Arthur Ashe Quotes

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.

From what we get, we can make a living. What we give; however, makes a life.

I had learned one of the bitter lessons of life: never try to regain the past, the fire will have become ashes.

Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.

You’ve got to get to the stage in life where going for it is more important than winning or losing.

One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.

Success is a journey not a destination. The doing is usually more important than the outcome. Not everyone can be Number 1.

If I were to say, "God, why me?" about the bad things, then I should have said, "God, why me?" about the good things that happened in my life.

The best way to judge a life is to ask yourself, "Did I make the best use of the time I had?

Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you’re behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory.

Conditioned to ecstasy, the poet is like a gorgeous unknown bird mired in the ashes of thought. If he succeeds in freeing himself, it is to make a sacrificial flight to the sun. His dreams of a regenerate world are but the reverberations of his own fevered pulse beats. He imagines the world will follow him, but in the blue he finds himself alone. Alone but surrounded by his creations; sustained, therefore, to meet the supreme sacrifice. The impossible has been achieved; the duologue of author with Author is consummated. And now forever through the ages the song expands, warming all hearts, penetrating all minds. At the periphery the world is dying away; at the center it glows like a live coal. In the great solar heart of the universe the golden birds are gathered in unison. There it is forever dawn, forever peace, harmony and communion. Man does not look to the sun in vain; he demands light and warmth not for the corpse which he will one day discard but for his inner being. His greatest desire is to burn with ecstasy, to commerge his little flame with the central fire of the universe. If he accords the angels wings so that they may come to him with messages of peace, harmony and radiance from worlds beyond, it is only to nourish his own dreams of flight, to sustain his own belief that he will one day reach beyond himself, and on wings of gold. One creation matches another; in essence they are all alike. The brotherhood of man consists not in thinking alike, nor in acting alike, but in aspiring to praise creation. The song of creation springs from the ruins of earthly endeavor. The outer man dies away in order to reveal the golden bird which is winging its way toward divinity.

Wherever I am when you feel sick at heart and weary of life, or when you stumble and fall and don’t know if you can get up again, think of me. I will be watching and smiling and cheering on.

Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can.

The ideal attitude is to be physically loose and mentally tight.

Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory.

Time goes forward because energy itself is always moving from an available to an unavailable state. Our consciousness is continually recording the entropy change in the world around us. We watch our friends get old and die. We sit next to a fire and watch it's red-hot embers turn slowly into cold white ashes. We experience the world always changing around us, and that experience is the unfolding of the second law. It is the irreversible process of dissipation of energy in the world. What does it mean to say, 'The world is running out of time'? Simply this: we experience the passage of time by the succession of one event after another. And every time an event occurs anywhere in this world energy is expended and the overall entropy is increased. To say the world is running out of time then, to say the world is running out of usable energy. In the words of Sir Arthur Eddington, 'Entropy is time's arrow'.

When I said these words, all the heat in my body seemed to rise to my face. I felt I might float up into the air, just like a piece of ash from a fire.

You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that.

We blacks look for leadership in men and women of such youth and inexperience, as well as poverty of education and character, that it is no wonder that we sometimes seem rudderless.... We see basketball players and pop singers as possible role models, when nothing could be further, in most cases, from their capacities.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. —ARTHUR ASHE

Hi Mom. I just wanted to let you know I’m okay. I don’t know if you watch the news but it looks like I inherited like a billion dollars in drug money or something. Can you find a lawyer? Just tell him I’m in danger of getting murdered or going to jail for having a bunch of heroin warehouses and mafia money that I didn’t even ask for, so whatever he can do to fix that would be great—SHUT UP! Sorry, I wasn’t talking to you, Arthur’s robot toilet is hassling me. Oh also my bodyguard shot a guy last night, hope that’s okay. He had super powers, they all do. I don’t know what’s up with that. Anyway, call me.” Well, that should set her mind at ease.

BIFF: I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them! I’m one dollar an hour, Willy! I tried seven states and couldn’t raise it. A buck an hour! Do you gather my meaning? I’m not bringing home any prizes any more, and you’re going to stop waiting for me to bring them home!

