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

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.

We cannot say what the woman might be physically, if the girl were not allowed all the freedom of the boy in romping, climbing, swimming, playing whoop and ball.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.

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

The gods play games with men as balls.

Hunting is all that’s worth living for—all time is lost what is not spent in hunting—it is like the air we breathe—if we have it not we die—it’s the sport of kings, the image of war without its guilt.