Patience is a timeless virtue that empowers us to navigate life's challenges with calm and resilience. Whether you're seeking motivation to stay steady during difficult times or inspiration to practice mindfulness, this curated collection of the top 123 patience quotes offers wisdom from thinkers, leaders, and everyday people. Dive in to find words that remind us of the strength found in waiting and the beauty of perseverance.
1. “Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.” - Hal Borland
2. “He that can have patience can have what he will.” - Benjamin Franklin
3. “A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.” - Henri J.M. Nouwen
4. “I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.” - Margaret Thatcher
5. “Our patience will achieve more than our force.” - Edmund Burke
6. “Patience is power.Patience is not an absence of action;rather it is "timing"it waits on the right time to act,for the right principlesand in the right way.” - Fulton J. Sheen
7. “Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.” - Rainer Maria Rilke
8. “Patience never wants Wonder to enter the house: because Wonder is a wretched guest. It uses all of you but is not careful with what is most fragile or irreplaceable. If it breaks you, it shrugs and moves on. Without asking, Wonder often brings along dubious friends: doubt, jealousy, greed. Together they take over; rearrange the furniture in every one of your rooms for their own comfort. They speak odd languages but make no attempt to translate for you. They cook strange meals in your heart that leave odd tastes and smells. When they finally go are you happy or miserable? Patience is always left holding the broom.” - Jonathan Carroll
9. “The best teachers have showed me that things have to be done bit by bit. Nothing that means anything happens quickly--we only think it does. The motion of drawing back a bow and sending an arrow straight into a target takes only a split second, but it is a skill many years in the making. So it is with a life, anyone's life. I may list things that might be described as my accomplishments in these few pages, but they are only shadows of the larger truth, fragments separated from the whole cycle of becoming. And if I can tell an old-time story now about a man who is walking about, waudjoset ndatlokugan, a forest lodge man, alesakamigwi udlagwedewugan, it is because I spent many years walking about myself, listening to voices that came not just from the people but from animals and trees and stones.” - Joseph Bruchac
10. “Why is patience so important?""Because it makes us pay attention.” - Paulo Coelho
11. “Prayer of an Anonymous Abbess:Lord, thou knowest better than myself that I am growing older and will soon be old. Keep me from becoming too talkative, and especially from the unfortunate habit of thinking that I must say something on every subject and at every opportunity.Release me from the idea that I must straighten out other peoples' affairs. With my immense treasure of experience and wisdom, it seems a pity not to let everybody partake of it. But thou knowest, Lord, that in the end I will need a few friends.Keep me from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point.Grant me the patience to listen to the complaints of others; help me to endure them with charity. But seal my lips on my own aches and pains -- they increase with the increasing years and my inclination to recount them is also increasing.I will not ask thee for improved memory, only for a little more humility and less self-assurance when my own memory doesn't agree with that of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be wrong.Keep me reasonably gentle. I do not have the ambition to become a saint -- it is so hard to live with some of them -- but a harsh old person is one of the devil's masterpieces.Make me sympathetic without being sentimental, helpful but not bossy. Let me discover merits where I had not expected them, and talents in people whom I had not thought to possess any. And, Lord, give me the grace to tell them so.Amen” - Anonymous
12. “He was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world.She was the book thief without the words.Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like rain.” - Markus Zusak
13. “There are times to stay put, and what you want will come to you, and there are times to go out into the world and find such a thing for yourself.” - Lemony Snicket
14. “Time has no meaning,Love will endure..” - Jude Deveraux
15. “The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.” - Paulo Coelho
16. “It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you.” - Charlotte Brontë
17. “There is something good in all seeming failures. You are not to see that now. Time will reveal it. Be patient.” - Swami Sivananda
18. “Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears.” - Barbara Johnson
19. “All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.” - Franz Kafka
20. “If you're serious about sanctification, you can expect to experience heart-wrenching moments that try your faith, your endurance, and your patience.” - Sheri L. Dew
21. “The soul hardly ever realizes it, but whether he is a believer or not, his loneliness is really a homesickness for God.” - Hubert Van Zeller
22. “I have patience in all things – as far as the antechamber.” - Gustave Flaubert
23. “No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.” - Lewis Carroll
24. “The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.” - Leo Tolstoy
25. “Patience is a virtue Savannah, to tolerate delay. It implies self control and forbearance, as opposed to wanting what we want when we want it. Something to think about. . .Catherine Weaver (Character), "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” - Catherine Weaver
26. “Miro, I'm so sorry. I always felt such pity for you humans because you could only think of one thing at a time and your memories were so imperfect and . . . now I realize that just getting through the day without killing somebody can be an achievement."It gets to be a habit. Most of us manage to keep our body count quite low. It's the neighborly way to live.” - Orson Scott Card
27. “Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don't drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper.” - Anne Lamott
28. “I will not deny but that the best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words.” - John Milton
29. “Life it too short to deal with crazy people.” - Karen E. Quinones Miller
30. “Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.” - Friedrich von Logau
31. “All men are made one for another: either then teach them better or bear with them.” - Marcus Aurelius
32. “Those speak foolishly who ascribe their anger or their impatience to such as offend them or to tribulation. Tribulation does not make people impatient, but proves that they are impatient. So everyone may learn from tribulation how his heart is constituted.” - Martin Luther
