“
The sun rises every day. What is to love? Lock the sun in a box. Force the sun to overcome adversity in order to rise. Then we will cheer! I will often admire beautiful sunrise, but I will never consider the sun a champion for having risen.
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Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
“
In the game of life;
Sometimes we win,
Sometimes we loss,
Either ways, we should always keep playing.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
“
We all fight for money, some for power, but most of all for love. But me, I fight to become a champion.
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Jonathan Anthony Burkett (Fighting To Become Champions)
“
After you have seasoned your gloves with the blood, sweat and tears of your opponents, all else is anticlimactic.
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Brian D'Ambrosio (Life in the Trenches)
“
While guidebooks might tell you that time collapsed here, another theory says that in Latin America, all of history coexists at once.
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Brin-Jonathan Butler (The Domino Diaries: My Decade Boxing with Olympic Champions and Chasing Hemingway's Ghost in the Last Days of Castro's Cuba)
“
He was some sort of boxing champion," she told me the night she took me out to celebrate my graduation. "He was always punching someone in the nose."
"Macho," I said.
"No," she said. "It was the clarity of expression that appealed to him.
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Melissa Bank (The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing)
“
Boxing is the most extreme metaphor of personal liability – you enter the ring alone and compete the same way.
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Brian D'Ambrosio (Life in the Trenches)
“
A heavyweight boxing champion who dodges all serious contenders to consistently fight marshmallows is derided and ridiculed—and rightly so. Christians who dodge all serious struggle and consciously seek to put themselves in whatever situations and relationships are easiest are doing the same thing—they are coasting, and eventually that coasting will define them and—even worse—shape them.
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Gary L. Thomas (Sacred Marriage: What If God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy?)
“
Cuban eyes often look close to tears. Tears never seem far away because both their pain and their joy are always so close to the surface.
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Brin-Jonathan Butler (The Domino Diaries: My Decade Boxing with Olympic Champions and Chasing Hemingway's Ghost in the Last Days of Castro's Cuba)
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The stupidest name for a sport is football. Why isn't it called tackleball? Real football is soccer. Soccer is the second-stupidest name for a sport, unless it was the name for female boxing. But female boxing is already called boxing, even though boxing should be the sport to see who can pack up stuff, like clothes, the fastest. Why isn't that a sport? If it was a sport, Ma would be a world-champion boxer.
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Jason Reynolds (As Brave As You)
“
I go to New York City, the Tournament of Champions, a significant milestone because it’s a clash of the top players in the world. Once more I square off against Chang, who’s developed a bad habit since we last met. Every time he beats someone, he points to the sky. He thanks God—credits God—for the win, which offends me. That God should take sides in a tennis match, that God should side against me, that God should be in Chang’s box, feels ludicrous and insulting. I beat Chang and savor every blasphemous stroke.
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Andre Agassi (Open)
“
Sur un même ring de boxe sont réunis Mike Tyson, le champion du monde en titre des poids lourds, et un chômeur bengali sous-alimenté.
Que disent les ayatollahs du dogme néolibéral ? Justice est assurée, puisque les gants de boxe des deux protagonistes sont de même facture, le temps du combat égal pour eux, l'espace de l'affrontement unique, et les règles du jeu constantes. Alors que le meilleur gagne !
L'arbitre impartial, c'est le marché.
L'absurdité du dogme néolibéral saute aux yeux. (p. 193)
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Jean Ziegler (Destruction massive : Géopolitique de la faim)
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The true hero is flawed. The true test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles - preferably of his own making - in order to triumph. A hero without a flaw is of no interest to an audience or to the universe, which, after all, is based on conflict and opposition, the irresistible force meeting the unmovable object. ... The sun rises every day. What is to love? Lock the sun in a box. Force the sun to overcome adversity in order to rise. Then we will cheer!
