Courage and grace is a formidable mixture. The only place to see it is the bullring.
It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.
One knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox — the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast.
They take unbelievable pleasure in the hideous blast of the hunting horn and baying of the hounds. Dogs dung smells sweet as cinnamon to them.
Though I am an old horse, and have seen and heard a great deal, I never yet could make out why men are so fond of this sport; they often hurt themselves, often spoil good horses, and tear up the fields, and all for a hare, or a fox, or a stag, that they could get more easily some other way; but we are only horses, and don't know.
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.