“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 , book The Murders in the Rue Morgue

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841).

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 18, 2024. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies…" by Edgar Allan Poe?
Edgar Allan Poe photo
Edgar Allan Poe 126
American author, poet, editor and literary critic 1809–1849

Related quotes

Algis Budrys photo

“You know, even more than playing chess, I dislike dealing with self-righteous chess players.”

Algis Budrys book Michaelmas

Source: Michaelmas (1977), Chapter 7 (p. 98)

Floyd Mayweather Jr. photo

“I'm a chess player; I play chess.”

Floyd Mayweather Jr. (1977) American boxer

2010s, 2015, Interview with Jim Gray (September 2015)

Marcel Duchamp photo

“The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

quote from Marcel Duchamp, by Kynaston McShine, 1989; as quoted on Wikipedia: Marcel Duchamp
posthumous

S. S. Van Dine photo

““Do you play chess, by the by?” asked Vance.
“Used to. But no more. A beautiful game, though—if it wasn't for the players.””

S. S. Van Dine book The Bishop Murder Case

Ch 11
The Bishop Murder Case (1929)

Siegbert Tarrasch photo

“Mistrust is the most necessary characteristic of the Chess player.”

Siegbert Tarrasch book The Game of Chess

The Game of Chess (1931), Pt. 2 : The End Game, p. 79

Anne Brontë photo

“Chess-players are so unsociable, they are no company for any but themselves.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXXIII : Two Evenings; Helen to Walter

Nikolai Krylenko photo

“We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess. We must condemn once and for all the formula "chess for the sake of chess", like the formula "art for art's sake". We must organize shockbrigades of chess-players, and begin immediate realization of a Five-Year Plan for chess.”

Nikolai Krylenko (1885–1938) Russian revolutionary, politician and chess organiser

Krylenko on promoting chess in the Soviet Union. Quoted in Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment

G. H. Hardy photo

“Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.”

G. H. Hardy book A Mathematician's Apology

A Mathematician's Apology (1941)

Ashot Nadanian photo

“Chess is not Mathematics, where ten is always more than one; in chess the King with a pawn can beat opponent's King with all pieces if they are placed badly.”

Ashot Nadanian (1972) chess player

Interview at S'pore Chess News, 23 August 2010 http://www.singaporechessnews.com/interview_ashot_nadanian.html

Garry Kasparov photo

“Having spent a lifetime analyzing the game of chess and comparing the capacity of computers to the capacity of the human brain, I've often wondered, where does our success come from? The answer is synthesis, the ability to combine creativity and calculation, art and science, into a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. Chess is a unique cognitive nexus, a place where art and science come together in the human mind, and are then refined and improved by experience.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

Opening Gambit, Why Chess?, p. 4
2000s, How Life Imitates Chess (2007)

Related topics