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  • Cricket is not illegal, for it is a manly game.

    - Queen Anne
      Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • Cricket is a game of the most terrifying stresses with more luck about it than any other game I know. They call it a team game, but in fact it is the loneliest game of all.

    -Aristotle
    Another Word from  Arlott.

  • Tennis is a game of no use in itself.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      The Advancement of Learning, bk.2.

  • Football, in itself, is a grand game fordeveloping a lad physicallyand also morally†but it is a viciousgame when it draws crowds of lads away from playing the game themselves to be merely onlookers at a few paid players.

    - Robert Stephenson Smyth, 1st Baron Baden-Powell
      Scouting for Boys.

  • What a polite game tennis is. The chief word in it seems to be 'sorry'and admiration of each other's play crosses the net as frequently as the ball.

    - SirJ(ames) M(atthew) Barrie
    Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • : Oh, but thou dost not know What 'tis to die. :Yes, I do know, my Lord: 'Tis less than to be born; a lasting sleep; A quiet resting from all jealousy, A thing we all pursue; I know besides, It is but giving over of a game, That must be lost.

    - Francis and Fletcher,John Beaumont
         PHILASTERBELLARIO1609  Philaster (published1620), act 3, sc.1.

  • They talk a good game, but economists hardly know enough about business cycles to figure out where they come from, let alone where they're going.

    - Gary Stanley Becker
      'How Bad Will the Next Downturn Be?', in Business Week, 10  Apr.

  • The Socratic method isnot a game at whichtwo can play.

    - Sir (Henry) Max(imilian) Beerbohm
    Zuleika Dobson, ch.15.

  •    Truth is the cry of all, but the game of the few.

    - George Berkeley
      Siris.

  • Cricket is full of theorists who can ruin your game in no time.

    - IanTerence Botham
      Ian Botham on Cricket.

  • They're killing the game with this phoney mystiquetelling people that a guy needs the abilities of a brain surgeon to play left-guard for the Colts. Football is simply a game to keep the coalminers off the streets.

    -Jimmy Breslin
    Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  •   Bowls is a young man's game which old men can play.

    - David Bryant
    Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • Clear Cymric voices carry well this Autumn night, Aneurin and Taliesin, cruel owls for whom it is never altogether dark before the rules made poetry a pedant's game.

    - Basil Bunting
      Briggflatts.

  • It is far more than a game, this cricket.

    - Sir Neville Cardus
    A Fourth Innings with Cardus.

  • Soccer is a man's game; not an outing for mamby- pambies.

    -Jack (John) Charlton
      For Leeds and England.

  • Ful craftier to pley she was Than Athalus, that made the game First of the ches, so was his name.

    - Geoffrey Chaucer
    c.1370  The Book of the Duchess, l.662^4.

  • But war's a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings should not play at. Nations would do well To extort their truncheons from the puny hands Of heroes, whose infirm and baby minds Are gratified with mischief, and who spoil, Because men suffer it, their toy the world.

    -William Cowper
      The Task, bk.5,'The Winter Morning Walk', l.187^92.

  •    'The game,'said he,'is never lost till won.'

    - George Crabbe
      Tales of the Hall,'Gretna Green', l.334.

  • Aconspiracy iseverything thatordinary lifeisnot.It'sthe inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us.We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle.Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach.

    - Don DeLillo
      Libra, pt.2,'In Dallas'.

  • There isplentyof timetowinthisgame, and tothrashthe Spaniards too.

    - Sir Francis Drake
      Attributed, while finishing a game of bowls at Plymouth Hoe, 20  Jul, before sailing to meet the  Armada. Quoted in the Dictionary of National Biography (1917^), vol.5, p.1342.

  • There is a widely held and quite erroneously held belief that cricket is just another game.

    - Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
      In Wisden: Cricketers'  Almanack,'The Pleasures of Cricket'.

  • Forasmuch as there isgreat noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls, from which many evils may arise, which God forbid, we command and forbid on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in future.

    -Edward II
      Royal proclamation, banning football from the streets of London.

  • Here lies, bowl'd out by Death's unerring ball, A cricketer renowned, by name John Small; But though his name was small, yet great was his fame, For nobly did he play the'noble game'. His life was like his inningslong and good; Full ninety summers had Death withstood, At length the ninetieth winter camewhen (Fate Not leaving him one solitary mate) This last of Hambledonians, old John Small, Gave up his bat and ballhis leather, wax and all.

    - Pierce Egan
      Epitaph on cricketer  John Small. Pierce Egan's Book of Sports.

  • Poetry is not a career, but a mug's game.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism.

  • So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf, to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she- bear coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. 'What! no soap?' So he died and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the Grand Panjandrumhimself, withthelittleround buttonat top; and they all fell to playing the game of catch-as- catch-can till the gunpowder ran out of theheels of their boots.

