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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

We cannot say what the woman might be physically, if the girl were not allowed all the freedom of the boy in romping, climbing, swimming, playing whoop and ball.

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