Quotations about Patience
Find patience or it will never find you. ~Mike Dolan, @HawaiianLife, tweet, 2015
It is only the long and patient road that leads to anywhere. ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), My Little Book of Life, 1912
Patience reveals the soul's hidden riches. ~Publilius Syrus, 1st century BCE, from the Latin by D. Lyman, 1856
Work well and wait; Impatience spoils the Sowing;
Don't dig up Seeds to see if they are Growing.
~Arthur Guiterman, "Of Farming," A Poet's Proverbs, 1924
He who says Patience, says Courage, Endurance, Strength. ~Marie Dubsky, Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916), translated by Mrs Annis Lee Wister, 1882
Patience is sister to meekness, and humility is its mother. ~Proverb
Today’s assignment: Adopt a wild patience towards unscheduled interruptions, unreasonable requests, and lost fools.
Beware the fury of a patient man. ~John Dryden, 1680
Tell her to look sharp about sending an answer... if she keeps me waiting long after that letter's sent, I shall go off pop, like a bottle of ginger-beer; I know I shall—string won't hold me, nor wire either. ~Frank Smedley, "Helping a Lame Dog Over a Stile," in The World of Wit and Humour, 1873
PATIENCE, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue. ~Ambrose Bierce
Leave this military hurry and adopt the pace of Nature. Her secret is patience. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
An ounce of patience is worth a pound of brains. ~Dutch proverb [quoted in P.J. Harrebomée, Spreekwoordenboek der Nederlandsche taal, c.1853, and in English: Henry G. Bohn, A Polyglot of Foreign Proverbs comprising French, Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Danish, with English Translations, 1857. Sometimes quoted as "A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains."
Patience is better than wisdom: an ounce of patience is worth a pound of brains. All men praise patience, but few enough can practise it; it is a medicine which is good for all diseases, and therefore every old woman recommends it; but it is not every garden that grows the herbs to make it with. ~Charles H. Spurgeon (1834–1892), "On Patience" (John Ploughman)
Have patience, my friend, have patience;
For Rome wasn't built in a day!
You wear yourself out for nothing
In many and many a way!
Why are you nervous and fretty
When things do not move along fast;
Why let yourself get excited
Over things that will soon be past?
~Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "Patience," 1940s
Patience and fortitude create their own happiness. ~Publilius Syrus, 1st century BCE, from the Latin by D. Lyman, 1856
You can't exist with nature without patience because everything in nature happens with such an easy, flowing manner. You get out of step, and you miss it. It's gone. ~Tom Brown, Jr.
If there be one attribute of the Deity which astonishes me more than another, it is the attribute of patience. The Great Soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry. In the realm of nature, every thing has been wrought out in the august consciousness of infinite leisure; and I bless God for that geology which gives me a key to the patience in which the creative process was effected. ~Timothy Titcomb (J.G. Holland), "Patience," Gold-Foil, Hammered from Popular Proverbs, 1859 [quoted (Holland), in Gems for the Fireside, edited by O.H. Tiffany, 1883: "Geology gives us a key to the patience of God."
In your patience possess ye your souls. ~Bible,
See that you possess your soul in patience... ~John Janeway (1633–1657)
Possess your soul in patience, sweet cousin. Doesn't that sound Shakespearean? ~Amanda M. Douglas, In the Sherburne Line, 1907
I should have found in some place of my soul
A drop of patience...
~William Shakespeare, Othello, c.1604
How poor are they that have not patience!
What wound did ever heal but by degrees?
~William Shakespeare, Othello, c.1604
An over-taxed patience gives way to fierce anger. ~Publilius Syrus, 1st century BCE, from the Latin by D. Lyman, 1856
All it takes is an apostrophe and a bit of an attitude adjustment to go from "impatient" to
Experience has also taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health. Maladies are constituted after the model of living creatures. Their destiny and their length of days are limited from their birth. He who arbitrarily and forcibly attempts to cut them short in the middle of their career, will prolong and multiply them, and will incense instead of appeasing them. ~Michel de Montaigne, translated from the French by E. J. Trechmann