c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
For several years Quinn had been having the same conversations with this man, whose name he did not know. Once, when he had been in the luncheonette, they had talked about baseball, and now, each time Quinn came in, they continued to talk about it. In the winter, the talk was of trades, predictions, memories. During the season, it was always the most recent game. They were both Mets fans, and the hopelessness of that passion had created a bond between them.
— Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy
When you're a sportswriter, you learn how to use your imagination and to flex your literary muscle, because it's the same game played over and over again. There's nothing unique or marvelous. It's not an earthquake, or a weird mass murder. It's just the same old game played over and over, and you have to bring out the personalities. You have to drag them kicking and screaming out into the light of day, or you're not a good sportswriter.
— Rick Bragg
Baseball is drama with an endless run and an ever-changing cast.
— Joe Garagiola
Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended. 
— George Bernard Shaw
Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers. 
— Herbert Hoover
All sports for all people. 
— Pierre de Coubertin
We made a successful, last-minute effort to get the French Open many years ago, when the USA network bailed on it. I remember, four of us jumped on a plane on the spur of the moment to cover it. I think we had someone draw up a sign (by hand) that we could hold up in front of the camera to tell viewers that it was ESPN coverage.
— Patrick McEnroe, Hardcourt Confidential: Tales from Twenty Years in the Pro Tennis Trenches
Molly stood up. You made an error! She felt like saying. A bad throw. So what? It's a baseball game. A game. Who really cares? A bad throw? In the great scheme of things? A bad throw? Of course she didn't say that. She understood that your own errors always feel tragic.
— Mick Cochrane, The Girl Who Threw Butterflies
Boxing is smoky halls and kidneys battered until they bleed. 
— Roger Kahn
Bobby Knight told me this: 'There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.' In other words a good offense wins.
— Dan Quayle
If you want to know if your kid is going to be fast, the best genetic test right now is a stopwatch. Take him to the playground and have him face the other kids.' Foster's point is that, despite the avant-garde allure of genetic testing, gauging speed indirectly is foolish and inaccurate compared with testing it directly - like measuring a man's height by dropping a ball from a roof and using the time it takes to hit him in the head to determine how tall he is. Why not just use a tape measure?
— David Epstein, The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance
Rhythm is everything in boxing. Every move you make starts with your heart, and that’s in rhythm or you’re in trouble. Your rhythm should set the pace of the fight. If it does, then you penetrate your opponent’s rhythm. You make him fight your fight, and that’s what boxing is all about.
— Sugar Ray Robinson, Sugar Ray
It is naive to think that sport is above politics, that any kind of level playing field exists, or that sport allows the world to put its problems on hold.
— Amy Bass
If the Olympics ever included American soccer, I can only hope it would be basketball instead of football. Even chess can hurt if you try too hard.
— Mark Sherman Smeester
No man who really is a man ever cared for the easy task. There is no enjoyment in the game that is easily won. It is that in which you have to strain every muscle and sinew to achieve victory that provides real joy.
— Eric Liddell
I don't like playing playstation. It seems like a waste of time to me. Reading, instead, leaves something inside you.
— Mattia Caldara
I just mean ... damn ... this might sound a bit crazy, but sometimes you can't help wondering if we don't take all this a bit too seriously. If we aren't putting too much pressure on the juniors. They're not really much more than ... kids."..."That depends what we want from the kids. And what the kids want from hockey.
— Fredrik Backman, Beartown
I told him how winning never feels as good as losing feels bad and when he asked why, I told him that my wins were for someone else but my losses were all on me.
— Douglas Brunt, Trophy Son
Don't be a cheater, lose with clsss.
— Bert McCoy
Slumps are like a soft bed. They are easy to get into and hard to get out of.
— Johnny Bench
Fidel Castro, who always enjoyed sports, promoted programs that helped Cuba become a front-runner in Latin America. The island nation fields outstanding baseball, soccer, basketball and volleyball teams. It also excels in amateur boxing. Believing that sports should be available for everyone, not just the privileged few, the phrase “Sports for all” is a motto frequently used. When Castro took power, he abolished all professional sports. Only amateur baseball has been played in Cuba since 1961.An unexpected consequence of this initiative was that many players discovered that they could get much better deals if they left Cuba. As an attempt to prevent this, Fidel forbade players from playing abroad and if they did leave the island, he would prevent their families from joining them.Originally, many Cuban baseball players played for teams in the American Negro league. This ended when Jackie Robinson was allowed to play with the Brooklyn Dodgers during the late 1940’s. Afterwards, all Cuban baseball players played for the regular leagues regardless of their race. The Negro National League ceased after the 1948 season, and the last All-Star game was held in 1962. The Indianapolis Clowns were the last remaining Negro/Latin league team and played until 1966.Cuban players with greater skill joined the Major League Baseball (MLB) teams. If they defected to the United States directly, they had to enter the MLB Draft. However, if they first defected to another country they could become free agents. Knowing this, many came to the United States via Mexico.In all, about 84 players have defected from Cuba since the Revolution. The largest contract ever given to a defector from Cuba was to Rusney Castillo. In 2014, the outfielder negotiated a seven-year contract with the Boston Red Sox for $72.5 million.Starting in 1999, about 21 Cuban soccer players have defected to the United States. The Cuban government considers these defectors as disloyal and treats their families with disrespect, even banning them from taking part in national sports.
