Card Players, by Paul Cezanne, c. 1893.

A hit, a very palpable hit.
                        —William Shakespeare, c. 1600



Children’s Games, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1560.


The gods play games with men as balls.
                         —Plautus, c. 200 BC


Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.
                         —Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838

There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker. The upper class knows very little about it. It is enough to make one ashamed of one’s species.
                         —Mark Twain, 1877

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game - and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.
                         —Jacques Barzun, 1954

Football game in the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, Florence, by Joannes Stradanus, c. 1567.

The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It’s nothing of the kind. The game is about glory. It’s about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.
                        —Danny Blanchflower, 1985

I do love cricket - it is so very English.
                        —Sarah Bernhardt, c. 1908