Meagre Set/banach-mazur Game

Famous quotes containing the words meagre, set and/or game:

    We know of no scripture which records the pure benignity of the gods on a New England winter night. Their praises have never been sung, only their wrath deprecated. The best scripture, after all, records but a meagre faith. Its saints live reserved and austere. Let a brave, devout man spend the year in the woods of Maine or Labrador, and see if the Hebrew Scriptures speak adequately to his condition and experience.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    We find it easy to set limits when the issue is safety.... But 99 percent of the time there isn’t imminent danger; most of life takes place on more ambiguous ground, and children are experts at detecting ambivalence.
    Cathy Rindner Tempelsman (20th century)

    My first big mistake was made when, in a moment of weakness, I consented to learn the game; for a man who can frankly say “I do not play bridge” is allowed to go over in the corner and run the pianola by himself, while the poor neophyte, no matter how much he may protest that he isn’t “at all a good player, in fact I’m perfectly rotten,” is never believed, but dragged into a game where it is discovered, too late, that he spoke the truth.
    Robert Benchley (1889–1945)