Quotes & Sayings About Pushing Limits

I like to describe Himalayan climbing as a kind of art of suffering. Just pushing, pushing yourself to your limits. — Wojciech Kurtyka

I always pushed myself. Whenever I felt I needed to stop, I made myself run faster. — Cecelia Ahern

There's a difference between when this happens in an artist's studio or on the tennis court versus inside the barrel of a fifty-foot wave. When you tap into that much force while pushing the absolute limits of human performance, that's more than just an imaginative breakthrough - that's bending reality to your will. — Steven Kotler

Many athletes are seeking new and novel ways of pushing their limits, and the challenge of running back-to-back races is certainly one way to test the boundaries. — Dean Karnazes

Life is not about discovering our talents; it is about pushing our talents to the limit and discovering our genius. — Robert Breault

I'm training two-and-a-half hours a day, pushing my body beyond its normal limits, putting on a lot of muscle mass and just making myself look like Superman, — Henry Cavill

Noah held my hair away from my face. — Katie McGarry

She wasn't a victim of fate, she was running her own risks, pushing beyond her own limits, experiencing things which, one day, in the silence of her heart, in the tedium of old age, she would remember almost with nostalgia - however absurd that might seem. — Paulo Coelho

Luke used to give me butterflies. Noah spawned mutant pterodactyls. — Katie McGarry

...but now, though, because I have still not gotten there, I feel as if distance- as if distance itself-has developed a density, a viscosity, and that I am pushing against it, that I am fighting distance's density; so I press the pedal, and the car surges, and I attempt to push to the terminus of distance, and when this does not happen and I am still not there I feel as if the tenacity of time will smother me- that I will be smothered by the atrocity of distance, by the painful failure of simultaneity; and I struggle to keep the gas pedal within civilized limits, and I go astride cars and around cars, and I am doused in the unthought thought: Please let me get to him quickly; — Evan Dara

Sandwiched between their "once upon a time" and "happily ever after," they all had to experience great adversity. Why must all experience sadness and tragedy? Why could we not simply live in bliss and peace, each day filled with wonder, joy, and love?
The scriptures tell us there must be opposition in all things, for without it we could not discern the sweet from the bitter. 2 Would the marathon runner feel the triumph of finishing the race had she not felt the pain of the hours of pushing against her limits? Would the pianist feel the joy of mastering an intricate sonata without the painstaking hours of practice? — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

The pure menace radiating from my younger sister is undeniable. She can hate me, but I need her to know that she has something that Stella never did: a place to fall. "And if he hurts you or if anyone hurts you...you have me."
It feels unnatural, but I hug my sister. Her arms are limp at her sides, but she doesn't push me away.
"Remember, you have me," I repeat. — Katie McGarry

I want to keep pushing the limits to see what's possible. That's the nice thing about ski racing - no one is stopping you from going faster. — Lindsey Vonn

One of the ironies of college is that the impossibility of reading your way out of the modern predicament is something you learn about, as a student, by reading. Part of the value of a humanistic education has to do with a consciousness of, and a familiarity with, the limits that you'll spend the rest of your life talking about and pushing against. — Joshua Rothman

Well, jobs are a great thing. You have to be a bit careful: If you raise the minimum wage, you're encouraging labor substitution and you're going to go buy machines and automate things - or cause jobs to appear outside of that jurisdiction. And so within certain limits, you know, it does cause job destruction. If you really start pushing it, then you're just making a huge trade-off. — Bill Gates

Have you thought of doing it? Being a cattle farmer? If that's what it's called? I think we should do that, but replace cattle with bunnies and then we don't milk or eat the bunnies. We just let them multiply. Then we'll take over the world. Me the queen. You the king. Our bunnies the army nobody can defeat. — Katie McGarry

Failure isn't something to be embarassed about; it's just proof that you're pushing your limits, trying new things, daring to innovate. — Gavin Newsom

Noah drew me closer to him. "It's okay. I've got you. — Katie McGarry

Always to be pushing out like this, beyond what I know cannot be the limits - what else should a man's life be? — David Malouf

I try as much as possible to keep pushing myself beyond my limits, those set by myself, and those by others, to see how much lies within. He said nothing is impossible and I truly believe Him.
Once in while I go beyond . . .
More often than not, I get pretty burned and decline to tend to my sores in solitude, whilst trying the best I can to find out why I burned so bad.
Other times, I surprise myself at the power within has been lying dormant probably out of ignorance or out of fear.
Either ways, I learn . . .
And probably that is the most significant thing to be gleaned out of every experience. — Ufuoma Apoki

I love doing action movies, I love pushing myself to the limit. — Kellan Lutz

Noah held my hand and my bag as he escorted me to the third floor - the Women's Pavilion. The elevator bell rang and the doors opened.
"Jesus, Echo, circulation in my hand would be a good thing," said Noah.
"Sorry." I tried to let go, but Noah kept his fingers linked with mine. — Katie McGarry

I'd say Harvard graduates leave here with a sense of the possible and the limit - and a sense that there are no limits to what humans can do and that you can always be pushing, whatever limit you think might be there. — Drew Gilpin Faust

Like all schools, we are always interested in learning, in research, in pushing the limits of knowledge. But we must balance that with our duty to protect the world, even from ourselves. — Holly Black

The whole system is under tremendous strain. Although the increasing pace of change is essential for developing new solutions, it is also pushing society to its limits. In global structures, it all comes to a head in the form of sudden crises. This leads to tipping point situations in which the seemingly impossible becomes possible. — Franz Josef Radermacher

If you're unwilling to leave someplace you've outgrown, you will never reach your full potential. To be the best, you have to constantly be challenging yourself, raising the bar, pushing the limits of what you can do. Don't stand still, leap forward. — Ronda Rousey

It is clear we exist in an abundant living Universe that knows no restriction - only the impulse to eternally expand with no limits or boundaries, perpetually becoming more of what it is and can ever be - star-stuff . . . Life, pushing out by creating light and matter from within itself, shaping and giving form to itself, exquisitely clothing itself in an infinite and unique number of ways. — Dennis Merritt Jones

Not sure how I felt about Antonio and Echo, I linked my fingers with hers. Antonio cocked a surprised eyebrow. Damn straight, bro. I just marked my territory. — Katie McGarry

Sports always works for us more allegorically or metaphorically and that's what's fantastic about why we love them. You demonstrate the limits to which a human being can go and they keep pushing the boundaries of that. — Ron Howard

It takes true strength of character to redefine your limits by pushing past them. — Katherine Reutter

It's about personal development. It's about creating your own character and pushing it to the limit. It's about pushing yourself so far out of your own and everybody else's idea of who you are and what you're capable of, that you no longer believe in limits. It's about reaching beyond your so-called potential, because your potential is never where you or anyone else expects it to be, not even close. It's about being able to say with the last breath of your life I used all my potential and all my talents and pushed myself to the limit. I could not have fought any harder. — Charlotte Eriksson

Beau's gaze made my cheeks flush. A pleased grin touched his lips and I suddenly wanted to know how those lips would feel pressed against mine. I couldn't take my eyes off them. Even when his smile vanished I continued staring at his mouth.
"You're gonna have to stop doing that Ash," Beau whispered huskily and closed the space between us. His body was suddenly pressed against mine. I managed to shake my fascination with his lips and gaze up into his eyes. He was staring down at me with a hungry gleam I wasn't accustomed to seeing. But I liked it. I liked it a lot.
"Ash, I'm trying real hard to be good. Good isn't my thing but Sawyers important to me. Please remember I've got limits and you studying my mouth like you want a taste is pushing me dangerously close to the edge of those limits. — Abbi Glines

We're pushing the limits of what a game is, and they think I'm beyond this limit. There will always be purists, but we've never got that push-back from businesses or consumers. Game dynamics are too powerful to leave bottled up in games. — Seth Priebatsch

So, Noah, Echo's the coat girl." I had a nickname? Noah chuckled. "Yeah." "Echo, is your father aware of this relationship?" "Would you believe me if I told you I didn't know about it?" Her eyes laughed. "Yes. — Katie McGarry

I remember Bob saying, 'Some people who believe in God are good, and some people who believe in God are not good. So where does that leave you?' He had looked around and decided that religion is responsible for a lot of trouble in the world.' Noyce, always pushing against the limits of accepted knowledge, told Bowers that what bothered him most about organized religions was that 'people don't think in churches. — Leslie Berlin

