Plaything Quotes & Sayings

Let woman be a plaything, pure and fine, like a precious stone, illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come. — Friedrich Nietzsche

That which makes man the mere plaything of fate is God. — Mahatma Gandhi

Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman
hath one solution - it is called pregnancy.
Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the
child. But what is woman for man?
Two different things wanted the true man: danger and
diversion. Therefore wanted he woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly.
Too sweet fruits - these the warrior like not. Therefore like he woman; - bitter is even the sweetest woman.
Better than man doth woman understand children, but
man is more childish than woman.
In the true man there is a child hidden: it wanted to
play. Up then, ye women, and discover the child in man! — Friedrich Nietzsche

I have ideas every day, and if I'm not carrying a pad of paper, I'm typing it into the notes thing on my iPhone, and it's just ridiculous - idle hands are the devil's plaything, and I can't be the devil's plaything. I got to be the devil; I got to be the guy making it all happen. — Corey Taylor

I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think. I am not whenever I am the plaything of my thought; I think of what I am where I do not think to think. — Jacques Lacan

A child's a plaything for an hour. — Mary Lamb

Today finds Scotland in an extraordinary muddle. First she was free in body, romantic, cultured, and uncivilised, till her government was taken over by a usurious Kirk, weilding power through superstition. The boor for a century, she was repopularised by Scott, adopted as a plaything by a foreign queen, suffered worse than any nation in the industrial upheaval, and finally left an abortive carcase rotting somewhere to the North of England. — George Scott-Moncrieff

Before the prospect of an intelligence explosion, we humans are like small children playing with a bomb. Such is the mismatch between the power of our plaything and the immaturity of our conduct. Superintelligence is a challenge for which we are not ready now and will not be ready for a long time. We have little idea when the detonation will occur, though if we hold the device to our ear we can hear a faint ticking sound. — Nick Bostrom

This was why he had become a master thief, to achieve this theft of thefts, this masterpiece of larceny. All the time, fascinating and terrible Caverna had been his goal. Whilst other Cartographers had sighed in vain after the beauty of her treacherous geography, he had decided to win her with cunning and threats.

All along Caverna had been his opponent and his prize, and she had never suspected it for a moment. He had fooled her, fought her and defeated her. She would be furious, no doubt, would hate him, rail against him and look for ways to destroy him, but he had outmanoeuvred her and now she had no choice but to play things his way. Unlike her earlier favourites, he was her lord, not a plaything to be tossed aside when she was bored.

And yet, for the first time in ten years, he found himself at something of a loss. I have succeeded. I have won. I rule the city. I wonder what I was planning to do with it? — Frances Hardinge

There is no man so great as not to have some littleness more predominant than all his greatness. Our virtues are the dupes, and often only the plaything of our follies. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything. — Ben Macintyre

The world is always a new plaything to children, while to the old it seems falling to pieces from sheer dryness. Everything loses its value with time, but it is not the fault of the fruit, but of the mouth and the tongue. — Kate Douglas Wiggin

I had never seen the jungle. They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I felt that I was Bagheera - the Panther - and no man's plaything, and I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw and came away; and because I had learned the ways of men, I became more terrible in the jungle than Shere Khan. — Rudyard Kipling

A resolution that is communicated is no longer within thy power; thy attentions become now the plaything of chance; he who would have his commands certainly carried out must take man by surprise. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A real man wants two things: danger and play. Therefore he wants woman as the most dangerous plaything. Man shall be educated for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I'm sure that if woman laid out the rules- requirements- early on, and let her intended know that he could either rise up to those requirements, or just move on. A directive like that signals to a man that you are not a plaything-someone to be used and discarded. It tells him that what you have- your benefits- are special, and that you need time to get to know him and his ways to decide if he DESERVES them.
The man who is willing to put in the time and meet the requirments is the one you want to stick around, because tthat guy is making a conscious decision that he, too, has no interest in playing games and will do what it takes to not only stay on the job, but also get promoted and be the proud beneficiary of your benefits. And you, in the meantime, win the ultimate prize of maintaing your dignity and self-esteem, and earning the respect of the man who recognized that you were worth the wait. — Steve Harvey

