A competitive athlete is painful to look at; trying hard to become an animal rather than a man, he will never be as fast as a cheetah or as strong as an ox.
Eight hours daily labor is enough for any human being
This is one of the earliest calls for the 8 hour work day.
I understand my limits. I'm not going to go out there just to fight for money and to put on a show for people at the risk of my own health. I won't do that.
If 'bounded by a surface' is the definition of body there cannot be an infinite body either intelligible or sensible.
What counts in the ring is what you can do after you're exhausted. The same is true of life.
Being able to jump off a swing is actually a useful and meaningful thing for a child to do... those are the tests that help us understand the limits of our body. That's a positive learning experience that we deny children on a regular basis.
I can play until I'm 40. But I won't.
One set at extreme intensity does the muscle-building job. It must be stressed that the one final, all-out set I do takes me to the very limit of my capabilities. If you feel you can attempt a second set, then you couldn’t have been pulling out all the stops during the first set. It's not pretty, but it works.
From the vertigo, I found out how far I can push myself physically and also mentally.
In my 20s, I could just power through stuff and be fine, but now, in your 40s? It's kind of like Kobe Bryant. He plays basketball a little bit differently than he did when he first started out.
I am a Division I All-American wrestler, but I wrestled college wrestling matches, seven minutes long. If I was to go in there and wrestle for seven minutes of a fight, a 25-minute fight, you're not getting nothing out of me for the rest of the time.
I think an Olympic medal is the only thing missing from what I can physically achieve as a cyclist. I can't win the Tour de France, but I've pretty much won everything else that I can within my physical realm, so that's the only thing missing.
I don't even know if you can blink in a hundredth of a second, and that's what it comes down to in speed skating.
The days of exploration of Shackleton and Scott are long gone. Everything has been climbed, crossed, done. Now what we're exploring are the full boundaries of human endeavour. It's not physical - it's all in the head.
Marathon running, for me, was the most controlled test of mettle that I could ever think of. It's you against Darwin.
You've got to respect your body and know the time to transition to what's next. A lot of athletes cannot transition. They don't have nothing to do after.
My body knows my limits.
Right now I feel like playing as long as I can, As long as my body will allow me to play I'm going to continue to play.
Pain warns us not to exert our limbs to the point of breaking them. How much knowledge would we not need to recognize this by the exercise of mere reason.
I can't play football forever.
I'm sure I frustrate the trainers - in fact, I know I frustrate the trainers to no end. But I think there's a very fine line. I listen to their advice. I take their medical expertise very seriously. But then I also, the reason I am where I am, the reason I play the way I play, is because I push beyond normal.
I am a marathon runner. I ran the New York City marathon and almost died. I tried to run, like, a two-minute mile early on in the race. I was crazy enough to think I could win. After seven miles I thought I would die, but I slowed down my pace and kept going.
Once upon a time, I could sing three hours. Now, when you see me say 'I'm done,' I'm done; ain't nothing left till the next night.
Our lives are bound by physical limits, familial ties, political conditions, and geographical restrictions. Individual freedom takes us beyond them all.
I want to see how far I can train. I have to see how far my body will go.