Play is the highest form of research.

Albert Einstein

Play precedes culture, because the idea of culture always presupposes human society, while animals have not waited for the human being to teach them to play.

Johan Huizinga

Chance and rules are the elements that underlie games and play. Play began among the elementary particles, atoms, and molecules, and now our brain cells carry it on. Human beings did not invent play. All our capabilities arise from play.

Eigen and Winkler

It is play and only play that makes man complete.

Johann Friedrich von Schiller

In our play we reveal what kind of people we are.

Ovid

Play is our brain's favorite way of learning.

Diane Ackerman

Culture arises and unfolds in and as play.

Johan Huizinga

Almost all creativity involves purposeful play.

Abraham Maslow

Whoever wants to understand much must play much.

Gottfried Benn

Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.

Joseph Chilton Pearce

The true object of all human life is play.

G. K. Chesterton

Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning.

Fred Rogers

A child loves his play, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

Benjamin Spock

Play fosters belonging and encourages cooperation.

Stuart Brown, M.D.

Play has been man’s most useful preoccupation.

Frank Caplan

To the art of working well a civilized race would add the art of playing well.

George Santayana

People tend to forget that play is serious.

David Hockney

Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.

Kay Redfield Jamison

Do not keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play.

Plato

Deep meaning lies often in childish play.

Johann Friedrich von Schiller

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

Heraclitus

Children at play are not playing about. Their games should be seen as their most serious minded activity.

Michel de Montaigne

"To the art of working well a civilized race would add the art of playing well".

George Santayana

"When God created the world he was playing".

Ernst Lurker

"Whoever wants to understand much must play much".

Gottfried Benn

"When we play, we sense no limitations. In fact, when we are playing, we are usually unaware of ourselves. Self-observation goes out the window. We forget all those past lessons of life, forget our potential foolishness, forget ourselves. We immerse ourselves in the act of play. And we become free."

Lenore Terr in Beyond Love and Work

"Imaginative play is a key that opens the doors of intuition."

Frances E. Vaughan in Awakening Intuition

"It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe, do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu-lila, lila meaning "play." And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt.

Alan Watts in Zen and the Beat Way

Be patient also with life itself. those who love life are tolerant of its ups and downs, its reversals and leaps forward. Those who love life enjoy playing it by ear, engaging life without a printed score, simply flowing with its melody. By keeping our agendas flexible and minimizing our demands, life can be a melodic song. Whenever circumstances interrupt the normal rhythm of life, those who cultivate patience and inner freedom are able to improvise with a life situation like jazz musicians, making up music as they go along. The emphasis in playing it by ear is on playfulness. Those who use that gift of the Holy Spirit make their way gracefully through life.

Edward Hays in The Great Escape Manual

A genuine sense of humor is having a light touch: not beating reality into the ground but appreciating reality with a light touch. The basis of Shambhala vision is rediscovering that perfect and real sense of humor, that light touch of appreciation.

Chopgyam Trungpa in The Essential Chogyam Trungpa edited by Carolyn Rose Gimian

"Laughter is the shortest distance between two people"

Victor Borge

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."

Helen Keller
 

"Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy."

Robert Anthony
 

"The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for."

Allan K. Chalmers
 

"Action may not always bring happiness;
but there is no happiness without action."

Benjamin Disraeli
 

"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."

Burton Hills
 

"Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy."

Cynthia Nelms
 

"Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead."

Scottish Proverb
 

"The joy that isn't shared dies young."

Anne Sexton
 

"No man is happy who does not think himself so."

Marcus Aurelius
 

"Happiness sneaks through a door you didn't know you left open."

John Barrymore
 

"What is given by the gods more desirable than a happy hour?"

Catullus
 

"Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will."

- Jawaharlal Nehru

 

"Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box."

- Italian proverb

" Seek, above all, for a game worth playing."

- Robert S. de Ropp

 

"Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length."

Robert Frost
 

"Often the greatest enemy of present happiness is past happiness too well remembered."

