GAMBLING QUOTES
quotations about gambling
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
That this evil is spreading there can be no doubt, and that, too, year after year, and is not nearly so much confined to men as it was, but women also go into sweeps, &c., to draw the winning horse in a race, or the first boat at a regatta or yacht race. Now, every description of gambling is a vice that cannot be too strongly condemned; but when ministers of religion set such a dreadfully bad example as to have raffles at bazaars for religious purposes, how can we expect that the young will grow up without a taste for trying their luck. It is, therefore, the bounden duty of fathers and mothers to be doubly watchful of their children, and by example, as well as precept, make them grow up with a horror of it. Who has not read the heart-rending accounts of gamblers' wives and children neglected and starved, whilse the infatuated homicide was night after night spending the remnants of the surroundings of their home at "chicken hazard," "Roughe et Noir," or some other gambling of the sort. Yes, I have read accounts enough to break the heart of any honest, sympathetic, true-hearted man or woman. Then echo my prayer--God keep us from the sin of gambling.
T. AUTUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On the Vice of Gambling", Short Essays
Time spent in a casino is time given to death, a foretaste of the hour when one's flesh will be diverted to the purposes of the worm and not the will.
REBECCA WEST
attributed, Rebecca West: Artist and Thinker
I am not surprised that there are gambling houses, like so many snares laid for human avarice; like abysses where many a man's money is engulfed and swallowed up without any hope of return; like frightful rocks against which the gamblers are thrown and perish.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
This was my first lesson about gambling: if you see somebody winning all the time, he isn't gambling, he's cheating.
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.
PAUL NEWMAN
attributed, Forbes Book of Quotations
Gambling is a way of buying hope on credit.
ALAN WYKES
attributed, The Complete Illustrated Guide to Gambling
Even as I approach the gambling hall, as soon as I hear, two rooms away, the jingle of money poured out on the table, I almost go into convulsions.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Gambler
The only man who makes money following the races is one who does it with a broom and shovel.
ELBERT HUBBARD
attributed, The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations
Gambling is not a vice, it is an expression of our humanness. We gamble. Some do it at the gaming table, some do not. You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Passion
One of the worst things that can happen to you in life is to win a bet on a horse at an early age.
DANNY MCGOORTY
attributed, The Little Red Book of Horse Wisdom
Never gamble with a man who knows both sides of the cards.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
When a gambler picks up a pack of cards or a pair of dice, he feels as though he has reduced an unmanageable world to a finite, visible and comprehensive size.
ANNABEL DAVIS-GOFF
The Literary Companion to Gambling
The world is the house of the strong. I shall not know until the end what I have lost or won in this place, in this vast gambling den where I have spent more than sixty years, dicebox in hand, shaking the dice.
DENIS DIDEROT
Elements of Physiology
Quit while you're ahead. All the best gamblers do.
BALTASAR GRACIAN
The Art of Worldly Wisdom
At the gambling table, there are no fathers and sons.
CHINESE PROVERB
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
"Distichs"
The game, like an endlessly circling bird, moved with a slow inexorable pace toward the center pot of money that grew magically with each dealt hand; revolving hands of cards, accompanied by a musical comment of silver upon silver tossed into the center of the table as the chant was heard, so soft as to be a litany calling on ghostly assistance and delivery.
RICHARD JESSUP
The Cincinnati Kid
Show me a gambler and I’ll show you a loser.
MARIO PUZO
Fools Die
Gambling is risk-taking. It might be said the owner of a casino gambles, takes risks, but he has the odds in his favour, so that's intelligent gambling. If I wanted to gamble, I'd buy the casino.
JEAN PAUL GETTY
interview, Within Whicker's World