Quote

I run each day to preserve the self I attained the day before and to secure the self yet to be.

George A. Sheehan

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

George A. Sheehan
Age: 74 †
Born: 1918
Born: November 5
Died: 1993
Died: November 1
Cardiologist
Military Officer
Physician
Preserves
Secure
Running
Self
Attained
Preserve

More quotes by George A. Sheehan

Image
The true runner is a very fortunate person. He has found something in him that is just perfect.
George A. Sheehan
Image
The most important thing I learned [from running] is that there is only one runner in this race, and that is me.
George A. Sheehan
Image
If you want to find the answers to the Big Questions about your soul, you'd best begin with the Little Answers about your body.
George A. Sheehan
Image
If marathoners finish they win.
George A. Sheehan
Image
Life is a positive-sum game. Everyone from the gold medallist to the last finisher can rejoice in a personal victory.
George A. Sheehan
Image
Play is where life lives
George A. Sheehan
Image
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 A. Sheehan
Image
Listen to your body. Do not be a blind and deaf tenant.
George A. Sheehan
Image
The more I run, the more I want to run, and the more I live a life conditioned and influenced and fashioned by my running. And the more I run, the more certain I am that I am heading for my real goal: to become the person I am.
George A. Sheehan
Image
People begin running for any number of motives, but we stick to it for one basic reason-to find out who we really are.
George A. Sheehan
Image
Do not tell me what to do, tell me what you do. Do not tell me what is good for me, tell me what is good for you. If, at the same time, you reveal the you in me, if you become a mirror to my inner self, then you have made a reader and a friend.
George A. Sheehan
Image
No matter how old I get, the race remains one of life's most rewarding experiences. 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 A. Sheehan
Image
I will not last forever. But I am damn well going to know I have been here.
George A. Sheehan
Image
Once you have decided that winning isn't everything, you become a winner.
George A. Sheehan
Image
Exercise: you don't have time not to
George A. Sheehan
Image
There are as many reasons for running as there are days in the year, years in my life. But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So, too, are you. Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be.
George A. Sheehan
Image
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 A. Sheehan
Image
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 A. Sheehan
Image
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 A. Sheehan
Image
On the roads, I can see truth revealed whole without thought or reason. There I experience the sudden understanding that comes unasked, unbidden. I simply rest, rest within myself, rest within the pure rhythm of my running. And I wait.
George A. Sheehan