Quotes About Patience

Don't cry anymore, she tells herself. Just do one thing at a time. Get from hour to hour and day to day like a frog jumping on lily pads.

What can a woman do when scandalous gossip travels the world? If she defends herself, she sounds guilty. So I waited some more.

She who weeps when the sun's in sky, Will never pile the platter high.

There's time to spare. This is one of the things I wasn't prepared for - the amount of unfilled time, the long parentheses of nothing. Time as white sound.

It's okay, mummy's in there lying on the floor. She'll be alright in an hour or so.

This could be the last time I have to wait. But I don't know what I'm waiting for. What are you waiting for? they used to say. That meant Hurry up. No answer was expected. For what are you waiting is a different question, and I have no answer for that one either.

I wish I knew what You were up to. But whatever it is, help me to get through it, please. Though maybe it's not Your doing; I don't believe for an instant that what's going on out there is what You meant. I have enough daily bread, so I won't waste time on that. It isn't the main problem. The problem is getting it down without choking on it.

We can't always do what we want," said Zilla gently. "Even you." "And sometimes we have to do what we hate," said Vera. "Even you.

It can't last forever. Others have thought such things, in bad times before this, and they were always right, they did get out one way or another, and it didn't last forever. Although for them it may have lasted all the forever they had.

for it is the fate of a woman Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless, Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers Running through caverns of darkness.… —HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, "The Courtship of Miles Standish," 1858.

Today I speak to my bones as I would speak to a dog. I want to go up the stairs, I tell them. Up, up, up, with one leg dragging. Is the ache deep in the bones, this elusive pain? Does that mean it will rain? Good bones, good bones, I coax, wondering how to reward them; if they will sit up for me, beg, roll over, do one more trick, once more. There. We're at the top. Good bones! Good bones ! Keep on going.

Waiting is also a place: it is wherever you wait. For me it's this room. I am a blank, here, between parentheses. Between other people

I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born.

Sex is like drink, it's bad to start brooding about it too early in the day.

Becka had a lot of these control-yourself techniques. I tried to practise them. They worked some of the time.

take your time, leave mine alone

Don't cry any more, she tells herself. Just do one thing at a time. Get from hour to hour and day to day like a frog jumping lily pads.

I no longer think that anything can happen. I no longer want to think that way. Happen is what you wait for, not what you do; and anything is a large category.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans, as used to be said; though in present day, the idea of God laughing is next door to blasphemy. An ultra-serious fellow, God is now.

This thing I'm doing can hardly be called living. Instead I'm lying dormant, like a bacterium in a glacier. Getting time over with. That's all.

You must observe the risings of the Sun and the changings of the Moon, because to everything there is a season. On

Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it.

At first I was given centuries to wait in caves, in leather tents, knowing you would never come back

it was at least three weeks before I got the telegram and could start regretting.