Favorite quotes

Often I use quotes to get me motivated. I put them beside my bed and read them before getting up or recite them as mantras while training. Do you have yours?

Here are some of my favorites :

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” Helen Keller “Sure I am this day we are masters of our fate, that the task which has been set before us is not above our strength; that its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our own cause and an unconquerable will to win, victory will not be denied us.” Sir Winston Churchill “A lot of people run to see who is the fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more. Nobody is going to win a 5000 meter race after running an easy 2 miles. Not with me. If I lose forcing the pace all the way, well, ar least I can live with myself.” Steve Prefontaine “There is one rule, above all others, for being a men. Whatever comes, face it on your feet.” Robert Jordan “Pain is temporary, pride is forever!” ?? “Never give in. Never give in. Never give in.” Churchill “The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat” Navy Seals And here are two good quotes pages : http://home.hia.no/~stephens/quotes.htm http://www.angelfire.com/ma2/senorduck/quotes.html There is also the classic Any given sunday Pacino speech (inch speech). I sometime use it as and alarm. Well, get psyched up and give me your favorites!

1st Corinthians 9:24 - Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.

9:26&27 - Therefore I do not run like a man runnning aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

1st Timothy 4:7 - I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness ,

Hebrews 12:1 - Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

And what goes better with qoutes from the Bible than qoutes from Star Wars:
“There is no try, do or do not”
“Your focus determines your reality”

Three-time winner Greg LeMond put it succinctly when he said, “It doesn’t get any easier. You just go faster.”

Bob from Davis, California, offers this ulta cycling tip:

“You have to ask yourself three questions. One. Am I bleeding from my eye sockets? Two. Am I projectile vomiting? Three. Are organs that are meant to be on the inside of my body on the outside? If you can’t answer ‘yes’ to any of those questions, get back on your bike and keep riding!”

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find how far they can go.” --T.S. Elliot

“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

“It is not the critic that counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done 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 short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcomings, who knows the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the high achievement of triumph and who at worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows his place shall never be with those timid and cold souls who know neither victory nor defeat” Theodore Roosevelt

Okay I know it’s dumb, but the one I use frequently
“Let’s blow this thing and go home kid”
Harrison Ford
Although I am still fond of the quote
“Talk quietly and carry a big stick”
Though it can be said the same
“Talk quietly and ride a fast bike”

                    The "Gopher"

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Good quotes guys, I’m taking notes…

Here are two more that a friend just send me :

“We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.”

“Every day you have to test yourself. If you don’t, it’s a wasted day.”

Though it can be said the same
“Talk quietly and ride a fast bike”

How 'bout “Talk quietly and ride your bike fast”?

RP

Here are a couple from www.quotationspage.com:

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.
Vernon Sanders Law

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945), radio address, October 26, 1939

“If it is to be, it is up to me.”

“Measure a man by the opponent it takes to discourage him.”

“You’ve got to lose a thousand times to be good. You’ve got to lose ten thousand times to be great.”

“I would tell you but then I would have to kill you”

  • Mark Allan, responding to my question about how he was able to get ready for IMH in 1993 in a very short period of time.

“These are the days that we will remember 20 - 30 years from now - that we will be able to tell our grand-kids all about”

  • Scott Tinley responding to my question about the conditions at the Canadian Short Course Tri Championships in 1993 in Calgary, Alberta( 5C, pouring rain with a chance of snow flurries!!)

We are what we repeated do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle

Some people see things as they are and ask “why?”. I see things that never were and ask “why not?”. - George Bernard Shaw

Zeke

“I don’t do it for the fun. I do it for the pain.”

Lance

My Favorites (all anonymous, but many will probably recognize them)

-Everyone has a purpose in life. Maybe yours is to serve as a warning to others.

-When it’s you against the world, bet on the world.

-They say that winners never quit and quitters never win. But those that never quit and never win are idiots.

-Before you attempt to beat the odds, make sure you can survive the odds beating you.

It’s been that kind of day.