Quotes About Patience

I can't bear fishing. I think people look like fools sitting watching a line hour after hour--or else throwing and throwing, and catching nothing.

Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit?

A woman may get to love by degrees—the best fire does not flare up the soonest.

To most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable — else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?

You must be sure of two things: you must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin.

When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning, because I couldn't have the end without them.

Fielding lived when the days were longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings.

she took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that men would be so, and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.

There is no short cut, no patent tram-road, to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.

Contented speckled hens, industriously scratching for the rarely-found corn, may sometimes do more for a sick heart than a grove of nightingales; there is something irresistibly calming in the unsentimental cheeriness of top-knotted pullets, unpetted sheep-dogs, and patient cart-horses enjoying a drink of muddy water.

One way to approach the book today might be to think of it not as an intimidating, monolithic entity, but as its original readers experienced it—as eight utterly manageable short books to be read over the leisurely course of a year. Another way might be to admit that you do have time to read an eight-hundred-page book, perhaps even according to a swifter timetable than that of George Eliot's first readers. You just need to reorder your priorities.

for the achievement of any work regarded as an end there must be a prior exercise of many energies or acquired facilities of a secondary order, demanding patience.

He leaped over the years in this way, and, in the haste of strong purpose and strong desire, did not see how they would be made up of slow days, hours, and minutes.

thinking of its wings and never flying.

Have not men, shut up in solitary imprisonment, found an interest in marking the moments by straight strokes of a certain length on the wall, until the growth of the sum of straight strokes, arranged in triangles, has become a mastering purpose? Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit?

It would be very petty of us who are well and can bear things, to think much of small offences from those who carry a weight of trial.

I shall be glad of a cup of coffee as soon as possible.

Ah, I often think it's wi' th' old folks as it is wi' the babbies, said Mrs. Poyser; they're satisfied wi' looking, no matter what they're looking at. It's God A'mighty's way o' quietening 'em, I reckon, afore they go to sleep.

and in the long valley of her life, which looked so flat and empty of way-marks, guidance would come as she walked along the road, and saw her fellow-passengers by the way.

O que chamamos de nosso desespero é, muitas vezes, apenas a dolorosa ansiedade de uma esperança não alimentada.

Ma ciò che chiamiamo disperazione è in realtà la dolorosa impazienza della speranza non alimentata.

for it was nearly five o'clock; and if people are to quarrel often, it follows as a corollary that their quarrels cannot be protracted beyond certain limits.

An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.

She saw the years to come stretch before her like an autumn afternoon, filled with resigned memory. Life to her could never more have any eagerness; it was a solemn service of gratitude and patient effort. She walked in the presence of unseen witnesses—of the Divine love that had rescued her, of the human love that waited for its eternal repose until it had seen her endure to the end.