A Quote by Northrop Frye

Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with children's play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in "playing" chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for.

Northrop Frye

Quote Topics

Been Chess Children Done End Energy Exhibition Fulfillment Further Goal Manifestation Own Piano Play Playing Sake Sense Then Think View Work

Quote Author

Northrop Frye
Canadian - Critic
July 14, 1912 - January 23, 1991

Work is the greatest means of education. To train children to work, to work systematically, to love work, and to put their brains into work, may be called the end and aim of schools. In education, no work should be done for the sake of the thing done, but for the sake of the growing mind.

Francis Wayland Parker

Work and play can be the same. When you are following your energy and doing what you want to do all the time, the distinction between work and play dissolves. Work is no longer what you have to do, and play what you want to do. When you are doing what you love, you may work harder and produce more than ever before, because you are having fun.

Shakti Gawain

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. . . . The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. . . . When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world.

Mark Twain

There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty.

Mary Oliver

But what is work and what is not work? Is it work to dig, to carpenter, to plant trees, to fell trees, to ride, to fish, to hunt, to feed chickens, to play the piano, to take photographs, to build a house, to cook, to sew, to trim hats, to mend motor bicycles? All of these things are work to somebody, and all of them are play to somebody. There are in fact very few activities which cannot be classed either as work or play according as you choose to regard them.

George Orwell

To play so as to be relaxed and refreshed for work is not to play, and no work is well and finely done unless it, too, is a form of play.

Alan Watts

When you see or hear something beautiful, it's like that thing is transmitting a kind of energy, and if that energy helped create the work, the only thing I can do is play it when I finally show the work.

Ann Demeulemeester

If you take a bale of hay and tie it to the tail of a mule and then strike a match and set the bale of hay on fire, and if you then compare the energy expended shortly thereafter by the mule with the energy expended by yourself in the striking of the match, you will understand the concept of amplification.

William Shockley

If the music in a groove fits with what you're playing, then play it; if not, then you can play it backwards. If that doesn't work, you try it at a different speed. If it really doesn't work you just break it. The whole ritual to put a record on a turntable just to listen to it, I don't do that too often.

Christian Marclay

If their work is satisfying people don't need leisure in the old-fashioned sense. No one ever asks what Newton or Darwin did to relax, or how Bach spent his weekends. At Eden-Olympia work is the ultimate play, and play the ultimate work.

J. G. Ballard

Play exists for its own sake. Play is for the moment; it is not hurried, even when the pace is fast and timing seems important. When we play, we also celebrate holy uselessness. Like the calf frolicking in the meadow, we need no pretense or excuses. Work is productive; play, in its disinterestedness and self-forgetting, can be fruitful.

Margaret Guenther

The difference between work and play is only a matter of attitude. Work, fully done, is play.

Gerald May

There is work that is work and there is play that is play; there is play that is work and work that is play. And in only one of these lies happiness.

Gelett Burgess

In all cases where work is produced by heat, a quantity of heat proportional to the work done is expended; and inversely, by the expenditure of a like quantity of work, the same amount of heat may be produced.

Rudolf Clausius

But I hope to maintain my credibility after I stop playing. Because, yes of course, now I play and I score goals and children all over are mad about me. Not just poor children - all children. We can make them really happy by the way we play, though I have to say that it's the poor ones that I think of most, the ones who can't come and watch the games at the stadium. We mean so much to them. That's why I'm so committed to this work. Later, after you've stopped playing, it's harder to have the same impact. But I will give it a go. I want to continue doing this kind of work for ever.