Quotes about sportsman

A collection of quotes on the topic of sportsman, man, war, sport.

Quotes about sportsman

“You cannot allow your desire to be a winner to be diminished by achieving success before and I believe there is room for improvement in every sportsman.”

Lionel Messi (1987) Argentine association football player

Success

“Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Animals, Dead

“A gun, no matter how rare, a dog, no matter how brilliant, cannot mean fulfillment without keenness in the man. It takes the sportsman’s edge honed fine, an “eye,” a sense of what is good, the ear for what is right – the heart. There is something about the wilderness, something in the blood that draws nourishment from the game.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

An Affair with Grouse (1982)

Dogs, Game, Sense, Heart

“When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him Vandal. When he wantonly destroys one of the works of God we call him Sportsman.”

Joseph Wood Krutch (1893–1970) American writer, critic, and naturalist

The Great Chain of Life (1956), Chapter 9 "The Vandal and the Sportsman" http://books.google.com/books?id=Ydc0cooCB6QC&lpg=PA146&q=&quot;when+a+man+wantonly+destroys+one+of+the+works+of+man+we+call+him+vandal+when+he+wantonly+destroys+one+of+the+works+of+god+we+call+him+sportsman&quot;#v=onepage. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2009, p. 148.

God

“Who can you blame, parents or their friends or the children? In India every parent wants their child to earn more money and fame than any of their peers, no one wants their child to be set on a cultural journey and do tremendous things like other artists or musicians or sportsman have done. They think the entertainment sector won’t earn them any job or money. I blame the parents. They should inspire their children to pursue their interest along with the regular studies. I feel really sorry about this.”

Hariprasad Chaurasia (1938) Indian bansuri player

On Parents and Passion.
Melodies of Brindavan: Pandit Hariprasad Chourasia

Money, Children, Feeling, Thinking

“No farmer-sportsman group is stronger than the ties of mutual confidence and enthusiasm which bind its members.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

"History of the Riley Game Cooperative, 1931-1939" [1940]; Published in For the Health of the Land, J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle (eds.), 1999, p. 189.
1940s

Confidence

“He wanted to win so badly it killed him. But before it killed him, it elevated the game of baseball, at the Polo Grounds, to a grim spectacle of play-war. The analogy fits McGraw. He reminds you more of a battlefield general than he does a sportsman, and if he reminds you of a general, it would be a man who combined the fury of a Patton and the spectacular, yet knowledgeable, flair of MacArthur. Perhaps this desire to win occasionally overflowed its normal limits and became an obsession; perhaps the grimness darkened the sport at times. This was his weakness, for McGraw was not infallible; McGraw was not perfect. Perfection is lifeless, mechanical, uncaring. McGraw was never uncaring. If he was anything, he was a man who cared.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

Hano. Greatest Giants of Them All. p. 250.
Sports-related

War, Game, Knowledge, Sport

“The God-Man functions as a true 'sportsman' in his playfield, where the very enjoyment is in the sport and not in the score.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

God, Sport

“To interest a Frenchman in a boxing match you must tell him that his national honor is at stake. To interest an Englishman in a war you need only suggest that it is a kind of a boxing match. Tell us that the Hun is a barbarian, we agree politely, but tell us that he is a bad sportsman and you rouse the British Empire.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

War, Box

“I am a sportsman all over, and to the back-bone – 'Unting is all that's worth living for – all time is lost wot is not spent in 'unting – it is like the hair we breathe – if we have it not we die – it's the sport of kings, the image of war without its guilt, and only five-and-twenty per cent of its danger.”

Robert Smith Surtees (1805–1864) English writer

Source: Handley Cross (1843), Ch. 7

War, Sport, Time

“People tend to fall into three psychological types, all differently motivated. There is the type, motivated by economic factors, money…And there is the type motivated by ‘face,’ or pride. This type is a spender, fighter, boaster, lover, sportsman, gambler; he has a will to power and an itch for glory. And there is the professional type, which claims to follow a code of ethics rather than simply seeking money or glory—priests and ministers, teachers, scientists, medical men, some artists and writers. The idea is that such a man believes that he is devoting his life to some purpose more important than his individual self. You follow me?”

Robert A. Heinlein book Space Cadet

Source: Space Cadet (1948), Chapter 9 “Long Haul”, p. 111

Life, Men, Money, People

“Untin' fills my thoughts by day, and many a good run I have in my sleep. Many a dig in the ribs I gives Mrs. J. when I think they're runnin' into the warmint…No man is fit to be called a sportsman wot doesn't kick his wife out of bed on a haverage once in three weeks!”

Robert Smith Surtees (1805–1864) English writer

Source: Handley Cross (1843), Ch. 11

Thinking, Sleep

“He was a good sportsman too. He was an excellent fast bowler and a good fielder. He was also a very good kabaddi player.”

Rajinikanth (1950) Indian actor

Ramachandra Rao, whom Shivaji affectionately used to call Kaddi (stick) Ramu because he was as thin as a rod.
You can see God in him at times (22 December 1999)