— Hank Bracker
Boxing day will never be the same now that Muhammed Ali is gone.
— Edw. C. Young
He never bothered listening to sports; the bored him, every one of them.
— Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
A scout never comes out to scout a team it's the player that they are scouting.
— Alcurtis Turner
Either you were the best of the best or you were nothing, and somehow that didn't seem right.
— Tim Green, Best of the Best
He cried like a jockey who'd just lost the Kentucky Derby by a few nostril hairs.
— Walter Witty, The Umpire Has No Clothes
I have never heard anyone profess indifference to a boat race. Why should you row a boat race? Why endure long months of pain in preparation of a fierce half hour, or even six minutes, that will leave you all but dead? Does anyone ask the question? Is there anyone who would not go through all its costs, and more, for the moment when anguish breaks into triumph - or even for the glory of having nobly lost? Is life less than a boat race? If a man will give all the blood in his body to win the one, will he not spend all the might of his soul to prevail in the other?
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Harvard coach Bill Reid would later credit Teddy Roosevelt with saving football. But words in a rule book are one thing. Someone had to show the nation a new way to play the game. The Carlisle Indians did that.
— Steve Sheinkin, Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team
I don
— t see anything wrong with running.It is a sports people...What about track and field and the Olympics?What's so hard about excepting running or track and field.Best Free Sports PicksHow can throwing a baseball around be considered more interesting than running?
Saramento4Kids is one stop destination for parents who are searching for fun events for their kids in Sacramento. With our user-friendly online directory, you can find the best kids event in no time.
— Sacramento4Kids
Winners have a tendency to be forgiven in this town.
— Fredrik Backman, Beartown
Like books, sports give people a sense of having lived other lives, of taking part in other people’s victories. And defeats. When sports are at their best, the spirit of the fan merges with the spirit of the athlete.
— Phil Knight, Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE
When we cuss each other out, call each other the vilest names on earth, and put each other down with thoughtless cruelty, it is the only way we know and the only language we have to express our ardent love for each other.
— Pat Conroy, A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life
I love that aspect of sports where you can see what kind of work, how much work, an athlete's been doing by how her body is carved.
— Diana Nyad, Find a Way
To take responsibility is to take the pain onto yourself. It means to bear more pain than what others felt because of your mistake. -Tokuchi Toua
— Kaitani Shinobu
A low possibility means it's not zero. - Tokuchi Toua
— Kaitani Shinobu
I sometimes turn on the radio and I find very often that what I'm listening to is a discussion of sports. These are telephone conversations. People call in and have long and intricate discussions, and it's plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated details and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level of superficiality that's beyond belief.
— Noam Chomsky
A number of listings for activity centers, fun places, Sports activities for kids you can get online through our online resource Sacramento4kids.Make your kids childhood more interesting to us.
— Sacramento4Kids
It’s the Olympics. If you can’t get up to swim early in the morning, don’t go.
— Michael Phelps
Virtually every tribe in the march towards civilization developed its tailored made initiation practices. In America, sports are part of the test for a young man’s initiation into manhood.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
What mattered to me most when I was batting was feeling comfortable. As long as I felt comfortable, it didn't matter where I was playing or who I was playing against. If you make technical adjustments to cope with different conditions, there's a risk of making yourself feel uncomfortable and of thinking too much about your technique. I've always felt that I've batted best when my mind has been at the bowler's end of pitch, not at my end. There's no time to think about both ends at the same time. So in general it always seemed to me that If I was comfortable with my gear, it would allow my mind to be at the opposite end and I had a better chance of playing well.
— Sachin Tendulkar, Playing It My Way: My Autobiography
Look. Shit happened. Shit's going to keep happening. You don't need me to tell your life isn't fair. You're here because you know it isn't. Life doesn't care what we want out of it
—  it's up to us to fight for what we want with everything we've got. Seth wanted us to win. He wanted us to make it past the fourth match. I think we owe it to him to perform. Let's show the world what we've got. Let's make this our year.
Basketball Rule #6A great teamhas a good scorerwith a teammatewho's on pointand readyto assist.
— Kwame Alexander, The Crossover
He only said the one word. A prayer. A supplication. A breath from his heart to mine.
— C.D. Reiss, HardBall
Love of sports will always break your heart, but in doing so, it reminds us we have one.
