Though the boys throw stones at frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest.

Idolatry is the mother of all games.

A win always seems shallow: it is the loss that is so profound and suggests nasty infinities.

These useless men ought to be cut up and served at a banquet. I really believe that athletes have less intelligence than swine.

The sadness of the end of a career of an older athlete, with the betrayal of his body, is mirrored in the rest of us. Consciously or not, we know: there, soon, go I.

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called games.

Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and the circus games.

Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.

One great reason why many children abandon themselves wholly to silly sports and trifle away all their time insipidly is because they have found their curiosity baulked and their inquiries neglected.

Play, wherein persons of condition, especially ladies, waste so much of their time, is a plain instance to me that men cannot be perfectly idle; they must be doing something, for how else could they sit so many hours toiling at that which generally gives more vexation than delight to people whilst they are actually engaged in it?

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of a gun.

A passion for horses, players, and gladiators seems to be the epidemic folly of the times. The child receives it in his mother’s womb; he brings it with him into the world, and in a mind so possessed, what room for science, or any generous purpose?

I do love cricket—it’s so very English.