If you don't keep pushing the limits, you wake up one day and you're the "center square to block." — Robin Williams

Pushing through fear was what eventually set you free. — Martina Boone

A Thoroughbred racehorse is one of God's most impressive engines. Tipping the scales at up to 1,450 pounds, he can sustain speeds of forty miles per hour. Equipped with reflexes much faster than those of the most quick-wired man, he swoops over as much as twenty-eight feet of earth in a single stride, and corners on a dime. His body is a paradox of mass and lightness, crafted to slip through air with the ease of an arrow. His mind is impressed with a single command: run. He pursues speed with superlative courage, pushing beyond defeat, beyond exhaustion, sometimes beyond the structural limits of bone and sinew. In flight, he is nature's ultimate wedding of form and purpose. — Laura Hillenbrand

Come here, baby." And with my words, Echo leaned into me soft, pliant, broken. "You're not alone," I whispered into her hair as I cradled her in my arms. "You're not alone, because you have me." And I love you, more than you could ever know — Katie McGarry

Although yoga is supposedly noncompetitive, I can't help that my Alpha nature requires that I go for the hardest variation of every pose, always pushing my limits as far as possible. — Edward Vilga

When I was a child, the lessons my father taught me had been about perseverance, never to accept limitations that stood in my way. As an adult, watching him in his final years, I also saw how to come to terms with limits that couldn't simply be wished away. When to shift from pushing against limits to making the best of them is not often readily apparent. But it is clear that are times when the cost of pushing exceeds its value. Helping my father through the struggle to define that moment was simultaneously among the most painful and most privileged experiences of my life. Part of the way my father handled the limits he faced was by looking at them without illusion. Though his circumstances sometimes got him down, he never pretended they were better than they were. He always understood that life is short and one's place in the world is small. But he also saw himself as a link in a chain of history. — Atul Gawande

Not enough people realize the satisfaction you can get from really pushing yourself to the limits. — Richard Branson

The worst kind of crying wasn't the kind everyone could see- the wailing on street corners, the tearing at clothes. No, the worst kind happened when your soul wept and no matter what you did, there was no way to comfort it. — Katie McGarry

You know a lot about math," I said. You know a lot about math? What type of statement was that? Right along the lines of "Hey, you have hair and it's red and curly." Real smooth. — Katie McGarry

I want to keep pushing the limits for drummers and expressing myself. — Travis Barker

If you're playing within your capability, what's the point? If you're not pushing your own technique to its own limits with the risk that it might just crumble at any moment, then you're not really doing your job. — Nigel Kennedy

Wait." I began to pull off his jacket. "You forgot this."
"Keep it," he said without looking back. "I'll get it from you on Monday. When we discuss tutoring."
And Noah Hutchins - girl-using stoner boy and jacket-loaning savior - faded into the shadows. — Katie McGarry

The overall climate meant that young artists pushing the limits of their craft were locked out of the establishment. — Paul Brody

Some people flinch when you talk about art in the context of the needs of society thinking you are introducing something far too common for a discussion of art. Why should art have a purpose and a use? Art shouldn't be concerned with purpose and reason and need, they say. These are improper. But from the very beginning, it seems to me, stories have indeed been meant to be enjoyed, to appeal to that part of us which enjoys good form and good shape and good sound. — Chinua Achebe

Guilt nagged at me. She didn't technically ask me a question, so in theory, I didn't owe her a response, but the need to please her swept over me like a tidal wave. But why? She was another therapist in the revolving door. They all asked the same questions and promised help, but each of them left me in the same condition they found me
broken. — Katie McGarry

I love you enough to never make you choose. — Katie McGarry

The only way you find what your limits are is by pushing them. — Terri Irwin

I'd always had an interest of pushing my limits and was intrigued by endurance. — Jennifer Pharr Davis

Lance Armstrong pushes the envelope in terms of the human experience. You can have a personal best, you can push your own envelope. For Lance, the person pushing him is him. The only person he's competing with, I think, is himself. To push that limit to the next step. There's a lot to learn from him. Lots. — Robin Williams

