Billiards Quotes

• I learned to approach racing like a game of billiards. If you bash the ball too hard, you get nowhere. As you handle the cue properly, you drive with more finesse.

  Juan Manuel Fangio

  Games, Racing, Balls

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• Every gentleman plays billiards, but someone who plays billiards too well, is no gentleman.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Play, Gentleman, Wells

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• To succeed, you must first believe you can.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Believe, Firsts, Succeed

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• To play billiards well was a sign of an ill-spent youth

  Herbert Spencer

  Gambling, Play, Youth

  Quoted in Duncan Life and Letters of Spencer, ch.20. Robert Louis Stevenson has also been credited with this observation.

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• To play billiards well is the sign of a misspent youth.

  Herbert Spencer

  Gambling, Play, Youth

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• Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

  Blaise Pascal

  Sports, Men, Play

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• It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

  H. L. Mencken

  Sports, Golf, Gambling

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• As in the game of billiards, the balls are constantly producing effects from mere chance, which the most skillful player could neither execute nor foresee, but which, when they do happen, serve mainly to teach him how much he has still to learn; so it is in the most profound and complicated game of politics and diplomacy. In both cases, we can only regulate our play by what we have seen, rather than by what we have hoped; and by what we have experienced, rather than by what we have expected.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Player, Games, Profound

  Lacon: or many things in afew words (p. 345)

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• A lot of people think international relations is like a game of chess. But it's not a game of chess, where people sit quietly, thinking out their strategy, taking their time between moves. It's more like a game of billiards, with a bunch of balls clustered together.

  Madeleine Albright

  Moving, Thinking, Games

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• If you are discouraged it is a sign of pride, because it shows you trust in your own powers.

  Mother Teresa

  Pride, Discouraged, Self Sufficiency

  Mother Teresa (2016). “No Greater Love, Commemorative Edition”, p.30, New World Library

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• Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.

  Stephen Leacock

  Inspirational, Pool, Happier Days

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• Sex at the age of 90 is like playing billiards with a rope

  Camille Paglia

  Sex, Men, Age

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• Strictures, reproaches, and intemperate speeches from the Senator of Louisiana are really the wailings of an apostle of despair; he has lost control of himself, he is trying to play billiards with elliptical billiard balls and a spiral cue.

  Huey Long

  Play, Despair, Trying

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• Fishing is not like billiards, in which it is possible to attain a disgusting perfection.

  Arthur Ransome

  Lakes, Sea, Fishing

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• Along the way [Mozart] got married; fathered seven children (two of whom survived into adulthood); performed as a pianist; violinist; and conductor; maintained a successful teaching studio; wrote thousands of letters; traveled widely; attended the theater religiously; played cards, billiards, and bocce; and rode horseback for exercise. Not bad for someone portrayed as a giggling idiot in the movies.

  Robert Greenberg

  Children, Teaching, Successful

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• There was one planet off in the seventh dimension that got used as a ball in a game of intergalactic bar billiards. Got potted straight into a black hole.

  Douglas Adams

  Games, Black, Bars

  Douglas Adams (2009). “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”, p.154, Pan Macmillan

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• I love various sports, including basketball, tennis and billiards.

  Yani Tseng

  Inspirational, Basketball, Sports

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• Every cloud has a silver lining.

  John Milton

  Inspirational, Clouds, Pool

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• If you are discouraged it is a sign of pride, because it shows you trust in your own powers. Never bother about other people's opinions. Be humble and you will never be disturbed. Remember St. Aloysius, who said he would continue to play billiards even if he knew he was going to die. Do you play well? Sleep well? Eat well? These are duties. Nothing is small for God.

  Mother Teresa

  Inspirational, Attitude, Humble

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• ..."And then we played Ping-Pong—” “Not pool? I always assumed he was a billiards man—I mean, it’s so handy the way he keeps a stick up his—

  Claire LaZebnik

  Mean, Men, Ping Pong

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