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Patience Quotes — 32 Patience Quotes, Each Checked to Its Source

There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

Edmund Burke

We had better wait and see.

H. H. Asquith

Our chickens are not yet hatched, though one can hear them pecking at their shells.

Winston Churchill · Recorded in David Dilks, 7 September 1943

Happiness is like a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Often credited to Nathaniel Hawthorne · Hawthorne never wrote it, and neither did Thoreau, who also gets the credit; the earliest version is an anonymous 1848 newspaper piece in the New Orleans Daily Crescent, signed only "L."

Guidance in these mundane matters is granted to us only step by step, or at the utmost a step or two ahead. There is therefore wisdom in reserving one’s decisions as long as possible and until all the facts and forces that will be potent at the moment are revealed.

Winston Churchill · To Foreign Secretary, 4 January 1945 (The Second World War, vol. V, Closing the Ring (1952))

In my experience of large enterprises, I have found it is often a mistake to try to settle everything at once.

Winston Churchill · Churchill on large enterprises.

No boy or girl should ever be disheartened by lack of success in their youth, but should diligently and faithfully continue to persevere and make up for lost time.

Winston Churchill · Churchill, who failed his Sandhurst entrance twice.

The strongest of all warriors are these two: Time and Patience.

Leo Tolstoy · General Kutuzov to Prince Andrei in War and Peace.

In these sombre fields in the first year you have to sow, and in the second year you harrow; the third year is your harvest.

Winston Churchill · House of Commons, 21 May 1936

The world also needs patience. It needs a period of calm rather than vehement attempts to produce clear-cut solutions. There have been many periods when prompt and violent action might have averted calamities. This is not one of them.

Winston Churchill · Margate, 10 October 1953

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

Edmund Burke

Justice moves slowly and remorselessly upon its path, but it reaches its goal eventually.

Winston Churchill · House of Commons, 23 July 1929

The first year yields nothing; the second very little; the third a lot; and the fourth a flood.

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, vol. I, The Gathering Storm (1948)

You ask me how I view the future. I view it with hope, and, I trust, with undiminished firmness of spirit. We must have the fibre and fortitude to endure the delays and await the outcome.

Winston Churchill · To Sir Stafford Cripps, 22 September 1942 (The Second World War, vol. I, The Gathering Storm (1948))

I was eleven years a fairly solitary figure in this House and pursued my way in patience and so there may be hope for the Hon. Member.

Winston Churchill · House of Commons, 8 December 1944

Patience and perseverance must never be grudged when the peace of the world is at stake.

Winston Churchill · House of Commons, 25 February 1954

Patience: a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

Ambrose Bierce · The source reads: “Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.”

Patience Quotes

There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

We had better wait and see.

Our chickens are not yet hatched, though one can hear them pecking at their shells.

Happiness is like a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Guidance in these mundane matters is granted to us only step by step, or at the utmost a step or two ahead. There is therefore wisdom in reserving one’s decisions as long as possible and until all the facts and forces that will be potent at the moment are revealed.

In my experience of large enterprises, I have found it is often a mistake to try to settle everything at once.

No boy or girl should ever be disheartened by lack of success in their youth, but should diligently and faithfully continue to persevere and make up for lost time.

The strongest of all warriors are these two: Time and Patience.

In these sombre fields in the first year you have to sow, and in the second year you harrow; the third year is your harvest.

The world also needs patience. It needs a period of calm rather than vehement attempts to produce clear-cut solutions. There have been many periods when prompt and violent action might have averted calamities. This is not one of them.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

Justice moves slowly and remorselessly upon its path, but it reaches its goal eventually.

The first year yields nothing; the second very little; the third a lot; and the fourth a flood.

You ask me how I view the future. I view it with hope, and, I trust, with undiminished firmness of spirit. We must have the fibre and fortitude to endure the delays and await the outcome.

How many wars have been averted by patience and good will?

Evidently he had the first quality of an angler, which is not to measure the pleasure by the catch.

I myself find waiting more trying than action.

We must not lose patience, and we must not lose hope.

What we are faced with is not a violent jerk but a prolonged pull.

No pains must be spared and no patience grudged which are necessary to bring that supreme hope to fruition.

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

I was eleven years a fairly solitary figure in this House and pursued my way in patience and so there may be hope for the Hon. Member.

Patience and perseverance must never be grudged when the peace of the world is at stake.

Patience: a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

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