Quote This! A Playful Quote Library
Here’s a starting list of interesting quotes of living playfully.
Quotes about Play and leading a Playful Life
"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope and that enables you to laugh at life's realities."
Dr. Seuss, gambler (he won a $50 bet that he couldn't write an entire book using only fifty words. The result was Green Eggs and Ham).
"We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing!"
George Bernard Shaw
"The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play."
Arnold Toynbee, British Historian 1889-1975
"What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it."
Mark Twain
"If you don't fail now and again, it's a sign you're playing it safe."
Woody Allen
"The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable."
Carl Gustav Jung
"Play is our brain's favorite way of learning."
Diane Ackerman, Contemporary American author
"Almost all creativity involves purposeful play."
Abraham Maslow, American psychologist, 1908-1970
"Whoever wants to understand much must play much."
Gottfried Benn, German physician, 1886-1956
"The true object of all human life is play."
G. K. Chesterton, British author, 1874-1936
"Play fosters belonging and encourages cooperation."
Stuart Brown, M.D.
Contemporary American psychiatrist
"Play has been man’s most useful preoccupation."
Frank Caplan
Contemporary American author
"Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father."
Roger von Oech
Contemporary American creativity guru
"Play keeps us fit physically and mentally."
Stuart Brown, M.D., Contemporary American psychiatrist
"Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play."
Henri Matisse, French painter, 1869-1954
"Play is training for the unexpected."
Marc Bekoff, Contemporary American biologist
"The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable."
Carl Jung, Swiss psychoanalyst, 1875-1961
"Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game."
Michael Jordan, American basketball player
"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."
Plato (428 BC-348 BC)
"Play is the exultation of the possible."
Martin Buber (German Philosopher, 1878-1965)
"Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is."
Mary Anne Radmacher
"When you play it too safe, you're taking the biggest risk of your life. Time is the only wealth we're given."
Barbara Sher
"Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems."
Bill Watterson
"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary."
Cecil Beaton
"A person's maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play"
Friedrich Nietzsche
"Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold."
Joseph Chilton Pearce
"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood."
Fred Rogers
"If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play."
John Cleese
"Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard."
Colin Powell
"Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold."
Joseph Chilton Pearce
Contemporary American scholar
"Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity."
Kay Redfield Jamison
Contemporary American professor of psychiatry
"Deep meaning lies often in childish play."
Johann Friedrich von Schiller
German poet, 1759-1805
"Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play."
Heraclitus
Greek philosopher, 535-475 BCE
"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct."
Carl Jung
Swiss psychoanalyst, 1875-1961
"If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society."
Jean Piaget
Swiss philosopher, 1896-1980
"Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold."
Joseph Chilton Pearce (Child Development Author)
"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."
Leo F. Buscaglia (Education Specialist, 1924-1998)
"The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground."
G. K. Chesterton
"If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied."
Alfred Nobel (1833 - 1896) Swedish chemist, inventor, philanthropist
"The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas."
Linus Pauling (1901 - 1994) US chemist
"If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society."
Jean Piaget
"You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them."
Richard Bach
"In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play."
Friedrich Nietzsche
"It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use, from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes"
St. Thomas Aquinas (Scholastic philosopher and theologian, 1225-1274)
"What a Difference Some Play Makes."
Patrice Hall, Author
Quotes about Spring
"Spring is nature's way of saying, 'Let's party!'"
Robin Williams
"April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks Go."
Christopher Morley, John Mistletoe
"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke
"It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!"
Mark Twain
"I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden."
Ruth Stout
"Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush."
Doug Larson
"Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquilizing agent as a sunny spring day."
W. Earl Hall
"In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them."
Aldo Leopold
"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."
Margaret Atwood
"Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment."
Ellis Peters
"Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men."
Chinese Proverb
"In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours."
Mark Twain
"The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month."
Henry Van Dyke
"If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom."
Audra Foveo
"April hath put a spirit of youth in everything."
William Shakespeare
"Out with the cold, in with the woo."
E. Marshall, "Spring Thought"
"The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created Spring."
Bern Williams
"If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall."
Nadine Stair
"Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves; now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes its gay attire."
Virgil
"The seasons are what a symphony ought to be: four perfect movements in harmony with each other."
Arthur Rubenstein
"Hey There, Mother Nature….Spring it on!"
Jools
The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's kiss glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze.
~Julian Grenfell
The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day.
~Robert Frost
The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven -
All's right with the world!
~Robert Browning
Awake, thou wintry earth -
Fling off thy sadness!
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth
Your ancient gladness!
~Thomas Blackburn, "An Easter Hymn"