36 Quotes by Wilhelm Steinitz

Chess is intellectual gymnastics.

A sacrifice is best refuted by accepting it.

Only the player with the initiative has the right to attack.

I may be an old lion, but I can still bite someone’s hand off if he puts it in my mouth.

Capture of the adverse King is the ultimate but not the first object of the game.

I am fully and entirely concentrated on the board. I never even consider my opponent’s personality. So far as I am concerned, my opponent might as well be an abstraction or an automaton.

I have never in my life played the French Defence, which is the dullest of all openings.

A win by an unsound combination, however showy, fills me with artistic horror.

I am not a chess historian – I myself am a piece of chess history, which no one can avoid. I will not write about myself, but I am sure that someone will write...