George Sheehan Quotes & Sayings

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

The 5-year-old sees that Paradise correctly, not in technology but in the fairy story, in the great myths that control and guide our lives. And myth is meaning divined rather than defined, implicit rather than explicit. — George Sheehan

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 Sheehan

The runner who is in peak condition is only a razor's edge from catastrophe. — George Sheehan

At 45, 2 years after the birth of his last child, he started running again. — George Sheehan

So it is not age that is threatened by youth, but the other way around. Youth is threatened by age. — George Sheehan

Man is meant to be a success. Each of us, he said, is unique and endowed with potentials unlike those of others. Success comes in finding your authentic self, the person you truly are, and becoming that person, tapping all of that untapped potential. — George Sheehan

From the moment you become a spectator, everything is downhill. It is a life that ends before the cheering and the shouting die. — George Sheehan

UNTIL I TOOK UP distance running, I found it easy to take it easy. I had no difficulty following the warnings of the experts. "Avoid stress," cautioned the physicians. I did. "Reduce your tensions," advised the psychologists. I did. "Rest that restless heart," counseled the clergy. I did. Doing these things requires no effort when you are lacking what Santayana called America's ruling passion - a love for business - when you are a lifelong non-joiner whose greatest desire is not to become involved, when almost everyone you meet is less interesting than your own ideas, and when your inner life has more reality than your outer one. — George Sheehan

Disease, then, is one of those bad experiences that turns information into knowledge and knowledge into wisdom. The bad experiences that make you love yourself and your body and the world. And make you know that you are in a game that has to have a happy ending. — George Sheehan

Running is just such a monestary
a retreat, a place to commune with God and yourself, a place for psychological and spiritual renewal. — George Sheehan

Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be. — George Sheehan

For every runner who tours the world running marathons, there are thousands who run to hear the leaves and listen to the rain, and look to the day when it is suddenly as easy as a bird in flight. — George Sheehan

With the publication of Running & Being in 1978, George Sheehan's voice became the voice of a movement, sounding a clarion call to hundreds of thousands of people to abandon their sedentary ways, take to the streets, and run. Today, there are millions of us lacing up our running shoes, training for 5-Ks, 10-Ks, half-marathons, and marathons - each trudging the same path of fitness and self-discovery that he blazed decades before. — George Sheehan

The true runner is a very fortunate person. He has found something in him that is just perfect. — George Sheehan

There are those of us who are always about to live. We are waiting until things change, until there is more time, until we are less tired, until we get a promotion, until we settle down / until, until, until. It always seems as if there is some major event that must occur in our lives before we begin living. — George Sheehan

The runner is coming to know, or will know if he runs enough...that the universe is the smallest divisible unit. — George Sheehan

Aging is a myth, he argued, and he showed it by posting his personal best at 3:01 in his 61st year. — George Sheehan

Courage is the bridge between our minds and our bodies. — George Sheehan

Running keeps me at a physical peak and sharpens my senses. It makes me touch and see and hear as if for the first time. Through it I get through the first barrier to true emotions, the lack of integration with the body. Into it I escape from the pettiness and triviality of everyday life. And, once inside,stop the daily pendulum perpetually oscillating between distraction and boredom...It is the swing from boredom to anxiety, from depression to worry, that exhausts and defeats us. The sure knowledge that we can be much more than we are frustrates us. — George Sheehan

The distance runner is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconscious. He is repairing the rent, and healing the wound in his divided self. He has found a way to make the ordinary extraordinary; the commonplace unique; the everyday eternal. — George Sheehan

Boredom, like beauty, is in the mind of the beholder. 'There is no such thing as an uninteresting subject,' said Chesterton. 'The only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. — George Sheehan

Only a sense of humor can help each of us face those great unanswerable questions: Why was I born? Why am I here? Why must I die? What must I do to make my life a triumph? - — George Sheehan

William James, who believed the decisive thing about us was not intelligence, strength, or wealth. The real question posed to us is the effort we are willing to make, — George Sheehan

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

If you don't have a challenge, find one, — George Sheehan

The mind's first step to self-awareness must be through the body. — George Sheehan

What the jogger's face shows is not boredom but contemplation, which Thomas Aquinas described as man's highest activity save one - contemplation plus putting the fruits of that contemplation into action. — George Sheehan