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Garth Stein
Brin-Jonathan Butler (The Domino Diaries: My Decade Boxing with Olympic Champions and Chasing Hemingway's Ghost in the Last Days of Castro's Cuba)
“
If you want to fight, then fight like this is your last and first fight and keep punching. And even if you're dying, if you have one last breath "PUNCH", then you should die.
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Abhysheq Shukla
“
Manny has swung with many men, but many men never seen Manny's blissful swing.
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Anthony Liccione
“
It was the sort of pub Alan liked, furnished with wall- to-wall forty-five-year-old gin-and-tonic drinkers. A notice on the wall behind the bar read: Please do not ask for credit, as a punch in the mouth often causes offence.
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Barry Graham (The Champion's New Clothes)
“
The jury was composed of eight blacks and four whites. Hoffa and his attorney, the legendary Edward Bennett Williams, struck only white jurors in the selection process. Hoffa had a black female lawyer flown in from California to sit at counsel table. He arranged for a newspaper, The Afro-American, to run an ad praising Hoffa as a champion of the “Negro race.” The ad featured a photo of Hoffa’s black-and-white legal team. Hoffa then had the newspaper delivered to the home of each black juror. Finally, Hoffa’s Chicago underworld buddy Red Dorfman had the legendary boxing champion Joe Louis flown in from his Detroit home. Jimmy Hoffa and Joe Louis hugged in front of the jury as if they were old friends. Joe Louis stayed and watched a couple of days of testimony. When Cye Cheasty testified, Edward Bennett Williams asked him if he had ever officially investigated the NAACP. Cheasty denied he had, but the seed was planted. Hoffa was acquitted. Edward
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Charles Brandt ("I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa)
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I can only surmise about what Liebling would make of today’s pugilistic dark ages. In his era, fighters fought rematches of close fights, even title fights, almost automatically. Ray Robinson and Jake LaMotta met six times, inconceivable for champions today. In the 1950s a quality pro thought himself underemployed if he had only eight or ten bouts a year, and the amateur scene was thriving. Nowadays pros who make a living from boxing are about as common as Yetis, and amateurs can’t get enough fights to learn the rudiments of the craft.
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A.J. Liebling (The Sweet Science)
“
Jobs and Kottke became serious vegetarians during their freshman year. “Steve got into it even more than I did,” said Kottke. “He was living off Roman Meal cereal.” They would go shopping at a farmers’ co-op, where Jobs would buy a box of cereal, which would last a week, and other bulk health food. “He would buy flats of dates and almonds and lots of carrots, and he got a Champion juicer and we’d make carrot juice and carrot salads. There is a story about Steve turning orange from eating so many carrots, and there is some truth to that.” Friends remember him having, at times, a sunset-like orange hue.
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Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
“
If [the heavyweights] become champions they begin to have inner lives like Hemingway or Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy or Faulkner, Joyce or Melville or Conrad or Lawrence or Proust…Dempsey was alone and Tunney could never explain himself and Sharkey could never believe himself nor Schmeling nor Braddock, and Carnera was sad and Baer an indecipherable clown; great heavyweights like Louis had the loneliness of the ages in their silence, and men like Marciano were mystified by a power which seemed to have been granted them. With the advent, however, of the great modern Black heavyweights, Patterson, Liston, then Clay and Frazier, perhaps the loneliness gave way to what it had been protecting itself against—a surrealistic situation unstable beyond belief. Being a Black heavyweight champion in the second half of the twentieth century (with Black revolutions opening all over the world) was now not unlike being Jack Johnson, Malcolm X and Frank Costello all in one…
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Joyce Carol Oates (On Boxing)
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ALI He was butterfly and bee. In the ring, he floated and stung. In 1967, Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay, refused to put on a uniform. “Got nothing against no Viet Cong,” he said. “Ain’t no Vietnamese ever called me nigger.” They called him a traitor. They sentenced him to a five-year jail term, and barred him from boxing. They stripped him of his title as champion of the world. The punishment became his trophy. By taking away his crown, they anointed him king. Years later, a few college students asked him to recite something. And for them he improvised the shortest poem in world literature: “Me, we.