Oil futures were originally created to give heating oil dealers, gas retailers, aviation companies and other businesses a method of hedging against adverse price changes. Instead, they've become just another Wall Street plaything. — Gary Weiss

They can buy talent. You can't buy it for yourself, but you can buy other people's talent to serve your purposes. And once an artist does that, he becomes like a plaything of the rich. — Robert Crumb

A book that furnishes no quotations is no book - it is a plaything. — Thomas Love Peacock

My father was short for a man, with a child's plaything for a name - Spinner. He had flawless dark brown skin and a head full of big, wet-looking curls, black as oil. And he had the smile of a scoundrel - the kind of smile that disarmed men and undressed women. — Charles M. Blow

The aphorism is a slippery plaything. — Mason Cooley

What is a bow and arrow? It is the beginning of the end. It is the winding path that grows to the roaring road of war. It is a plaything and a weapon and a triumph in human engineering. It is the first faint stirring of an atom bomb. — Clifford D. Simak

This compulsion to an activity without respite, without variety, without result was so cruel that one day, noticing a swelling over his stomach, he felt an actual joy in the idea that he had, perhaps, a tumor that would prove fatal, that he need not concern himself with anything further, since it was this malady that was going to govern his life, to make a plaything of him, until the not-distant end. If indeed, at his period, it often happened that, though without admitting it even to himself, he longed for death, it was in order to escape not so much from the keenness of his sufferings as from the monotony of his struggle. — Marcel Proust

We know - or should know - what lies at the end of the road of racial polarization. A 'race card' is not something to play, because race is a very dangerous political plaything. — Thomas Sowell

The prince put the dagger on the table. "Sorry."
Yorick bent forward and looked up into his eyes. "Don't forget our respective places here. I'm your clown. Your plaything. Your toy. Scarcely human. No need to apologise. — A.J. Hartley

Without any effort of his will, or power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud; an outcry that went pealing through the night, and was beaten back from one house to another, and reverberated from the hills in the background; as if a company of devils, detecting so much misery and terror in it, had made a plaything of the sound and were bandying it to and fro. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Of all the toys available, none is better designed than the owner himself. A large multipurpose plaything, its parts can be made to move in almost any direction. It comes completely assembled, and it makes a sound when you jump on it. — Stephen Baker

Her butler opened it for her. His name was Boredom. She said, 'Boredom, fetch me a plaything.' He said 'Very good ma'am,' and putting on his white gloves so that fingerprints would not show he tapped at my heart and I thought he said his name was Love. — Jeanette Winterson

However, the fickle strivings of her heart and her mind did not encounter a will in her that, without limiting them, could guide them and keep her from becoming their charming and fragile plaything. — Marcel Proust

You cannot imagine what wrath and sadness overcome your whole soul when a great idea, which you have long cherished as holy, is caught up by the ignorant and dragged forth before fools like themselves into the street, and you suddenly meet it in the market unrecognizable, in the mud, absurdly set up, without proportion, without harmony, the plaything of foolish louts! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

My quarrel with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes no quotations, is me judice, no book, - it is a plaything. — Thomas Love Peacock

What he would have given to be that plaything in her hands ... — Amanda Lance

What is bigger than an elephant? But this also is become man's plaything, and a spectacle at public solemnities; and it learns to skip, dance, and kneel — Plutarch

I'm not interested in being anyone's plaything right now.
"I believe I'm asking to be yours."
Shaking her head, she fought a smile and looked up at me. "Stop being cute."
"Meet me upstairs."
"What? No."
"The empty ballroom adjacent to the restrooms. It's up the stairs and to your right. — Christina Lauren

