Compiled by chess buzz

Sidewalk playin': https://www.bing.com/videos/search?...

* Starting Out: French Defense: Game Collection: Starting out : The French

* Alekhine's French Def: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/che...

* A few KIAs: Game Collection: Opening Ideas

* Advance French: Game Collection: Attacking with the French

* Black Defends: Game Collection: Opening repertoire black

* Masterful: Game Collection: FRENCH DEFENSE MASTERPIECES

Hans On French: Game Collection: French Defense

Compiled by Fredthebear
Legendary gambiteer of the Ohio Valley

* By date: Game Collection: King's Gambit attacking games

* POTD: Game Collection: POTD Kings Gambit Accepted - KGA

* Vienna 1903 KG games: Game Collection: Vienna 1903

* Short Selection for White:
Game Collection: Repertoire for White

* Oskar plays 1e4: Oskar Oglaza

* Chess Principles: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comm...

* Linus: https://zoboko.com/text/o1qn0yy8/ch...

* List of gambits: https://detailedpedia.com/wiki-List...

* Freaky Fridays: https://allchessopenings.blogspot.c...

"Chess first of all teaches you to be objective." – Alexander Alekhine

"Among a great many other things that chess teaches you is to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good. It trains you to think before grabbing and to think just as objectively when you're in trouble." -- Stanley Kubrick

"Chess helps you to concentrate, improve your logic. It teaches you to play by the rules, take responsibility for your actions, how to problem solve in an uncertain environment." – Garry Kasparov

"Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game." – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"To avoid losing a piece, many a person has lost the game." – Savielly Tartakower

"Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter." ― Winston S. Churchill

The Use Of Knowledge

Between two citizens
A controversy grew.
The one was poor, but much he knew:
The other, rich, with little sense,
Claimed that, in point of excellence,
The merely wise should bow the knee
To all such moneyed men as he.
The merely fools, he should have said;
For why should wealth hold up its head,
When merit from its side has fled?
"My friend," said Bloated-purse,
To his reverse,
"You think yourself considerable.
Pray, tell me, do you keep a table?
What comes of this incessant reading,
In point of lodging, clothing, feeding?
It gives one, true, the highest chamber,
One coat for June and for December,
His shadow for his sole attendant,
And hunger always in the ascendant.
What profits he his country, too,
Who scarcely ever spends a sou –
Will, haply, be a public charge?
Who profits more the state at large,
Than he whose luxuries dispense
Among the people wealth immense?
We set the streams of life a-flowing;
We set all sorts of trades a-going.
The spinner, weaver, sewer, vender,
And many a wearer, fair and tender,
All live and flourish on the spender –
As do, indeed, the reverend rooks
Who waste their time in making books."
These words, so full of impudence,
Received their proper recompense.
The man of letters held his peace,
Though much he might have said with ease.
A war avenged him soon and well;
In it their common city fell.
Both fled abroad; the ignorant,
By fortune thus brought down to want,
Was treated everywhere with scorn,
And roamed about, a wretch forlorn;
Whereas the scholar, everywhere,
Was nourished by the public care.

Let fools the studious despise;
There's nothing lost by being wise.

Drive sober or get pulled over.

The Two Friends

Two friends, in Monomotapa,
Had all their interests combined.
Their friendship, faithful and refined,
Our country can't exceed, do what it may.
One night, when potent Sleep had laid
All still within our planet's shade,
One of the two gets up alarmed,
Runs over to the other's palace,
And hastily the servants rallies.
His startled friend, quick armed,
With purse and sword his comrade meets,
And thus right kindly greets:
"You seldom com'st at such an hour;
I take you for a man of sounder mind
Than to abuse the time for sleep designed.
Have lost your purse, by Fortune's power?
Here's mine. Have suffered insult, or a blow,
I have here my sword – to avenge it let us go." "No," said his friend, "no need I feel
Of either silver, gold, or steel;
I thank you for your friendly zeal.
In sleep I saw you rather sad,
And thought the truth might be as bad.
Unable to endure the fear,
That cursed dream has brought me here."

Which think you, reader, loved the most!
If doubtful this, one truth may be proposed:
There's nothing sweeter than a real friend:
Not only is he prompt to lend –
An angler delicate, he fishes
The very deepest of your wishes,
And spares your modesty the task
His friendly aid to ask.
A dream, a shadow, wakes his fear,
When pointing at the object dear.

The Man And His Image
To M. The Duke De La Rochefoucauld.

A man, who had no rivals in the love
Which to himself he bore,
Esteemed his own dear beauty far above
What earth had seen before.
More than contented in his error,
He lived the foe of every mirror.
Officious fate, resolved our loverFrom such an illness should recover, Presented always to his eyes
The mute advisers which the ladies prize; –
Mirrors in parlours, inns, and shops, –
Mirrors the pocket furniture of fops, –
Mirrors on every lady's zone,13
From which his face reflected shone.
What could our dear Narcissus do?
From haunts of men he now withdrew,
On purpose that his precious shape
From every mirror might escape.
But in his forest glen alone,
Apart from human trace,
A watercourse,
Of purest source,
While with unconscious gaze
He pierced its waveless face,
Reflected back his own.
Incensed with mingled rage and fright,
He seeks to shun the odious sight;
But yet that mirror sheet, so clear and still,
He cannot leave, do what he will.

Before this, my story's drift you plainly see.
From such mistake there is no mortal free.
That obstinate self-lover
The human soul does cover;
The mirrors follies are of others,
In which, as all are genuine brothers,
Each soul may see to life depicted
Itself with just such faults afflicted;
And by that charming placid brook,
Needless to say, I mean your Maxim Book.

This is one of La Fontaine's most admired fables, and is one of the few for which he did not go for the groundwork to some older fabulist. The Duke de la Rochefoucauld, to whom it was dedicated, was the author of the famous "Reflexions et Maximes Morales," which La Fontaine praises in the last lines of his fable. La Rochefoucauld was La Fontaine's friend and patron. The "Maximes" had achieved a second edition just prior to La Fontaine's publication of this first series of his Fables, in 1668. "The Rabbits" (Book 10, Fable 15.), published in the second collection, in 1678-9, is also dedicated to the Duke, who died the following year, 1680.