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

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.

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

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

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

Idolatry is the mother of all games.

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called games.

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.

The gods play games with men as balls.

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

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.

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.