    - Samuel Foote
    Responding to a challenge from the actor Charles Macklin that there was no speech he could not repeat from memory after just one hearing. Macklin had to acknowledge defeat. Foote's phrases 'no soap'and 'the grand Panjandrum' became widely adopted. Quoted in Maria Edgeworth Harry and Lucy (1825), vol.2.

  • Cricket remains for me the game of games, the sanspareil, the great metaphor, the best marriage ever devisedof mind and body† For meit remainstheProust of pastimes, the subtlest and most poetic, the most past- and-present; whose beauty can lie equally in days, in a whole, or in one tiny phrase, a blinding split second.

    -John Robert Fowles
    Quick Singles,'Vain Memories'. Quoted in Helen Exley Cricket Quotations (1992).

  • The game is so full of plot-interest and drama.

    - C(harles) B(urgess) Fry
    Of rugby union. Quoted in E H D Sewell Rugger: The Man's Game (1950). English playwright.  His  early  poetic drama was  succeeded by comedies  and  tragi-comedies  such  as  A  PhoenixToo  Frequent (1946) and Venus Observed (1950).

  • The one passion of my life has been footballthe most exhilarating game I know, and the strongest protest against selfishness, without sermonizing, that was ever put before a thoughtful people.

    -John Goodall
    Quoted in  Andrew Ward and  Anton Rippon The Derby County Story (1983).

  • Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours'march to dinnerand then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths.

    -William Hazlitt
      Table Talk, vol.2,'On Going a  Journey'.

  • There is much of economic theory which is pursued for no better reason than its intellectual attraction; it is a good game. 402

    - SirJohn Richard Hicks
      Causality in Economics.

  • If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.

    - Bob originally LeslieTownes Hope Hope
    Quoted in the Reader's Digest, Oct1958.

  • It's more than a game. It's an institution.

    -Ted (Edward James) Hughes
      Of cricket. Tom Brown's Schooldays, pt.2, ch.7.

  • Please allow me to introduce myself I'm a man of wealth and taste. I've been around for a long, long year Stole many a man's soul and faith. And I was around when Jesus Christ Had his moments of doubt and pain, Made damn sure that Pilate Washed his hands and sealed his fate. Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name But what's puzzling you Is the nature of my game.

    - Mick and Richards, Keith Jagger
      'Sympathy for the Devil'.

  • How heroic to be able to suppress one's vanity to the extent of confessing that the game is too hard.

    - Alice James
      On suicide. Diary entry, 5  Aug.

  • If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will.

    -William James
      The Will to Believe.

  • This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game. Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast, Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.

    - (John) Robinson Jeffers
      Solstice,'Love the Wild Swan'.

  • A decision of the courts decided that the game of golf may be played on a Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort.

    - Stephen Butler Leacock
      Over the Footlights,'Why I Refuse to Play Golf'.

  • My advice to people today is as follows: If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you takethe energy processseriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.

    -Timothy Francis Leary
      Lecture,  Jun, collected in The Politics of Ecstasy (1968), ch.21.

  •    Hail Cricket! glorious, manly, British game! First of all Sports! be first alike in fame!

    -James pseudonym of  James Dance Love
      'Cricket:  An Heroic Poem'.

  • Being inpoliticsislikebeing a football coach.Youhaveto be smart enough to know the game and stupid enough to think it is important.

    - EugeneJ(oseph) McCarthy
      In the Los  Angeles Times,7 Dec.

  • When's the game itself going to begin? Marx

    - Groucho originally Julius Henry Marx Marx
    While watching a game of cricket at Lord's. Quoted in Colin Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • Many continentals think life is a game, the English think cricket is a game.

    - George Mikes
      How to be an  Alien.

  • Then he dropped two in at once, and leant over the bridge to see which of them would come out first; and one of them did; but asthey were both thesame size, he didn't know if it was the one which he wanted to win, or the other one. So the next time he dropped one big one and one little one, and the big one came out first, which waswhat hehad said it would do, and thelittle one came out last, which was what he had said it would do, so he had won twice† And that was the beginning of the game called Poohsticks.

    - A(lan) A(lexander) Milne
      The House at Pooh Corner, ch.6.

  • But what care I? It's the game that calls me Simply to be on the field of play; How can it matter what fate befalls me, With ten good fellows and one good day!

    - A(lan) A(lexander) Milne
    Quoted in Helen Exley Cricket Quotations (1992).

  • Golf is so popular simply because it is the best game in the world at which to be bad.

    - A(lan) A(lexander) Milne
    Attributed.

  • Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.

    -Vladimir Nabokov
      Interview in Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, Spring.

  • Baseball is a Lockean game, a kind of contract theory in ritual form, a set of atomic individuals who assent to patterns of limited co-operation in their mutual interest.

    - Michael Novak
      The Joys of Sport, pt.1.

  • Home I would go But that my doors are hateful to my eyes, Fill'd and damm'd up with gaping creditors, Watchful as fowlers when their game will spring.

    -Thomas Otway
      Venice Preserved, or a Plot Discovered, act1, sc.1.

  • Science is a search for truthit is not a game in which one tries to best his opponent, to do harm to others.

