Of alle chevalry to chose, the chef thyng alosed Is the lel layk of luf, the lettrure of armes. Choosing from all chivalrous actions, the chief things to praise Are the loyal sport of love and the lore of arms.

-Anonymous
c.1370  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, l.1512^3.

Stretchpantsöthegarmentthat madeskiing a spectator sport.

-Anonymous
  In Time, 23 Feb.

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

-Austen,Jane
  Pride and Prejudice, ch.57.

Politics is a blood sport.

-Bevan, Aneurin
Quoted in  Jennie Lee My Life with Nye (1980).

Yet, when confinement's lingering hour was done, Our sport, our studies, and our souls were one: Together we impell'd the flying ball; Together waited in our tutor's hall; Together join'd in cricket's manly toil.

-Rochdale
  Hours of Idleness,'Childish Recollections'. Of his childhood days at Harrow public school.

While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve! While Summer loves to sport Beneath thy lingering light; While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves, Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air, Affrights thy shrinking train, And rudely rends thy robes.

-Collins,William
  Odes on Several Descriptive and  Allegoric Subjects,'Ode to Evening', l.41^8.

Detested sport, That owes its pleasure to another's pain.

-Cowper,William
  Of hunting. The Task, bk.3,'The Garden', l.326^7.

Man is to be held only by the slightest chains; with the idea that he can break them at pleasure, he submits to them in sport.

-Edgeworth, Maria
  Letters for Literary Ladies,'Letters of  Julia and Caroline', no.1.

I was not meant for the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here running people down is considered sport. 332

-Foster,Vince(nt W,Jr)
  Note found after his suicide. Reported in the NewYork Times,13  Aug.

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow-creatures is amusing in itself.

-Froude,James Anthony
  Oceana.

We are making politics a spectator sport in which our only duty is to vote somebody into office and then retire to the grandstands.

-Gergen, David Richmond
  In US News &  World Report,10 May.

In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained.

-Graves, Robert von Ranke
  Occupation: Writer,'Lars Porsena'.

No man likes to see his emotions the sport of a merry- go-round of skittishness.

-Hardy,Thomas
  Far from the Madding Crowd, ch.4.

'Justice'was done, and the President ofthe Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport withTess.

-Hardy,Thomas
Tess of the D'Urbervilles, ch.59.

'Cricket,'said Raffles,'like everything else, is a good enough sport until you discover a better. As a source of excitement it isn't in it with other things you wot of Bunny, and theinvoluntarycomparison becomes a bore. What's the satisfaction of taking a man's wicket when you want his spoons?' 414

-Hornung, E(rnest) W(illiam)
  The Amateur Cracksman.

College football is a sport that bears thesame relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture.

-Hubbard, Elbert Green
Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

My idea of a contact sport was chess.

-Hughes, Robert Studley Forrest
  A  Jerk on One End: Reflections of a Mediocre Fisherman.

The onlyathletic sport I mastered was backgammon.

-Jerrold, Douglas William
Quoted in W  Jerrold Douglas Jerrold (1914), vol.1, ch.1.

No physical activity is so vain as boxing. A man gets into the ring to attract admiration. In no sport, therefore, can you be more humiliated.

-Mailer, Norman Kingsley
  The Fight.

Quand je me jou  e« a'   ma chatte, qui s c° ait si elle passe son temps de moy plus que je ne fay d'elle? When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?

-Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de
  Essais, bk.2, ch.12 (translated by Charles Cotton).