A thread for references to classic stories about gambling
Quote: THE MAGIC SKIN ,HONORE DE BALZAC Translator : Ellen Marriage
Do you understand all the force and frenzy in a soul which impatiently waits for the opening of a gambling hell? Between the daylight gambler and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady's window. Only with morning comes the real throb of the passion and the craving in its stark horror. Then you can admire the real gambler who has neither eaten slept thought nor lived he has so smarted under the scourge of his martingale so suffered on the rack of his desire for a coup of trente-et-quarante. At that accursed hour you encounter eyes whose calmness terrifies you faces that fascinate glances that seem as if they had power to turn the cards over and consume them. The grandest hours of a gambling saloon are not the opening ones. If Spain has bull-fights and Rome once had her gladiators Paris waxes proud of her Palais-Royal where the inevitable roulettes cause blood to flow in streams and the public can have the pleasure of watching without fear of their feet slipping in it.
Also :
Quote: The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky
However ridiculous it may seem to you that I was expecting to win at roulette, I look upon the generally accepted opinion concerning the folly and the grossness of hoping to win at gambling as a thing even more absurd. For why is gambling a whit worse than any other method of acquiring money? How, for instance, is it worse than trade? True, out of a hundred persons, only one can win; yet what business is that of yours or of mine?
