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

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.

Recreations should be as sauces to your meat, to sharpen your appetite unto the duties of your calling, and not to glut yourselves with them.

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

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.

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

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

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

The gods play games with men as balls.

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

Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.