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.

Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.

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

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.

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

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.

Idolatry is the mother of all games.

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

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.

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.

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