A Game Of Chess Quotes & Sayings

You all know that each title in the Chronicles has a chess theme; that's partly because of the overall design of the Chronicles themselves - the game of chess as an analogue of the game of life. — Dorothy Dunnett

It feels a little silly to annotate a game in which I didn't make a single move on my own, just following my preparation all the way. [ ... ] A pretty finale. I was obviously hoping for the beauty prize sacrificing both my rooks and all, but OK, Im [sic] afraid requirements are one makes a move of his own for that it seems. Something I could avoid doing in the last five rounds in Dresden. Silly game, this chess. — Jan Gustafsson

Fencing is a game of living chess, a match where reflexes only work in combination with intent, and mind and body must work together at every moment. — V.E Schwab

I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by a the elaborate frivolity of chess. — Edgar Allan Poe

Here is a definition which correctly reflects the course of thought and action of a grandmaster: - The plan in a game of chess is the sum total of successive strategical operations which are each carried out according to separate ideas arising from the demands of the position. — Alexander Kotov

It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Life is like a game of chess that you have to play even after losing the king. — Ashish Jaiswal

You may not see every single piece of the puzzle that creates your life
you may not see every move the grand chess player makes
but know, He is in complete control of the game board. Sometimes certain pieces are moved or knocked over to make room for new ones. Other times, things happen because of the world we live in. But everything in the end, will always turn out for good. It's a nice promise, isn't it? To know there's a reason for it all? — Rachel Van Dyken

When they killed him, Mother wouldn't hold her peace, so they slit her throat. I was stupid then, being only nine, and I fought to save them both. But the thorns held me tight. I've learned to appreciate thorns since. The thorns taught me the game. They let me understand what all those grim and serious men who've fought the Hundred War have yet to learn. You can only win the game when you understand that it IS a game. Let a man play chess, and tell him that every pawn is his friend. Let him think both bishops holy. Let him remember happy days in the shadows of his castles. Let him love his queen. Watch him loose them all. — Mark Lawrence

Unlike every other product that is now manufactured for the table, wine exists in as many varieties as there are people who produce it. Variations in technique, climate, grape, soil and culture ensure that wine is, to the ordinary drinker, the most unpredictable of drinks, and to the connoisseur the most intricately informative, responding to its origins like a game of chess to its opening move. — Roger Scruton

If no one can stalemate God in a game of chess, no one should ever think of winning. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome. — Jerry Seinfeld

An hour's history of two minds is well told in a game of chess. — Jose Raul Capablanca

So far a lot of battles I have won, so far I have reached the game with the chess puzzles 105 level out of 350. — Deyth Banger

To take charge of destiny means to play a very convoluted chess game on multiple levels of consciousness and existence. — Frederick Lenz

All chess players know what a combination is. Whether one makes it oneself, or is its victim, or reads of it, it stands out from the rest of the game and stirs one's admiration. — Eugene Znosko-Borovsky

It can't be a great cosmic game of chess, it has to be just very complicated Solitaire. — Terry Pratchett

I look at improvising as a prolonged game of chess. There's an opening gambit with your pawn in a complex game I have with one character, and lots of side games with other characters, and another game with myself - and in each game you make all these tiny, tiny moves that get you to the endgame. — Steve Carell

Sometimes a Pawn is enough to change the whole game and those who ignore the importance of it, are liable to lose their Queen. — Sandeep Sharma

It'll be like a game of chess. We can let the game unfold as it did before, but if we want to avoid checkmate, we'll have to readjust the pieces a few moves shy of the finish. — Darren Shan

It's the fault of the chess players themselves. I don't know what they used to be, but now they're not the most gentlemanly group. When it was a game played by the aristocrats it had more like you know dignity to it. When they used to have the clubs, like no women were allowed and everybody went in dressed in a suit, a tie, like gentlemen, you know. Now, kids come running in their sneakers. Even in the best chess club-and they got women in there. It's a social place and people are making noise, it's a madhouse. — Bobby Fischer

Deep Blue didn't win by being smarter than a human; it won by being millions of times faster than a human. Deep Blue had no intuition. An expert human player looks at a board position and immediately sees what areas of play are most likely to be fruitful or dangerous, whereas a computer has no innate sense of what is important and must explore many more options. Deep Blue also had no sense of the history of the game, and didn't know anything about its opponent. It played chess yet didn't understand chess, in the same way a calculator performs arithmetic bud doesn't understand mathematics. — Jeff Hawkins