One finds limits by pushing them. — Herbert Simon

But life is too short not to make a fool out of yourself from time to time. And sometimes you need to make an ass out of yourself, just to see what you are capable of doing next. Life isn't just about pushing your limits and seeing what you're made of in the face of adversity. Sometimes it's about getting embarrassed and feeling humiliated and seeing where you can go from there. — Abby Rosmarin

As professional soccer players, we take our bodies to the extreme. We're the people at the gym that look like we're breaking the machines. Pushing our bodies to the limits is what makes us so strong and capable and Olympians. It's not an easy thing to consistently do over and over again to your body. — Abby Wambach

There is something that you can do, for a greater good, for a greater cause, one that is far bigger than just yourself. Find it, and then, do it. — Kevin Abdulrahman

If the writer believes that our life is and will remain essentially mysterious, if he looks upon us as beings existing in a created order to whose laws we freely respond, then what he sees on the surface will be of interest to him only as he can go through it into an experience of mystery itself. His kind of fiction will always be pushing its own limits outward toward the limits of mystery, because for this kind of writer, the meaning of a story does not begin except at a depth where adequate motivation and adequate psychology and the various determinations have been exhausted. Such a writer will be interested in what we don't understand rather than in what we do. He will be interested in possibility rather than probability. He will be interested in characters who are forced out to meet evil and grace and who act on a trust beyond themselves - whether they know clearly what it is they act upon or not. — Flannery O'Connor

I'M BUYING YOU A COAT."
And I meant it. I opened the car door and slung my leather jacket around her shoulders.
"It's February. Why don't you ever have a damn jacket on?" Echo slid her arms through my coat, closing her eyes as she inhaled. When she finaly opened them, she fluttered her eyelashes, giving me a look of pure seduction. "Maybe I like wearing yours instead."
I swalowed. I had plans, and those plans did not involve kissing her against my car. Dammit, she was going to kill me.
"Congratulations, it's yours. — Katie McGarry

I must have killed a lot of cows in a past life for Karma to hate me this much. — Katie McGarry

Now I've been criticized for advocating that people push their boundaries because sometimes people get caught. Sometimes people get fired. Sometimes people lose their jobs because of pushing the boundaries too far, but it's an interesting experience. They found they didn't want to stay within those limitations that they were pushing. Once people find they can survive outside the limits, they're much happier. They don't want to feel trapped. So I think we can urge people to push the boundaries as far as they can, and if they get in trouble, fine; that's not too bad if that's what they want to do. — Myles Horton

I'm not sure if I'm most happy when I'm comfortable and content or when I'm pushing myself to the limits. There are such different versions of happy, and I really appreciate both. — Kristen Stewart

In the end all that matters is climbing and pushing your personal limits. No matter the grade, if you climb something that was hard for you, then that's sick. — Jimmy Webb

(Decadent style) is ingenious, complicated, learned, full of shades of meaning and research, always pushing further the limits of language ... forcing itself to express in thought that which is most ineffable, and in form the vaguest and most fleeting contours; listening that it may translate them to the subtle confidences of the neuropath, to the avowals of aging and depraved passion, and to the singular hallucinations of the fixed idea verging on madness ... In opposition to the classic style, it admits of shading, and these shadows teem and swarm with the larvae of superstitions, the haggard phantoms of insomnia, nocturnal terrors, remorse which starts and turns back at the slightest noise, monstrous dreams stayed only by impotence, obscure phantasies at which daylight would stand amazed, and all that the soul conceals of the dark, the unformed, and the vaguely horrible, in its deepest and furthest recesses. — Theophile Gautier

Noah?
A welcome voice - not my mother's, but welcome all the same: Echo. A smile spread across my face. This was too good. Me in a towel, alone in the house with my nymph. I left the bathroom. — Katie McGarry

There is always room in your life for thinking bigger, pushing limits and imagining the impossible. — Tony Robbins

Closing his eyes, he held her tightly and sifted place in a general southerly direction, pushing to the farthest limits his diminished power could carry him. The moment he rematerialized, he instantly sifted again, arms locked around her.
Railroad track. Sift. Grocery store. Keep moving. Roof of a house. Sift. Cornfield. Sift. Cornfield. Sift. Cornfield. Sift. Cornfield. Bloody Midwest. Sift. — Karen Marie Moning

I found myself surrounded by people
starting with my mom, grandparents, uncles, and aunts, and leading to a string of wonderful role models and mentors
who kept pushing me to see more than what was directly in front of me, to see the boundless possibilities of the wider world and the unexplored possibilities within myself. People who taught me that no accident of birth
not being black or relatively poor, being from Baltimore or the Bronx or fatherless
would ever define or limit me. — Wes Moore

When you push yourself beyond limits, you discover inner reserves, which you never thought existed earlier. — Manoj Arora

I don't think anyone's pushing for spending limits in the campaign. — Craig Benson

I have a real interest in pushing some of the limits of things that studios don't want to make. — George Clooney

Please, Noah, I don't want to do this wrong. Tell me how to make you feel good."
He shifted so that his body rested beside mine, his leg and arm still draped over me. I felt small under his warmth and strength.
His chocolate-brown eyes softened. "Being with you feels good. Touching you-" he tucked a curl behind my ear. "-feels good. I have never wanted anyone like I want you. There's nothing you can do wrong when just breathing makes everything right. — Katie McGarry

You don't want to just get by, you want to get ahead. You don't want to settle for mediocrity, you want to strive for greatness. You don't want to get lost in the crowd, you want to stand out and lead the charge. Pushing the limits of your potential isn't easy, but it will be worth it. — Michael J. Schiemer

Hearsay, even from the people I love, doesn't equate to gospel truth. — Katie McGarry

Endurance running was my passion , my ride. So here, I was in the driver's seat, running for two days straight pushing the mental and physical limits striving to be better, to go farther, to give more. — Dean Karnazes

I've got you. I swear to God, I've got you," said Noah. "Stay with me, Echo."
I wanted to. I wanted to stay with him, but the shouting and screams and glass breaking in my mind grew louder. "Make it stop."
He tightened his grip on my arms. "Fight, Echo! You've got to fucking fight. Come on, baby. You're safe. — Katie McGarry

So, really," continued Jacob as if this were perfectly normal to expound on art in these circumstances, "when you think about it, the artists who make people stop and think, who push the form, who make you uncomfortable, who are laughable, well, they're the ones who get remembered." Idly, Jacob dug a hole in the snow with his shovel and then another one next to it. "So why wouldn't you want to join the ranks of the ridiculed? — Justina Chen

In the early 1930s, flying from England to Australia was the longest flight in the world. It was considered extremely dangerous and hazardous, pushing pilots to the limits of mechanical skills and human endurance. Aviation was young. — Mary Garden

There is nothing better than having a personal-best day, being in shape and pushing myself beyond my own limits. — Dan O'Brien

I love inventing interesting people and then pushing them to their absolute limits - and usually those absolute limits involve homicidal faeries, werewolves, or some other paranormal menace. — Maggie Stiefvater

I wrote about the person I love most, my older brother, Noah. We don't live together so I wrote what I imagine he does when we're not together."
"And what is that?" prodded the stout man.
"He's a superhero who saves people in danger, because he saved me and my brother from dying in a fire a couple of years ago. Noah is better than Batman." The crowd chuckled.
"I love you, too, lil'bro. — Katie McGarry

Echo already felt like a heavy drug. The kind I avoided on purpose - crack, heroin, meth. The ones that screwed with your mind, crept into your blood and left you powerless, helpless. — Katie McGarry

I am thrilled to be alive at time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding. Even better, we may eventually discover that there are no limits. — Richard Dawkins

I bet he fucks like he drives - a little reckless, pushing all the limits, and in it until the very last lap. — K. Bromberg

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It's the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them. — Brian Eno

Pushing the limits, to be thought provoking, pushing people to think and question the limits, it's not always bad for the rules if you're confident because it can even strengthen your understanding of religion in the process. — Tariq Ramadan

I'm in a position where, theoretically, I could play the same ten concertos and make a very good living bouncing around playing Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and Barber, but I really think artists should keep pushing limits and trying new things. — Joshua Bell

The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it -when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared. — Salman Rushdie

Pushing your limits is what allows you to grow stronger, so if you find yourself feeling passive, it can make sense to dial it up a little. Get moving. Accomplish something small. Do something you enjoy. Embrace what moves you. And start again. — Max McKeown

Echo placed the expertly folded blanket back on the couch and smoothed it several times, insisting on finding perfection in a world where none existed. — Katie McGarry