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

-Anne, Queen
  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.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  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.

-Baden-Powell, Robert Stephenson Smyth, 1st Baron
  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.

-Barrie, SirJ(ames) M(atthew)
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.

-Beaumont, Francis and Fletcher,John
     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.

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

The Socratic method isnot a game at whichtwo can play.

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

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

-Berkeley, George
  Siris.

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

-Botham, IanTerence
  Ian Botham on Cricket.

They're killing the game with this phoney mystiqueötelling 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.

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

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

-Bryant, David
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.

-Bunting, Basil
  Briggflatts.

It is far more than a game, this cricket.

-Cardus, Sir Neville
A Fourth Innings with Cardus.

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

-Charlton,Jack (John)
  For Leeds and England.

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

-Chaucer, Geoffrey
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.

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

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

-Crabbe, George
  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.

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

There isplentyof timetowinthisgame, and tothrashthe Spaniards too.

-Drake, Sir Francis
  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.