"Gamblers play just as lovers make love and drunkards drink,--blindly and of necessity, under domination of an irresistable force. There are beings vowed to play, as there are others vowed to love. I wonder who invented the story of the two sailors who were so possessed by the lust of gambling? They were shipwrecked, and only escaped a watery grave, after experiencing the most appalling vicissitudes, by climbing on the back of a whale. The instant they were installed there, they lugged out of their pockets dice and dice boxes and settled themselves down to play. The story is truer than truth. Every gambler is like those sailors. And in very deed there is something in play that does terribly stir the fibres of daring hearts. Is it an insignificant delight to tempt fortune? Is it a pleasure devoid of intoxiation to taste in one second months, years, a whole lifetime of fears and hopes?..." (Anatole France, The Gardens of Epicurus, p. 12).

"We are all gamblers. What we desire most intensely is that the inexorable procession of rational connection cease for a while. That there be installed, even for a short time, an unheard-of unravelling of another kind, a marvellous escalation of events, an extraordinary succession, as if predestined, of the smallest details, to the point where we think that things -- until now maintained artificially at a distance through a contract of succession and causality -- suddenly find themselves, not delivered over to chance, but converging spontaneously, concurring through their very connection in this self-same intensity." (Baudrillard "The Indifference of Space" from the book Mass. Identity. Architecture. (2003))

"The student 'never stops learning'; the gambler 'never has enough'; for the flâneur, 'there is always something more to see.' Idleness has in view an unlimited duration, which fundamentally distinguishes it from simple sensuous pleasure, of whatever variety." (AP 806).

"Gambling" is defined as "Any transaction or pursuit involving risk and uncertainty." (OED)

"The dicethrow affirms becoming and it affirms the being of becoming." (Deleuze "The Dicethrow," Neitzsche and Philosophy p. 25)

"The gamblers, of whom I descried not a few, were still more easily recognizable. They wore every variety of dress, from that of the desperate thimble-rig bully, with velvet waistcoat, fancy neckerchief, gilt chains, and filagreed buttons, to that of the scrupulously inornate clergyman, than which nothing could be less liable to suspicion. Still all were distinguished by a certain sodden swarthiness of complexion, a filmy dimness of eye, and pallor and compression of lip. There were two other traits, moreover, by which I could always detect them: a guarded lowness of tone in conversation, and a more than ordinary extension of the thumb in a direction at right angles with the fingers." (Poe Man of the Crowd)

"There were many individuals of dashing appearance, whom I easily understood as belonging to the race of swell pick-pockets with which all great cities are infested. I watched these gentry with much inquisitiveness, and found it difficult to imagine how they should ever be mistaken for gentlemen by gentlemen themselves. Their voluminousness of wristband, with an air of excessive frankness, should betray them at once.

"The gamblers, of whom I descried not a few, were still more easily recognisable. They wore every variety of dress, from that of the desperate thimble-rig bully, with velvet waistcoat, fancy neckerchief, gilt chains, and filagreed buttons, to that of the scrupulously inornate clergyman, than which nothing could be less liable to suspicion. Still all were distinguished by a certain sodden swarthiness of complexion, a filmy dimness of eye, and pallor and compression of lip. There were two other traits, moreover, by which I could always detect them; - a guarded lowness of tone in conversation, and a more than ordinary extension of the thumb in a direction at right angles with the fingers. - Very often, in company with these sharpers, I observed an order of men somewhat different in habits, but still birds of a kindred feather. They may be defined as the gentlemen who live by their wits. They seem to prey upon the public in two battalions - that of the dandies and that of the military men. Of the first grade the leading features are long locks and smiles; of the second frogged coats and frowns.

"Descending in the scale of what is termed gentility, I found darker and deeper themes for speculation. I saw Jew pedlars, with hawk eyes flashing from countenances whose every other feature wore only an expression of abject humility; sturdy professional street beggars scowling upon mendicants of a better stamp, whom despair alone had driven forth into the night for charity; feeble and ghastly invalids, upon whom death had placed a sure hand, and who sidled and tottered through the mob, looking every one beseechingly in the face, as if in search of some chance consolation, some lost hope; modest young girls returning from long and late labor to a cheerless home, and shrinking more tearfully than indignantly from the glances of ruffians, whose direct contact, even, could not be avoided; women of the town of all kinds and of all ages - the unequivocal beauty in the prime of her womanhood, putting one in mind of the statue in Lucian, with the surface of Parian marble, and the interior filled with filth - the loathsome and utterly lost leper in rags - the wrinkled, bejewelled and paint-begrimed beldame, making a last effort at youth - the mere child of immature form, yet, from long association, an adept in the dreadful coquetries of her trade, and burning with a rabid ambition to be ranked the equal of her elders in vice; drunkards innumerable and indescribable - some in shreds and patches, reeling, inarticulate, with bruised visage and lack-lustre eyes - some in whole although filthy garments, with a slightly unsteady swagger, thick sensual lips, and hearty-looking rubicund faces - others clothed in materials which had once been good, and which even now were scrupulously well brushed - men who walked with a more than naturally firm and springy step, but whose countenances were fearfully pale, whose eyes hideously wild and red, and who clutched with quivering fingers, as they strode through the crowd, at every object which came within their reach; beside these, pie-men, porters, coal- heavers, sweeps; organ-grinders, monkey-exhibiters and ballad mongers, those who vended with those who sang; ragged artizans and exhausted laborers of every description, and all full of a noisy and inordinate vivacity which jarred discordantly upon the ear, and gave an aching sensation to the eye." (Poe "Man of the Crowd page _______ )