“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.”
"The music of a marathon is a powerful strain, one of those tunes of glory. It asks us to forsake pleasures, to discipline the body, to find courage, to renew faith, and to become one's own person, utterly and completely."
- George Sheehan
Transformation
"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
Self-awareness
"My times become slower and slower, but the experience of the race is unchanged: each race a drama, each race a challenge, each race stretching me in one way or another, and each race telling me more about myself and others."
- George Sheehan
Personal Growth
"The music of a marathon is a powerful strain, one of those tunes of glory. It asks us to forsake pleasures, to discipline the body, to find courage, to renew faith, and to become one’s own person, utterly and completely."
- George Sheehan
Inspiration
"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
Motivation
"Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."
- Joshua J. Marine
Adversity
"The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it."
- Epicurus
Adversity
"It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Adversity
"The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that’s where it’s at."
- Jesse Owens
Adversity
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress."
- Frederick Douglass
Adversity