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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Academe, n. An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.

Academy, n. (from academe) A modern school where football is taught.

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

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.

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

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