Waiting quotes

“Slow and steady wins the race.”

The moral values sustained progress over bursts of speed that are not matched by attention or follow-through.

Source note: Traditional English moral associated with the fable; wording is later than the ancient Greek tradition.

“They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Service is not limited to visible activity; patience and faithful endurance can also count as meaningful response.

Source note: Sonnet commonly titled “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent.”

“While we are postponing, life speeds by.”

Seneca warns that postponement is itself a use of finite life: waiting for a more convenient future can become the very way the available present is lost.

Source note: Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 1, “On Saving Time,” Richard M. Gummere translation. The line follows Seneca’s advice to hold every hour and precedes his claim that nothing is truly ours except time. Letter 1 remains part of the single normalized Moral Letters work family.

“If you can wait and not be tired by waiting.”

Patience is portrayed as active endurance: the ability to continue without letting delay become defeat.

Source note: If—, first stanza; the line frames patience as sustained conduct under delay.

“Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.”

Speed without judgment can undermine the very goal a person is pursuing, so patience becomes part of effective action.

Source note: Act 2, Scene 3; Friar Laurence urges Romeo to move with greater care.

“He that can have patience can have what he will.”

The proverb presents patience as a practical advantage in goals that require time rather than immediate reward.

Source note: Poor Richard’s Almanack.

“Not knowing when the Dawn will come, I open every Door.”

Because opportunity and renewal cannot always be predicted, openness becomes a practical response to uncertainty rather than passive waiting.

Source note: Poem 1619; uncertainty about dawn becomes a reason to remain open to possibility.

“Progress, however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow.”

Smiles treats durable progress as incremental rather than instantaneous, arguing that worthwhile results are built through repeated effort and patience instead of expecting one dramatic breakthrough.

Source note: Self-Help, Chapter IV, “Application and Perseverance,” Project Gutenberg #935. The sentence opens a paragraph that continues, “Great results cannot be achieved at once,” and compares advancement in life to walking step by step.

“Still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labour and to wait.”

Progress is pictured as a combination of effort and patience rather than nonstop urgency.

Source note: A Psalm of Life, final line.

“The strongest of all warriors are these two—Time and Patience.”

Some conflicts are changed less by force than by endurance and the gradual effects of time.

Source note: War and Peace; public-domain translations vary slightly.

“When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.”

Jefferson’s practical rule inserts a deliberate delay between anger and speech, giving judgment time to return before emotion becomes an irreversible response.

Source note: Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson Smith, February 21, 1825, Founders Online / National Archives. The sentence is item 10 in a short list of “canons of conduct” sent to his namesake relative; the archive currently labels the transcription an Early Access document rather than a final authoritative edition.

“Patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude,—and the rarest, too.”

Ruskin separates patience from mere persistence: fortitude is not only continuing to act, but also bearing delay, frustration and incomplete results without losing steadiness.

Source note: The Ethics of the Dust, Lecture IV, Project Gutenberg #4701. Ruskin immediately contrasts many persevering people with the rarer patient person and later insists that genuine patience is not necessarily passive or idle.

“No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig.”

Epictetus treats worthwhile development as organic rather than instantaneous: ability, character and reconciliation require stages of growth that cannot be skipped simply because the final result is desired now.

Source note: Discourses, Book I, Chapter XV, “What Philosophy Promises,” George Long translation, Project Gutenberg #10661. Epictetus gives the fig-and-grape analogy while answering someone who wants immediate guidance about repairing a brother’s unkindness.

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”

The verse places change inside a larger rhythm of seasons and purposes, making it useful for thinking about acceptance when one phase of life gives way to another.

Source note: Ecclesiastes 3:1 in the King James Version, opening the sequence of contrasting times and seasons.

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

The image recognizes that wounds and complicated situations change gradually rather than instantly, but the dramatic context warns against automatically treating a persuasive maxim as trustworthy advice.

Source note: Othello, Act 2, Scene 3, Project Gutenberg #1531. Iago says this to Roderigo while encouraging patience with a manipulative plot; the speaker context is therefore essential to interpretation.

“Hope is the bird with its dim sensations; The shell that keeps it alive is Patience.”

MacDonald pictures patience as the protective structure around hope: hope may begin weakly and imperfectly, while patience gives it time to mature rather than demanding immediate proof.

Source note: “Hope and Patience,” in The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume II (1893), Project Gutenberg #9984. The bird-and-shell image is a poetic metaphor rather than a literal psychological model.

“Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience—or give it a more fascinating name: call it hope.”

Happiness can depend less on dramatic change than on recognizing what is already possible and waiting without giving up.

Source note: Sense and Sensibility.

“Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof: and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.”

Finishing and enduring are given more weight than the excitement of starting or the pride of appearance.

Source note: Ecclesiastes 7:8 in the King James Version; the verse contrasts patient spirit with pride and values the completed end of a matter over the excitement of its beginning.

“Those things which a man cannot amend in himself or in others, he ought patiently to bear, until God shall otherwise ordain.”

The devotional advice separates attempted correction from patient endurance: when a fault cannot presently be changed, continued struggle to control it may need to give way to forbearance.

Source note: The Imitation of Christ, Book I, Chapter XVI, “Of bearing with the faults of others,” William Benham translation, Project Gutenberg #1653. The chapter is explicitly Christian devotional teaching and continues by urging patience with others partly because each person also has faults that others must bear.

“And on top of this let me assure you that in writing, or learning to write, solid daily practice is the prescription and 'waiting upon inspiration' a lure.”

Quiller-Couch puts dependable practice ahead of waiting for inspiration, making regular work the ordinary foundation from which stronger moments can emerge.

Source note: On The Art of Reading, Lecture V, Project Gutenberg #16579; the surrounding analogy connects disciplined reading with the harder sister art of writing.