Everything in New York is a photograph. All the things that are supposed to be dirty or rough or unrefined are the most beautiful things. Garbage cans at the ends of alleyways look like they've been up all night talking with each other. Doorways with peeling paint look like the wise lines around an old feller's eyes. I stop and stare but can't stay because men always think I'm selling something. Or worse, giving something away. I wish I could be invisible. Or at least I wish I didn't look like someone they want to look at. They stop being part of the picture, they get up from their chess game and come out of the frame at me, blocking my view. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

A chess game, after all, is a fight in which all possible factors must be made use of, and in which a knowledge of the opponent's good and bad qualities is of the greatest importance. — Emanuel Lasker

Whenever Black succeeds in assuming the initiative in maintaining it to a successful conclusion, the sporting spirit of the chess lover feels gratified, because it shows that the resources of the game are far from being exhausted. — Savielly Tartakower

To venture an opinion is like moving a piece at chess: it may be taken, but it forms the beginning of a game that is won. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Malina looked incredulous. "Are you anything more than a Druid?"
"Of course I am. I own this shop and I play a mean game of chess, and I've been told that I'm a frakkin' Cylon."
"What's a frakkin' Cylon?"
"I don't know, but it sounds really scary when you say it with a Polish Accent. — Kevin Hearne

War is like a game of chess ... but with this little difference, that in chess you may think over each move as long as you please and are not limited for time, and with this difference too, that a knight is always stronger than a pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than one, while in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division and sometimes weaker than a company. The relative strength of bodies of troops can never be known to anyone ... Success never depends, and never will depend, on position, or equipment, or even on numbers, and least of all on position. — Leo Tolstoy

Chess is a game of bad moves. — Andrew Soltis

The game of baseball between pitcher and hitter sets up like a game of chess in that you have to anticipate several moves ahead to set up your opponent. — Brad Lidge

King Yorandt to Kristina in book three of Fracture the Secret Enemy Saga~Secrets
release date: Summer 2014

Even the master does not play perfectly. He can only hope to make fewer mistakes than his opponent, and that in the end, he is the victor. Sajah (chess) is a ruthless game where the pieces are all pawns and the Queen is the true killer.
She spares no one to protect the king. The king however, is ruled by all of the pieces that lay before him, even his opponent. Every move is a decision that can change the whole board, and the endgame. — Virginia McKevitt

I am willing to take life as a game of chess in which the first rules are not open to discussion. No one asks why the knight is allowed his eccentric hop, why the castle may only go straight and the bishop obliquely. These things are to be accepted, and with these rule the game must be played: it is foolish to complain of them. — W. Somerset Maugham

But it's also because of something personal. My mother and father met while playing chess, so I've always had a fondness for the game. If it weren't for chess, I might not be here. — Dorothy Dunnett

Human life very much resembles a game of chess: for, as in the latter, while a gamester is too attentive to secure himself very strongly on one side of the board, he is apt to leave an unguarded opening on the other, so doth it often happen in life. — Henry Fielding

It's important, according to me, to train in small doses so as to not lose the joy of playing chess. I personally think too many coaching and training classes may take away a child's interest in the game itself. The essential thing to do is practise often and, in case of a doubt, to consult a trainer. — Viswanathan Anand

If you're playing a one-minute game, I could squeeze in five to six games before anybody walked by my cubicle. So I got really good at blitz, one-minute chess games. But that's kind of like the cheap chess version. — Paul Banks

Charles Babbage proposed to make an automaton chess-player which should register mechanically the number of games lost and gained in consequence of every sort of move. Thus, the longer the automaton went on playing game, the more experienced it would become by the accumulation of experimental results. Such a machine precisely represents the acquirement of experience by our nervous organization. — William Stanley Jevons

It was Steinitz who was the first to establish the basic principles of general chess strategy. He was a pioneer and one of the most profound researchers into the thruth of the game, which was hidden from his contemporaries. — Jose Raul Capablanca

For a game it is too serious, for seriousness too much of a game. — Moses Mendelssohn

But a man is a frivolous and incongruous creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the process of the game, not the end of it. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You broke a man today. Doesn't that affect you at all? These are lives, not pieces in a chess game with your uncle.'
'You're wrong. We are on my uncle's board and these men are all his pieces.'
'Then each time you move one of them, you can congratulate yourself on how much like him you are. — C.S. Pacat

