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?

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

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

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

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

The gods play games with men as balls.

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?

Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world: it gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. The picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.

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

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

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

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

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