Quotes for
the Journey:

Play


Play has been people's most
useful preoccupation.

Frank Caplan

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

   

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.       -Carl Jung

   
Those who know how to play can easily leap over the adversities of life.  And one who knows how to sing and laugh never brews mischief.        -Iglulik Proverb
   

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 Buscaglia

   
A buoyant and full-blooded soul has quick senses and miscellaneous sympathies:  it changes with the changing world; and when not too much starved or thwarted by circumstances, it finds all things vivid and comic.  Life is free play fundamentally and would like to be free play altogether.        -George Santayana
    
If you aren't playing well, the game isn't as much fun.  When that happens I tell myself just to go out and play as I did when I was a kid.       -Thomas J. Watson, Sr.
   
Creation, after all, is only play.        -Stephen C. Paul

Play keeps us vital and alive.  It gives us an enthusiasm for life that is irreplaceable.  Without it, life just doesn't taste good.        -Lucia Capocchione
   
Why is play so elusive for some grown-ups?  Because we are so strongly attracted and attached to a profoundly goal-oriented, work-ethic-driven society.  Like other forms of non-work, play connotes wastefulness, a stoppage in the way of what needs to get done.  Yet often what really needs to get done has more to do with our hearts and spirits and less to do with a deadline or longstanding project.  Play beckons to us, urging us to live in the present moment, a moment that becomes more luminous when we disallow interruptions like work and worry.       -Leslie Levine
   
The real joy of life is in its play.  Play is anything we do for the joy and love of doing it, apart from any profit, compulsion, or sense of duty.  It is the real living of life with the feeling of freedom and self-expression.  Play is the business of childhood, and its continuation in later years is the prolongation of youth.       -Walter Rauschenbusch
    
The world is your playground.  Why aren't you playing?       -Ellie Katz
    
We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything than when we are playing.       -Charles Schaefer
    
Does it not appear to you versatility is the true and rare characteristic of that rare thing called genius--versatility and playfulness?  In my mind they are both essential.       -Mary Russell Mitford
   
They are enlightened who join in this play knowing it as play, for people suffer only because they take as serious what the gods made for fun.       -Alan Watts
   
   
We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing!        -George Bernard Shaw
   
The true object of all human life is play.  Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.       -G. K. Chesterton
   
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.       -Roger von Oech
   
To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as though nothing of consequence will happen.  On the contrary, when we are playful with each other we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence.  It is, in fact, seriousness that closes itself to consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility.  To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion.  To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself.       -James Carse
    
The ability to play is essential to being a creative artist.       -Dewitt Jones
   
Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.        -Joseph Chilton Pearce

     

If I get to pick what I want to do, then it's play. . . if someone else tells me that I have to do it, then it's work.       -Patricia Nourot

   

To the art of working well a civilized race would add that art of playing well.        -George Santayana
    
Play is the beginning of knowledge.       -George Dorsey
    
Thirty Reasons to Play!
Jill Murphy Long

1.   Explore!

2.   Time just for me.

3.   Connect with old friends.

4.   Make new friends.

5.   Have extra energy.

6.  Learn a new skill.

7.   Expand my interests.

8.   Expand my world.

9.   Think more clearly.

10.   Have fun.

11.   Sleep better.

12.   Be in a better mood.

13.   Be happy.

14.   Be healthier.

15.   Be with my dog.

16.   Be strong.

17.   Increase my strength.

18.   Be independent.
19.   Be confident.

20.   Time to problem solve.

21.   Reduce stress.

22.   Be with God.

23.   Be in nature.

24.   Get a suntan.

25.   Be me!

26.   Sweat out toxins.

27.   Eat healthier.

28.   Renew my enthusiasm for life.

29.   Be powerful.

30.   Because I want to!

When you play, you benefit from the physical movement, the intellectual stimulation and the creative expression.  You'll feel better about yourself, and many forms of active play will actually help you to get in better shape physically.  So while you may think you don't have time to play, this is the best thing you could possible be doing.

From her book Permission to Play, 2003.

   

   

    

Home - About - Links - abundance - acceptance - achievement - action - adversity - aging - ambition - America
anger - anticipation - apathy - appreciation - arrogance - attitude - authenticity - autumn - awareness - awe
balance - beauty - being yourself - beliefs - body - brooding - busyness - celebration - challenges - change
character - children - choice - Christianity - Christmas - coincidence - commitment - common sense
community - comparison - compassion - complaining - compliments - compromise - confidence - conformity
conscience
- contentment - control - courage - covetousness - creativity - crisis - criticism - cruelty - death
desire - determination - discouragement - diversity - doubt - dreams - earth - education - ego - encouragement
enlightenment
- enthusiasm - envy - eternity - experience - failure - faith - family - fathers - fault-finding - fear
flowers
- forgiveness - freedom - friendship - fun - the garden of life - gardening - generosity - gentleness - giving
goals
- God - goodness - grace - gratitude - greed - grief - growing up - guilt - happiness - hatred - healing - health
helpfulness
- home - honesty - hope - hospitality - humility - hurry - ideals - idleness - idolatry - ignorance
imagination
- impatience - individuality - inspiration - integrity - introspection - intuition - jealousy - journey - joy
judgment
- kindness - knowledge - laughter - law of attraction - laziness - leadership - learning - letting go - life
listening
- loneliness - love - lying - marriage - materialism - meanness - meditation - mindfulness - miracles
mistakes - mistrust - money - mothers - mystery - nature - negative attitude - new year - oneness
open mindedness - opportunity - optimism - pain - patience - peace - perfectionism - perseverance - perspective
pessimism
- play - positive thinking - possessions - potential - prayer - prejudice - the present moment - pride
principle
- prosperity - purpose - reflection - relationships - religion - resentment - respect - responsibility - rest
revenge
- risk - role models - sadness - safety - the seasons of life - self - self-love - self-pity - self-respect
service - shame - silence - simplicity - smiles - solitude - spirit - spring - success - summer - the tapestry of life
teachers - Thanksgiving - thoughts - time - today - trust - truth - values - vanity - war - weight - winter - wisdom
wonder
- work - worry - worship - youth - zen
Dale Carnegie
- Albert Einstein - Ralph Waldo Emerson - Anne Morrow Lindbergh - Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross
Helen Keller - Mother Teresa - Eleanor Roosevelt - Orison Swett Marden - Albert Schweitzer - Aristotle
Mohandas Gandhi - Wilferd A. Peterson

   

Two great Kindle books from livinglifefully.com!  First, the daily meditations from the first year are gathered together in a single volume at just $2.99 for the entire year, and second, almost 4,000 quotes from livingllifefully.com are gathered in one volume for just 99 cents--that's right, for less than one dollar, you can have thousands of quotes that took years to gather on your own PC, Mac, or Kindle, to have with you wherever you are.