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

Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The gods play games with men as balls.

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

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

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.

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