Therefore, he sat before his dying fire, sorrowful to think upon the way by which he had come to that night, yet not strewing poison on the way by which other men had come to it. That he should have missed so much, and at his time of life should look so far about him for any staff to bear him company upon his downward journey and cheer it, was a just regret. He looked at the fire from which the blaze departed, from which the afterglow subsided, in which the ashes turned grey, from which they dropped to dust, and thought, 'How soon I too shall pass through such changes, and be gone!' To review his life was like descending a green tree in fruit and flower, and seeing all the branches wither and drop off, one by one, as he came down towards them. 'From the unhappy suppression of my youngest days, through the rigid and unloving home that followed them, through my departure, my long exile, my return, my mother's welcome, my intercourse with her since, down to the afternoon of this day with poor Flora,' said Arthur Clennam, 'what have I found!' His door was softly opened, and these spoken words startled him, and came as if they were an answer: 'Little Dorrit.

Believe me, most people resist change, even when it promises to be for the better. But change will come, and if you acknowledge this simple but indisputable fact of life, and understand that you must adjust to all change, then you will have a head start.

In front of the house was a huge old ash-tree. The west wind, sweeping from Derbyshire, caught the houses with full force, and the tree shrieked again. Morel liked it. "It's music," he said. "It sends me to sleep." But Paul and Arthur and Annie hated it. To Paul, it became an almost demonical noise.

Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

It struck me that we-that moth and I-were two opposite extremes. My existence was as unstable as a stream, changing in every way; but the moth was like a piece of stone, changing not at all. While thinking this thought, I reached out a finger to feel the moth’s velvety surface; but when I brushed it with my fingertip, it turned all at once into a pile of ash without even a sound, without even a moment in which I could see it crumbling. I was so astonished I let out a cry. The swirling in my mind stopped; I felt as if I had stepped into the eye of a storm. I let the tiny shroud and its pile of ashes flutter to the ground; and now I understood the thing that had puzzled me all morning. The stale air had washed away. The past was gone.

It was an interminable labor, and he had always known it to be as hopeless as alchemy. The gold, the great and glowing masterpiece, would never shine amongst the dead ashes and smoking efforts of the crucible, but in the course of the life, in the interval between the failures, he might possibly discover curious things.

There are many fair places in heaven, and over everything there a godlike watch is kept. A hall stands there, fair, under the ash by the well, and out of that hall come three maids.... [T]hese maids determine the period of men's lives: we call them Norns; but there are many norns: those who come to each child that is born, to appoint his life.”   Prose Edda, Gylfaginning, Snorri Sturlson, translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur  

In every direction upon these moors there were traces of some vanished race which had passed utterly away, and left as its sole record strange monuments of stone, irregular mounds which contained the burned ashes of the dead, and curious earthworks which hinted at prehistoric strife. The glamour and mystery of the place, with its sinister atmosphere of forgotten nations, appealed to the imagination of my friend, and he spent much of his time in long walks and solitary meditations upon the moor. The

inscription, which reads in part, HINC CINERES TANTI HOMINIS RESURRECTIONEM MORTUORUM EXPECTANT RIP. Arthur heard Claire reading the dedication aloud then translating, “From the ashes of so great a man look for the resurrection of the dead. Rest in peace.

Thank you.” I hated feeling indebted to him, but I took great comfort in the hams and bacon slabs soaking in the curing syrup. He shrugged. “Nothing one neighbor wouldn’t do for another.” “I think you are more neighborly than most.” He poked a stick into the cooling ash. “It isn’t hard to want to help you.” I sucked in the smoky night air, its cold stinging my nose and chest. Though that night with Arthur on the front steps of the schoolhouse in Downington hadn’t been cold, suddenly it seemed too similar to this one. All alone. In the dark. Words that could mean so many different things. “Thank you,” I said. His shoulder raised and lowered as he stared into the distance. I wondered what his life was like, a single man in this small town. No family to speak of. Prater’s Junction didn’t seem to have many girls of an age for him to be interested in. So why didn’t he go elsewhere? Nothing held him here that I could see. He threw the stick on top of the fire pit. “I did it.” I pulled my coat closer around me. “Did what?” “Asked to be considered for a Texas Ranger.” I shoved my hands into the pockets of my coat. “Congratulations. I hope they accept you.” He stepped closer, so close that I could see every inch of his face, in spite of the cloak of night. “I’d never have dared, but for you.” With a hard swallow, I stepped away. Away from the reach of his arms, his lips. I had no intention of falling for a man I didn’t really know. Not again. Besides, though the sheriff had endearing qualities, my heart didn’t leap at his nearness. “Rebekah?” Ollie’s voice, from the house. Sheriff Jeffries touched his hat, stepped back, and nodded. “See you at church on Sunday, Rebekah.

