"Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe."--Russian proverb
"No fool can play chess, and only fools do."--German proverb
"[Chess] ...is a testy, choleric game, and very offensive to him [or her] that loseth the mate."--Robert Burton (The Anatomy of Melancholy)
"[Chess] ...is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil..."--G.M. Hopkins (with apologies for messing with his poetry)
"Chess is a Dance of Yin and Yang."--Le Fou de Dieu
In Shakespeare's "Hamlet", the protagonist at one point exclaims, "O God! I could be bounded in a nut-shell, and count myself a king of infinite space...". Chess is bounded in a 64-square nut-shell with rigid rules governing play, and yet what an infinity of possibilities stretches out before the players. Chess is rather like the TARDIS of Doctor Who: bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside.