People stress the violence. That's the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there's a... calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There's a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there's a satisfaction to the game that can't be duplicated. There's a harmony.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O mistress mine, where are you roaming? O stay and hear, your true love's coming,... That can sing both high and low. Trip no further, pretty sweeting. Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A great while ago the world begun, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,... But that's all one, our play is done, And we'll strive to please you every day.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If there is a species which is more maltreated than children, then it must be their toys, which they handle in an incredibly off-h...and manner.... Toys are thus the end point in that long chain in which all the conditions of despotic high-handedness are in play which enchain beings one to another, from one species to another--cruel divinities to their sacrificial victims, from masters to slaves, from adults to children, and from children to their objects.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An honest appraisal of the respective pleasures derived from theater and cinema, at least as to what is less intellectual and more... direct about them, forces us to admit that the delight we experience at the end of a play has a more uplifting, a nobler, one might perhaps say a more moral, effect than the satisfaction which follows a good film. We seem to come away with a better conscience. In a certain sense it is as if for the man in the audience all theater is "Corneillian." From this point of view one could say that in the best films something is missing. It is as if a certain inevitable lowering of the voltage, some mysterious aesthetic short circuit, deprived us in the cinema of a certain tension which is a definite part of theater. No matter how slight this difference it undoubtedly exists, even between the worst charity production in the theater and the most brilliant of Olivier's film adaptations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I suppose that Paderewski can play superbly, if not quite at his best, while his thoughts wander to the other end of the world, or... possibly busy themselves with a computation of the receipts as he gazes out across the auditorium. I know a great actor, a master technician, can let his thoughts play truant from the scene ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with c...hildren's play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in "playing" chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Although pretend play is important, it is still the means to an end, not the end itself. Do not make the mistake of thinking a con...trived, pretend drama can substitute for real interpersonal comfort in dealing with important emotional issues.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It might seem desirable to attempt a definition of play--not a dictionary definition but one that takes into account the psycholog...ical principles involved. We might define it as pleasurable activity in which the means is more important than the ostensible end. This clearly distinguishes it from work, and is in line with our hypothesis that, like work, play is an end in itself, an opportunity for the discharge of aggressive energy in not only painless but actually pleasurable forms, energy which would otherwise be repressed at a definite psychological expense or else expressed in harmful ways. Play acts out timelessly in pantomime, symbol, and gesture the unfulfillable aggressive and erotic wishes of the players. I say unfulfillable, although the fantasies of some play are actually realized later, as, for example, in the little girl's play with her doll.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »