Patience quotes
Waiting well is a skill, and these writers practised it. Quotes about patience and perseverance, many of them proverbs from around the world.
The library has 404 quotes on this topic. Here are 60 of the most quoted, no more than four from any one writer.
60 patience quotes
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Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Psalm of Life, Voices of the Night -
What’s gone and what’s past help Should be past grief.
William Shakespeare The Winter’s Tale, Act iii. Sc.2 -
How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?
William Shakespeare Othello, Act ii. Sc. 3 -
For there was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently.
William Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing, Act v. Sc. 1 -
If I can catch him once upon the hip, I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.
William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice, Act i. Sc. 3 -
But hushed be every thought that springs From out the bitterness of things.
William Wordsworth Elegiac Stanzas. Addressed to Sir G. H. B -
Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts.
James Russell Lowell Columbus -
The Awakened call patience the highest penance, long-suffering the highest Nirvana; for he is not an anchorite who strikes others, he is not an ascetic who insults others.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 184 · translated by F. Max Müller -
The young men must not wait to be brought forward by the older men.
Abraham Lincoln November 20 -
Specious words confound virtue. Want of forbearance in small matters confounds great plans.
Confucius Analects, XV.26 · translated by James Legge -
True fortitude I take to be the quiet possession of a man’s self, and an undisturbed doing his duty, whatever evil besets him or danger lies in his way.
John Locke -
Heaven is long-enduring and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves. This is how they are able to continue and endure.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 7.1 · translated by James Legge -
If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live thus as men do.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book X.15 · translated by George Long -
Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then, or bear with them.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book VIII.59 · translated by George Long -
Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.
John Locke -
There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
Edmund Burke Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation -
The block of granite, which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.
Thomas Carlyle -
Have you not to endure the clamor and shouting and such annoyances as these? Well, I suppose you set all this over against the splendour of the spectacle and bear it patiently. What then?
Epictetus Golden Sayings, No. XIV · translated by Hastings Crossley -
Do not send your desire forward to it, but wait till it is opposite to you.
Epictetus Enchiridion, ch. XV · translated by George Long -
If labor be presented to you, you will find that it is endurance.
Epictetus Enchiridion, ch. X · translated by George Long -
The path of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.
William Cowper To an Afflicted Protestant Lady -
We should manage fortune like our health, enjoy it when it is good, be patient when it is bad, and never resort to strong remedies but in an extremity.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 392 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
Constant dropping wears away stones; and by diligence and patience the mouse ate in two the cable; and little strokes fell great oaks.
Benjamin Franklin Poor Richard’s Almanack -
We may say vices wait on us in the course of our life as the landlords with whom we successively lodge, and if we travelled the road twice over I doubt if our experience would make us avoid them.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 191 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
Let us do the work of men while we bear the form of them.
John Ruskin Sesame and Lilies -
He is a truly good man who desires always to bear the inspection of good men.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 206 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
Patience and tenacity of purpose are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. CXV -
Or arm th’ obdured breast With stubborn patience as with triple steel.
John Milton Paradise Lost, Bk. II -
Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them.
Oliver Goldsmith The Vicar of Wakefield -
Longanimity: the disposition to endure injury with meek forbearance while maturing a plan of revenge.
Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary -
There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honours too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience.
Jean de La Bruyère -
Remember too on every occasion which leads thee to vexation to apply this principle; not that this is a misfortune, but that to bear it nobly is good fortune.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book IV.49 · translated by George Long -
The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command.
William Wordsworth She was a Phantom of Delight -
Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into a genius.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton -
Fear not the anger of the wise to raise; Those best can bear reproof who merit praise.
Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism, Pt. iii., Line 23 -
Have we patience to hear him say to us, Would I had thee with me!
Epictetus Golden Sayings, No. LXI · translated by Hastings Crossley -
If we could have a little patience, we should escape much mortification. Time takes away as much as it gives.
Madame de Sévigné -
A rolling stone gathers no moss.
Publilius Syrus Maxim 524 -
Consider that he who would not have the bad man do wrong, is like the man who would not have the fig-tree to bear juice in the figs, and infants to cry, and the horse to neigh, and whatever else must of necessity be. For what must a man do who has such a character?
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book XII.16 · translated by George Long -
A look, a gesture, an attitude, a tone of voice, all bear their parts in the great work of pleasing.
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Letters to His Son -
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. Let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
Bible (World English Bible) James, 1:2–4 -
When his reason points out to him no good way, or at least no one way less bad than another, he will stop short, and wait for light.
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Maxims, Maxim 10 -
All things come round to him who will but wait.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Tales of a Wayside Inn. The Student’s Tale -
Everything comes if a man will only wait.
Benjamin Disraeli Tancred, Book iv. Chap. viii. (1847.) -
The kindest and the happiest pair Will find occasion to forbear; And something, every day they live, To pity, and perhaps forgive.
William Cowper Mutual Forbearance -
While Resignation gently slopes away, And all his prospects brightening to the last, His heaven commences ere the world be past.
Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village, Line 110 -
Social intercourse makes us the more able to bear with ourselves and others.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Patience is the support of weakness; impatience, the ruin of strength.
Charles Caleb Colton -
To persevere in one’s duty and to be silent is the best answer to calumny.
George Washington -
Metaphysics, with which physics cannot dispense, is that wisdom of thought which was before all physics, lives with it, and will endure after it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
God gives strength to bear a great deal, if we only strive ourselves to endure.
Hans Christian Andersen -
Let no one imagine that he is the man the world has been waiting for as its deliverer.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Patience is a plant That grows not in all gardens.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Michael Angelo, Pt. ii., 4 -
Beware the fury of a patient man.
John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel, Part i. Line 1005 -
It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die than who will endure pain with patience.
Julius Caesar -
“Tell me how you bear so blandly the assuming ways of wild young people?” Truly they would be unbearable if I had not also been unbearable myself as well.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Wise to resolve, and patient to perform.
Alexander Pope The Odyssey of Homer, Book iv. Line 372 -
Our fate, whatever it be, is to be overcome by patience under it.
Virgil -
The feelings generally run riot in prosperity; and to bear good fortune with evenness of mind is no easy task.
Ovid -
If you do what you should not, you must bear what you would not.
Benjamin Franklin