You have to be optimistic about golf. I mean it's physically demanding, particularly if you're on one leg. But it's psychologically demanding regardless of your physical infirmities. I mean, it's a tough sport. You've got to be disciplined and optimistic. And if you have a bad hole, you've got to be optimistic that you'll do well on the next hole.
I am delighted to have you play football. I believe in rough, manly sports. But I do not believe in them if they degenerate into the sole end of any one's existence. I don't want you to sacrifice standing well in your studies to any over-athleticism; and I need not tell you that character counts for a great deal more than either intellect or body in winning success in life. Athletic proficiency is a mighty good servant, and like so many other good servants, a mighty bad master.
Success isn't winning every time. A lot of different factors go into every race, and you can't control all of them. Success means doing as excellent a job as you can on that particular day. The people I admire most aren't necessarily the most wonderful athletes. I admire the ones who keep coming back and doing it, time after time.
I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat. It is only some carnivorous animals that have to subsist on flesh. Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventures, and for hides and furs is a phenomenon which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality . . . Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to a man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures.
That's the thing I love about sports: sports force you to quit. You can't pursue your dream till you're 46. When it comes to acting, writing, comedy, nobody ever stops you.
We learn early on that, in order to be a winner, you have to believe in yourself. You have to have the confidence to make things happen. And you have to have personal pride.
It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made he (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one...that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
I don't know why people question the academic training of an athlete. Fifty percent of the doctors in this country graduated in the bottom half of their classes.
We seem to be riding on the top of the highest mast of the tallest ship; and yet at the same time we know that nothing of this sort matters; love is not proved thus, nor great achievements completed thus; so that we sport with the moment and preen our feathers in it lightly.