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

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

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?

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

The gods play games with men as balls.

Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.