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Eduardo Galeano (Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone)
“
The Metaphor That Stuck In 1996, the Summer Olympic Games were held in my home city of Atlanta. As I watched athletes from all over the world perform in their respective events, I remember wondering what motivated them to compete at the highest levels. On the surface, it seemed logical to assume that these world-class athletes were driven by all the positive rewards that would go to the champion—fame, admiration, and of course, the gold medal. After training for most of their lives, who wouldn’t want to experience “the thrill of victory”? But as I watched the games unfold, it became obvious that while some athletes were motivated by positive rewards, many others were trying to avoid “the agony of defeat.” Rather than think about all the accolades that would come from success, some athletes were motivated to run even faster, and jump even higher, because they were trying to avoid an undesirable outcome. Carl Lewis, arguably one of the greatest track and field athletes of all time, and nine-time Olympic gold medalist, was an excellent example of this. After his last event in Atlanta, when he won the gold medal on his final attempt in the long jump, the sportscaster asked, “Mr. Lewis, what were you thinking about just before you jumped?” As it turned out, Carl Lewis wasn’t thinking about medals, money, or having his picture on a box of Wheaties. Instead, he said his primary motivation was that his family was in the stadium and he didn’t want to disappoint them by losing his final Olympic event.
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Thomas Freese (Secrets of Question-Based Selling: How the Most Powerful Tool in Business Can Double Your Sales Results (Top Selling Books to Increase Profit, Money Books for Growth))
“
Anger provides the No. 1 difference between a fist-fight and a boxing bout. Anger is an unwelcome guest in any department of boxing. From the first time a chap draws on gloves as a beginner, he is taught to "keep his temper"-never to "lose his head." When a boxer gives way to anger, he becomes a "natural" fighter who tosses science into the bucket. When that occurs in the amateur or professional ring, the lost-head fighter leaves himself open and becomes an easy target for a sharpshooting opponent. Because an angry fighter usually is a helpless fighter in the ring, many prominent professionals-like Abe Attell and the late Kid McCoy- tried to taunt fiery opponents into losing their heads and "opening up." Anger rarely flares in a boxing match. Different, indeed, is the mental condition governing a fist-fight. In that brand of combat, anger invariably is the fuel propelling one or both contestants. And when an angry, berserk chap is whaling away in a fist-fight, he usually forgets all about rules-if he ever knew any.
That brings us to difference No. 2: THE REFEREE ENFORCES THE RULES IN A BOXING MATCH; BUT THERE ARE NO OFFICIALS AT A FIST-FIGHT. Since a fist-fight has no supervision, it can develop into a roughhouse affair in which anything goes. There's no one to prevent low blows, butting, kicking, eye-gouging, biting and strangling. When angry fighters fall into a clinch, there's no one to separate them. Wrestling often ensues. A fellow may be thrown to earth, floor, or pavement. He can be hammered when down, or even be "given the boots"- kicked in the faceunless some humane bystander interferes. And you can't count on bystanders. A third difference is this: A FIST-FIGHT IS NOT PRECEDED BY MATCHMAKING. In boxing, matches are made according to weights and comparative abilities. For example, if you're an amateur or professional lightweight boxer, you'll probably be paired off against a chap of approximately your poundage-one who weighs between 126 and 135 pounds. And you'll generally be matched with a fellow whose ability is rated about on a par with your own, to insure an interesting bout and to prevent injury to either. If you boast only nine professional fights, there's little danger of your being tossed in with a top-flighter or a champion.