    - Linus Carl Pauling
      No MoreWar.

  •    Art is a game only if you playat it, a mirror that reflects from the inside out.

    - Marge Piercy
      Stone, Paper, Knife,'Stone, Paper, Knife'.

  • Fashion should be a game.

    - Mary Quant
      Quant by Quant.

  • Praise the sports of the land And water, each one The bath by the beach, or the yacht on the sea But of all the sweet pleasures Known under the sun; A good game of Croquet's the sweetest to me.

    -Thomas Mayne Reid
      Quoted in Colin Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • For when the One Great Scorer comes To write against your name, He marksnot that you won or lost But how you played the game.

    - Grantland Rice
    Only the Brave,'Alumnus Football'.

  • Play ball! Means something more than runs Or pitches thudding into gloves! Remember through the summer suns This is the game your country loves.

    - Grantland Rice
    Quoted in ColinJarmanThe Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  •   L'amour est un jeu, la poe  sie est unjeu, la vie doit devenir un jeu (c'est le seul espoir de nos luttes politiques) et 'la re  volution elle-me"  me est unjeu', comme disaient les plus conscients des re  volutionnaires de mai. Love is a game, poetry is a game, life should become a game (it's the only hope for our political struggles) and 'the revolution itself is a game', as the most aware of the May revolutionaries said.

    - Alain Robbe-Grillet
      Projet pour une re  volution a'   NewYork.

  • I guess there is nothing that will get your mind off everything like golf. I have never been depressed enough to take up the game but they say you get so sore at yourself you forget to hate your enemies.

    -Will Rogers
    Quoted in Michael HobbsThe Golf Quotation Book (1992).

  • I stand for the square deal†not merely for fair play under thepresent rules of thegame, but for having those rules changed, so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunityand of reward for equally good service.

    -Theodore Roosevelt
      Speech, Osawatomie, 31 Aug.

  • If this can be termed the century of the common man, then soccer, of all sports, is surely his game† In a world haunted by thehydrogenand napalm bomb, thefootball field is a place where sanity and hope are still left unmolested.

    - Sir Stanley Rous
      Quoted in Bryon Butler The Official History of the Football Association (1986).

  • Anyway,I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's aroundnobody big, I mean except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliffI mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.

    -J(erome) D(avid) Salinger
    The Catcher in the Rye, ch.22.

  • But the past is just the same,and War's a bloody game.

    - Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
      'Aftermath'.

  • Anybody on for a game of tennis?

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Misalliance.This may be the origin of 'Anyone for tennis?', as used in archetypal theatrical drawing-room comedies.

  • Chameleons feed on light and air: Poet's food is love and game.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'An Exhortation'.

  • The Soviet game is chess†ours is poker.We will have to play a creative mixture of both games.

    - George P(ratt) Shultz
      Comment to President Reagan. Recalled in Turmoil and Triumph.

  • There's three things you can do in a baseball game^you can win, you can lose, or it can rain.

    - Casey (Charles Dillon) Stengel
    Quoted in ColinJarmanThe Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • I don't think I can be expected to take seriouslya game which takes less than three days to reach its conclusion.

    - SirTom originally Tom Straussler Stoppard
      Of baseball. In The Guardian, 24 Dec.

  • Well, if the worst comes in the end of all, it'll be great game to see if there's none to pity him but a widow woman, the like of me, has buried her children and destroyed her man.

    -John Millington Synge
      Widow Quin.The Playboy of theWesternWorld, act 2.

  • Man is the hunter; woman is his game: The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, We hunt them for the beauty of their skins; They love us for it, and we ride them down.

    -Tennyson
      The Princess, pt.5, l.147^50.

  • Never change a winning game: always change a losing one.

    - Bill (WilliamTatem II) Tilden
    Quoted in ColinJarmanThe Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • Village cricket spread fast through the land.In those days, before it became scientific, cricket was the best game in the world to watcheach ball a potential crisis.

    - George Macaulay Trevelyan
    Quoted in Helen Exley Cricket Quotations (1992).

  • I'm not saying my golf game went bad, but if I grew tomatoes they'd come up sliced.

    - Lee Buck Trevino
    Quoted in Scholastic Coach,'Coaches' Corner', Dec1982.

  • If there is any game in the world that attracts the half- baked theorist more than cricket I have yet to hear of it.

    - Fred (Frederick Sewards) Trueman
      FreddieTrueman's Book of Cricket.

  • Cricket is the greatest game that the wit of man has yet devised.

    - Sir Pelham Plum Warner
    Quoted in ColinJarmanThe Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • Football is all very well as a game for rough girls, but it is hardly suitable for delicate boys.

    - Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
    Quoted in Alvin Redman The Epigrams of OscarWilde (1952).

  • It is no game for the soft of sinewand the gentle of spirit. Thehigherand dirtiercroquet-playercanusetheguile of a cobra and the inhumanity of a boa constrictor.

    - Alexander Humphreys Woollcott
    Quoted in ColinJarmanThe Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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