solve ridiculous crossword puzzles! That's hack work, not Great Art! Just give it a topic, any topic, as difficult as you like..."
Klapaucius thought, and thought some more. Finally he nodded and said:
"Very well. Let's have a love poem, lyrical, pastoral, and expressed in the language of pure mathematics. Tensor algebra mainly, with a little topology and higher calculus, if need be. But with feeling, you understand, and in the cybernetic spirit."
"Love and tensor algebra?" Have you taken leave of your senses?" Trurl began, but stopped, for his electronic bard was already declaiming:

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!

Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

In Reimann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in bound partition never part.

For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler, ~ Stanisław Lem

I was alone again in the unquiet darkness. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

History's best thinkers eventually concluded that our flaws were too powerful to trust with freedom. Thus we've been groomed as hamsters in a wheel that benefits a laughing few. No more great works will be accomplished under the regime, because beauty is not democratic or profitable. ~ D.B.C. Pierre

Where do I come from?
We are the children of the Great Explosion of Love that begot the whole Universe. We bear a common lineage that unites us in its interminable matrix, that is manifested in all of the different and infinite dimensions, allowing us to participate in this unending co-creation with an attitude of loving co-responsibility.
Who am I?
I am a being of light (Love), with innumerable dimensional manifestations of shadings of Love and Life. The transitory experience within matter, time and space (human being) resides in those manifestations. This allows me the use of my free will in a co-responsible way in the co-creative process of life. ~ Ivan Figueroa-Otero

We deny the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous criminals. We remember the Roman Emperors. We remember the great poisoning princes of the Renaissance. We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. ~ G.K. Chesterton

History narrates stories about great men from the past,write your story now and make history ~ Mohammed Sekouty

I don't think I'm craving any more fame. But success and being recognized for making great work all around the world, I think it's a great thing. ~ John Legend

I never allow of any difficulties. The great secret of being useful and successful is to admit of no difficulties. ~ George Gipps

For the only great men among the unfree and the oppressed are those who struggle to destroy the oppressor. ~ Walter Rodney

Stand on the stage in front of 15 people or 15,000. Have them look up to you and tell you how wonderful you are, and if you don't think that's a great feeling, okay, then you're unlike me. ~ Richie Sambora

I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day. ~ Albert Camus

In America, however, many people still believed in a different standard, one that explained a great deal about the country's enduring mediocrity in education: According to this logic, students who passed the required classes and came to school the required number of days should receive their diplomas, regardless of what they had learned or what would happen to them when they tried to get a job at the Bama Companies. Those kids deserved a chance to fail later, not now. It was a perverse sort of compassion designed for a different century. ~ Anonymous

Circumstances have rarely favored great men. A lowly beginning is no bar to a great career. The boy who works his way through college may have a hard time of it, but he will learn how to work his way in life, and will usually take higher rank in school and in after life than his classmate who is the son of a millionaire. ~ Orison Swett Marden

Great leaders build trust from their team because the leader is willing to put his/her people "first." Once the team believes that, they will put their leader, and the company, first as well. ~ Beth Ramsay

Some few, & I am one, even wish to God, though at the loss of millions of lives, that the North would proclaim a crusade against Slavery. In the long run, a million horrid deaths would be amply repaid in the cause of humanity ... Great God how I shd like to see that greatest curse on Earth Slavery abolished. ~ Charles Darwin

That team across the way, you tip your hat to them. They did a great job. It showed in these Finals. ~ LeBron James

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

A result once generally accepted by mathematicians is seldom retracted, and then only with great pangs.
The Nature of Mathematics ~ Max Black

In far-off lands stand the great stones
on which my thoughts rest.
It was a foreigner who wrote the strange words
on the hard board that is called my soul.
Days and nights I lie and think
about things that never happened:
my thirsty soul was once given a drink. ~ Edith Sodergran

The great question of life is not the question of death but the question of life. Fear of death shames us all. ~ Edward Abbey

The great triad of enemies for Christian growth contain the world, the flesh, and the devil. ~ R.C. Sproul

All of the great ideas, without action, become stale and useless. The key to turning dreams into reality is action. People who have great ideas are a dime a dozen. People who act on their dreams and ideas are the select few, but they are the ones who gain the wealth, wealth and wisdom that is available. Someone will act today. Let it be you. ~ Jim Rohn

Institutions train you to be skilled;
the wilderness trains you to become great. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence ~ Seneca.

Even though my songs may sound very personal, to me most of them are fiction. It is a great way for me to be able to live a fantasy life as a writer because I get to be someone else, someplace else for three and a half minutes, just like the listener. ~ Nanci Griffith

For years, liberals have demonstrated a near religious devotion to the cause of 'cleaning up elections' with campaign finance reform, the wondrous panacea that would finally rescue our great country from corruption in politics ... How anyone could believe that corrupt politicians could or would legislate away their own corruption is completely beyond me. ~ Anthony Gregory