Quotations

What I say is, patience, and shuffle the cards.
Miguel de Cervantes, 'Don Quixote'

She [the niece of Talleyrand] pushed ... the licence of divorce to an extremity which can only be equalled amongst the dwellers in some of the States of America. She ... was in a position 'to play whist with three ex-husbands while a fourth betted on her'.
Courtney, 'English Whist and Whist Players'

With spots quadrangular of diamond form,
Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife,
And spades, the emblems of untimely graves.
William Cowper, 'Task' (bk. IV, The Winter Evening, l. 217)

One should always play fair when one has the winning cards.
Oscar Wilde

Cards were at first for benefits designed,
Sent to amuse, not enslave the mind.
David Garrick

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.
Josh Billings

Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.
Charles Lamb

Has fortune dealt you some bad cards? Then let wisdom make you a good gamester.
Francis Quarles

Those who feel the breath of sadness
Sit down next to me
Those who find they�re touched by madness
Sit down next to me
James, 'Sit Down'

Will: Unfortunately I find that those touched by madness are usually sitting opposite me. Bad luck partner!

The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all these more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.
Edgar Allan Poe

A man's idea in a game of cards is war, cruel, devastating, and pitiless. A lady's idea of it is a combination of larceny, embezzlement and burglary.
Finley Peter Dunne

The bizarre world of cards is a world of pure power politics where rewards and punishments are meted out immediately.
Ely Culbertson

I have a notion that gamblers are as happy as most people, being always excited; women, wine, fame, the table, even ambition, sate now and then, but every turn of the card and cast of the dice keeps the gambler alive -- besides one can game ten times longer than one can do any thing else.
Lord Byron

Never play card with a man called Doc.
Never eat at a place called Mom's.
Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.
Nelson Algren

My first big mistake was made when, in a moment of weakness, I consented to learn the game; for a man who can frankly say �I do not play bridge� is allowed to go over in the corner and run the pianola by himself, while the poor neophyte, no matter how much he may protest that he isn�t �at all a good player, in fact I�m perfectly rotten,� is never believed, but dragged into a game where it is discovered, too late, that he spoke the truth.
Robert Benchley

I don't wanna talk
About the things we've gone through
Though it's hurting me
Now it's history
I've played all my cards
And that's what you've done too
Nothing more to say
No more ace to play
Abba, 'The Winner Takes It All'

Men are like a deck of cards. You'll find the occasional king, but most are jacks.
Laura Swenson

True luck consists not in holding the best of the cards at the table;
luckiest is he who knows just when to rise and go home.
John Hay

Bridge is a means of forgetting the thousands of little irrirations of a mind over-crowded with anarchy. For bridge has a purpose, that of taking as many tricks as possible. The end is clear and very simple. But nothing in the lives of bridge-players is clean-cut, and no ends are defined. And so they retire into some orderly process, even in a game, from messy complication of their lives.
John Steinbeck, 'The Log from the Sea of Cortez'

Well I don't know why I came here tonight,
I got the feeling that something ain't right,
I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs,
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.

Yes I'm stuck in the middle with you,
And I'm wondering what it is I should do,
It's so hard to keep this smile from my face,
Losing control, yeah, I'm all over the place,
Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.
Stealers Wheel, 'Stuck In The Middle With You'

Will: Reminds me of some of my less favourable tournament experiences...

But whiles he thought to steal the single ten.
The king was slyly finger'd from the deck!

Shakespeare, 'Henry VI', Part III, Act V, Scene 1.

Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.
Steven Wright

If you play Bridge badly you make your partner suffer, but if you play poker badly you make everybody happy.
Joe Laurie Jr.

Whether he likes it or not, a man's character is stripped at the poker table; if the other players read him better than he does, he has only himself to blame. Unless he is both able and prepared to see himself as others do, flaws and all, he will be a loser in cards, as in life.
Anthony Holden

See how the world its veterans rewards!
A youth of frolics, an old age of cards.
Alexander Pope, 'Moral Essays'. Epistle ii. Line 243

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can't make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.
Christopher Hitchens, The Observer, issue of 14th November 2010

When in doubt, win the trick.
Edmond Hoyle