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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 Handley Cross (1843)

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More quotes by Robert Smith Surtees

Women never look so well as when one comes in wet and dirty from hunting.

Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour (1853)

No man rides harder than my Lord Scamperdale – always goes as if he had a spare neck in his pocket.

Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour (1853)

The only infallible rule we know is, that the man who is always talking about being a gentleman never is one.

Ask Mamma (1858)

It is an inwariable rule with the dealers to praise the bad points and let the good 'uns speak for themselves.

Handley Cross (1843)

More people are flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice.

The Analysis of the Hunting Field (1846)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Smith Surtees (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.