Playfulness Quotes

“A dog can be a ‘significant other’ as it infuses a magic fluid stream of oxytocin, trust, ease, and patience; and transforms a man’s life into a paradise of complicity and mutual sympathy, arousing at the same time an instinct of playfulness that many people have lost since their young age and that puts things in new perspectives.( "I am young and have no dog")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“If life has got to be a play, let's play it well. As the avoidance of problems and the maintenance of inner peace may guide us smartly through open and unswerving confrontations, let's face up to conflicts playfully, as well. Playfulness allows us to see things from different angles and may sometimes save us from harmful outcomes. ("The band was still playing")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Giovanni had awakened an itch, had released a gnaw in me. I realized it one afternoon, when I was taking him to work via the Boulevard Montparnasse. We had bought a kilo of cherries and we were eating them as we walked along. We were both insufferably childish and high-spirited that afternoon and the spectacle we presented, two grown men jostling each other on the wide sidewalk and aiming the cherry pits, as though they were spitballs, into each other's faces, must have been outrageous. And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it sprang yet more so; for that moment I really loved Giovanni, who had never seemed more beautiful than he was that afternoon.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room

“I am so tired.
I have grown old from being serious.
I have grown ill from being serious.
I want to laugh at myself.
I want to forget myself.
I am so tired.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“Joy knows itself. As children we didn’t even know the word joy, we were joy.”
― Francis Lucille, The Perfume of Silence

“A lot is said about the serious by the fact that the most intelligent person around is almost always the most playful.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“There is a correlation between how seriously we take life and how many problems it gives us.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Our seriousness prevents us from enjoying the circus of life.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The main difference between play and playfulness is that play is an activity, while playfulness is an attitude.”
― Miguel Sicart, Play Matters

“In cricket fielding, if catch comes right in your hand, there is no fun. You enjoy the most when you have to dive to catch the ball. This is what playfulness is all about. Difference between being a servant of someone and surrendering to someone is playfulness. Don’t make things too easy in your relationship with your spouse or children or gods. Keep the playfulness alive.”
― Shunya

“Play is also a way to be close and, even more important, a way to reconnect after the closeness has been severed. Chimpanzees like to tickle one another's palms, especially after they have had a fight. Thus, the second purpose of play serves our incredible - almost bottomless - need for attachment and affection and closeness.”
― Lawrence J. Cohen, Playful Parenting: An Exciting New Approach to Raising Children That Will Help You Nurture Close Connections, Solve Behavior Problems, and Encourage Confidence

“Politics is sports for people who think they are smart and more serious about life.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Plus, we adults have unhealed hurts from our own childhoods, which sometimes get in the way right when our children need our support. Our own piles of old feelings interfere with parenting playfully. In turn, that makes it hard to help children with their emotional difficulties,”
― Lawrence J. Cohen, Playful Parenting: An Exciting New Approach to Raising Children That Will Help You Nurture Close Connections, Solve Behavior Problems, and Encourage Confidence

“She broke slices of apple in tiny pieces and played the game she’d love as a little girl: feeding the ants. Bent double in the hot sun, she was a great god dropping manna from heaven with no more reason and logic than any human could ever discover.

The ants stopped in their tracks before such food from paradise, showing their astonishment with agitated feelers at first. Then, human as people, they put such amazing gifts to practical use — they picked up the food and headed for home. If they met other ants at the corner or down the block, the word went out in Formic, and the newcomers came looking for manna too.”
― Nancy Price

“I often wonder whether the playground of the imagination is our truest space after all.”
― Hannah Paasch, Millenneagram: The Enneagram Guide for Discovering Your Truest, Baddest Self

“Compassion, kindness, joy, laughter, playfulness, light-heartedness, wonder and awe don’t simply feel good—they’re also a neurobiological recipe for wellbeing and longevity.”
― Simona Ondrejkova

“The worst thing about our cultures, education systems, and religions is that they make us take life seriously.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Most adult geniuses are more playful than most children.”
― @Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The immature think maturity is mutually exclusive with playfulness.”
― @Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Tuning in does not mean questioning our children about every little detail of their lives. Instead, tell an interesting story from your day; they might respond with a story of their own.”
― Lawrence J. Cohen, Playful Parenting: An Exciting New Approach to Raising Children That Will Help You Nurture Close Connections, Solve Behavior Problems, and Encourage Confidence

“Failure embraces everyone, but only experts know, how to slip her the tongue.”
― Curtis Tyrone Jones

“What has always struck me about every Zen master I've met and every Zen book I've read is the sense of humor. Mindfulness in practice is not endlessly silent as much as it is delightfully playful. Presence and connection come with a pinch of sassiness that allows us to return to our inner child in authenticity and lightness.”
― Aline Ra M, Bullshit-Free Mindfulness: An Uncommon Guide for Joy in Everyday Life

“Most adults make adulthood seem like a disease that is caused by a deficiency of playfulness.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The Brave Man
Carves
Out His Fortune,
And
Every Man
Is The Son
Of His Own
Works.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Waking up is the end of spirituality in the usual sense of that word.

With that in mind, we can approach various nondual explorations (or practices, if you want to call them that) in a playful way, as natural and spontaneous activities of life. Like art, music or dancing, they are ways in which life is exploring, enjoying, revealing, loving and entertaining itself.”
― Joan Tollifson, Nothing to Grasp

“But sometimes children do not connect or reconnect so easily. They may feel so isolated that they retreat into a corner, or come out aggressively with both arms swinging. They may be annoying, obnoxious, or downright infuriating as they try desperately to signal us that they need more connection. These situations call for creating more playtime, not doling out punishment or leaving the lonely child all alone.”
― Lawrence J. Cohen, Playful Parenting: An Exciting New Approach to Raising Children That Will Help You Nurture Close Connections, Solve Behavior Problems, and Encourage Confidence

“Young children also play to learn about the world. Why aren't we amused when our toddler drops her food off the high chair for the hundredth time? Because we know about gravity (and we have to clean it up).
She, however, is extremely amused, because everything about the universe is new and interesting and open to playful discovery.”
― Lawrence J. Cohen, Playful Parenting: An Exciting New Approach to Raising Children That Will Help You Nurture Close Connections, Solve Behavior Problems, and Encourage Confidence

“Anagrams are everywhere, especially when you’re waiting, ‘toilet’ can give ‘Eliott’ i just found out.”
― Alain Bremond-Torrent, running is flying intermittently

“Human beings go through a 'camel phase' during which they carry all the foolish prejudices society burdens them with. Then comes the 'lion phase,' when they fight against all such prejudices. But there's another phase only a few achieve: the childhood phase. It's the highest phase, which requires one to consider life with the naïveté of a child, to play games, to be open to all kinds of influences, and to find one's lost innocence again. That's why I play games.”
― O.Z. Livaneli, Bliss

“Life is each moment precious to creativity. What you create does not matter, and it may just be an image in the void - but whatever you do must come out of your playfulness and satisfaction. Love is the purpose, and life is the journey.”
― Lenfantvivant