Quotations and Passages on Patience

Patience is a necessary
ingredient of genius.

Benjamin Disraeli

Life on the farm is a school of patience;
you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.

Henri Fournier Alain

The most extraordinary thing about
the oyster is this. Irritations get
into its shell. It does not like them.
But when it cannot get rid of them,
it uses the irritation to do the
loveliest thing an oyster ever has
a chance to do. If there are
irritations in our lives today,
there is only one prescription:
make a pearl. It may have to be
a pearl of patience, but, anyhow,
make a pearl.
And it takes faith and love to do it.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself.
Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections,
but instantly set about remedying them--
every day begin the tasks anew.

Francis de Sales

Patience is the companion of wisdom.

Saint Augustine

It does not astonish or make us angry that it takes a whole year
to bring into the house three great white peonies and two pale
blue iris. It seems altogether right and appropriate that these
glories are earned with long patience and faith. . . . and also that
it is altogether right and appropriate that they cannot last.
Yet in our human relations we are outraged when the supreme
moments, the moments of flowering, must be waited for. . . .
and then cannot last. We reach a summit, and then have to go down again.

May Sarton

Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold.
For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power
to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet
with great wrongs, and they will be powerless to vex your mind.

Leonardo da Vinci

Patience and tenacity of purpose are assets of infinitely greater
value than cleverness. There is great strength in patiently waiting.
The sun, having set, comes up. The tide ebbs, but always flows in again.

Fred van Amburgh

Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes
or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer that there must be
time. Let the tree first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

Epictetus

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Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly
will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.

Johann von Schiller

Patience is power. Patience is not an absence of action; rather, it is "timing"; it waits on the right time to act, for the right principles and in the right way.

Fulton J. Sheen

Flowers do not force their way with great strife. Flowers open to perfection slowly in the sun. Don't be in a hurry about spiritual matters. Go step by step, and be very sure.

White Eagle

There is no road too long to the person who advances deliberately
without undue haste; no honors too distant to the person who
prepares him or herself for them with patience.

Jean La Bruyere

One who is master of patience
is master of everything else.

Lord Halifax

If I have made any valuable discoveries,
it is owing more to patient attention
than to any other talent.

Isaac Newton

How poor are they that have not patience!
What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

William Shakespeare

The greater our hurry, the longer the way;
the greater our patience, the sooner we reach the goal.

German proverb

Patience is neither weariness nor dreary surrender. It is a
positive virtue, the capacity to wait for opportunity. . . .
   There are many images that portray patience: The lioness waiting
in the high grass for her prey to pass by, making no movement for
hours except for gentle twitches of her tail. The old monk waiting
for God; the ancient eyes filled with wisdom, his mind and body filled
with tranquility. Another image is the picture of the slow growth of
the solid oak tree. Imperceptibly, little by little, the acorn becomes
a tree. Slowly--that's how it becomes so strong.
   We live in a time when speed seems to be essential. Fast trains,
fast cars, fast walking, fast-food restaurants. Even our perception of
growth is speeded up with the use of the stop-frame camera.
   There is nothing wrong with speed in itself, but a question is forced
upon us. Does speed necessarily require us to be unreflective? If so,
then we are rushing into lives that are not reflected upon, not examined.
This is dangerous. Perhaps we do have to make room for patience in
our lives--a little room to breathe. Patience. Patience.

Edward J. Lavin

Patient people enjoy the pleasure of saying to whoever is feeling
anxious about delays--restaurant servers, clerks waiting on
the telephone to get your credit card verified, dry cleaners
who were sure your sweater would be ready--"It's okay.
These things happen." Patience, in a rushed world, is a
shared relief. Witnesses to patient transactions,
as well as participants, all get to calm down.

Sylvia Boorstein

When the hard times of life come, we know that no matter how tragic
the circumstances seem, no matter how long the spiritual drought,
no matter how long and dark the days, the sun is sure to break through;
the dawn will come. The warmth of His assurance will hold us in an embrace
once again, and we will know that our God has been there all along.
We will hear him say, through it all, “Hold on, my child, joy comes in the morning!”

Gloria Gaither

They who can have patience can have what they will.

Benjamin Franklin

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shapes of pains,
losses, and disappointments; but let us have patience,
and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.

Joseph Addison