— Stuart Stevens, The Last Season
Middle Tennessee? Really? My bracket is more busted than Screech's face during puberty.
— William Shakespeare, Macbeth
You tell me it's the institution.Well, you know, you'd better free you mind instead.But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow.Don't you know it's gonna be all right?
— John Lennon, MBE (1940-1980)
But it's all right now.I learned my lesson well.You see, you can't please everyoneSo you've got to please yourself.
— Rick Nelson
If you can't support us when we lose or draw, don't support us when we win
— Bill Shankly
Martial Arts does not teach you how to fight, it teaches you why not to.
— Lakshya Bharadwaj
I wish people had as much enthusiasm about unfucking the planet as they did about sports. Who wins on Sunday is pretty goddamned trivial compared to just about anything else.
— Michael Brewer
Gods, I love sports. All the excitement of real news, only it doesn't matter so you don't have to worry about it.
— Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five
Worse than getting kicked out of your slot to go on to a winning season is to lead during a losing one. Nobody wants to be king of the losers.
— A.D. Aliwat, Alpha
There’s a reason why the Super Bowl is watched way more than the NBA Finals and World Series.
— A.D. Aliwat, Alpha
My dad bought the team when I was little. I've been around guys like you my whole life. I'm over the whole 'jock-and-awe' thing.
— Jaci Burton, All Wound Up
I want to eat you alive, he wanted to say. I want to sink into you and stay. God, how did this happen so fast? He was dizzy with it, with Jake's passion, his laugh, his growl, the deep brown eyes that darkened with hunger when they looked at him. Brandon shivered and wrapped his arms around Jake's neck to hold on tight.
— Abigail Roux, Caught Running
Reading...is a full-contact sport; we crash up against the wave of words with all of our intellectual, imaginative, and emotional resources.
— Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines
Sports can unite worlds, tear down walls and transcend race, the past, and all probability. Unlike life, sport matters.
— Shehan Karunatilaka, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew
This message is brought to you by the BCBS [Booty Call Broadcasting System]. If you are back in town, get your wet ass over here." (The Hook Up, 42%)
— Kristen Callihan, The Hook Up
When we're down and the momentum is stacked against us. Those are the moments when we find out what we're made of. When we learn to trust and lean on each other.
— Charles Martin, A Life Intercepted
Tendulkar's genius is of an order that the average player cannot comprehend. Dravid's greatness is not just comprehensible, it is reassuring
— Suresh Menon - The Best of Indian Sports Writing
He(Rahul Dravid) is the intelligent man's guide to what a sportsman ought to be - modest, dependable, well-educated, with the gift of grace under pressure and a perspective that is adult. He is the comfort for those who know they cannot be Tendulkar
— Suresh Menon - The Best of Indian Sports Writing
He who thinks he's the best is not the best... And the one who thinks "he who thinks he's the best is not the best" is also not the best.
— Suky Achchille
It's nice to be pushed, when you're being pushed in the right direction.
— Kent Allen, Game of Edges
How you harangue referees. How you fall over when you've not been touched. How you make a meal out of every tackle to try and get the other player booked. How you protest when you have nothing to fucking protest about –
— David Peace, The Damned Utd
One of the privileges of being an athlete is that on days when I have practice and games, I’m present whether I’m present or not. It’s not fair, but that’s the system. What can I do about it?
— Erin O'Riordan, Cut
Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-conciousness. Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make.
— Bruce Lee
I'd never been much of an athlete, due to a physical condition I'd had since birth (unathleticism). Perhaps if there were a sport centered around lying on your couch in a neurotic stupor all day, I'd take an interest.
— Colson Whitehead, The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death
He once told me, Instead of scoring thirty goals a season, why don't you score twenty-five and help someone else to score fifteen? That way the team's ten goals better off.
— David Peace, The Damned Utd
Forget about showering with my fellow students in Tribeca Alternative’s prison-style showers—one nozzle for four to six girls at a time—in the locker room. It was impossible to work up a sweat during what passed for physical education class at TAHS, so there was no need to shower, anyway.Well, impossible for me, considering that, in the past, whenever a volleyball or whatever came near me,I’d always make sure to step calmly away to avoid it. See? No sweat. No need for a shower. Problem solved.
— Meg Cabot, Being Nikki
The more you practice the better you'll be, the harder you train the great in you they'll see.
— Alcurtis Turner
Football is all about sentiment
—  if it weren't then we'd all support Manchester United.
If you make lots of little changes to your lifestyle, you’ll need to make time to have some fun too, otherwise life can get a little boring.
— Auliq Ice
The upset is in the mind of the favorite.
— Bo Schembechler, Bo's Lasting Lessons: The Legendary Coach Teaches the Timeless Fundamentals of Leadership
If you just play really hard, he says, nothing else matters.
— Kekla Magoon, Camo Girl
A lost is a lost no matter if you loose by 1 point or 40 points it's still a lost.