Mi hanno chiesto spesso com'è questa vita da tennista, e non ho trovato mai la parola giusta per descriverla. Ma adesso mi sta venendo in mente. È, soprattutto, uno straziante, eccitante, orribile, sorprendente vortice. Esercita perfino una leggera forza centrifuga, che combatto da trent'anni. Adesso, sdraiato sul dorso sotto l'Arthur Ashe Stadium, tenendo per mano un avversario sconfitto e in attesa che qualcuno venga ad aiutarci, faccio l'unica cosa possibile. Smetto di opperre resistenza. Chiudo gli occhi e rimango a guardare.

«El verdadero heroísmo es notablemente sobrio, muy poco dramático. No es la urgencia de sobrepasar a los demás a cualquier costo, sino la urgencia de servir a los demás a cualquier costo». —ARTHUR ASHE

The label finally decided I needed media training after I did an interview with the CBS Early Show at the Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day, a concert that kicks off the U.S. Open every year in August. I have to admit that I did not know who Arthur Ashe was. Now I know he was one of the greatest tennis players in the world and the first African American man to win Wimbledon. When he came out as HIV positive in 1992, he created an impact that lasted long beyond his death a year later. But back then, I just showed up and sang where people told me to. 98 Degrees was going to perform, so I was excited to sing with Nick again. I barely knew who any of the tennis players were, even Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. During the interview before the concert, the tennis players and us singers stood off-stage, and we were each asked what it meant to be there to celebrate Arthur Ashe’s impact. “I’m just so proud to be here and to give back,” I said, and then turned to Andre Agassi. “This is such a great event you put on.” Andre’s eyes widened in a look of “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Everyone, including the news crew, realized I thought Andre was Arthur Ashe. The late Arthur Ashe.

by Luci Shaw To the Edge: for Madeleine L'Engle Be with her now. She faces the ocean of unknowing, losing the sense of what her life has been, and soon will be no longer as she knew it, as we knew it with her. Lagging behind, we cannot join her on this nameless shore. Knots in her bones, flesh flaccid, the skin like paper, pigment gathering like ashes driven by a random wind, a heart that may still sing, interiorly - we cannot know - have pulled her far ahead of us, our pioneer. As we embrace her, her inner eyes embrace the universe.. She recognizes heaven with its innumerable stars - but not our faces. Be with her now, as you have sometimes been - a flare that blazes, then dulls, leaving only a bright blur in the memory. Hold her in the mystery that no one can describe but Lazarus, though he was dumb and didn't speak of it. Fog has rolled in, erasing definition at the edge. Walking to meet it, she hopes soon to see where the shore ends. She listens as the ocean breathes in and out in waves. She hears no other sound.

I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them!

What do you think a soldier's job is, Derfel?" he asked me in that intimate manner that made you feel he was more interested in you than anyone else in the world. "To fight battles, Lord," I said. He shook his head. "To fight battles, Derfel," he corrected me, 'on behalf of people who can't fight for themselves. I learned that in Brittany. This miserable world is full of weak people, powerless people, hungry people, sad people, sick people, poor people, and it's the easiest thing in the world to despise the weak, especially if you're a soldier. If you're a warrior and you want a man's daughter, you just take her; you want his land, you just kill him; after all, you're a soldier and you have a spear and a sword, and he's just a poor weak man with a broken plough and a sick ox and what's to stop you?" He did not expect an answer to the question, but just paced on in silence. We had come to the western gateway and the split-log steps that climbed to the platform over the gate were whitening with a new frost. We climbed them side by side. "But the truth is, Derfel," Arthur said when we reached the high platform, 'that we are only soldiers because that weak man makes us soldiers. He grows the grain that feeds us, he tans the leather that protects us and he polls the ash trees that make our spear-shafts. We owe him our service.

