MORE
RUNNING QUOTES |
RISK |
| It is not the critic
who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where
the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the
man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat
and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes up short again and
again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who
does actually strive to do deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great
devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the
end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least
fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those
timid souls who know neither victory or defeat. Theodore Roosevelt You cannot discover new oceans until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. "If
you are ever going to achieve as much as you can in a sport, you are going
to have to be willing to make a leap of faith to learn how much your body
can handle." "A
race is not well-run unless you've crossed the finish line knowing that
you couldn't have kept going for one more step. If you could have, then
you didn't give it everything you had." |
MOTIVATION |
| "A man must love
a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and
money, but even practices it without any hope of doing it well". G.K.
Chesterton
The greatest pleasure in life is in doing what
people say you cannot do. Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it. "The
best feeling in the world is walking into an athletic atmosphere and knowing
the other athletes are scared to death to compete against you." "Don't
be content with average because average is just as close to the bottom
as it is to the top." "When
anyone tells me I can't do anything...I'm just not listening anymore."
"You
go for it. All the stops are out. Caution is to the wind and you're battling
with everything you have. That's the real fun of the game." "The
ones who want to achieve and win championships motivate themselves."
"The
difference is almost all mental. The top players just hate to lose. I
think that's the difference. A champion hates to lose even more than she
loves to win." |
MISC. |
The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation. "It
is better to be defeated on principle than to win on lies." "Playing
your favorite sport is like being able to get candy when you're at the
store with your mom. Being on the field and having all your problems drift
away for the two hours you play is like the most relaxing thing I can
think of." "In
the long run, you hit only what you aim at." Great
spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. "Cooperation
is the thorough conviction that nobody gets there unless everybody gets
there." "Sports
serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence." "Talent
is the gift plus the passion--a desire to succeed so intense that no force
on earth can stop it." "An
athlete is a normal person with the gift of an undying passion to be the
best and achieve greatness." "The
difference between a good athlete and a top athlete is the top athlete
will do the mundane things when nobody's looking." "Sportsmanship
is not just about being nice. It is much more important than that. It's
about realizing that you could not compete without an opponent and that
she has the same goals as you." "If
what you did yesterday still looks big to you today, then you must not
have done anything today." |
VICTORY
and DEFEAT |
"Winning has a joy and discrete purity to it that cannot be replaced by anything else. Winning is important to any man's or woman's sense of satisfaction and well-being. Winning is not everything; but it is something powerful, indeed beautiful, in itself, something as necessary to the strong spirit as striving is necessary to the healthy character." ---A. Bartlett Giamatti
"We
generally make too much of winning. Let's face it, someone always has
to win; that is the nature of competition. But the mere fact of winning
doesn't make you great." "Winners
must have two things, definite goals and a burning desire to achieve them."
"They
don't give you gold medals for beating somebody. They give you gold medals
for beating everybody." "The
most important lesson you can learn from winning is that you can."
Nothing is more certain than the defeat of a man who gives up. George Sheehan "A
gold medal is a wonderful thing, but if you're not enough without it,
you'll never be enough with it." "In
life, as in sports, you will try, and you will sometimes fail. There will
be no apparent reward except to know that you did your best." "I
like pressure. If I am not on the edge of failure, I'm not being sufficiently
challenged." "I
believe in playing with your heart, with every fiber in your body--fairly,
squarely, by the rules--to win. And I believe that any man's finest moment,
the greatest fulfillment of all he holds dear, is that moment when he
has worked his heart out and lies exhausted on the floor of battle--victorious."
"I
can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not
trying." "All
of us get knocked down, but it's resiliency that really matters. All of
us do well when things are going well, but the thing that distinguishes
athletes is the ability to do well in times of great stress, urgency and
pressure." "Losers
look what they are going through. Winners looks where they are going to."
"Fall
seven times, stand up eight." "I
play to win. Even when common sense should tell me I no longer have a
chance. Even when I have been playing at my worst and all the breaks have
been going against me. I approach each new day, and each new game as a
glorious opportunity to get going again." Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan "There
is no doubt in my mind that there are many ways to be a winner, but there
is really only one way to be a loser, and that is to fail and not look
beyond the failure." "I
never thought about losing, but now that it's happened, the only thing
is to do it right....We all have to take defeats in life." "Do
not throw in the towel; use it for wiping the sweat off your face."
|
TRAINING |
| "Training gives
us an outlet for supressed energies created by stress and thus tones the
spirit just as exercise conditions the body." ---Arnold Schwarzennegger "I ran and ran and ran every day, and I
acquired this sense of determination, this sense of spirit that I would
never, never give up, no matter what else happened." "Excellence
is not a singular act but a habit. You are what you do repeatedly."
"Don't
think expensive equipment will make up for lack of talent or practice."
"The
harder you work, the luckier you get." "My
boyfriend said if I spend one more weekend at the gym he'll leave me...I'm
sure gonna miss him." "Nobody
ever drowned in sweat!" "The
vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at
the point of exhaustion when no one else is watching." "The
more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle." "For
every finish-line tape a runner breaks--complete with the cheers of the
crowd and the clicking of hundreds of cameras--there are the hours of
hard and often lonely work that rarely gets talked about." |
SUCCESS |
| "Part of being
a champ is acting like a champ. You have to learn how to win and not run
away when you lose.... Everyone has bad stretches and real successes. Either
way, you have to be careful not to lose your confidence or get too confident."
---Nancy Kerrigan "When I was fifteen, I had lucky underwear.
When that failed, I had a lucky hairdo, then a lucky race number, even
lucky race days. After fifteen years, I've found the secret to success
is simple: it's hard work." "Success
doesn't come to you....you go to it." "Some
people dream of success while others wake up and achieve it." |
PAIN |
| "There has never
been a great athlete who died not knowing what pain is." ---Bill Bradley "The man who can
drive himself farther once the effort gets painful is the man who will
win." |
ADVERSITY |
| "Obstacles are
challenges for winners and excuses for losers." ---M.E. Kerr "It's always too
early to quit." |
RUNNING |
| "Running is a metaphor
for life; there's always someone faster than you, always someone slower.
All you can do is hang in there, and put your heart into it." ---Unknown |