— Alcurtis Turner
readers are saying;“A great story about a fan's love for 'all things sport' ...”" Great read. Must buy as a stocking stuffer."“A great piece of work
— Keith Guernsey
We hear about Tiger Woods as a prodigy at three years old. For every Tiger Woods, there are thousands of kids who never want to touch a golf club again.
— Michael Sokolove, Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women's Sports
Emotionally, I was just a mess. But it’s such a long recovery period that you have to come to terms with it. You can’t cry the whole time until you get back on the field.
— Michael Sokolove, Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women's Sports
Women cannot compete with men in physical prowess. And why in the name of all that is sane should we? Why not rather have our ambition go into sport for health, endurance, and the mere love of it?
— Michael Sokolove, Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women's Sports
Basketball Rule #4If you missenough of life'sfree throwsyou will payin the end.
— Kwame Alexander, The Crossover
It’s amazing how two thin pieces of clothing can hold such deep memories. Laughter, pain, victory, defeat, friendship, fatigue, elation… they’re all there, but only to the person who’s worn the uniform
— Wendelin Van Draanen, The Running Dream
I am building a fire, and everyday I train, I add more fuel. At just the right moment, I light the match.
— Mia Hamm
To be a professional you have to act like one as well..
— Alcurtis Turner
A man with new ideas is a madman, until his ideas triumph.
— Marcelo Bielsa
Racing is an escape from society. From symbols of status, and self-perception. A chance to just be. For everyone to just be, with each other.
— Erin Beresini, Off Course: Inside the Mad, Muddy World of Obstacle Course Racing
The real, many-veiled answer to the question of just what goes through a great player's mind as he stands at the center of hostile crowd-noise and lines up the free-throw that will decide the game might well be: nothing at all.
— David Foster Wallace
As I run I tell myself to think of a river. And clouds. But essentially I'm not thinking of a thing. All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.
— Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
I bet they love those games on Friday night more than they do segregation.
— Pat Conroy, South of Broad
Basketball is not just a game its a way of living if you apply it to everyday life.
— Alcurtis Turner
Being strong means that you are made of steel.
— Pēteris Bitāns
Being strong is not how hard you hit but its as hard you can get hit and keep going that is how winning is done.
— Rocky
If you want to be the best, be the best, if you are not the best, pretend you are
— Muhhamad Ali
The idea here is simple, if you can dream it, it is possible.
— Ernest Riveras Tobia
I have to race because racing is a part of me. But I had to learn to race from a place of joy. Not pain. Not sorrow. Not anger. Not to fix things I can’t control. But for a connection with other people. With the wilderness. With myself.
— Erin Beresini, Off Course: Inside the Mad, Muddy World of Obstacle Course Racing
Wisdom of the Ages "Assault and Battery" Weather forecast for the St. Louis Rams next Sunday in Seattle.
— Matthew D. Heines
Walking to the net, I'm certain that I've lost to the better man, the Everest of the next generation. I pity the young players who will have to contend with him. I feel for the man who is fated to play Agassi to his Sampras. Though I don't mention Pete by name, I have him uppermost in my mind when I tell reporters: It's real simple. Most people have weaknesses. Federer has none.
— Andre Agassi, Open
In Texas, two things are cherished above all else- football and gossip.
— Cora Carmack, All Lined Up
The two keys to success as a sportswriter are: 1) A blind willingness to believe anything you're told by the coaches, flacks, hustlers and other "official spokesmen" for the team-owners who provide the free booze ... and: 2) A Roget's Thesaurus, in order to avoid using the same verbs and adjectives twice in the same paragraph.Even a sports editor, for instance, might notice something wrong with a lead that said: "The precision-jack-hammer attack of the Miami Dolphins stomped the balls off the Washington Redskins today by stomping and hammering with one precise jack-thrust after another up the middle, mixed with pinpoint-precision passes into the flat and numerous hammer-jack stomps around both ends....
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
And yet, winning is like a welcome drink going down your throat, like a beautiful embrace. It is brilliant while it lasts but it isn't forever. The high eventually melts away and the journey of life begins afresh. The truly remarkable among us visit these highs periodically; winning then becomes a journey, a graph where each point is crucial but is in reality merely part of a larger curve.
— Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers
The uglier a man's legs are, the better he plays golf. It's almost a law.
— H.G. Wells
'Why are you yelling at the television when you know they cannot hear you?' 'You wouldn't understand,' said Asher, his gaze locked on the screen. 'It's a human thing.' 
— Rowan McBride, Paul's Dream
If you put the time and work into getting better therefore that is called practice, anything that you practice you will definitely get better.
— Alcurtis Turner
Owen Owens Field embodies the name of the team that calls it home. It's Spartan to the core.
