Quotes by 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.”

“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.”

“Exercise is done against ones wishes and maintained only because the alternative is worse”

“If you want to win anything- a race, yourself, your life- you have to go a little berserk”

“Anything that changes your values changes your behavior.”

“The minds first step to self-awareness must be through the body.”

“Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing.”

“If you dont do it, youll never know what would have happened if you had done it”

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

The minds first step to self-awareness must be through the body.

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.

I am a lonely figure when I run the roads. People wonder how far I have come, how far I have to go. They see me alone and friendless on a journey that has no visible beginning or end. I appear isolated and vulnerable, a homeless creature. It is all they can do to keep from stopping the car and asking if they can take me wherever Im going.I know this because I feel it myself. When I see the runner I have much the same thoughts. No matter how often I run the roads myself, I am struck by how solitary my fellow runner appears. The sight of a runner at dusk or in inclement weather makes me glad to be safe and warm in my car and headed for home. And at those times, I wonder how I can go out there myself, how I can leave the comfort and warmth and that feeling of intimacy and belonging, to do this distracted thing.But when finally I am there, I realise it is not comfort and warmth I am leaving, not intimacy and belonging I am giving up, but the loneliness that pursues me this day and every day. I know that the real loneliness, the real isolation, the real vulnerability, begins long before I put on my running shoes.

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.

The distance runner who accepts the past in the person he is, and sees the future as a promise rather than a threat, is completely and utterly in the present. He is absorbed in his encounter with the everyday world. He is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconsciou. He is repairing the rent, and healing the wound in the divided self. He has found a way to make the ordinary extraordinary; the commonplace, unique; the everyday, eternal.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.