Since its creation in 1981, every issue of Sporting Classics has featured a special page dedicated to the quotes of sporting literature. Sporting Classics Daily often publishes quotes from Passages, a collection of more than 700 quotes available in the Sporting Classics store, but each of the following quotes appeared in the July/August 2015 issue of the print magazine. We hope you enjoy this compilation and pay it forward by submitting your favorite quotes for future publication.
“I feel certain that a lot of the boys feel just as I do about a grouse: When all is said and done, there is no other bird in all the world that is his equal in that perfect combination of beauty, speed, wild woodcraft, and a certain patrician elegance. If Helen of Troy had been a bird, she would have been a grouse.”
— Archibald Rutledge, Hunter’s Choice, 1946.
Submitted by Albert Mull of Johnson City, Tennessee.
“. . . You see the ways the fisherman doth take to catch the fish;
What engines does he make!
Behold! How he engageth all his wits;
Also his snares, lines, angles, hooks, and nets;
Yet fish there be, that neither hook, nor line, nor snare, nor net, nor engine can make thine:
They must be groped for, and be tickled too;
Or they will not be catched, whate’er you do.”
— John Bunyan, The Pilgrims Progress, 1678.
Submitted by Ellen Koogler of Bridgewater, Virginia.
“The bad shot or unskilled sportsman is generally a man who possesses but little idea of discrimination, and one who lacks keen observation and judgment.”
— Frank Schley, American Partridge and Pheasant Shooting, 1877.
Submitted by H. Barton West of Westminster, Maryland.
“As hunters go through life, if they follow the spirit of the hunt faithfully, they are guided through the issues of life cycle. Times may change, and people may change too, but nature is always there and so are the instinctual energies that call us to hunt.”
— James A. Swan, In Defense of Hunting, 1995.
Submitted by David R. Drinan of Somers, Connecticut.
“A tough shooting man will bury an old companion — they live so short a period compared to human longevity — and never apologize for tears streaming down his cheeks as he digs a grave under a rock maple, wraps his comrade in an expensive blanket — because that was the dog’s favorite bedding — and laboriously erects a granite headstone. Such a man will meander down to visit in after years, never stepping on the mound, muttering little messages meant only for the wind and for poignant memory.”
— Frank Woolner, “Grouse Hunting,” Gray’s Sporting Journal, Fall, 1975.
Submitted by John Sebright of Ada, Michigan.
“Something within fishermen tries to make fishing into a world perfect and apart — I don’t know what it is or where, because sometimes it is in my arms and sometimes in my throat and sometimes nowhere in particular except somewhere deep. Many of us would probably be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect.”
— Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, 1976.
Submitted by Randy Burkard of East Amherst, New York.
“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the eggs of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow munching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.”
— Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” 1855.
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