— Neil  Hayes, When the Game Stands Tall, Special Movie Edition: The Story of the De La Salle Spartans and Football's Longest Winning Streak
The recruiter didn't bother to introduce himself when Alumbaugh extended his hand. Instead, he turned to Aliotti and said: "He's not six-foot-one."Nice to meet you, too, Alumbaugh thought.
— Neil  Hayes, When the Game Stands Tall, Special Movie Edition: The Story of the De La Salle Spartans and Football's Longest Winning Streak
If we had played Poly a hundred more times that year we wouldn't have beaten them again. On that night we found a way. It was an unbelievable thing. It was a marvelous, miraculous win." -Coach Frank Allocco
— Neil  Hayes, When the Game Stands Tall, Special Movie Edition: The Story of the De La Salle Spartans and Football's Longest Winning Streak
Understatement has become part of the tradition. A proposal to build a history room to house the football team's memorabilia was immediately shelved when many former players complained. What makes this program so special is what you carry in your heart, they argued, not what you hang on the wall.
— Neil  Hayes, When the Game Stands Tall, Special Movie Edition: The Story of the De La Salle Spartans and Football's Longest Winning Streak
De La Salle hung on for the 28-21 victory. Afterward, Ladouceur stood before his exhausted team. It was by far the biggest victory in school history at the time, but the coach noticed that several of his players wore masks of disappointment. "It's OK to feel disappointed if you didn't play your absolute best," he told them. "That's what we're all about.
— Neil  Hayes, When the Game Stands Tall, Special Movie Edition: The Story of the De La Salle Spartans and Football's Longest Winning Streak
He hadn't developed into the accomplished running quarterback many had predicted he would become over the course of the season.But he had come to personify this team. He was raw and untested when the season began, but he played his two best games in the two biggest games on the schedule. He wasn't the player anybody expected him to be, but he got the job done-at times spectacularly.
— Neil  Hayes, When the Game Stands Tall, Special Movie Edition: The Story of the De La Salle Spartans and Football's Longest Winning Streak
My favorite passage from the book: "Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking of what we want to become. Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking about who we don't ever want to be again. Everything we do is part of who we are. How we choose to use those memories, to motivate or to submit is entirely up to us.
— Shane Niemeyer The Hurt Artist
This is the very structure of sports journalism: deification and damnation, death and resurrection, failure and redemption. You succeed so you can falter so you can succeed again. We need a rise and a fall. We need hubris and retribution and recovery.
— Will Leitch
Only one person can own any plate at a time. It belongs to the pitcher, or it belongs to the batter, Aiken, but not to both. You understand.
— Allan Dare Pearce, Paris in April
Where is it written in the Constitution that because a guy played football, he has the automatic right to sit in that booth? How hard is football? If I've spent thirty-five years as a sportswriter, you think I don't know you get six for a touchdown? You think I don't know that? You think I don't know you get three for a field goal? C'mon, c'mon. And I can actually speak English okay, so that would be a difference between me and a guy who spent his whole life playing football. Now, not all of them are like that, but it's that thinking that says, "We have divine right of booth." No, you don't. No you don't.
— Tony Kornheiser
Something that you love so much you would be willing to die for it.
— Alcurtis Turner
One hit, one moan of fractured air, one solid impact and the man went down.
— L.G. Kelso, Fierce
What did I discover during my solo—besides learning to unwrap my energy bar ahead of time? That you ask yourself a lot of questions when you're alone on a bike for that long. One question more than others: Why the heck am I doing this? When I was done, I think I had found the answer: For the satisfaction that comes with pushing your body to the breaking point and conquering the unknown.
— Matt Long, The Long Run: One Man's Attempt to Regain His Athletic Career-And His Life-by Running the New York City Marathon
Enduring means accepting. Accepting things as they are and not as you would wish them to be, and then looking ahead, not behind.
— Rafael Nadal
Rule #12: The correct number of bikes to own is N+1, where N is the number of bikes currently owned.
— The Velominati, The Rules: The Way of the Cycling Disciple
Running is perhaps the most fundamental of all sports, and it is economically the least costly to perform. As a consequence, it is the most democratic and most competitive of all sports because individual merit can prevail despite economic equality. It is a sport for everyone, the whole world over.
— Bernd Heinrich, Why We Run: A Natural History
Some sessions are stars and some sessions are stones, but in the end they are all rocks and we build upon them.
— Chrissie Wellington, A Life Without Limits: A World Champion's Journey
I find it surreal, then perfectly normal. I'm struck by how fast the surreal becomes the norm. I marvel at how unexciting it is to be famous, how mundane famous people are. They're confused, uncertain, insecure, and often hate what they do. It's something we always hear - like that old adage that money can't buy happiness-but we never believe it until we see it ourselves. Seeing it in 1992 brings me a new measure of confidence.
— Andre Agassi, Open
Like many men addicted to sports, Clive Sr. was also a religious man.
