Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.

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

Idolatry is the mother of all games.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence; in other words it is war minus the shooting.

If I played in New York, they’d name a candy bar after me.

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

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

The gods play games with men as balls.

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

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.

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

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?