quotes, quotations and passages on fun

People rarely succeed unless they
have fun in what they are doing.

Dale Carnegie

Choose to have fun. Fun creates enjoyment. Enjoyment invites participation. Participation focuses attention. Attention expands awareness. Awareness promotes insight. Insight generates knowledge. Knowledge facilitates action. Action yields results. Oswald B. Shallow

Life is meant to be fun, and fun is a sure antidote to disappointment. A million things have brought me joy, or laughter, or most important, the experience of beauty. Read. Plant a potato, and discover a treasure chest of new ones when you dig them. Walk down a northern path in the springtime, and try to count the dogwood blossoms and the trilliums. Read Shakespeare. Discover love. Then look up at the stars and reach for them. Richard Cutler It's impossible to have too much fun. Stephen C. Paul

If one insisted always on being serious, and never allowed him or herself a bit of fun and relaxation, one would go mad or become unstable without knowing it. Herodotus

Unless each day can be looked back upon by an individual as one in which he or she has had some fun, some joy, some real satisfaction, that day is a loss. unattributed

Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better.

George Santayana

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While ideas such as discipline and focus are undeniably important, so is
the idea of having fun. With a small amount of effort, we can extract all
the fun and joy out of most parts of our lives--our relationships, our work,
even our leisure time. We can put so many restrictions and should's on
everything we do that our very lives become dull, overly ponderous, and
routine. Before long, we find ourselves living up to a set of rules--and
we're not certain where the rules came from or whose they are. Let
yourself go. Have a little fun with life. Or, have a lot of fun with life. If
you've spent years being extremely disciplined, reliable, and somber,
maybe part of achieving balance is having a decade of fun.

Melody Beattie

Fun is fundamental. There is no way around it. You absolutely must
have fun. Without fun, there is no enthusiasm. Without enthusiasm,
there is no energy. Without energy, there are only shades of gray.

Doug Hall

We don't stop playing because we turn old, but turn old because we stop playing.

Satchel Paige

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

G.K. Chesterton

I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny,
but we can have lots of good fun that is funny.

Dr. Seuss
The Cat in the Hat

If you obey all the rules,
you miss all the fun.

Katherine Hepburn

It is a happy talent
to know how to play.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Extreme fun is, well, extreme. Fun that is so much fun that we are willing to risk life and limb to taste it, even if only for a second. It's the fun of sky diving, bungee jumping, rock climbing, snow boarding. Ordinary fun is the chewing gum kind of fun, even the washing dishes kind of fun that comes with the warm water and emerging sparkle and the meditation-like expanse of timelessness that ends when the sink is empty.

The problem is that it's the extreme kinds of fun that get all the press. That's the kind of fun that soft drink commercials are made of. The other, the ordinary kind of fun goes for the most part unnoticed, barely felt.

Which is precisely why so many of us think that we aren't having fun. Which is precisely why so many of us really aren't having fun--because even when we are, we think we're not, if you know what I mean. So we need to take back the fun that we are given on a daily basis: the fun of crunchy cereal, of cold milk and hot coffee, of birdsong and dog wag, of smiles and waves, of warm blankets and light reading, of bringing someone breakfast in bed, of holding someone, of being held.

Bernie DeKoven

PLAYING SHOULD BE FUN! In our great eagerness to teach our children
we studiously look for "educational" toys, games with built-in lessons,
books with a "message." Often these "tools" are less interesting and
stimulating than the child's natural curiosity and playfulness. Play is
by its very nature educational. And it should be pleasurable. When
the fun goes out of play, most often so does the learning.

Joanne E. Oppenheim

Fun is the cheapest and best medicine in the world for your children
as well as for yourself. Give it to them in good large doses. It will not
only save you doctors' bills, but it will also help to make your children
happier, and will improve their chances in life. We should not need
half so many prisons, insane asylums, and almshouses
if all children had a happy childhood.

Orison Swett Marden
The Joys of Living

Those who do not get fun and enjoyment out of
every day. . . need to reorganize their lives.

George Matthew Adams

The more fun you have,
the greater your value
to yourself and to your
society. The more fun you
share with others, the more
fun you have.

Bernie De Koven
from the "Purported Utterances
of the Oaqui" ("wacky")

Articles and book excerpts on fun:

Put a Little Z.I.P. in Your Relationships Chris Widener

There's time for fun, and there's time for work. The relationship between the two
seems to be a pattern within all natural systems; you can feel it in your gut whether
you're on or off track. When your life is all fun and no work, you feel unclean somehow.
When it's all work and no fun, you're out of balance and hardly of use to anyone.
In fact, it's because the problems of the world are so serious that we need to do
whatever it takes to lighten up sometimes. One of the ways you know you're in
the flow is if you're seriously of service and seriously enjoying yourself at the same time.
It feels right because it is right.

Marianne Williamson

Most homes are far too serious. Why not let the children dance and play to their heart's content? They will get rubs enough, knocks enough in the world; they will get enough of the hard side of life later. Resolve that they shall at least be just as happy as you can make them while at home, so that if they should have unfortunate experiences later, they can look back upon their home as a sweet, beautiful, charming oasis in their life; the happiest spot on earth.

It is a great thing to encourage fun in the home. There is nothing like a fun-loving home. It keeps children off the streets, it discourages vice and all that is morbid.

The home ought to be a sort of theater for fun and all sorts of sports—a place where the children should take the active parts, although the parents should come in for a share too. You will find that a little fun in the evening, romping, and playing with the children, will make you sleep better. It will clear the physical cobwebs and brain-ash from your mind. You will be fresher and brighter for it the next day. You will be surprised to see how much more work you can do, and how much more readily you can do it if you try to have all the innocent fun you can.

Orison Swett Marden
The Joys of Living (1913)

You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things
which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased with them,
or too grasping to care for what you can not turn to other account than mere delight.

John Ruskin

Safe, I decided, didn't leave much room for fun.

Justina Chen Headley
North of Beautiful

We are taught to put fun and serious pursuits on a continuum as opposed
extremes, when this dichotomy is entirely false, made even worse when
we act as though we can instantly exchange one for the other. . . . Exerting
yourself at a task that is serious and rewarding can still be quite fun, but doing
something fun because you have a neurotic need to pack your life full of
fun is pretty much a guarantee that any long-term benefits
you derive will be entirely happenstance.

Anthony D. Ravenscroft