The gods play games with men as balls.

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

A brilliant boxing match, quicksilver in its motions, transpiring far more rapidly than the mind can absorb, can have the power that Emily Dickinson attributed to great poetry: you know it’s great when it takes the top of your head off.

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.

If I lose at play, I blaspheme, and if my fellow loses, he blasphemes. So that God is always sure to be the loser.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Idolatry is the mother of all 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?