— Richard Russo, Nobody's Fool
I don't get it. Basketball is so supremely boring. I can't understand the point of watching ten giants running from one end of the field--court--to the other throwing an orange ball through a hoop in the air. I guess it's better than golf, but so is watching paint dry.
— Carter Quinn, Out of the Blackness
The sports pages are men's pages, although they are not presented as such. /.../ On foreign fields, the men win their trophies, or lose their honour, doing battle on the nation's behalf. The readers, mainly men, are invited to see these male exploits in terms of the whole homeland, and, thus, men's concerns are presented as if defining the whole national honour.The parallel between sport and warfare seems obvious...
— Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism
I've been let in on a dirty little secret: winning changes nothing. Now that I've won a slam, I know something that very few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn't feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn't last as long as the bad. Not even close.
— Andre Agassi, Open
all about that action boss
— marshawn lynch
Who you are as a person far outweighs what you do in an athletic arena.
— Chris Matakas
A ball feels different off every player's racket-there are minute but concrete subtleties of force and spin. Now, hitting with her (Steffi Graf), I feel her subtleties. It's like touching her, though we're forty feet apart. Every forehand is foreplay.
— Andre Agassi, Agassi
She's a Texan, born and raised. Football is in our blood.
— Simone Elkeles, Wild Cards
The guys who play it [soccer] are kinda dumb. Why don't they just kick the crap out of the guy in front of the net? Then they could score all they want.
— Tite Kubo, Bleach, Volume 17
Train hard while others don't, so you can win while your opponents wont.
— Andre Bramble
Thankfully, Coach had taught me a way of embracing the pain. He called that overwhelming rust of hurt 'The Moment of No Return', a point of pure agony when the body told an athlete to quit, to rest, because the pain was so damn tough. It was a tipping point. He reckoned that if an athlete dropped in The Moment, then all the pain that went before it was pointless, the muscles wouldn't increase their current strength. But if he could work through the pinch and run another two reps, maybe 3, them the body would physically improve in that time, and that was when an athlete grew stronger.
— Usain Bolt, Faster than Lightning: My Autobiography
Last night I missed two free throws which would have won the game against the best team in the state. The farm town high school I play for is nicknamed the "Indians," and I'm probably the only actual Indian ever to play for a team with such a mascot.This morning I pick up the sports page and read the headline: INDIANS LOSE AGAIN.Go ahead and tell me none of this is supposed to hurt me very much.
— Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
I have no sense of humor about losing
— Rafael Nadal, Rafa
New Rule: Americans must realize what makes NFL football so great: socialism. That's right, the NFL takes money from the rich teams and gives it to the poorer one...just like President Obama wants to do with his secret army of ACORN volunteers. Green Bay, Wisconsin, has a population of one hundred thousand. Yet this sleepy little town on the banks of the Fuck-if-I-know River has just as much of a chance of making it to the Super Bowl as the New York Jets--who next year need to just shut the hell up and play.Now, me personally, I haven't watched a Super Bowl since 2004, when Janet Jackson's nipple popped out during halftime. and that split-second glimpse of an unrestrained black titty burned by eyes and offended me as a Christian. But I get it--who doesn't love the spectacle of juiced-up millionaires giving one another brain damage on a giant flatscreen TV with a picture so real it feels like Ben Roethlisberger is in your living room, grabbing your s
— Bill Maher, The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass
Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union.
— Tom Clancy, The Cardinal of the Kremlin
We spend 8 hours a day, for 10 months a year, for nearly 17 years sending our kids to school to prepare them for life. In all of that time there is never a course in overcoming adversity, goal setting, sacrifice, perseverance, teammates, or family. I guess that's what wrestling is for.
— JohnA Passaro
One of the supreme paradoxes of baseball, and all sports, is that the harder you try to throw a pitch or hit a ball or accomplish something, the smaller your chances are for success. You get the best results not when you apply superhuman effort but when you let the game flow organically and allow yourself to be fully present. You'll often hear scouts say of a great prospect, "The game comes slow to him." It mean the prospect is skilled and poised enough to let the game unfold in its own time, paying no attention to the angst or urgency or doubt, funnelling all awareness to the athletic task at hand.
— R.A. Dickey, Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball
The burn is my girlfriend, failure is my ex. I'm married to the track and engaged to success.
— Andre Bramble
When life throws you a curve ball just give up, no need messing around with that off speed shit
— Bradley Bowman
Nobody will outwork, out-train or out-will me !
— Andre Bramble
In my opinion any activity during which you can enjoy a beverage is not a sport. It is a party.
— Michael Thomas Ford, Alec Baldwin Doesn't Love Me & Other Trials from My Queer Life
Sports Jerseys: To wear another man’s name on your back is a subconscious slap in the face to who you are. Don’t fantasize about being someone else. Put in the work required to rise to the level of your greatest self.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
You didn't play baseball that well with two hands. How do you think you're going to make it with one?  "If you're just going to tell me what I can't do, you can leave.
