Literary notes about SPORT (AI summary)
The word "sport" in literature functions as a multifaceted term, simultaneously capturing playful amusement and the tension of competition or conflict. At times it signifies lighthearted recreation and social merriment—as when characters engage in games or banter for sheer delight [1, 2]—while in other instances it evokes a more serious, even martial aspect, representing the controlled aggression or the strategic elegance of contest [3, 4]. Authors employ the term to underline the duality of human behavior: it can be an expression of innocent pleasure and wit, as well as a metaphor for the competitive or violent impulses that mimic the theater of war [5, 6]. Thus, "sport" emerges as a symbol with layers of meaning, reflecting the paradoxical blend of levity and gravity within human endeavors [7, 8].
- In the evening, by the campfire, the men played cards and whiled away the hours in talk and sport.
— from The Story of My Life by Helen Keller - “I understand what you want; you want to see some genuine English sport.
— from The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1 by Henry James - In war states wish to be efficient in order to conquer, but in sport men wish to prove their excellence because they wish to have it.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana - Sport is a liberal form of war stripped of its compulsions and malignity; a rational art and the expression of a civilised instinct.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana - Imitation, then, is devoid of knowledge, being only a kind of play or sport, and the tragic and epic poets are imitators in the highest degree.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato - As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, They kill us for their sport.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - In the meantime you shall have good sport to look upon us.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais - But what is the sport, monsieur, that the ladies have lost?
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare