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

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

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.

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

Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world: it gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. The picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.

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 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.

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

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.

Idolatry is the mother of all games.

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

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.