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

The gods play games with men as balls.

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

Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and the circus 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 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?

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.

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

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

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?

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

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

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