Courage and grace is a formidable mixture. The only place to see it is in the bullring.

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

I never yet could make out why men are so fond of hunting; they often hurt themselves, often spoil good horses, and tear up the fields—and all for a hare or a fox or a stag that they could get more easily some other way.

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

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

Idolatry is the mother of all games.

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

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

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.

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

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?

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?

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