It's Not Over Sports Quotes & Sayings

Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts. — Mary McCarthy

1.1.19.02.006: Team sports are mandatory in order to build character. Character is there to give purpose to team sports. — Jasper Fforde

Kevin's always saying things like "You've got a real deep bench, now, kid." Or "You gotta keep your eye on the ball, and you're going to push it over the goal line." And I have no idea what he is talking about, but I nod enthusiastically and say, "Sure, of course, sports," and hope he doesn't ask any follow-up questions. — Mindy Kaling

We also notice that Paul was focused. He had a clear goal, and he would not veer to the right or to the left from it. We can't help but wonder how many emails Paul would have skipped over, or how current he would have been with the news of the day, or even how vigorously he would be rooting for his favorite sports teams or athletes. Our ability to have information quickly is both a blessing and a curse. Our ability to function in a fast-paced society sometimes encourages us to focus on nothing of lasting value, just running from one temporal thing to the next. Just — James MacDonald

It has always seemed to me that any man is a better man for being a hunter. This sport confers a certain constant alertness, and develops a certain ruggedness of character ... Moreover, it allies us to the pioneer past. In a deep sense, this great land of ours was won for us by hunters. — Archibald Rutledge

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

Keep it simple, when you get too complex you forget the obvious. — Al McGuire

BMX is kind of a big guy sport, you know. — Donny Robinson

Stiff, huh? I think seeing you roll around on the floor in that tight little outfit accomplished that. — Collette West

Seen on her own, the woman was not so remarkable. Tall, angular, aquiline features, with the close-cropped hair which was fashionably called an Eton crop, he seemed to remember, in his mother's day, and about her person the stamp of that particular generation. She would be in her middle sixties, he supposed, the masculine shirt with collar and tie, sports jacket, grey tweed skirt coming to mid-calf. Grey stockings and laced black shoes. He had seen the type on golf courses and at dog shows - invariably showing not sporting breeds but pugs - and if you came across them at a party in somebody's house they were quicker on the draw with a cigarette lighter than he was himself, a mere male, with pocket matches. The general belief that they kept house with a more feminine, fluffy companion was not always true. Frequently they boasted, and adored, a golfing husband. ("Don't Look Now") — Daphne Du Maurier

Badminton is not a popular sport in India. — Saina Nehwal

I want a life of good sport, good people and the competition that goes with it. — Randy Lerner

One keeps looking out for innovation in IPL, but of late it hasn't been all that obvious. Lionel Richie as an opening act? Johnny Mathis must have been busy. Matthew Hayden's Mongoose? Looks a bit like Bob Willis' bat with the "flow-through holes"; Saint Peter batting mitts are surely overdue a revival. The only genuinely intriguing step this year, bringing the IPL to YouTube, was forced on Modi by the collapse of Setanta; otherwise what Modi presents as 'innovation' is merely expansion by another name, in the number of franchises and the number of games. — Gideon Haigh

Football, basketball, and the Olympic sports all have their problems with banned substances. — Jim Sensenbrenner

Instead, over the past thirty years, in the world of action and adventure sports, in situations where asses really were on the line, the bounds of the possible have been pushed further and faster than ever before in history. We've seen near-exponential growth in ultimate human performance, which is both hyperbolic paradox and considerable mystery. Somehow, a generation's worth of iconoclastic misfits have rewritten the rules of the feasible, not just raising the bar but often obliterating it altogether. And this brings up one final question: Where-if anywhere-do our actual limits lie? — Steven Kotler

My father was a basketball player, so I loved basketball because he did. It was a direct transference. But, more than that, basketball, in the United States at least, plays the same function that soccer does everyone else in the world. It's the sport of poverty. It's the sport born of poverty. It's the cheapest sport. — Sherman Alexie

Newsflash: it's not the guy who determines whether you're a sports fisher or a keeper-it's you. (Don't hate the player, hate the game.) When a man approaches you you're the one with total control over the situation-whether he can talk to you, buy you a drink, dance with you, get your number, take you home, see you again, all of that. We certainly want these things from you; that's why we talked to you in the first place. But it's you who decides if you're going to give us any of the things we want, and how, exactly, we're going to get them. Where you stand in our eyes is dictated by YOUR control over the situation. Every word you say, every move you make, every signal you give to a man will help him determine whether he should try to play you, be straight with you, or move on to the next woman to do a little more sport fishing. — Steve Harvey

