Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

George Sheehan

Physician and Author on Marathon Running

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

"Exercise is done against one's wishes and maintained only because the alternative is worse."

"Anything that changes your values changes your behavior. "

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

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

"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. "

"Life is the great experiment. Each of us is an experiment of one-observer and subject-making choices, living with them, recording the effects."

"Everyone is an athlete. The only difference is that some of us are in training, and some are not."

"Play is where life lives."

"Fitness has to be fun. If it is not play, there will be no fitness. Play, you see, is the process. Fitness is merely the product."

"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."

"Fitness is a stage you pass through on the way to becoming a racer."

"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."

"Have you ever felt worse after a run?"

"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."

"Like most runners, I always want to do better. I am constantly after myself for eating too much and training too little. I know if I weighed a few pounds less and trained a few hours more, my times would improve. But I find the rewards not quite worth the effort...I am forced, therefore to do the best with what I've got. I must get my speed and distance from the most efficient use of my body."

"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."

"Listen to your body. Do not be a blind and deaf tenant."

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

"I have met my hero, and he is me."

"Of all the races, there is no better stage for heroism than a marathon."

"Once you have decided that winning isn't everything, you become a winner."

"Sweat cleanses from the inside. It comes from places a shower will never reach."

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

"Success rests with having the courage and endurance and above all the will to become the person you are, however peculiar that may be. Then you will be able to say, “I have found my hero and he is me.”"

"Out on the roads there is fitness and self-discovery and the persons we were destined to be."

"The answer to the big questions in running is the same as the answer to the big questions in life: do the best with what you've got."

"The difference between a jogger and a runner is an entry blank."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"There will never be a day when we won't need dedication, discipline, energy, and the feeling that we can change things for the better."

"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."

"We who run (marathons) are different from those who merely study us. We are out there experiencing what they are trying to put into words. We know what they are merely trying to know. They are seeking belief, while we already believe. Our difficulty is in expressing the whole truth of that experience, that knowledge, that belief."

"To know you are one with what you are doing, to know that you are a complete athlete, begins with believing you are a runner."

"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."

"There is a healthy way to be ill."

"Why race? The need to be tested, perhaps; the need to take risks; and the chance to be number one."