Successful leaders are like icebergs. When you look at an iceberg, you see only about 10 percent of it, and the rest of it is hidden under the water. When you look at successful leaders, you see only a fraction of their lives. You see the part that looks really good, but there’s usually a lot that remains hidden that’s neither exciting nor glamorous. Tennis star Arthur Ashe said, “True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever the cost.” True leadership is the same.

From the ashes of the studio system, a “New Hollywood” emerged, beginning with the 1967 release of Bonnie and Clyde. Mixing violence, sex, and art, Arthur Penn’s $2.5 million film did more than signal a break with the Hollywood of Cary Grant, John Wayne, and Katharine Hepburn. It also brought in $50 million at the box office. And

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. Arthur Ashe

Listen up, worms. Your life of leisure is over. From now on you’re going to have to earn your keep. Ash is your new master. His every word is to be obeyed without question. If at any point you have a problem with Ash, your matter will be resolved by Ash himself. The gentleman to his side is Makyr. He is a master miner. Those of you who wish to pay off your debts quicker will have to show him that you’re worth something. His jobs pay best, but he won’t hire just anyone. And this is our local celebrity, Hugo the Ambidexter. He has garnered quite the reputation already, and I’m sure that some of you have heard about him. Mostly bad things, but I’m here to tell you not to believe the rumors. The truth is that he’s much worse than the rumors claim. Hugo’s job is to maintain order in the fort. Nothing happens here without his knowing and consent. Everyone got that?

Most important is the third question. When our grand purpose for living is more about serving others than ourselves, or when we focus what we do primarily to serve others, it matters less what we're chasing, or what we do to make a living. In the words of the former tennis great Arthur Ashe, “From what we get, we can make a living; from what we give, we can make a life.

Chapter Ten The Threads in My Hands THE YEAR 1993 did not start well. In fact, New Year’s Day found me ill at ease, hurting, coughing, and feverish, on an airplane bringing my family back a day early from Miami.

It was while here that I got my first lessons in baking bread in the ground. The method was this: A shallow hole was dug in the sand and a fire lighted in it and allowed to burn out, thoroughly heating the ground all around it. While the ground was being heated, bread was made of sour dough, put between two gold-pans, and allowed to rise. Then the hot ashes and dirt were scooped out of the hole and the gold pans put in and covered with ashes and hot sand. The bread was allowed to stay in about an hour: if left in too long it wouldn’t burn, but the crust would get thicker. The loaf came out a rich golden brown and very delicious. This of course was only done when conditions were favorable.

He would have withstood it, and everything would have passed quietly and well, they would have gotten by with a lot of sweat, but Arthur couldn't take it. Either he had not heard Redrick's shout, or he became scared out of his wits, or maybe, he had been baked more strongly than Redrick—anyway he lost control and ran off blindly, with a scream deep in his throat, following his instinct—backward. The very direction they couldn't take. Redrick barely managed to rise and grab his ankle with both hands. Arthur fell down with the full weight of his body, raising a cloud of ashes, squealed in an unnatural voice, kicked Redrick in the face with his other foot, and struggled wildly. Redrick, not thinking clearly any more through the pain, crawled on top of him, touching the leather jacket with his burned face, trying to press the boy into the ground, holding his long hair with both hands and desperately kicking his feet and knees at Arthur's legs and his rear end and at the dirt. He could barely hear the muffled moans coming from beneath him and his own hoarse shouts: "Lie there, you toad, lie still, or I'll kill you." Tons and tons of hot coals were pouring over him, and his clothing was in flames and the leather of his shoes and jacket was blistering and cracking, and Redrick, his head mashed into the gray ash, his chest trying to keep the damn boy's head down, could not stand it. He yelled his lungs out.

Split a young ash sapling a few feet down its trunk. At sunrise, pass the child through the cleft, three to nine times, against the sun. Then bind the tree and plaster the fissure with mud or clay. If the tree fares well, so will the child.

In the words of Arthur Ashe, “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

Lord,” W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, perhaps quoting someone, “make us not great but busy.

True heroism is not dramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.” —Arthur Ashe

I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am. —Arthur Rimbaud

Kita tidak bisa memilih angin, tapi kita bisa belajar mengatur layar.

Kita tidak bisa memilih angin, tapi kita bisa belajar mengatur layar.