Football is like a religion to me. I worship the ball, and I treat it like a god. Too many players thinkof a football as something to kick.They should be taught to caress it and to treat it like a precious gem.

-Pele¤   pseudonym of  Edson Arantes do Nascimento
Quoted in David PickeringThe Cassell Soccer Companion (1994).

How little, mark! that portion of the ball, Where, faint at best, the beams of science fall.

-Pope, Alexander
  The Dunciad, bk.3, l.83^4.

To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink. For a shilling the Bruddersford United AFC offered you Conflict and Art.

-Priestley,J(ohn) B(oynton)
  The Good Companions, bk.1, ch.1.

Find out where the ball is, get there; hit it.

-Ranjitsinhji, Prince
Explaining his tactics as a batsman. Quoted in ColinJarmanThe Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

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

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

If you're in the penalty area and aren't sure what to do with the ball, just stick it inthenet, and we'll discuss your options afterwards.

-Shankly, Bill (William)
Quoted in ColinJarmanThe Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

As fattening is the first duty of fashionable female life, it must be duly enforced by the rod if necessary. I got up a bit of flirtation with missy, and induced her to rise and shake hands with me. Her face was lovely, but her body was as round as a ball.

-Speke,John Hanning
  In Karagwe, west of LakeVictoria, among the Galla people. Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile.

Thesecret of managing a ball club istokeepthefiveguys who hate you away from the five who are undecided.

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

Wake! for the Ruddy Ball has taken flight That scatters the slow Wicket of the Night; And the swift Batsman of the Dawn has driven Against the Star-spiked Rails a fiery smite. See Fitzgerald 324:82.

-Thompson, Francis
'Wake! for the Ruddy Ball hasTaken Flight', parody of Edward Fitzgerald, quoted in J C Squire Apes and Parrots (1929).

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

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

For a long time we dreamed of a real leather ball, and at last my brother had one for his birthday. The feel of the leather, the stitching round it, the faint gold letters stamped upon it, the touch of the seam, the smell of it, all affected me so deeply that I still have that ache of beauty when I hold a cricket ball.

-Uttley, Alison
  Carts and Candlesticks.

The history of a battle is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost; but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference.

-Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of
  Of the Battle of Waterloo. Letter, 8 Aug.

What can you expect of a girl who was allowed to wear black satin at her coming-out ball?

-Wharton, Edith Newbold ne¤  e Jones
  TheAge of Innocence, bk.1, ch.5.

So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a ball.

-Woolf, (Adeline) Virginia ne¤  e Stephen
  To the Lighthouse, pt.1, ch.13.

   Even on the mornings when I creak out of bed, I still get pumped up about hitting that silly little white ball.

-Zoeller, Fuzzy
In GolfWorld,13 Apr.