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Patience is important for anyone who is interested in self-improvement and self-actualization. Not only will one encounter setbacks, but the progress will almost certainly be slow going, measured in months and years rather than days and weeks. Patience is the thing that will help you to keep your head down, knowing that the slow progress will pay off over time.
Having patience with our own progress is a form of inner strength that allows us to achieve our goals. When things seem to be moving slowly, we must keep at them because they are moving.
But patience is not simply about being patient with ourselves and our progress. It is also about being patient with others. Influencing others often requires great patience on our part, explaining the same things again and again until the ideas germinate and begin making sense.
Wisdom, solid planning and inner strength… all of these are nothing without the patience to ensure their exercise and implementation.
There are very few successful people who are not also patient people. Even those who are not patient by nature must learn how to cultivate this quality in themselves if they wish to succeed.
The quotes below underscore the importance and the power of patience.
Quotes About Patience With Yourself
Bruce Lee
“Patience is not passive, on the contrary, it is concentrated strength.”
William Faulkner
“And sure enough, even waiting will end…if you can just wait long enough.”
Mae West
“Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Patience and fortitude conquer all things.”
Lee Tolstoy
“Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait…there is nothing stronger than these two: patience and time, they will do it all.”
James P. Carse
“Gardening is not outcome-oriented. A successful harvest is not the end of a gardener’s existence, but only a phase of it. As any gardener knows, the vitality of a garden does not end with a harvest. It simply takes another form. Gardens do not ‘die’ in the winter but quietly prepare for another season.”
– James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games
Moliere
“Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.”
Francis de Sales
“Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit.
Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.
What is anything in life compared to peace of soul?”
Elizabeth Taylor
“It is very strange that the years teach us patience—that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.”
Edmund Burke
“Our patience will achieve more than our force.”
Franz Kafka
“All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.”
Quotes About Patience With Others
Saint Augustine
“Patience is the companion of wisdom.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
Charlotte Brontë
“It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you.”
Benjamin Franklin
“He that can have patience can have what he will.”
Aristotle
“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”
Margaret Thatcher
“I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.”
Lao Tzu
“Trying to understand is like straining through muddy water. Have the patience to wait! Be still and allow the mud to settle.”
Marcus Aurelius
“All men are made one for another: either then teach them better or bear with them.”
– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Chinese proverb
“One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life.”