Oscar Hammling
 

"A joy that's shared is a joy made double." 

John Ray
 

"Yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow only a vision, but today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope..."

Kalidasa
 

"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you want."

Margaret Young

"Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been the key to everything I’ve done from the outset. More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin’s success. "

Richard Branson

"It may be that true happiness lies in the conviction that one has irremediably lost happiness. Then we can begin to move through life without hope or fear, capable of finally enjoying all the small pleasures, which are the most lasting."

Maria Luisa-Bombal
 

"Fate often puts all the material of happiness into a man's hands just to see how miserable he can make himself with them."

Don Marquis
 

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about."

John Mason Brown

"Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response."

Mildred Barthel.

 
"Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay not attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap."

William Bennett
 

"What is the worth of anything,
But for the happiness 'twill bring?"

Richard Owen Cambridge.

 
"If you want happiness for an hour -- take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day -- go fishing.
If you want happiness for a month -- get married.
If you want happiness for a year -- inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime -- help someone else."

Chinese proverb
 

"The joyfulness of a man prolongeth his days."

The Bible: Ecclesiasticus. XXX. 22

 
"Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens."

Douglas Jerrold.
 

 "Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose."

Helen Keller
 

"We are never so happy, nor so unhappy, as we suppose ourselves to be."

 La Rochefoucauld.
 

"Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy."

Karl Marx
 

"Success is getting and achieving what you want. Happiness is wanting and being content with what you get."

Bernard Meltzer
 

"Act happy, feel happy, be happy, without a reason in the world. Then you can love, and do what you will."

Dan Millman
 

"I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them."

John Stuart Mill.
 

"Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have."

Doris Mortman

 
"Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy."

Gretta Brooker Palmer.
 

"It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere."

Agnes Repplier.
 

"The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be  happy; I mean that if you are happy you will be good."

Bertrand Russell
 

"No joy can equal the joy of serving others."

Sai Baba
 

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve."

Albert Schweitzer
 

"I wish you all the joy that you can wish."

William Shakespeare (Merchant of Venice).
 

"Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression."

Dodie Smith

 
"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with."

Mark Twain.

 
"If only we wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is difficult, since we think them happier than they are."

Monesquieu
 
 

"The happy man is not he who seems thus to others, but who seems thus to himself."

Publilius Syrus
 

"If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give."

Bertrand Russell

"Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change."

Bertrand Russell
 

"A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted."

George Santayana
 

"The greater part of happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances."

Martha Washington
 

"Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government."

Aristotle
 

"Happiness depends upon ourselves."

Aristotle
 

"We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same."

Anne Frank
 

"The purpose of our lives is to be happy."

The 14th Dalai Lama

 
"True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self, but the point is not only to get out you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand."

Henry James
 

"The highest happiness of man ... is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable."

Goethe
 

"You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them."

Albert Camus
 

"Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route."

Charles Caleb Colton
 

"No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend till he is unhappy."

Thomas Fuller
 

"It is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while."

Don Marquis
 

"Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it."

Jacques Prevert
 

"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."

 Marcel Proust

 
"Happiness walks on busy feet."

Kittie Turmell

 
"Happiness is nothing more than health and a poor memory."

Albert Schweitze
 

"The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile."

Bertrand Russell
 

"It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, which give happiness."

Thomas Jefferson
 

"Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own;
He who secure within can say:
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today."

 
Horace
 

"Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere wholeheartedly, one-directionally, without regret or reservation."

William H. Sheldon
 

"The more refined one is, the more unhappy."

Anton Chekhov
 

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."

Ernest Hemingway
 

"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city."

George Burns
 

"To fill the hour, that is happiness."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness."

Mary Satton

" Take time every day to do something silly."

Philips Walker

" The most thoroughly wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed"

Nicolas de Chamfort

" Unless each day can be looked back upon by an individual as one in which he has had some fun, some joy, some real satisfaction, that day is a loss."

Anon

" He who does not get fun and enjoyment out of every day...needs to reorganize his life"

George Matthew Adams