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Jack Dempsey (Toledo arts: championship fighting and agressive defence (Martial arts))
“
Hong Kong Cha-Cha Champion of 1957. And just as he could pick up dance steps after being shown them only once, so he had an instant understanding of any martial art he encountered — whether Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Filipino — or Western techniques of fencing or boxing. In parallel with his acting career, Bruce Lee was also the catalyst for the hybridization of martial art styles — a unique approach to the subject that eventually led to the ‘mixed martial art’ and ‘ultimate fighting’ of today. Bruce’s intentions have often been misunderstood by some in the martial arts community, who believe he was accumulating every possible technique he could, so as to create a total armoury. But for Bruce, it was the shared principles behind all the various techniques that were far more important than acquiring a vast catalogue of moves. I do not fear the man who has practiced ten-thousand kicks once. But I fear the man who has practiced one kick ten-thousand times. In his view, a martial artist shouldn’t set out to compile an encyclopedia of styles any more than a musician should. After all, would the ultimate musician be one who learned every jazz lick he could, every blues lick, every classical piece, and pop tune — along with the folk music of Kazakhstan — which he then tried to cobble together into one unholy racket?
”
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Bruce Thomas (Bruce Lee: Beyond the Limits)
“
heal.” Paramedics rushed in to take him from the officers. So wrapped up was she in the moment that Rachel hadn’t even heard the ambulance approaching. “You have to let these people do their job,” the same officer said gently. “Stand back please.” Rachel turned her eyes towards the young man. “This is my fiancé,” she whispered. “He’s been missing for more than three days, and I thought he might be dead. Please, don’t send me away.” The female paramedic nodded at the officer, and he let her step close. She reached out and touched the arm that didn’t seem to be injured. “I’ve been praying and praying for you,” she whispered near his ear. “And Gott sent a host of angels to help me find you.” “You found me?” he asked, his eyes drinking her in. “How?” Before she could answer, the paramedic intervened. “We’re going to take him to the hospital. You can ride along in the back. Sir, if you’ll just lie down on the stretcher?” Isaac cooperated, but never let his eyes leave her face. “You look so different,” he managed to say through his split lip. “Yah,” she agreed, touching the hair that he’d never really seen except when wisps escaped her kapp. “You too.” Now he did laugh, but it was clear that it pained him. “Sorry! I wasn’t thinking.” “Nee, it’s okay. If I don’t laugh, I might cry, and what woman wants to see her beau cry?” “I don’t care,” she returned passionately, striding alongside the stretcher as he was wheeled toward the waiting ambulance. “I only care that you’re in one piece.” Just as they were getting into the vehicle, the same young officer approached her. “I’ll meet you at the hospital to take a statement, Miss…?” “Uh, Swartz, Rachel Swartz. But I don’t really know anything.” “Still, I’ll see you there.” The doors closed and Rachel looked up to see her three champions standing side by side at the top of the hill, waving at her. She prayed a blessing on them and hoped to see them soon. At the hospital, Isaac was taken into the emergency ward and Rachel was forced to wait outside. On the way over, Isaac had tried to tell her what he knew, but it didn’t make much sense. The
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Emma Cartwright (Amish Love and Faith Collection: Bumper Amish Romance - 24 Book Box Set)
“
A champion is someone who gets up when he can’t.”—Jack Dempsey.
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Lux Alani (Punch Happy: There's No Crying in Boxing)
“
It’s been difficult, what
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Freda Lightfoot (Champion Street Market Series Box Set 2 (Champion Street Market #4-6))
“
The first thing I do with a young fighter,” D’Amato said, “is explain fear. Most people don’t know much about fear. They think it’s a sign of being yellow. But fear is normal. It’s like fire. If you let it get out of control, it will destroy you and everything around you. If you can learn how to control it, you can make it work for you. Fear is just nature’s way of preparing you to fight.”7
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W.K. Stratton (Floyd Patterson: The Fighting Life of Boxing's Invisible Champion)
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People love their causes they champion; they love their divisions and neatly packaged boxes of identity; for without them, they would be forced to look within, find themselves, set aside pettiness and face reality (that's quite frightening to most). As a result, they are like a lost ship at sea, forced to submit to the waves of society.
