Paddy Kavanagh was not only one of Ireland's greatest writers but he also spent many's a 'junor' football game between the posts for his native Enniskeen, in the county of Monaghan.

What is less well known, however, is that many of the world's greatest writers, artists, philosophers and political leaders have taken an interest in the ups and downs of Gaelic football and have commented on it. An Fear Rua has diligently collected the thoughts of a few of them on our great and glorious game ¡K

„h 'He who is victorious should remember the instability of earthly things.' - Buddha

„h 'The lovers of football are large, boisterous, nobby boys who are good at knocking down and trampling on slightly smaller boys.' - George Orwell

„h 'Men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals.' - Isaiah Berlin

„h 'There is no real substitute for a ball struck squarely and firmly.' - Billy Bragg

„h 'Am I my brother's keeper?' - Cain, in the Book of Genesis

„h 'You base footballer!' - William Shakespeare

„h 'Each succeeds in reaching the goal by a different method' - Niccolo Machiavelli

„h 'All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football' - Albert Camus

„h Will I reach the goal, so long sought after, so long pursued?' - Paul Cezanne

„h 'In seeking a goal a woman acquires that magnificent possession - the absolute' - Simone De Beauvoir

„h 'The game replaces sexual enjoyment by pleasure in movement' - Sigmund Freud

„h 'Football is an art' - Germaine Greer

„h 'It is not just a simple game. It is a weapon of the revolution' - Che Guevara

„h 'Football can be categorised as a type three masturbatory technique.' - Shere Hite

„h 'There is no greater glory for a man than that which he achieves by his own hands and feet.' - Homer

„h 'It is a foolhardy, crazy game I have entered into.' - Henrik Ibsen

„h 'The unhappy individual is forever quite close to the goal and at the same time some distance from it' - Soren Kierkegaard

„h 'There is such a thing as everyday, ordinary, vulgar ecstasy; the ecstasy of anger, the ecstasy of speed at the wheel, the ecstasy of ear-splitting noise, ecstasy in the stadium.' - Milan Kundera

„h 'Everyone needs to score now and then' - Hugh Hefner

„h 'If a man is greatly injured by a single person, and is not avenged to his satisfaction, he seeks, even with its ruin, to get his revenge.' - Niccolo Machiavelli

„h 'If the game is lost, your earthly life is wasted.' - Henrik Ibsen

„h 'Men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals.' - Isaiah Berlin

„h 'Football is one of the most unifying activities amongst us.' - Nelson Mandela

„h 'The goal passes through a series of phases independent of the will of man. - Karl Marx

„h 'Football is War. - Rinus Michels

„h 'The goalkeeper is the lone eagle, the man of mystery, the last defender.' - Vladimir Nabokov

„h 'I never felt at home on the team' - Henrik Ibsen

„h 'There's quite enough real causes of trouble already, and we need not add to them by encouraging young men to kick each other on the shins amid the roar of infuriated spectators.' - George Orwell

„h 'Football? I'd prefer a good game of Camogie any day!' - Sharon Stone

„h 'Football, a game in which everyone gets hurt¡K' - George Orwell

„h 'In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.' - Jean-Paul Sartre

„h 'Am I so round with you as you with me, that like a football you do spurn me thus? You spurn me hence and he will spurn me hither. If I last in this service you must case me in leather.' - William Shakespeare

„h 'No goal is impossible.' - Stirner

„h 'Football causeth fighting, brawling, quarrel picking, murder and great effusion of blood, as daily experience teacheth' - Stubbs

„h 'I stood on my balcony and urged them not to accept an incomplete victory.' - Leon Trotsky

„h Football has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disegard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.' - George Orwell

„h 'Football is a game for rough girls. Not suitable for delicate boys.' - Oscar Wilde

„h 'The sturdie plowman, lustie, strong and bolde overcometh the winter with driving the football, forgetting labour and many a grievous fall' - Barclay

„h 'Five days shalt thou labour, as the Bible says. The sixth day is the Lord thy God's. The seventh is for football.' - Burgess, Anthony

„h 'A man is created for his acts. His goal is paradise.' - Henrik Ibsen

„h 'You play to win and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win.' - George Orwell

„h 'With thy brawls thou hast disturbed our game.' - William Shakespeare

„h 'Rugby is a game for barbarians played by gentlemen. Football is a game for gentlemen played by barbarians.' - Oscar Wilde