Ever since that day when I was 11 years old, and I wasn't allowed in a photo because I wasn't wearing a tennis skirt, I knew that I wanted to change the sport.
Billie Jean KingRead
Tennis taught me so many lessons in life. One of the things it taught me is that every ball that comes to me, I have to make a decision. I have to accept responsibility for the consequences every time I hit a ball.
Interpretation
Life is about making choices and accepting the consequences of those choices.
In this quote, Billie Jean King reflects on how tennis serves as a metaphor for life, emphasizing the importance of decision-making and personal accountability. Each tennis ball symbolizes opportunities or challenges that require a response, and how one chooses to engage with these moments defines their journey and personal growth.
In practice
In a motivational speech at a sports event.
Ever since that day when I was 11 years old, and I wasn't allowed in a photo because I wasn't wearing a tennis skirt, I knew that I wanted to change the sport.
A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning.
Natural talent only determines the limits of your athletic potential. It's dedication and a willingness to discipline your life that makes you great.
I feel that tennis is an art form that is capable of moving the players and the audience - at least a knowledgeable audience-in almost sensual ways. When I'm performing at my absolute best, I think that some of the euphoria I feel must be transmitted to the audience.
I like putting money back into what made my life, and tennis has been great to me.
Be bold. If you're going to make an error, make a doozy, and don't be afraid to hit the ball.
I have found life an enjoyable, enchanting, active, and sometime terrifying experience, and I've enjoyed it completely. A lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other.
I won't talk about what it was like in prison, except to say I'm glad I'm out and that I plan never to go back and to pay my taxes every day.
But we've all ended up giving body and soul to Africa, one way or another. Even Adah, who's becoming an expert in tropical epidemiology and strange new viruses. Each of us got our heart buried in six feet of African dirt; we are all co-conspirators here. I mean, all of us, not just my family. So what do you do now? You get to find your own way to dig out a heart and shake it off and hold it up to the light again.
Life is a promise; fulfill it.
Wake up! If you knew for certain you had a terminal illness--if you had little time left to live--you would waste precious little of it! Well, I'm telling you...you do have a terminal illness: It's called birth. You don't have more than a few years left. No one does! So be happy now, without reason--or you will never be at all.
One ship drives east and another drives west With the selfsame winds that blow. Tis the set of the sails And not the gales Which tells us the way to go. Like the winds of the seas are the ways of fate, As we voyage along through the life: Tis the set of a soul That decides its goal, And not the calm or the strife.
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