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Dara Reidyr
“
what do African Americans get in return for our loyalty? Very little. Democrats do not champion black causes with the same passion that Republicans champion issues that are dear to white evangelical voters. In fact, some Democrats seem terrified to advance any agenda that would explicitly serve the African American community. When state legislatures pass bills that might suppress black votes, mainstream women’s organizations and environmental organizations should be grabbing their legal briefcases and sprinting past lawyers from the NAACP, trying to get into court to defend black access to the ballot box. After all, we are their indispensable voters, without whom
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Van Jones (Beyond the Messy Truth: How We Came Apart, How We Come Together)
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When I became Governor, the champion middleweight wrestler of America happened to be in Albany, and I got him to come round three or four afternoons a week….While President I used to box with some of the aides. —THEODORE ROOSEVELT, the only U.S. president who swam naked in the Potomac in winter, went blind in one eye from boxing in the White House, gave a speech immediately after taking a bullet in the chest, and nearly died mapping an uncharted river in the Amazon
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Christopher McDougall (Natural Born Heroes: Mastering the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance)
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Within a six-month period in 1935 and 1936, the Tigers, Red Wings, and Lions all captured titles as Detroit’s own Joe Louis reigned as boxing’s uncrowned champion. Detroit remains the only city to score the trifecta of a World Series, a Stanley Cup, and an NFL championship in one season.
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Tom Stanton (Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball, and the Secret Society that Shocked Depression-era Detroit)
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It is perhaps not commonly known that a Negro heavyweight championship title existed from 1902 to 1932 when many white champions (including John L. Sullivan, Jim Jeffries, Jack Dempsey) refused to fight blacks. (In 1925 Dempsey pointedly refused to meet Harry Willis - “The Black Menace” - in a fight urged upon him by many observers.) One wonders: who were the true world’s champions in those years? And of what value are historical records when they record so blatantly the prejudices of a dominant race?
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Joyce Carol Oates (On Boxing)
“
Not as your judge. As your champion.
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George R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire, 5-Book Boxed Set: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, A Dance with Dragons (Song of Ice & Fire 1-5))
“
Schumacher has no flaws. He has the best car, the best-financed team, the best tires, the most skill. Who can rejoice in his wins? The sun rises every day. What is to love? Lock the sun in a box. Force the sun to overcome adversity in order to rise. Then we will cheer! I will often admire a beautiful sunrise, but I will never consider the sun a champion for having risen.
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Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
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When the fighter decides he has the potential to be a great champion, he must understand that this alone isn’t actually enough for him to realise great success. The most important factor that will command results is action, not desire or belief alone. Being a champion means to be a leader and actively take control of your life. A champion isn’t someone who wants and wishes. The wants and wishes are simply the engines, which fuels the mileage of action for years until you get to the destination that was initially so far away. The problem for many fighters who do not realise their potential is that they lack this knowledge that there is a process to becoming a champion, and this process requires great enormous amounts of action.
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Reemus Boxing (The Cus D'Amato Mind: Learn The Simple Secrets That Took Boxers Like Mike Tyson To Greatness)
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Schumacher has no flaws. He has the best car, the best-financed team, the best tries, the most skill. Who can rejoice in his wins? The sun rises every day. What is to love? Lock the sun in a box. Force the sun to overcome adversity in order to rise. Then we will cheer! I will often admire a beautiful sunrise, but I will never consider the sun a champion for having risen. So. For me to relate the history of Denny, who is a true champion, without including his missteps and failings would be doing a disservice to all involved.
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Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
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For example, the champion of the USSR in heavyweight, Algierdas Szocikas, sticks to the ring in a straight, balanced, right-hand position, allowing him to move lightly and quickly in the ring and with stronger effects use a stronger left hand. His tactics, based on surprising attacks from a distance, favors exceptional agility in moving around the ring.
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Michael Wenz (BOXING: COMBAT SPORT: RULES, TECHNIQUES, POSITIONS, DISTANCE, MOVEMENT. BECOME A SPORT LEGEND. (TRAINING))
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Will you joust today, my lord?” she asked him. Clegane’s voice was thick with contempt. “Wouldn’t be worth the bother of arming myself. This is a tournament of gnats.” The king laughed. “My dog has a fierce bark. Perhaps I should command him to fight the day’s champion. To the death.” Joffrey was fond of making men fight to the death.
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George R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire, 5-Book Boxed Set: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, A Dance with Dragons (Song of Ice & Fire 1-5))
“
I have a complicated spiritual history. Here's the short version: I was born into a Mass-going Roman Catholic family, but my parents left the church when I was in the fifth grade and joined a Southern Baptist church—yes, in Connecticut. I am an alumnus of Wheaton College—Billy Graham's alma mater in Illinois, not the Seven Sisters school in Massachusetts—and the summer between my junior and senior year of (Christian) high school, I spent a couple of months on a missions trip performing in whiteface as a mime-for-the-Lord on the streets of London's West End. Once I left home for Wheaton, I ended up worshiping variously (and when I could haul my lazy tuckus out of bed) at the nondenominational Bible church next to the college, a Christian hippie commune in inner-city Chicago left over from the Jesus Freak movement of the 1960s, and an artsy-fartsy suburban Episcopal parish that ended up splitting over same-sex issues. My husband of more than a decade likes to describe himself as a “collapsed Catholic,” and for more than twenty-five years, I have been a born-again Christian. Groan, I know. But there's really no better term in the current popular lexicon to describe my seminal spiritual experience. It happened in the summer of 1980 when I was about to turn ten years old. My parents had both had born-again experiences themselves about six months earlier, shortly before our family left the Catholic church—much to the shock and dismay of the rest of our extended Irish and/or Italian Catholic family—and started worshiping in a rented public grade school gymnasium with the Southern Baptists. My mother had told me all about what she'd experienced with God and how I needed to give my heart to Jesus so I could spend eternity with him in heaven and not frying in hell. I was an intellectually stubborn and precocious child, so I didn't just kneel down with her and pray the first time she told me about what was going on with her and Daddy and Jesus. If something similar was going to happen to me, it was going to happen in my own sweet time. A few months into our family's new spiritual adventure, after hearing many lectures from Mom and sitting through any number of sermons at the Baptist church—each ending with an altar call and an invitation to make Jesus the Lord of my life—I got up from bed late one Sunday night and went downstairs to the den where my mother was watching television. I couldn't sleep, which was unusual for me as a child. I was a champion snoozer. In hindsight I realize something must have been troubling my spirit.
Mom went into the kitchen for a cup of tea and left me alone with the television, which she had tuned to a church service. I don't remember exactly what the preacher said in his impassioned, sweaty sermon, but I do recall three things crystal clearly: The preacher was Jimmy Swaggart; he gave an altar call, inviting the folks in the congregation in front of him and at home in TV land to pray a simple prayer asking Jesus to come into their hearts; and that I prayed that prayer then and there, alone in the den in front of the idiot box. Seriously. That is precisely how I got “saved.” Alone. Watching Jimmy Swaggart on late-night TV. I also spent a painful vacation with my family one summer at Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's Heritage USA Christian theme park in South Carolina. But that's a whole other book…
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Cathleen Falsani (Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace)
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I always thought having a ring doctor at a boxing match was like having a preacher in a whore house. If a fighter is worried about his health, he’s obviously chosen the wrong profession.
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Steven L. Kent (Long Live the Champion)
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Undefeated heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson was once asked if he was worried about the prefight strategy of one of his opponents. He replied, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
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J. Warner Wallace (The Truth in True Crime: What Investigating Death Teaches Us About the Meaning of Life)
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If you want to fight than fight as if this is your first and the last fight & keep punching. And even if you are dying and have just one last breath “PUNCH” then die.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KARMA)