Quotes About Patience

It's so easy to wish that we'd made an effort in the past, so that we'd happily be enjoying the benefit now, but when now is the time when that effort must be made, as it always is, that prospect is much less inviting.

Time waits for no ovary.

Forbearance is a form of generosity.

arriving rarely makes you as happy as you anticipate. p 84

As Samuel Johnson said, To hear complaints is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy.

The days are long, but the years are short...

See the child you have," as the saying goes, "not the child you wish you had." In the end, I agreed with Michel de Montaigne: "The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced.

One lives in the naïve notion that later there will be more room than in the entire past. —Elias Canetti, The Human Province

many people decide to improve their habits, they don't begin by looking where their keys are; they begin by looking in an easy spot.

Things often get harder before they get easier.

it's a Secret of Adulthood: things often get harder before they get easier—but I'd started.

is surprising how soon a desire will die of inanition if it be never fed.

These couples ease into arguments instead of blowing up immediately—and avoid bombs such as "You never . . ." and "You always . . .

Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me.… They remind me of one's childhood that one goes through, wondering what the next course is going to be like—and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oeuvres.

Although people often assume that cravings intensify over time, research shows that with active distraction, urges—even strong urges—usually subside within about fifteen minutes.

This was exactly what I had noticed about the "stopping" aspect of First Steps. When we try a new habit for the first time, it feels full of promise, even if it's arduous. But most of that excitement is gone the second time, and the habit's drawbacks are more apparent. Plus, there's the discouraging feeling of having lost ground, of going backwards. "Hang in there," I said.

In other words, even though one coin certainly isn't sufficient to make a man rich, a man only becomes rich by adding one coin after another.

a Secret of Adulthood: things often get harder before they get easier—but

How slow life is, how violent hope is.

Wenn die Welt einmal untergehen sollte, ziehe ich nach Wien, denn dort passiert alles fünfzig Jahre später.

But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.

Talent is a long patience, and originality an effort of will and intense observation.

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

Years passed; and he endured the idleness of his intelligence and the inertia of his heart.