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

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

The gods play games with men as balls.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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

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?