Lost Matches Quotes & Sayings

I lost count of the number of referees who came to me both at Derby and Forest and said, 'I'd just like to express my thanks. I love matches involving your team. We never have any trouble with them. — Brian Howard Clough

There is no "tropical island paradise" I know of which remotely matches up to the fantasy ideal that such a phrase is meant to conjure up, or even to what we find described in holiday brochures. It's natural to put this down to the discrepancy we are all used to finding between what advertisers promise and what the real world delivers. It doesn't surprise us much any more. So it can come as a shock to realise that the world we hear described by travellers of previous centuries (or even previous decades) and biologists of today really did exist. The state it's in now is only the result of what we've done to it, and the mildness of the disappointment we feel when we arrive somewhere and find that it's a bit tatty is only a measure of how far our own expectations have been degraded and how little we understand what we've lost. The people who do understand what we've lost are the ones who are rushing around in a frenzy trying to save the bits that are left. — Douglas Adams

Apart from these parental physical jerks, he did not train his body; he merely inhabited it. A friend had once shown what he called gymnastics for the intelligentsia. You took a box of matches and threw its contents on the floor, then bent down and picked them up, one by one. The first time he tried it himself, he lost patience and stuffed all the matches back in handfuls. He persevered, but the next time, just as he was bending down, the telephone went, and he was needed at once; so the housekeeper was detailed to pick up the matches instead. — Julian Barnes

Except in a very few matches, usually with world-class performers, there is a point in every match (and in some cases it's right at the beginning) when the loser decides he's going to lose. And after that, everything he does will be aimed at providing an explanation of why he will have lost. He may throw himself at the ball (so he will be able to say he's done his best against a superior opponent). He may dispute calls (so he will be able to say he's been robbed). He may swear at himself and throw his racket (so he can say it was apparent all along he wasn't in top form). His energies go not into winning but into producing an explanation, an excuse, a justification for losing. — C. Terry Warner

More matches are lost through carelessness at the beginning than any other cause. — Harry Vardon

The rest of the evening passed agreeably: the crew had their games on the main deck, resigning themselves to Sirs and dice now that dancing was out, those who would go ashore to enjoy the dining halls and tea houses went after their matches were lost, and those who remained either took themselves off to an early rest or remained with the musicians, to sing out the remainder of the evening by way of a few round songs, calling out verses in melodic dissonance, singing the history of Good Marrie the Whore and though there were "Ten hands in her purse, there was still room for one more!", — Michelle Franklin

Wear that scarf," he said, pointing to a blue cashmere scarf hanging on a peg. "It matches your eyes."
Alec looked at it. Suddenly he was filled with hate - for the scarf, for Magnus, and most of all for himself. "Don't tell me," he said. "The scarf's a hundred years old, and it was given to you by Queen Victoria right before she died, for special services to the Crown or something."
Magnus sat up. "What's gotten into you?"
Alec stared at him. "Am I the newest thing in this apartment?"
"I think that honor goes to Chairman Meow. He's only two."
"I said newest, not youngest," Alec snapped. — Cassandra Clare

Savor powerlessness, after power, in every phase that matches it precisely; replace every old triumph with the new defeat; strengthen yourself on your weakness; win yourself back when so very lost. — Elias Canetti

You must take care to light the matches one at a time. If a powerful emotion should ignite them all at once, they would produce a splendor so dazzling that it would illuminate far beyond what we can normally see; and then a brilliant tunnel would appear before our eyes, revealing the path we forgot the moment we were born, and summoning us to regain the divine origins we had lost. The soul ever longs to return to the place from which it came, leaving the body lifeless. — Laura Esquivel

The human element, the human flaw and the human nobility - those are the reasons that chess matches are won or lost. — Viktor Korchnoi

He says this episode will be about grief. About helping other people to mourn. He says that my family's involvement could really help other people in similar situations. All those viewers who thought they lost a family member to a famous serial killer, then are told 36 years later that DNA from the crime scene matches both that of a retired nurse and a man who was four years old at the time and grew up to murder his mother, I think.
With less graciousness than I'd hoped to display, I ask if there's a reason why stories about the bizarre, violent deaths of young, good-looking, middle- to upper-class white girls help people mourn better than other stories. — Maggie Nelson

I lost a lot of judo matches because of points fighters. It was extremely frustrating for me. — Ronda Rousey

My ceiling's broken, my car's got a puncture and we've just lost two matches. But I've got my health and I'll ask the big man upstairs why he didn't give us a point. — Ian Holloway

They went Indian file. First came the scouts, clever, graceful, quiet. They had rifles. Next came the antitank gunner, clumsy and dense, warning Germans away with a Colt .45 automatic in one hand and a trench knife in the other.
Last came Billy Pilgrim, empty-handed, bleakly ready for death. Billy was preposterous - six feet and three inches tall, with a chest and shoulders like a box of kitchen matches. He had no helmet, no overcoat, no weapon, and no boots. On his feet were cheap, low-cut civilian shoes which he had bought for his father's funeral. Billy had lost a heel, which made him bob up-and-down, up-and-down. The involuntary dancing, up-and-down, up-and-down, made his hip joints sore. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Notting Forest are having a bad run, they've lost six matches in a row now without winning — David Coleman

Matches are won and lost so many times in the locker room. — Lleyton Hewitt

I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled. — Diane Setterfield

Forest have now lost six matches without winning. — David Coleman