I used to play a lot of chess and competitive chess and study chess and as you get to the grandmasters and learn their styles when you start copying their games like the way they express themselves through ... The way Kasparov or Bobby Fischer expresses themselves through a game of chess is it's astonishing. You can show a chess master one of their games and they'll say "Yeah, that is done by that player." — Rainn Wilson

Daniel Wolpert, of Cambridge University, is fond of pointing out that IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer is capable of beating a grand master at the game of chess, but no computer has yet been developed that can move a chess piece from one square to another as well as a 3-year-old child. — Stuart Firestein

it is again: that Hindu belief that all of life is maya, illusion. Once we see life as a game, no more consequential than a game of chess, then the world seems a lot lighter, a lot happier. Personal failure becomes "as small a cause for concern as playing the role of loser in a summer theater performance," writes Huston Smith in his book The World's Religions. If it's all theater, it doesn't matter which role you play, as long as you realize it's only a role. Or, as Alan Watts said: "A genuine person is one who knows he is a big act and does it with complete zip. — Eric Weiner

The pleasure to be derived from a chess combination lie in the feeling that a human mind is behind the game, dominating the inanimate pieces ... and giving them breath of life. — Richard Reti

What is the object of playing a gambit opening? ... To acquire a reputation of being a dashing player at the cost of losing a game — Siegbert Tarrasch

I have always thought you could take the measure of a man by his sports manners - that is to say, the way in which he conducts himself on the playing field, or even over a game of chess or cards. — Graydon Carter

Sometimes, as in a game of chess, we must strategically regress so that we might progress toward our ultimate objective. — Crystal Woods

But the thing that was great about Capablanca was that he really spoke his mind, he said what he believed was true, he said what he felt. He wanted to change the rules [of chess] already, back in the twenties, because he said chess was getting played out. He was right. Now chess is completely dead. It is all just memorisation and prearrangement. It's a terrible game now. Very uncreative. — Bobby Fischer

The acting is something that will always be a part of my life, but the writing gives me a lot more creative freedom. You're a pawn in somebody else's chess game, whereas as a writer and as a director, you get to call the shots. And that's very thrilling. — Amber Benson

I felt that chess ... is a science in the form of a game ... I consider myself a scientist. I wanted to be treated like a scientist. — Bobby Fischer

I may play some exhibition games so I don't want to quit the game of chess completely. I just decided and it's a firm decision not to play competitive chess anymore. — Garry Kasparov

Except for a handful, chess players don't have such illusions. The game has a severe analytic quality that makes self-deception difficult. Unlike the undiscovered poet who, despite the harsh criticism of his peers, lives on his fantasies for the day that he will be recognized as the next Dylan Thomas, even a young chess player can usually gauge his talent. When Josh was six, he played several games against a pudgy thirteen-year-old who was the top player on his high school team. He beat Josh every time, but a couple of the games were close, and afterwards the boy seemed gloomy about his performance. He explained that if he didn't make significant improvement during the next year, he would wind up as just another wood-pusher. Despite his celebrity in school, he seemed to know that he didn't have it. While — Fred Waitzkin

At one point I had a very complicated plan to use the game of chess as a generating structure for writing. I prepared for a long time. I finally wrote two chapters and stopped. It was too complicated and too difficult to write. And who would've read it? — Dumitru Tepeneag

Be warned! From Satan's viewpoint you are a pawn in his game of cosmic chess. — Adrian Rogers

Chess is, in essence, a game for children. Computers have exacerbated the trends towards youth because they now have an immensely powerful tool at their disposal and can absorb vast amounts of information extremely quickly. — Nigel Short

The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head
no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it. — Herman Melville

The Possibilities in racing tactics are almost unlimited, as in a game of chess, for every move there is a counter, for every attack there is a defense ... The runner's greatest asset, apart from essential fitness of body, is a cool and calculating brain allied to confidence and courage. Above all, he must have a will to win. — Franz Stampfl

In so-called communist Romania, chess was held in high esteem, even if our champions were weaker than the Soviets. This game, this "sport of the mind," was at the time a better way to establish your reputation than literature. — Dumitru Tepeneag

When you ask what are electrons and protons I ought to answer that this question is not a profitable one to ask and does not really have a meaning. The important thing about electrons and protons is not what they are but how they behave, how they move. I can describe the situation by comparing it to the game of chess. In chess, we have various chessmen, kings, knights, pawns and so on. If you ask what chessman is, the answer would be that it is a piece of wood, or a piece of ivory, or perhaps just a sign written on paper, or anything whatever. It does not matter. Each chessman has a characteristic way of moving and this is all that matters about it. The whole game os chess follows from this way of moving the various chessmen. — Paul A.M. Dirac

Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game. — G.H. Hardy

The draw by stalemate looks like a spot of discontinuity in the otherwise harmonious universe of values. To save a game by letting yourself be so completely humiliated as not being able to make a move looks rather undeserved. — Mihail Marin

Chess is a lot of fun for me. Football is a physical game, and in chess you can just beat someone mentally - you outwit somebody, outmaneuver them, think ahead of them. — Larry Fitzgerald

A deep laugh stirred in his chest, and his thumb brushed over the backs of her fingers before he withdrew his hand. She felt the rasp of a callus on his thumb, the sensation not unlike the tingling scrape of a cat's tongue. Bemused by her own response to him, Annabelle looked down at the chess piece in her hand.
"That is the queen - the most powerful piece on the board. She can move in any direction, and go as far as she wishes." There was nothing overtly suggestive in his manner of speaking ... but when he spoke softly, as he was doing at that moment, there was a husky depth in his voice that made her toes curl inside her slippers.
"More powerful than the king?" she asked.
"Yes. The king can only move one square at a time. But the king is the most important piece."
"Why is he more important than the queen if he's not the most powerful?"
"Because once he is captured, the game is over. — Lisa Kleypas

A game of chess is not an examination of knowledge; it is a battle of nerves. — David Bronstein

...erosion control in Japan is like a game of chess. The forest
engineer, after studying his eroding valley, makes his first move, locating and building
one or more check dams. He waits to see what Nature's response is. This determines the
forest engineer's next move, which may be another dam or two, an increase in the former
dam, or the construction of side retaining walls. After another pause for observation, the
next move is made and so on until erosion is checkmated." (An Agricultural Testament) — Albert Howard

I believe that Chess possesses a magic that is also a help in advanced age. A rheumatic knee is forgotten during a game of chess and other events can seem quite unimportant in comparison with a catastrophe on the chessboard. — Vlastimil Hort

The days when it was possible to win a serious game only by merit of sporting character or depth of chess understanding have vanished forever. Chess knowledge has become dominant, bypassing all the other factors that contribute to success. — Anatoly Karpov

There is technology where you can watch the match live online and also on TV. If people understood the game, I'm sure we would have a lot of chess fans by now. — Viswanathan Anand

Chess is a game sufficiently rich in meaning that it is easily capable of containing elements of both tragedy and comedy. — Luke McShane

Chess is and will always be a game of chance. — Jan Hein Donner

It's not only the myths surrounding chess. Chess itself is a myth, you know? A game of hierarchy, of war. It's a story that people have been using to explain complex concepts for eons. Mathematics, yes. Geometry. Business. Philosophy. Even love. — Skye Warren

The game gives us a satisfaction that Life denies us. And for the Chess player, the success which crowns his work, the great dispeller of sorrows, is named 'combination'. — Emanuel Lasker

Of course, errors are not good for a chess game, but errors are unavoidable and in any case, a game without ant errors, or as they say 'flawless game' is colorless. — Mikhail Tal

In a game of chess, someone has to take the black pieces. — Eve Forward

She felt like a chess player who, by the clever handling of his pieces, sees the game taking the course intended. Her eyes were bright and tender with a smile as they glanced up into his; and her lips looked hungry for the kiss which they invited. — Kate Chopin

A knowledge of tactics is the foundation of positional play. This is a rule which has stood its test in chess history and one which we cannot impress forcibly enough upon the young chess player. A beginner should avoid Queen's Gambit and French Defence and play open games instead! While he may not win as many games at first, he will in the long run be amply compensated by acquiring a thorough knowledge of the game — Richard Reti

I also found out why I should never reveal the "why" to others. A little knowledge withheld is a great advantage one should store for future use. That is the power of chess. It is a game of secrets in which one must show and never tell. — Amy Tan

It might have begun a bit like a chess game, but it had taken on its own momentum, and owned both of them. — Julie Anne Long

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. — Yann Martel

Because of the level of my chess game, I was able - even against a weak opponent, such as my younger brothers or the dog - to get myself checkmated in under three minutes. I challenge any computer to do it faster. — Dave Barry

A game of chess is a visual and plastic thing, and if it isn't geometric in the static sense of the word, it is mechanical, since it moves. It's a drawing; it's a mechanical reality. — Marcel Duchamp