Over the fireplace was the portrait of his father's first wife, Robert's mother, Olive. Jay hated that painting. There she was, solemn and saintly, looking down her long nose at all who came after her. When she caught a fever and died suddenly at the age of twenty-nine his father had remarried, but he never forgot his first love. He treated Jay's mother, Alicia, like a mistress, a plaything with no status and no rights; and he made Jay feel almost like an illegitimate son. Robert was the firstborn, the heir, the special one. Jay sometimes wanted to ask whether it had been an immaculate conception and a virgin birth. — Ken Follett

I think every family should have a dog; it is like having a perpetual baby; it is the plaything and crony of the whole house. It keeps them all young. — John Brown

After breakfast I spent an hour cleaning my revolver and trying my skill at a target. Jane shook her head, probably thinking that bullets were vain against demonic powers. But Perdita was hugely delighted with the shining little instrument and wanted it for a plaything; women of all ages will play with death! ("Absolute Evil") — Julian Hawthorne

Perhaps, he thought, his Master would only amuse himself with the little pain slut for a little while and then give her back to his faithful servant as an eternal plaything. The ghost chuckled at the thought of what he would do to that little slut if he had all of eternity as he faded away into the undulating mirror and left sweet Angelica to her fate. — Bella Swann

Human life is insignificant. What's ominous is the movement of the spheres. When I settled here, a sun speck sat on the doorjamb at two in the afternoon. Thirty-six days passed. The speck jumped to the next room. The earth had completed another leg of its journey. The little sun speck, a child's plaything, reminds us of eternity. — Yury Olesha

Speaking as one who was given to you as a plaything, your behavior towards women has been beastly. I know for a fact that you're better than this."
"My, my, now you are starting to sound like a wife. Too bad I'm not in the market for none of those."
"No, why should you be? You're too busy sleeping with other men's wives to bother finding your own. — Gaelen Foley

To be born in imbecility, in the midst of pain and crisis; to be the plaything of ignorance, error, need, sickness, wickedness, and passions; to return step by step to imbecility, from the time of lisping to that of doting; to live among knaves and charlatans of all kinds; to die between one man who takes your pulse and another who troubles your head; never to know where you come from, why you come and where you are going! That is what is called the most important gift of our parents and nature. Life. — Denis Diderot

This is us together. I own it. This body is my plaything. Your ache is mine. Your orgasm is mine. Your hunger is mine. Your dirty thoughts are mine. — C.D. Reiss

In the name of feminism, we denied some essential aspects of our authentic selves. While feminism should have been nothing if not a celebration of our own unique characteristics, we insisted that we had no unique characteristics ... that gender differences were hogwash, and a feminine woman was nothing more than a plaything for men. — Marianne Williamson

An art is only great and significant if it is one that all may enjoy. The art of a clique is but a plaything. — W. Somerset Maugham

I had been brought up in the law and had this sort of instinct that international law operates and was there to protect principles and not to be the plaything of power and might - which I now know, of course, to be an absolute nonsense. International law should be spelled l-o-r-e. — David Lange

She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women. Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say.
The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was, "You don't know how happy I am to be with you." That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express. — Milan Kundera

The blues is not a plaything like some people think they are. — Son House

THE ART OF THE BRICK exhibition is accessible because it engages the child in all of us while simultaneously illuminating sophisticated and complex concepts. Everyone can relate to the medium since it is a toy that many children have at home. But my goal with this exhibition when it first debuted in 2007 was to elevate this simple plaything to a place it has never been before. — Nathan Sawaya

A total reverse of fortune, coming unawares upon a man who 'stood in high degree,' happy and apparently secure,-such was the tragic fact to the mediaeval mind. It appealed strongly to common human sympathy and pity; it startled also another feeling, that of fear. It frightened men and awed them. It made them feel that man is blind and helpless, the plaything of an inscrutable power, called by the name of Fortune or some other name,-a power which appears to smile on him for a little, and then on a sudden strikes him down in his pride. — A. C. Bradley

A victim of God may, Through learning adaption, Become a partner of God, A victim of God may, Through forethought and planning, Become a shaper of God. Or a victim of God may, Through shortsightedness and fear, Remain God's victim, God's plaything, God's prey. — Octavia Butler

