“[Christian] … he felt very much like an uninitiated chess-player who sees that the pieces are in a peculiar position on the board, and might open the way for him to give checkmate, if he only knew how.”

—  George Eliot , book Felix Holt, the Radical

Source: Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Chapter 25 (at page 210)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "[Christian] … he felt very much like an uninitiated chess-player who sees that the pieces are in a peculiar position on…" by George Eliot?
George Eliot photo
George Eliot 300
English novelist, journalist and translator 1819–1880

Related quotes

Dhyan Chand photo

“His real talent lay above his shoulders. His was easily the hockey brain of the century. He could see a field the way a chess player sees the board. He knew where his teammates were, and more importantly where his opponents were - without looking. It was almost psychic.”

Dhyan Chand (1905–1979) Indian field hockey player

Dhyan Chand (a biographical sketch)

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

William Golding photo

“Ralph… would treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies

Bobby Fischer photo

“I object to being called a chess genius because I consider myself to be an all around genius who just happens to play chess, which is rather different. A piece of garbage like Kasparov might be called a chess genius, but he's like an idiot savant. Outside of chess he knows nothing.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, July 6 2001 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_18_1.MP3
2000s

Pope Francis photo

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel. … I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that. We must see if he said things in that way and I will give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

As quoted in "Pope Francis: Donald Trump 'is not Christian'", by Rebecca Kaplan, CBS News (18 February 2016) http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pope-francis-trump-is-not-christian/
2010s, 2016, Visit to Mexico (February 2016)

Victor Villaseñor photo

“Suddenly, I don’t know how to explain it, the chess pieces seemed to come alive for me. It was like I could now see the chess pieces moving on the board on their own. I started beating everybody. I, the slowest of the slow, had now gone something like a hundred games without losing. I could do no wrong. It was magical how the pieces spoke to me, showing me where to move.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Marshall Faulk photo

“In my mind and my heart, I feel like I'm the better player. But I feel like I'm better than anybody who ever played the game, but that's just how it is, that's the only way you can succeed. And in his mind, he (Jackson) feels like he's the better player and the best player who has ever played the position. You have to have that attitude to succeed, but you can't have the ego to the point where you don't understand how him starting and me playing the role helps the team.”

Marshall Faulk (1973) All-American college football player, professional football player, running back, Pro Football Hall of Fame memb…

USA Today 2005-08-02.

Isaac Bashevis Singer photo

“We all play chess with Fate as partner. He makes a move, we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves, we try to prevent it. We know we can't win, but we're driven to give him a good fight.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

Source: The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

Adam Smith photo

“The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section II, Chap. II.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part VI

Harlan Ellison photo

“He was just Ron and I kinda liked him, mostly because he wrote well, and I never felt he took all that Scientology nonsense seriously but knew how to make a good buck, and he liked me, and… well, he was a friend who died.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Introduction to Angry Candy (1988)

Related topics