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.

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

We cannot say what the woman might be physically, if the girl were not allowed all the freedom of the boy in romping, climbing, swimming, playing whoop and ball.

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.

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 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.

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.

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?

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

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