Badminton is for the birds. – Author unknown

Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck only at one end of a room, it will soon fall to the floor. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends. – Johnson

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