Football is a sport of emotions, and we have to capture that in our films. — Steve Sabol

Playing other sports - and believe me, I played every sport I could - made me a better hockey player. — Tie Domi

One reason I won't compromise is because I believe honesty helps you win over the long haul. You can win a game tomorrow and lose a team. You can lose a game tomorrow and win a football team. — Lou Holtz

There's one thing I don't ever think about: losing ... Instead, I think about how I'm going to win, and how I can do it the quickest way. — Joe Frazier

In the very early stages of working in sports, I was sick of being referred to as "the Barbie doll" because I had long, blond, fake hair. So I went and bought a boxed hair color, dyed my hair black, and put on glasses. And I looked ridiculous. I looked like a completely different person. I was trying to get away from the stereotype but what I realized in doing that is that what I say and how I conduct myself in what I do will speak for itself, and I don't need to apologize for being a woman in that space. — Charissa Thompson

Another atrocity of summer is soccer. When the Euro Cup is on, it brings out the worst in people. It turns them into ravaging beasts who complain when a team they like, which they have done nothing to deserve, slips from grace and loses the match.
An old man sitting beside me at the cafe was watching the men watch the soccer rather than watch the soccer himself. He found their reactions more entertaining than the game.
"All this stuff and nonsense over men kicking a ball," he groused. "And they don't do any of the work themselves."
I told him, "We should just have wars. Then we would not need sports."
He laughed and quite agreed with me. — Michelle Franklin

I watch movies and sports. I can count on the fingers of my hand the number of times I have watched an hour show. I never watch a half-hour show, and I never watch myself. — William Shatner

I pray not for victory, but to do my best. — Amos Alonzo Stagg

For me, it is about creating a career - I'm very interested in the sports side and want to continue to do more stuff in that. But ultimately, what I consider myself to be is an actor, and the more variety I can play will continue to round me out. — Brian Baumgartner

Judo was one of those sports where they give you guidelines but then try to tell you to develop your own style. — Ronda Rousey

To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten. The first 'second' is when you come out of the blocks. The next is when you look up and take your first few strides to attain gain position. By that time the race is actually about half over. The final 'second' - the longest slice of time in the world for an athlete - is that last half of the race, when you really bear down and see what you're made of. It seems to take an eternity, yet is all over before you can think what's happening. — Jesse Owens

What other sport holds out hope of improvement to a man or a woman over fifty? True, the pros begin to falter at around forty, but it is their putting nerves that go, not their swings. For a duffer like [me], the room for improvement is so vast that three lifetimes could be spent roaming the fiarways carving away at it, convinced that perfection lies just over the next rise. And that hope, perhaps, is the kindest bliss of all that golf bestows upon its devotees. — John Updike

There's a big confusion in this country over what we want versus what we need," Morrie said. "You need food, you want a chocolate sundae. You have to be honest with yourself. You don't need the latest sports car, you don't need the biggest house. The truth is, you don't get satisfaction from those things. You know what really gives you satisfaction? ... Offering others what you have to give ... I don't mean money, Mitch. I mean your time. Your concern. Your storytelling. It's not so hard. — Mitch Albom

Outside, overgrown grass lapped dew on Ronan's boots, and mist curled around the tyres of the charcoal BMW. The sky over Monmouth Manufacturing was the colour of a muddy lake. It was cold, but Ronan's gasoline heart was firing. He settled into the car, letting it become his skin. The night air was still coiled beneath the seats and lurking in the door pockets; he shivered as he tethered his raven to the seat belt fastener in the passenger seat. Not the fanciest setup, but effective for keeping a corvid from flapping around one's sports car. Chainsaw bit him, but not as hard as the early morning cold. — Maggie Stiefvater

I have found life highly competitive. I accept it. It is useless, merely a hypocritical humbug, to sincerely wish your opponent to win. If you are out to win you are better not wanting to know your opponent, much less grow to like him - and wish him, honestly success over you. I have never functioned that way. — Percy Cerutty

