Athleticism Quotes

“The Rider

A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn't catch up to him,

the best reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.

What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.

A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, Fuel: Poems

“We're not hunter-gatherers anymore. We're all living like patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital. What keeps us alive isn't bravery, or athleticism, or any of those other skills that were valuable in a caveman society. It's our ability to master complex technological skills. It is our ability to be nerds. We need to breed nerds.”
― Neal Stephenson, Seveneves

“Give up your attachment to comfortable ways of living - show yourself in the gymnasium (gymnos = 'naked'), prove that you are not indifferent to the difference between perfect and imperfect, demonstrate to us that achievement - excellence, arete, virtu - has not remained a foreign word to you, admit that you have motives for new endeavours! Above all: only grant the suspicion that sport is a pastime for the most stupid as much space as it deserves, do not misuse it as a pretext to drift further in your customary state of self-neglect, distrust the philistine in yourself who thinks you are just fine as you are! Hear the voice from the stone, do not resist the call to get in shape! Seize the chance to train with a god!”
― Peter Sloterdijk, Du mußt dein Leben ändern

“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

“To pilot a racehorse is to ride a half-ton catapult. It is without question one of the most formidable feats in sport.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend

“On athleticism, God knows no favor. It seems rather he is in the business of teaching winners how to lose and losers how to win.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Apparently, this climb was wearing her out—but she’d been taking irregular walks for years, damn it. Surely she should be a semipro athlete by now? Apparently not. The human body was an inconvenient and unreasonable thing.”
― Talia Hibbert, Get a Life, Chloe Brown

“The idea that athleticism was suddenly inversely proportional to intellect was never a cause of bigotry, but rather a result of it.”
― David Epstein, The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance

“Under gold clouds, he pushed the limits of my body, setting a faster pace—some days surpassing forty rugged miles, unstopping through morning’s thick peach haze; noon’s warmth; red evening sun.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir