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George Sheehan QUOTES

George Sheehan QUOTES

1 " Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be. "

― George Sheehan

2 " The mind's first step to self-awareness must be through the body. "

― George Sheehan

3 " Running keeps me at a physical peak and sharpens my senses. It makes me touch and see and hear as if for the first time. Through it I get through the first barrier to true emotions, the lack of integration with the body. Into it I escape from the pettiness and triviality of everyday life. And, once inside,stop the daily pendulum perpetually oscillating between distraction and boredom...It is the swing from boredom to anxiety, from depression to worry, that exhausts and defeats us. The sure knowledge that we can be much more than we are frustrates us. "

― George Sheehan , Running & Being: The Total Experience

4 " I am a lonely figure when I run the roads. People wonder how far I have come, how far I have to go. They see me alone and friendless on a journey that has no visible beginning or end. I appear isolated and vulnerable, a homeless creature. It is all they can do to keep from stopping the car and asking if they can take me wherever I'm going.
I know this because I feel it myself. When I see the runner I have much the same thoughts. No matter how often I run the roads myself, I am struck by how solitary my fellow runner appears. The sight of a runner at dusk or in inclement weather makes me glad to be safe and warm in my car and headed for home. And at those times, I wonder how I can go out there myself, how I can leave the comfort and warmth and that feeling of intimacy and belonging, to do this distracted thing.
But when finally I am there, I realise it is not comfort and warmth I am leaving, not intimacy and belonging I am giving up, but the loneliness that pursues me this day and every day. I know that the real loneliness, the real isolation, the real vulnerability, begins long before I put on my running shoes. "

― George Sheehan

5 " We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely...change is due to want power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now. "

― George Sheehan

6 " The distance runner who accepts the past in the person he is, and sees the future as a promise rather than a threat, is completely and utterly in the present. He is absorbed in his encounter with the everyday world. He is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconsciou. He is repairing the rent, and healing the wound in the divided self. He has found a way to make the ordinary extraordinary; the commonplace, unique; the everyday, eternal. "

― George Sheehan , Running & Being: The Total Experience

7 " The runner is coming to know, or will know if he runs enough...that the universe is the smallest divisible unit. "

― George Sheehan

8 " The true runner is a very fortunate person. He has found something in him that is just perfect. "

― George Sheehan

9 " Disease, then, is one of those bad experiences that turns information into knowledge and knowledge into wisdom. The bad experiences that make you love yourself and your body and the world. And make you know that you are in a game that has to have a happy ending. "

― George Sheehan , Running & Being: The Total Experience

10 " Running is just such a monestary-- a retreat, a place to commune with God and yourself, a place for psychological and spiritual renewal. "

― George Sheehan , George Sheehan on Running to Win: How to Achieve the Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Victories

11 " And while these pounds were being shed, while the physiological miracles were occurring with the heart and muscle and metabolism, psychological marvels were taking place as well. Just so, the world over, bodies, minds, and souls are constantly being born again, during miles on the road. "

― George Sheehan , George Sheehan on Running to Win: How to Achieve the Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Victories

12 " For every runner who tours the world running marathons, there are thousands who run to hear the leaves and listen to the rain, and look to the day when it is suddenly as easy as a bird in flight. "

― George Sheehan

13 " So it is not age that is threatened by youth, but the other way around. Youth is threatened by age. "

― George Sheehan

14 " It's very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not
to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is
against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit. "

― George Sheehan

15 " There are those of us who are always about to live. We are waiting until things change, until there is more time, until we are less tired, until we get a promotion, until we settle down / until, until, until. It always seems as if there is some major event that must occur in our lives before we begin living. "

― George Sheehan

16 " The distance runner is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconscious. He is repairing the rent, and healing the wound in his divided self. He has found a way to make the ordinary extraordinary; the commonplace unique; the everyday eternal. "

― George Sheehan , Running & Being: The Total Experience

17 " Boredom, like beauty, is in the mind of the beholder. ’There is no such thing as an uninteresting subject,’ said Chesterton. ’The only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. "

― George Sheehan

18 " The runner need not break four minutes in the mile or four hours in the marathon. It is only necessary that he runs and runs and sometimes suffers. Then one day he will wake up and discover that somewhere along the way he has begun to see order and law and love and Truth that makes men free. It "

― George Sheehan , Running & Being: The Total Experience

19 " From the moment you become a spectator, everything is downhill. It is a life that ends before the cheering and the shouting die. "

― George Sheehan , Running & Being: The Total Experience

20 " He runs because he has to. Because in being a runner, in moving through pain and fatigue and suffering, in imposing stress upon stress, in eliminating all but the necessities of life, he is fulfilling himself and becoming the person he is. "

― George Sheehan , Running & Being: The Total Experience