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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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?

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of a gun.

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

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?

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