Day 1 A player who conjugates a verb in the first person singular cannot be part of the squad, he has to conjugate the verb in the first person plural.  We.  -- Wanderley Luxemburgo

Day 2 An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets.  He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head.  -- Emil Zatopek

Day 3 Every sport pretends to a literature, but people don't believe it of any other sport but their own.  -- Alistair Cooke

Day 4 Finish last in your league and they call you Idiot.  Finish last in medical school and they call you Doctor.  -- Abe Lemons

Day 5 I figure practice puts your brains in your muscles.  -- Sam Snead

Day 6 I know we're meant to be these hard-headed, money-obsessed professionals but we're still little boys at heart.  Just ask our wives.  -- Rob Lee

Day 7 I would have thought that the knowledge that you are going to be leapt upon by half-a-dozen congratulatory, but sweaty team-mates would be inducement not to score a goal.  -- Arthur Marshall

Day 8 If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?  -- Vince Lombardi

Day 9 I'm fanatical about sport:  there seems to me something almost religious about the fact that human beings can organise play, the spirit of play.  -- Simon Gray

Day 10 It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.  -- H.L. Mencken

Day 11 It may be that all games are silly.  But then, so are humans.  -- Robert Lynd

Day 12 Men forget everything; women remember everything.  That's why men need instant replays in sports.  They've already forgotten what happened.  -- Rita Rudner

Day 13 One day of practice is like one day of clean living.  It doesn't do you any good.  -- Abe Lemmons

Day 14 People understand contests.  You take a bunch of kids throwing rocks at random and people look askance, but if you go and hold a rock-throwing contest - people understand that.  -- Don Murray

Day 15 Sports is human life in microcosm.  -- Howard Cosell

Day 16 The essence of sports is that while you're doing it, nothing else matters, but after you stop, there is a place, generally not very important, where you would put it.  -- Roger Bannister

Day 17 The finish line is sometimes merely the symbol of victory.  All sorts of personal triumphs take place before that point, and the outcome of the race may actually be decided long before the end.  -- Laurence Malone

Day 18 So frivolous is [Man] that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.  -- Blaise Pascal

Day 19 When cerebral processes enter into sports, you start screwing up.  It's like the Constitution, which says separate church and state.  You have to separate mind and body.  -- Bill Lee

Day 20 Sports constantly make demands on the participant for top performance, and they develop integrity, self-reliance and initiative. -- Byron R. White

Day 21 Anyone who will tear down sports will tear down America. Sports and religion have made America what it is today. -- Woody Hayes

Day 22 Competing in sports has taught me that if I'm not willing to give 120 percent, somebody else will. -- Ron Blomberg

Day 23 I always turn to the sports page first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures. -- Earl Warren

Day 24 In sports, you simply aren't considered a real champion until you have defended your title successfully. Winning it once can be a fluke; winning it twice proves you are the best. -- Althea Gibson

Day 25 It's too bad that one has to conceive of sports as being the only arena where risks are, [for] all of life is risk exercise. That's the only way to live more freely, and more interestingly. -- William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

Day 26 One man practicing sportsmanship is better than a hundred teaching it. -- Knute Rockne

Day 27 Sports is the only entertainment where, no matter how many times you go back, you never know the ending. -- Neil Simon

Day 28 You've got to win in sports -- that's talent -- but you've also got to learn how to remind everybody how you did win, and how often. That comes with experience. -- Billie Jean King

Day 29 Through sports, a coach can offer a boy a way to sneak up on the mystery of manhood. -- Pat Conroy

Day 30 The greatest efforts in sports came when the mind is as still as a glass lake. -- Timothy Gallwey

Day 31 Tactics, fitness, stroke ability, adaptability, experience, and sportsmanship are all necessary for winning. -- Fred Perry