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

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

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.

Football causeth fighting, brawling, contention, quarrel picking, murder, homicide and great effusion of bloode, as daily experience teacheth.

The true mission of American sports is to prepare young men for war.

The whole secret of fencing consists but in two things, to give and not to receive.

Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.

Gambling is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity, and the father of mischief.

Recreations should be as sauces to your meat, to sharpen your appetite unto the duties of your calling, and not to glut yourselves with them.

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

The gods play games with men as balls.

Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world: it gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. The picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.

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