A Quote by David Foster Wallace

I submit that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is, and also the most demanding....Basketball comes close, but it's a team sport and lacks tennis's primal mano a mano intensity. Boxing might come close- at least at the lighter weight divisions- but the actual physical damage the fighters inflict on each other makes it too concretely brutal to be really beautiful- a level of abstraction and formality (i.e., play) is necessary for a sport to possess true metaphysical beauty (in my opinion).

David Foster Wallace

Quote Topics

Abstraction Actual Also Basketball Beautiful Beauty Boxing Brutal Close Come Damage Demanding Divisions Each Fighters Formality In My Opinion Inflict Intensity Lacks Least Level Lighter Makes Metaphysical Might Most Most Beautiful Necessary Opinion Other Physical Physical Beauty Play Possess Primal Really Really Beautiful Sport Submit Team Team Sport Tennis Too True Weight

Quote Author

David Foster Wallace
American - Writer
February 21, 1962 - December 12, 2008

For sure, with golf it's not a physically demanding sport like tennis. That's what makes tennis great - you combine both things. It's a very mental sport and at the same time can be dramatically physical. But I do admire the mentality of sport more than the physicality because physical performance is much easier to practice than mental performance.

Rafael Nadal

I submit that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is and also the most demanding. It requires body control, hand-eye coordination, quickness, flat-out speed, endurance, and that weird mix of caution and abandon we call courage. It also requires smarts. Just one single shot in one exchange in one point of a high-level match is a nightmare of mechanical variables.

David Foster Wallace

No sport is more geared to the warrior's code of honour, pride and respect. That's why I love boxing. It's mano a mano. One against one. It's driven by fear and your need to conquer it.

Carl Froch

Tennis is a beautiful sport but it's also a sport where you get thrown out there into the world and it's on an international level. As an athlete and as a human being you're learning. You're a kid.

Mark Philippoussis

My father used to play ice hockey, though not at a high level, and my mother wasn't involved in sport at all, but they were keen that we played some sort of sport. They chose tennis because they thought it was a good sport for girls to play.

Karolina Pliskova

To not only be a cancer survivor, but to return to the sport of boxing, because, I mean, this is not basketball, this is not baseball, this is not a sport you play. This is a sport where you can die in the ring. So it says a lot to me to come back and be a world champion in that aspect.

Daniel Jacobs

Some folks call tennis a rich people's sport or a white person's game. I guess I started too early because I just thought it was something fun to do. Later, I discovered there was a lot of work to being good in tennis. You've got to make a lot of sacrifices and spend a lot of time if you really want to achieve with this sport, or in any sport, or in anything truly worthwhile.

Arthur Ashe

Tennis is a traditional game. A big sport like tennis does not need too many changes. The game has become too fast, there are hardly any long, interesting rallies these days. So maybe slowing down the courts could help. But you can't really stop a sport from evolving.

Bjorn Borg

I am very obsessed with ballet now because it is a very difficult sport and a beautiful one because it is not about money. It's not like playing football or tennis - dance has no sponsors, it's just for the beauty. Maybe it is the only last pure sport.

Carine Roitfeld

By continually increasing the difficulty of the sport, we are discouraging younger athletes from starting and continuing in the sport. But most importantly, we are losing the beauty of our sport. We do not want gymnastics to lose what makes it so great - its artistic beauty.

Svetlana Boginskaya

Football was really my least favorite sport and the last sport that I ended up picking up as a kid. My dad started me off with baseball, which most kids did at that time. I really enjoyed basketball. That was my favorite sport.

Tony Dungy

People in tennis, they've been in a certain bubble for so long they don't even know who they are, because obviously it's just been tennis, tennis, tennis. And let it be just tennis, tennis, tennis. Be locked into that. But when tennis is done, then what? It's kinda like: Let's enjoy being great at the sport.

Frances Tiafoe

I think boxing is a singular sport, because the stakes are so high and because it just appeals to people's primal instincts. It's a life and death sport, and it's a sport of sacrifice. It's a humbling sport, and people are coming from humbling circumstances. It's always fun to watch a person that's come from nothing to having everything and losing it again.

Aaron Eckhart

Boxing is an American sport - a 'so-called sport' to many - in which images of incalculable beauty and violence, desperation and ingenuity, are routinely entwined; the sport that evokes the most extreme reactions - loathing, revulsion, righteous indigation; a fierce and often inexplicable loyalty.