Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

* Amusements are to religion like breezes of air to the flame; gentle ones will fan it, but strong ones will put it out.
- David Thomas, p. 12.

* Any pleasure which takes and keeps the heart from God is sinful, and unless forsaken, will be fatal to the soul.
- Richard Fuller, p. 12.

* People should be guarded against temptation to unlawful pleasures by furnishing them the means of innocent ones. In every community there must be pleasures, relaxations, and means of agreeable excitement; and if innocent are not furnished, resort will be had to criminal. Man was made to enjoy as well as labor; and the state of society should be adapted to this principle of human nature.
- William Ellery Channing, p. 12.
 

* Whatever we do to please ourselves, and only for the sake of the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is "play," the "pleasing thing," not the useful thing. The first of all English games is making money. That is an all-absorbing game; and we knock each other down oftener in playing at that than at football, or any other rougher sport; and it is absolutely without purpose; no one who engages heartily in that game ever knows why. Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money — he never knows. He doesn't make it to do any thing with it. He gets it only that he may get it. " What will you make of what you have got ' " you ask, "Well, I'll get more," he says. Just as at cricket you get more runs. There is no use in the runs; but to get more of them than other people is the game. And there is no use in the money; but to have more of it than other people is the game.
- Charles Spurgeon, p. 13

* Recreation is not the highest kind of enjoyment; but in its time and place it is quite as proper as prayer.
o Samuel I. Prime, p. 12