Chess is not for the faint-hearted; it absorbs a person entirely. To get to the bottom of this game, he has to give himself up into slavery. Chess is difficult, it demands work, serious reflection and zealous research. — Wilhelm Steinitz

Every man needs a women, when his life in a trouble. just like a game of chess, queen protect the king — Anuj Kr. Thakur

I see myself more as an ambassador of the game. And I hope to bring chess to a higher level in the United States. Making bigger tournaments, more interesting events. Making it a respectable profession for young people to be able to pursue in the future. — Maurice Ashley

If I am a pawn in someone else's chess game, you better believe I am going to demand an explanation before being shoved at some rook. I'll play my part, damn it, but I want the courtesy of being asked for my consent! — Thomm Quackenbush

And from the time I was a kid, I've had this internal monologue roaring through my head, which doesn't stop - unless I'm asleep. I'm sure every person has this; it's just that my monologue is particularly loud. And particularly troublesome. I'm constantly asking myself questions. And the problem with that is that your brain is like a computer: If you ask a question, it's programmed to respond, whether there's an answer or not. I'm constantly weighing everything in my mind and trying to predict how my actions will influence events. Or maybe manipulate events are the more appropriate words. It's like playing a game of chess with your own life. And I hate fucking chess! — Jordan Belfort

Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of each of us would some day depend upon our winning or losing a game of chess. Do you not think that we should all consider it to be our primary duty to learn at least the names of the pieces and how to position them on the chessboard? — Aldous Huxley

A lot of people think international relations is like a game of chess. But it's not a game of chess, where people sit quietly, thinking out their strategy, taking their time between moves. It's more like a game of billiards, with a bunch of balls clustered together. — Madeleine Albright

The physicist is like someone who's watching people playing chess and, after watching a few games, he may have worked out what the moves in the game are. But understanding the rules is just a trivial preliminary on the long route from being a novice to being a grand master. So even if we understand all the laws of physics, then exploring their consequences in the everyday world where complex structures can exist is a far more daunting task, and that's an inexhaustible one I'm sure. — Martin Rees

Chess is more than a game or a mental training. It is a distinct attainment. I have always regarded the playing of chess and the accomplishment of a good game as an art, and something to be admired no less than an artist's canvas or the product of a sculptor's chisel. Chess is a mental diversion rather than a game. It is both artistic and scientific. — Jose Raul Capablanca

And perhaps it was precisely because she knew nothing at all about chess that chess for her was not simply a parlor game or a pleasant pastime, but a mysterious art equal to all the recognized arts. She had never been in close contact with such people - there was no one to compare him with except those inspired eccentrics, musicians and poets whose image one knows as clearly and as vaguely as that of a Roman Emperor, an inquisitor or a comedy miser. Her memory contained a modest dimly lit gallery with a sequence of all the people who had in any way caught her fancy. — Vladimir Nabokov

There's never before been a Chess player with such a thorough knowledge of the intricacies of the game and such an absolutely indomitable will to win. I think Bobby is the greatest player that ever lived — Lisa Lane

It's a great huge game of chess that's being played
all over the world
if this is the world at all, you know. Oh, what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them! I wouldn't mind being a Pawn, if only I might join
though of course I should like to be a Queen, best. — Lewis Carroll

Chess is so inspiring that I do not believe a good player is capable of having an evil thought during the game. — Wilhelm Steinitz

Chess is a very tough game, and psychologically a tough game. And of course, chess needs a lot of qualities, human qualities. And so you must have a very strong nervous system, and then you must be well prepared; you must be able to work a lot. — Anatoly Karpov

All conceptions in the game of chess have a geometrical basis. — Eugene Znosko-Borovsky

Remorse has no place in a warrior's mind ... A war is like a game of chess, Nicholaa. Every battle is like a well-thought-out move on the board. Once it begins, there shouldn't be any emotion involved whatsoever. — Julie Garwood

You don't have to be really good anymore to get good results. What's happening with Chess is that it's gradually losing its place as the par excellence of intellectual activity. Smart people in search of a challenging board game might try a game called Go. — Hans Berliner

Chess is a good way to learn, to keep your brain fit and the ego in check, a mental form of your local gymnasium. Those who see chess merely as a means of self-proof make the game experience uncomfortable and drive many of the better, more sensitive brains to analysis, correspondence, problems, studies and the like. — Peter Abelard