Decent" people the world over do not spend too much energy on the task of sexual reproduction, or on the practices that have been built on it. Romance resembles sports in this respect as well: instead of doing it personally, most people are content to hear about it or watch a few experts perform it. A — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It is not that sport, over-indulged in, coarsens the mind; it is that it dulls it. — Will Self

One little bird not larger than a sparrow, it may have been a Phalarope, would alight on the turbulent surface where the breakers were five or six feet high, and float buoyantly there like a duck, cunningly taking to its wings and lifting itself a few feet through the air over the foaming crest of each breaker, but sometimes outriding safely a considerable billow which hid it some seconds, when its instinct told it that it would not break. It was a little creature thus to sport with the ocean, but it was as perfect a success in its way as the breakers in theirs. — Henry David Thoreau

These guys have been criticized the last few years for not getting to where we're going, but I've always said that the most important thing in sports is to keep trying. Let this be an example of what it means to say it's never over. — Jerry Sloan

Like all the other arrivals to the tournament, Hank had erected a banner in front. It was a long, tapering pennant with a blue and red circular design in the center and the words GO CUBS! on both sides.
Interesting," said Hugo. "What does it mean?"
It was a gift from Sam," Hank explained as they entered the tent. "He said it used to represent Triumph over Adversity, but now better represents Impossible Quests and Lost Causes."
I think I preferred not knowing that," said Hugo.
Hank grinned. "You're a Sox fan too, hey? — James A. Owen

Competitive rowing is an undertaking of extraordinary beauty preceded by brutal punishment. Unlike most sports, which draw primarily on particular muscle groups, rowing makes heavy and repeated use of virtually every muscle in the body, despite the fact that a rower, as Al Ulbrickson liked to put it, "scrimmages on his posterior annex." And rowing makes these muscular demands not at odd intervals but in rapid sequence, over a protracted period of time, repeatedly and without respite. On one occasion, after watching the Washington freshmen practice, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Royal Brougham marveled at the relentlessness of the — Daniel James Brown

I hope I epitomize the American dream. For I came against long odds, from the ghetto to the very top of my profession. I was not immediately good at basketball. It did not come easy. It came as the result of a lot of hard work and self-sacrifice. The rewards, where they worth it? One thousand times over. — Bill Russell

Boxing is an ego-driven sport. The idea is to not get too personal or emotional with it. You just know when it's over, it's over, and that's it. — Mike Tyson

Dancing was my sport when I was younger. So I chose that over everything. And then, I just had to keep going because it became a competitive thing. But I'm not trying to impress anyone anymore. Dancing is more like my art, now. — Heather Morris

At the time I attended a private Catholic school called Maryville College. I was the champion of the Maryville sports day every single year and my mother won the mom's trophy every single year. Why? Because she was always chasing me to kick my ass and I was always running not to get my ass kicked. Nobody ran like me and my mom. She wasn't one of those "Come over here and get your hiding [beating]" type of moms. She delivered to you free of charge. She was a thrower too. Whatever was next to her was coming at you. If it was something breakable, I had to catch it and put it down. If it broke, that would be my fault too and the ass-kicking would be that much worse. If she threw a vase at me, I'd had to catch it, put it down and then run. In a split-second I'd have to think "Is it valuable? Yes. Is it breakable? Yes. Catch it, put it down. Now run!" We had a very Tom and Jerry relationship, me and my mom. She was the strict disciplinarian, I was naughty as shit. — Trevor Noah

I was keen on sports-that's how my nose got this way. It's not actually broken; the nose was just pushed up a little bit and moved over. It's an aquiline nose, quite Irish. — John Hurt

I made a decision that year, to start mattering in a way that had nothing to do with sports teams or plastic crowns, and the reality is, I might have made that decision without her, or if I'd never fallen in love with a girl who considered love to be the biggest disaster of all. — Robyn Schneider

The Olympics is not really about the sport, it's about the story behind the person. You keep the sport relatively simple to understand - let the fans understand that a takedown is 1 point, a turn is 2, a pin and the match is over. Keep it simple, and keep the story on the individual. — Kurt Angle

I don't know how old I am because a goat ate the Bible that had my birth certificate in it. The goat lived to be twenty-seven. — Satchel Paige

Victory and defeat are each of the same price. — Thomas Jefferson

On television, I have watched countless athletes from different countries, sports and Olympics stand proudly at the top of the podium and shed tears. They symbolized the Olympics for me because Olympic medals represent all of the hard work and sacrifices made by the athletes as well as the people who helped them reach the top of their sports. — Hannah Kearney

