Lawn-tennis and badminton, to speak of more elaborate games, deserve also the highest praise on the score of health, and it is to be hoped that they will enjoy a long-lived popularity. – George Black, Household Medicine: A Guide to Good Health, Long Life, and the Pro

Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence. His name, like the shuttlecock, must be beat backward and forward, or it falls to the ground. – Johnson

His Highness playing at shuttle-cock with one far taller than himself, and hitting him by chance with the shuttle-cock upon the forehead — “this is,” quoth he, “the encounter of David with Goliath.” – Prince Henry, of his father, James the First