Why, if you were not interested in me as anything more than a"-she stumbled, trying to find the right terminology-"momentary plaything, you might at least have just told me outright afterward." She crossed her arms and sneered at him. "Why didn't you? You think I was not strong enough to take it without causing a scene? I assure you, no one is better used to rejection than I, my lord. I think it very churlish of you not to inform me to my face that your breach in manners was an unfortunate impulse of the moment. I deserve some respect. We have known each other long enough for that at the very least. — Gail Carriger

Democracy cannot be a plaything for the capital cities. It has to infiltrate every nook and cranny in the country, including the village. — Meles Zenawi

Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate. — Viktor E. Frankl

It had never occurred to him until then to think that literature was the best plaything that had ever been invented to make fun of people ... — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Teach your scholar to observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you would have it grow, do not be in too great a hurry to satisfy this curiosity. Put the problems before him and let him solve them himself. Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him discover it. If ever you substitute authority for reason he will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people's thoughts. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams ... Man ... is above all the plaything of his memory. — Andre Breton

I think a lot of people learn to code messing around with things while in secondary school. And for me, it started up as a hobby and a plaything, and I just became more curious over time. — John Collison

I think there is no work of art which represents the spirit of a nation more surely than "Die Meister Singer" of Richard Wagner. Here is no plaything with local colour, but the raising to its highest power all that is best in the national consciousness of his country. — Ralph Vaughan Williams

From that night on, the electron-up to that time largely the plaything of the scientist-had clearly entered the field as a potent agent in the supplying of man's commercial and industrial needs ... The electronic amplifier tube now underlies the whole art of communications, and this in turn is at least in part what has made possible its application to a dozen other arts. It was a great day for both science and industry when they became wedded through the development of the electronic amplifier tube. — Robert Andrews Millikan

Beauty! thou pretty plaything! dear deceit, That steals so softly o'er the stripling's heart, And gives it a new pulse unknown before! — Robert Blair

After all, I might not intend to use him for a plaything, but I could still appreciate looking through the toy-shop window. — Deanna Raybourn

I like using LEGO bricks as a medium because I enjoy seeing people's reaction to artwork created from something with which they are familiar. ... My goal is to elevate this simple plaything to a place it has never been before. I also appreciate the cleanliness of the LEGO brick. The right angles. The distinct lines. But, from a distance, those right angles and distinct lines offer new perspectives, changing to curves. — Nathan Sawaya

All too often modern man becomes the plaything of his circumstances because he no longer has any leisure time; he doesn't know how to provide himself with the leisure he needs to stop to take a good look at himself. — Michel Quoist

You're the half-sister of the full-blood demon, Valenti. The illegitimate child of Asmodeus - one of the Seven Princes of Hell. You were sold at birth as a plaything for lesser demons."
"A half-blood abomination," he snarled. "An embarrassment to demons everywhere. By all rights, you should be dead. — Pippa DaCosta

Better to sink with tempests raging o'er
Masts all dismantled and hull gaping wide
Than rest and rot on some unclouded shore
The idle plaything of the listless tide.

Better the grime of battle on the brow,
With grim defeat to crush thy dying hand
Than through long years of peace to tyrant bow
Or dwell captive in a strangers land.

Better the castle with beleaguered gate,
By battle's lightning shivered in a day
Than peaceful walls in pomp of sullen state,
Through centuries sinking to a dull decay.

Better resolve to win thy heart's desire,
And striving bravely, die in the endeavor
Than have the embers of some smothered fire
Lie smouldering in thy saddened soul forever. — Sam Davis

Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted. — Rebecca West

In the Tea Party era, it is the restless conservative Republican who has become passion's plaything, the toy of impetuous romance, an erotomania only intensified by the lusting for an upstart savior. — James Wolcott

don't you dare, for one minute,
believe that my kindness makes me
anything but insurmountable.
i did not unzip my chest to every kind of hurt,
and stagger back, wounded and alive,
just to hear you call me weak for trying.
i opened my door to heartache -
i gave her the fucking key.
my softness for wayward strangers
has made me nothing less
than a halfway house for aching soles.
so when you open your mouth
and call me 'baby'
understand that i am not your next victim
in a laundry list of broken girls.
you think i don't know you? people like you?
people with mouths for hands.
i've got skin like topsoil
and your teeth could never take root.
so when you go looking to make a plaything
of a sunburst,
you better look for someone with less fire
than me.
because softness or no,
i will eat you alive
before i let you make a meal of me. — Ashe Vernon

So, what do you do, Ellie? he asked. Well, previously, I held a position on death row, but lately I've been a vampire's plaything. Soon I'll be sacrificed so the Soul Reaper and the Enemy of Old can make babies. — Kresley Cole

ON THE RETURN OF A BOOK
LENT TO A FRIEND
I GIVE humble and hearty thanks for the safe return of this book which having endured the perils of my friend's bookcase, and the bookcases of my friend's friends, now returns to me in reasonably good condition.
I GIVE humble and hearty thanks that my friend did not see fit to give this book to his infant as a plaything, nor use it as an ash-tray for his burning cigar, nor as a teething-ring for his mastiff.
WHEN I lent this book I deemed it as lost: I was resigned to the bitterness of the long parting: I never thought to look upon its pages again.
BUT NOW that my book is come back to me, I rejoice and am exceeding glad! Bring hither the fatted morocco and let us rebind the volume and set it on the shelf of honour: for this my book was lent, and is returned again.
PRESENTLY, therefore, I may return some of the books that I myself have borrowed. — Christopher Morley

It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests and talents pertinent to the court's role. Otherwise the sound principle of substantial deference to a president's choice of judicial nominees will dissolve into a rationalization for senatorial abdication of the duty to hold presidents to some standards of seriousness that will prevent them from reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends. — George Will

Those who really value Ukrainian sovereignty should opt for real independence and a positive neutrality: neither a plaything of the West nor Moscow. — Tariq Ali

The last of the human freedoms: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you become the plaything to circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity ... — Viktor E. Frankl

Music is supposed to be interwoven into the fabric of society; it is not supposed to be a plaything that is there to serve the population's titillation of the moment. — Billy Corgan

Chance makes a plaything of a man's life. — Seneca The Younger

Whence, it may be asked, had come that plaything of the tempest? From what part of the world did it rise? It surely could not have started during the storm. — Jules Verne

Thus I became Rhysand's plaything, the harlot of Amarantha's whore. — Sarah J. Maas

In comparison with capitalism, which reconstituted man as an economic animal; in comparison with Marxism, which found man an object made up of organized matter; in comparison with catholicism, which saw him as the unwitting plaything of an imperious unseen power (the Divine Will); in comparison with dialectical materialism, which saw him as unwitting plaything of the deterministic evolution of the means of production- existentialism made man a god — Ali Shariati

There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor
both black and white
through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The water wasn't the same down here.

Water is what runs out of the kitchen taps or a playground drinking fountain. It fills bathubs and pools and yes, of course, the ocean- but at a certain depth, water becomes a barrier from all you remember, all you think you know.

You're trapped within it, a plaything of it.

Focus erodes. Your thoughts mutate. The pressure.

The pressure.

The soul can't cope with that. It shouldn't be expected to.

Humans weren't built for this. There's a reason nothing lives down here.

Or nothing should. — Nick Cutter

Children are holy and pure. Even those of bandits and crocodiles belong among the angels ... They must not be turned into a plaything of one's mood, first to be tenderly kissed, then rabidly stomped at. — Anton Chekhov

The religion which treats its flock as a credulous plaything offers one of the cruelest spectacles that can be imagined: a human being in fear and doubt who is openly exploited to believe in the impossible — Christopher Hitchens

Fledgling designers need investment - but how much easier it is to put them in a dead man or woman's shoes, perhaps also backing the new designer's namesake line, but only as what the French call a 'danseuse,' a plaything. — Suzy Menkes