— Mary Jane Auch, One-Handed Catch
I don't let birdies and pars get in the way of having a good time
— Angelo Spagnolo
At least watching dirty movies can be kind of fascinating if they aren't too horribly strange. And even the horribly strange ones are still more interesting than televised sports.
— Merrill Markoe, The Psycho Ex Game
A sport has its own built-in integrity, doesn't need an artificial one. Athletics carries its own set of truths, and those truths are diminished and manipulated by people with agendas.
— Chris Crutcher, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography
But how a game plan came to be, what a finished plan looked like, I had no idea. I’d heard that all copies were shredded as soon as the game was over.
— Nicholas Dawidoff, Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football
Life is a sports make it count.
— Derrick Adkins
I learned a long time ago that there is something worse than missing the goal, and that's not pulling the trigger.
— Mia Hamm, Go For the Goal: A Champion's Guide To Winning In Soccer And Life
The reporter asked, "why did you play so hard.""Because there might have been somebody in the stands today who'd never seen my play before, and might never see me again"-Joe DiMaggio
— Joe DiMaggio
Politicians and sports coaches both need to be smart enough to master the game, but dumb enough to think it matters.
— David Mitchell, number9dream
Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.The human beauty we're talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings' reconciliation with the fact of having a body.
— David Foster Wallace, Both Flesh and Not: Essays
Sport, properly directed, develops character, makes a person courageous, a generous loser, and a gracious victor; it refines the senses, gives intellectual penetration, and steels the will to endurance. It is not merely a physical development then. Sport, rightly understood, is an occupation of the whole person, and while perfecting the body as an instrument of the mind, it also makes the mind itself a more refined instrument for the search and communication of truth….
— Pope Pius XII
In Gym, the kids on my team learned not to pass me the ball and to step quickly in front of me if the other team tried to take advantage of my weakness. I happily stayed out of their way.
— Stephenie Meyer, Twilight
Baseball, of all sports, and maybe of all human endeavors, has no room for cynicism.
— Howard Frank Mosher, Waiting for Teddy Williams
A friend tells a story about taking his ten-year-old son to a Jets game. The game was being played during a driving rain on a freezing cold day, and the Jets lost by twenty points to a team they were supposed to beat. As they headed toward the exits, the boy looked up, with tears in his eyes, and asked, 'Dad, why are we Jets fans?
— Joe Queenan, True Believers: The Tragic Inner Life of Sports Fans
Discouraged?As I was driving home from work one day, I stopped to watch a local Little League baseball game that was being played in a park near my home. As I sat down behind the bench on the first-baseline, I asked one of the boys what the score was."We’re behind 14 to nothing,” he answered with a smile.“Really,” I said. “I have to say you don’t look very discouraged.”“Discouraged?” the boy asked with a puzzled look on his face. “Why should we be discouraged? We haven’t been up to bat yet.
— Jack Canfield
Basketball allowed me to revere my father without him knowing what I was up to. I took up basketball as a form of homage and mimicry.
— Pat Conroy, My Losing Season: A Memoir
If not for sports, I do not think my father would have ever talked to me.
— Pat Conroy, My Losing Season: A Memoir
Plane Ride - In our sport it is natural and necessary to set up goals to inspire us. We all want to achieve the next level, the break-thru performance. What we (all of us) must not forget is that the journey to these goals is the best part. The daily process of obtaining success takes up the majority of our time and effort throughout our lives. Remember to appreciate what you’ve done in the past and what you are doing in the present on your way to higher goals. This will allow you to always strive for something more without missing out on the fact that your path to success is as much a starting point as it is a finish line.
— Matthew Alan
Its me own battle... and I'm seeing me body take on me mind.... BIG TIME!
— The Fitness Doc
On the surface, there is something peculiar about turning a portion of one's happiness over to a collection of ballplayers, and perhaps more peculiar still is concerning oneself about ball games played decades before one's birth.
— Tom Swift, Chief Bender's Burden: The Silent Struggle of a Baseball Star
Will we ever see his like again? It is doubtful. But at least for a brief moment in time we were lucky to have him as one of our own: an English lionheart who was the terror of the continent, who earned the love and respect of everyone who had the privilege to see him in action and above all was a thoroughly decent hero of whom we can be proud. Rest in peace 'Big Dunc'. Your feats will echo in eternity.
— James Leighton, Duncan Edwards: The Greatest
Life would be better if the Leafs would make the playoffs. Life would be perfect if they’d win the Stanley Cup.
— Tom Earle
The sad fact of life: Winners love the game. Losers don't.
— The Wombat
Training energy system to effectively resynthesize ATP – as quickly as possible – so that muscle contraction continues without onset of fatigue – forms the basis of most exercise protocols.
— The Fitness Doc
When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: "Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense." But the point is, it does make sense: It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports.
— Noam Chomsky
Without self-discipline, success is impossible, period.
