Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Gambling
Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were thrones;
Whose table earth, whose dice were human bones.
Byron—The Age of Bronze. St. 3.
The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to every other loss, and by the act of suicide, renounces earth to forfeit Heaven.
C. C. Colton—Lacon. Reflection.
Our Quixote bard sets out a monster taming,
Arm’d at all points to fight that hydra, gaming.
David Garrick—Prologue to Ed. Moore’s Gamester.
Shake off the shackles of this tyrant vice;
Hear other calls than those of cards and dice:
Be learn’d in nobler arts than arts of play;
And other debts than those of honour pay.
David Garrick—Prologue to Ed. Moore’s Gamester.
Look round, the wrecks of play behold;
Estates dismember’d, mortgaged, sold!
Their owners now to jails confin’d,
Show equal poverty of mind.
Gay—Fables. Pt. II. Fable 12.
Oh, this pernicious vice of gaming!
Ed. Moore—The Gamester. Act I. Sc. 1.
I’ll tell thee what it says; it calls me villain, a treacherous husband, a cruel father, a false brother; one lost to nature and her charities; or to say all in one short word, it calls me—gamester.
Ed. Moore—The Gamester. Act II. Sc. 1.
Ay, rail at gaming—’tis a rich topic, and affords noble declamation. Go, preach against it in the city—you’ll find a congregation in every tavern.
Ed. Moore—The Gamester. Act IV. Sc. 1.
How, sir! not damn the sharper, but the dice?
Pope—Epilogue to the Satires. Dialogue II. L. 13.
It [gaming] is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity, and the father of mischief.
George Washington—Letter to Bushrod Washington. Jan. 15, 1783.