Quotes About Patience

He who angers you conquers you. —Elizabeth Kenny

What is harder than rock, or softer than water? Yet soft water hollows out hard rock. Persevere. —Ovid

Keeping a slow hunch alive poses challenges on multiple scales. For starters, you have to preserve the hunch in your own memory

It is simply hard to pinpoint exactly when Darwin had the idea, because the idea didn't arrive in a flash; it drifted into his consciousness over time, in waves. In the months before the Malthus reading, we could probably say that Darwin had the idea of natural selection in his head, but at the same time was incapable of fully thinking it. This is how slow hunches often mature: by stealth, in small steps. They fade into view.

that in any profession the highest order of work is achieved, not by fussy empirical demands for 'something to be done,' but by patient study of the eternal laws.

phrase "often a bridesmaid, never a bride" originated with a 1925 Listerine advertisement.)

If you're trying to "transform reality" you need to give your ideas the time they need to mature; don't just look for sudden epiphanies. Cultivate your hunches.

Sony inaugurated research into the first consumer videocassette recorder in 1969, but didn't ship its first Betamax for another seven years, and VCRs didn't become a household necessity until the mid-eighties.

anti-"lightbulb moment," the idea that comes into focus over decades, not seconds.

Finding missing mittens is hard work. It would be easier to grow new ones! Let's try planting the other mitten right here in the garden. Next spring when the snow melts, a little mitten tree might sprout. Miss Seltzer and I would take good care of it all summer long. In the fall we'd pick the ripe mittens. Then I'd give mittens on Christmas. And mittens on birthdays. And mittens on Valentine's Day!

Rilke knew what was up. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, one distant day, live right into the answer. What's truer than that...

Solving a problem in a hundred years is, practically speaking, the same as not solving it at all.

At every moment we choose, consciously or unconsciously, between good things now and better things later.

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese

Bad things can happen quickly, but good things aren't built in a day, and as they unfold, they will be out of sync with the news cycle. The peace researcher John Galtung pointed out that if a newspaper came out once every fifty years, it would not report half a century of celebrity gossip and political scandals. It would report momentous global changes such as the increase in life expectancy.10

We can make choices that leave us unhappy in the short term but fulfilled over the course of a life, such as raising a child, writing a book, or fighting for a worthy cause.

Odyssean self-control [...] is more effective than the strenuous exertion of willpower, which is easily overmatched in the moment by temptation.

Things that can't go on forever can go on much longer than you think.

Bad things can happen quickly, but good things aren't built in a day, and as they unfold, they will be out of sync with the news cycle.

The psychologist Walter Mischel captured the conflict in an agonizing choice he gave four-year-olds in a famous 1972 experiment: one marshmallow now or two marshmallows in fifteen minutes.15 Life is a never-ending gantlet of marshmallow tests, dilemmas that force us to choose between a sooner small reward and a later large reward.

Watch a movie now or pass a course later; buy a bauble now or pay the rent later; enjoy five minutes of fellatio now or an unblemished record in the history books later.

And yet shall Love himself be heard,Though long deferred, though long deferred:O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred:Music is Love in search of a word.

It may be an old cliche, but I think true love will last; it has no end. But finding the right person is a very difficult thing.

The faith that I love the best, says God, is hope.