The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations. The least satisfying of desires. A nameless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess.

A day will come when beings, now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon Earth as a footstool and laugh, and reach out their hands amidst the stars.

Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life.

Chess is a curse upon a man.

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

The past is the beginning of the beginning and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn.

Success is to be measured not by wealth, power, or fame, but by the ratio between what a man is and what he might be.