If I stayed a football player, my career would have been over 20 years ago. As it is, my knees are shot. I found I got the same good feeling in acting that I had in sports, but I found I could have a more profound impact on people. — William Petersen

I love team sports - they give me something to focus on rather than the fact that I can't breathe or my muscles are aching. — Sanjeev Bhaskar

I don't plan on writing biographies of great sports stars who are still playing ball. But I did write one on Jackie Robinson, who was playing ball in the 20th century. — David A. Adler

In order to play some sports there's quite a big cost implication, whereas football is relatively cheap. All you need is a ball and a couple of jumpers to practise. — Hope Powell

Most of us have had that experience - at around puberty - of realising that, despite whatever efforts we put into our chosen sports, we will become at best competent. — Will Self

I will always treasure the privilege of writing the 'Sports of The Times' column. — George Vecsey

I'm trying to set out the passion and complexity of this sport. Many people think it's a dumb activity: stand on the gas and turn left. In fact, it's probably one of the most complex sports in existence. — Janet Guthrie

His eyes meet mine, and for a moment everything seems like it'll be okay. More than okay, actually. — Collette West

The only consistent hobby I've had is studying Spanish and French because of some delusion of grandeur to work around the world. I love sports but usually I'm looking for the next job. — William Sanderson

In any small town, sports are really important to the high school, and I wasn't very good at sports. — Martina Mcbride

It's a game of habit, or repetition. You can't play one way in practice and another way in a game. It's a reflex. The game is so quick you don't have time to think. — Bill Sharman

It was another example of a phenomenon I call "the talking dog syndrome." Some people are still amazed that any woman (this includes Governors' wives, corporate CEOs, sports stars and rock singers) can hold her own under pressure and be articulate and knowledgeable. The dog can talk! — Hillary Rodham Clinton

Television is making sports universal; for the same reason, big-time soccer is growing more popular in the United States. — George Vecsey

Falling in love is the right adventure for those who dislike sports and travel. — Mason Cooley

Nadal's the best player in history on [clay], and he is one of the best-ever players that played this game. — Novak Djokovic

Many families amass more objects than their houses can hold. The result is garages given over to old furniture and unused sports equipment, home offices cluttered with boxes of stuff that haven't yet been taken to the garage. Three out of four Americans report their garages are too full to put a car into them. Women's cortisol levels (the stress hormone) spike when confronted with such clutter (men's, not so much). Elevated cortisol levels can lead to chronic cognitive impairment, fatigue, and suppression of the body's immune system. — Daniel J. Levitin

I love that men like to look at women, that they love sports, that they need to know the inner workings of mechanical objects. I love the whole makeup of men - that they never mature and are always just boys. — Krista Allen

As an actor, acting is like playing a sport. You do this thing that's intangible, and while it's happening, it's great. But then when it's done, there's really no tangible product. Someone else is capturing it and turning it into something tangible. — Chris Evans

When I grew up, all of our news, weather, and sports came from America. The people where I grew up rooted for American teams as opposed to Canadian teams. — Lori Lansens

Ski racing is probably the least guaranteed sport out there. It's really rare when the favorites win. — Ted Ligety

I am aware that many regard me as an anti-sports character person, but the truth is that the country's economy by then was in bad shape. Tanzania being among the highly indebted countries, I had to give sports the least prominence during my first term, while setting priorities in revitalising our economy. — Benjamin Mkapa

It is how you show up at the showdown that counts. — Homer H. Norton

Courageous people are not afraid to fail. So often in life and in sports, we're afraid to fail. Instead, we should attack things with excitement and enthusiasm and think about the positives as opposed to the negatives. — Matt Cullen

Gymnastics is not at all as popular as, for example, soccer. Gymnastics as a sport isn't promoted very well. — Henrietta Onodi

In sports, I refused to do any interviews that were just going to become human-interest stories. Don't turn me into a tragic heroine. — Aimee Mullins

I think racing in Mexico will prove to be a great move for our sport in the future. The reaction we received from the fans last year was outstanding. The fans were unbelievable, and I expect the same reaction this year. — Kevin Harvick