— Lou Holtz
Someone who doesn't make the (Olympic) team might weep and collapse. In my day no one fell on the track and cried like a baby. We lost gracefully. And when someone won, he didn't act like he'd just become king of the world, either. Athletes in my day were simply humble in our victory.I believe we were more mature then...Maybe it's because the media puts so much pressure on athletes; maybe it's also the money. In my day we competed for the love of the sport...In my day we patted the guy who beat us on the back, wished him well, and that was it.
— Louis Zamperini, Devil at My Heels
A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.
— Bernard Malamud
Baseball has so much history and tradition. You can respect it, or you can exploit it for profit, but it's still being made all over the place, all the time.
— Michael   Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Baseball is a soap opera that lends itself to probabilistic thinking. [Dick Cramer]
— Michael   Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
With sports, you have no time to reflect. You just do.
— Terri Giuliano Long, In Leah's Wake
It's considered good sportsmanship not to pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.
— Mark Twain
While sports are indisputably a positive source of strength and self-development for girls, they can accomplish this only if the environment in which female athletes throw their javelins, kick their soccer balls, and swim their fast and furious laps is an environment that respects girls and takes them seriously as athletes.
— Leslie Heywood
Is it or is it not a matter of importance that a young man starts out in life with an ability to shut his jaw hard and say "I will," or "I will not," and mean it?
— John William Heisman
I was awarded 'Most Aggressive Rider of the Day', generally given to the most spectacular loser of the day.
— David Millar, Racing Through the Dark
Every sport pretends to be literature. . .
— Alistair Cooke
Look, girls. It is important to all of us that we win this game, right? Well, when it comes to athletics, boys are simply better suited than girls. It’s a fact of nature that no one can change. I’m sorry, but maybe you can play next time when it’s less crucial.
— Francine Pascal, Boys Against Girls
One group of riders doped, the others alongside them racing clean. You can work out for yourselves which group was fastest.
— David Millar, Racing Through the Dark
I had grown used to getting a pat on the back and being told after a good result: 'Well done, David - you should be happy, you're the first clean rider.
— David Millar, Racing Through the Dark
...you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit.
— Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning
Unless you have been very, very lucky, you have undoubtedly experienced events in your life that have made you cry. So unless you have been very, very lucky, you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit.
— Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid
When a girl cries, few things are more worthless than a boy.
— Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds
I shed more tears than God could ever have required.
— Arthur Rimbaud, Illuminations
More and more, the hardest part of crying is when I can't stop.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
I wasn't crying about mothers," he said rather indignantly. "I was crying because I can't get my shadow to stick on. Besides, I wasn't crying.
— J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Admit it," He insists. "I was right." "No." I sniff. "You were wrong." sniff. "I'm just crying"-sniff- "cause i'm so happy." My tear take that lie as their cue and start streaming down my cheeks. "Come on, Princess," he says, "You don't need to cry over that loser."  This only makes me cry harder. We both know who the loser is in this scenario. With a muttered curse, Quince wraps his arms around me and squeezes. It feels remarkably like a hug. "Don't cry," he whispers in my ear. "Please." I don't know if it's his soft words or the fact that my face is now hidden by his broad chest, but i just let go. Three years of longing and loving from a distance have built to the breaking point, and i let it out all over his west coast choppers T-shirt. "shhh," He soothes. "He's not worth it.
— Tera Lynn Childs, Forgive My Fins
Consider anything, only don’t cry!
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
And the snow that fell onto the roof in winter... it fell softly... softly... and it covered the house, the armchair, the books, the children's voices. It covered Anna and Abel, covered their parallel world, and everything was finally, very, very quiet.
— Antonia Michaelis, The Storyteller
Crying wasn't like riding a bike. Give it up, and you quickly forget how it's done.
— Alice Hoffman, The Ice Queen
It is always tedious when someone tells you that if you don't stop crying, they will give you something to cry about, because if you are crying then you already have something to cry about, and so there is no reason for them to give you anything additional to cry about, thank you very much.
— Lemony Snicket, The Slippery Slope
Your tears come easy, when you're young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you're old, and leaving it. I burst out crying.
— Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
He found it so easy and so pleasant to cry that he didn’t try to stop for a while, until he realized he was forcing his sobs a little, exaggerating their depth with unnecessary shudders.…The whole point of crying is to quit before you coined it up. The whole point of grief itself was to cut it out while it was still honest, while it still meant something. Because the thing was so easily corrupted
— Richard Yates
Chuck Norris’s tears cure cancer. Too bad he’s never cried.
— Ian Spector, The Truth About Chuck Norris: 400 Facts About the World's Greatest Human
All the books of the world full of thoughts and poems are nothing in comparison to a minute of sobbing, when feeling surges in waves, the soul feels itself profoundly and finds itself. Tears are the melting ice of snow. All angels are close to the crying person.
— Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse