Barry S. Strauss Quotes

#1. Ergometer is Greek for 'work meter'

Barry S. Strauss

#2. Rowing was not simple for me. I nodded whenever the instructor made a point, as if I understood, but I could as easily have assembled the space shuttle as have repeated the moves she was explaining.

Barry S. Strauss

#3. Rowing it was pointed out, was a sport that risked few injuries. So it was, I ould discover, but only if you did it right.

Barry S. Strauss

#4. The single sculler, alone on the river at dawn, or spotlighted in his lane during a race, is th emost romantic, the most quixotic figure in all rowing.

Barry S. Strauss

#5. A boat is the hardest think I know of to put into perspective. It is so much like a human figure, there is something alive about it.

Barry S. Strauss

#6. In college, I was an editor on the student daily ... To the extent that I noticed the existence of crew at all, I saw only what appeared to be big-boned acolytes who rose at dawn.

Barry S. Strauss

#7. It's the quintessential Greek sport: harmonious, competitive, agonizing, nautical, and above all, intelligent. It combines Odysseus's brains and brawn and love of the sea with the tactical precision of the Spartan pikeman.

Barry S. Strauss

#8. Eakins rejected gentlemen athletics as his theme. Instead, he took a subject that had been the stuff of illustrated weeklies and the penny press and turned it into fine art. Eakins celebrates not fire from heaven but honest sweat, not genius but hard work.

Barry S. Strauss

#9. Think of aerobics plus weight lifting minus the music or camaraderie. Combine unalloyed endurance with straightforward strength and demand poise, timing, and practiced form as well. Think of pure pain: that's the ergometer.

Barry S. Strauss

#10. When you are on the erg your mind is too busy to pay attention to the sounds of the machine; you notice only that they are indeed loud.

Barry S. Strauss

#11. The oars game me power but also taught me humility.

Barry S. Strauss

#12. If rowing is a trial then the ergometer is the courtroom, the meter is the jury. And an honest jury at that, because the numbers do not lie.

Barry S. Strauss

#13. There is a place where cerebral an corporeal meet: they call it rowing

Barry S. Strauss

#14. The greatest poet who ever wrote about rowing is Virgil, the greatest historian is Thucydides, but the greatest imagination ever to turn its attention to the sport is that of painter, Thomas Eakins.

Barry S. Strauss

#15. So to the lyre of Orpheus they struck with their oars, The furious water of the sea, and the surge broke into waves. Here and there the dark brine gushed with foam, Roaring terribly through the strength of the mighty men.

Barry S. Strauss