tennis quotes

Tennis is a game of no use in itself.

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

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).

The only possible regret I have isthe feeling that I will die without having played enough tennis.

-Jean Borotra
Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

   Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

- Robert Lee Frost
   Address at Milton  Academy, Mass,17 May.

If I'd wanted to be an individual, I'd have taken up tennis.

- Ruud Gullit
Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

The self isnow the sacred cow of American culture, self- esteem is sacrosanct, and so we labour to turn arts education into a system in which no one can fail. In the same spirit, tennis could be shorn of its elitist overtones: you just get rid of the net.

- Robert Studley Forrest Hughes
  Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of  America.

The real pitch lake is simply about two hundred asphalt tennis courts, in very bad condition, set in the midst of somegently undulating greenmeadows.Iam inclined to ask for my money back.

- Aldous Leonard Huxley
  On the Trinidad Pitch Lake. Beyond the Mexique Bay.

Conversation is like playing tennis with a ball made of Krazy Putty that keeps coming back over the net in a different shape.

- David John Lodge
  Small World, pt.1, ch.1.

Little old ladies in tennis shoes.

- Stanley Mosk
Characterizing older, activist women. Quoted in William Safire Safire's Political Dictionary (1975).

To theTennis Court, and there saw the King playat tennis and others; but to see how the King's play was extolled, without any cause at all, was a loathsome sight.

- Samuel Pepys
  Diary entry, 4 Jan.

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.

We are merely thestars'tennis-balls, struck and bandied Which way please them.

-John Webster
  The Duchess of Malfi, act 5, sc.4.