33. “Put up in a placewhere it is easy to seethe cryptic admonishmentT.T.TWhen you feel how depressinglyslowly you climbit's well to remember thatThings Take Time.” - Piet Hein
34. “Regarding vengeance and arch-enemies, one must not only be timely but prideful, and pride exacts propriety.” - Adam Levin
35. “It is very strange that the years teach us patience - that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.” - Elizabeth Taylor
36. “David’s mouth dripped open slowly. He stood with his heels dug into my carpet, a dashed hope, a broken dream. No amount of money could top the priceless look that gathered on his face like an unmade bed. His eyebrows crumpled and furrowed like disheveled sheets. His lips curled into an acidic smirk. Confusion and shock collided in the cornea of his dilated pupils. He was a B.B. King song, personified. His entire body sang the blues.” - Brandi L. Bates
37. “The word 'jihad' has nowhere been used in the Qur'an to mean war in the sense of launching an offensive. It is used rather to mean 'struggle'. the action most consistently called for in the Qur'an is the exercise of patience. (p. 7-8)” - Wahiduddin Khan
38. “Lark: "You shouldn't yell at her." Frostpine: "Of course I should. Gods bless us all, Lark, but our Water dedicates would try the patience of a stone." — Dedicates Lark and Frostpine when the latter found out that the Water Temple had run out of warded boxes” - Tamora Pierce
39. “I realized that the deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by His letting us have our way in the end, but by His making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able to honestly to pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done.” - Elisabeth Elliot
40. “What good has impatience ever brought? It has only served as the mother of mistakes and the father of irritation.” - Steve Maraboli
41. “Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.” - Molière
42. “There's no advantage to hurrying through life." -Shikamaru Nara” - Masashi Kishimoto
43. “The first lesson to learn is to resign oneself to the little difficulties in life, not to hit out at everything one comes up against. If one were able to manage this one would not need to cultivate great power; even one's presence would be healing.” - Hazrat Inayat Khan
44. “A stumble may prevent a fall.” - Thomas Fuller
45. “Everything comes if a man will only wait.” - Benjamin Disraeli
46. “The enemy is the necessary condition for practicing patience.” - His Holiness the Dalai Lama
47. “She and Marie were Montreal girls, not trained to accompany heroes, or to hold out for dreams, but just to be patient.” - Mavis Gallant
48. “All the reasons you fell in love are still there, but perhaps buried under worries and responsibility. Find them again, then hang in there. Truly, the best is yet to come.” - Laurie Paige
49. “Perfect love is perfectly patient.” - Neal A. Maxwell
50. “God, teach me to be patient, teach me to go slow,Teach me how to wait on You when my way I do not know.Teach me sweet forbearance when things do not go rightSo I remain unruffled when others grow uptight.Teach me how to quiet my racing, rising heartSo I might hear the answer You are trying to impart.Teach me to let go, dear God, and pray undisturbed untilMy heart is filled with inner peace and I learn to know your will.” - Helen Steiner Rice
51. “There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.” - George Eliot
52. “Impatient men are generous ones. Or haven't you learned that by now?” - Megan Chance
53. “Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.” - Helen Keller
54. “The woman gestured to a seat and put on a patient face. An impatient sort of patient face, like an impatient face dressing up as a patient one for Halloween.” - Shannon Hale
55. “Sólo con una ardiente paciencia conquistaremos la espléndida ciudad que dará luz, justicia y dignidad a todos los hombres. Así la poesía no habrá cantado en vano.” - Pablo Neruda
56. “He felt the comfort of being part of an eternal cycle symbolized by the gold strips on either side of the black mourning band he wore. Light, dark, light. The dark was just an interval.” - Jack Campbell
57. “Fear is the glue that keeps you stuck. Faith is the solvent that sets you free.” - Shannon L. Alder
58. “Tolerance is nothing more than patience with boundaries.” - Shannon Alder
59. “Wise men are not pacifists; they are merely less likely to jump up and retaliate against their antagonizers. They know that needless antagonizers are virtually already insecure enough.” - Criss Jami
60. “The common man prays, 'I want a cookie right now!' And God responds, 'If you'd listen to what I say, tomorrow it will bring you 100 cookies.” - Criss Jami
61. “She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding.” - Jane Austen
62. “The work that God does in us when we wait is usually more important than the thing for which we wait!” - Erwin W. Lutzer
63. “Any methodology for developing patience requires a multi-tiered approach.” - Allan Lokos
64. “We must accept the reality that the causes of impatience travel a two-way street.” - Allan Lokos
65. “everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait . . . there is nothing stronger than these two: patience and time, they will do it all.” - Leo Tolstoy
66. “[She] lost her patience, a thing she was all too prone to misplacing.” - Gail Carriger
67. “Because you don't learn anything unless you can find the patience to read. TV takes that away from you. It robs you from your mind.” - Markus Zusak
68. “Maybe that's why life is so precious. No rewind or fast forward...just patience and faith.” - Cristina Marrero
69. “Knowing trees, I came to realize, understand and appreciate the act of patience.” - Ogwo David Emenike
70. “I have seen what comes of being patient," Amanda said with a boding look. "And I have no opinion of it.""What does come of it?" Inquired Sir Gareth."Nothing!” - Georgette Heyer
71. “Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.” - Margaret Atwood
72. “So much of control is not authoritative action but mindful waiting.” - Cameron Conaway
73. “now i can get them teeth” - William Faulkner
74. “Above all, trust in the slow work of God.We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.We should like to skip the intermediate stages.We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability— and that it may take a very long time.And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually—let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste.Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you,and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.” - Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
75. “Aura, I'm really patient, but I'm not a bloody saint.” - Jeri Smith-Ready
76. “When you get mad, it's the time you lose” - Hiroko Sakai
77. “It almost seems as though this roiling world is conspiring to test our patience at every turn. In fact, it is. With this in mind, we would be wise to look on our imperfect environment as a teacher rather than an antagonist. It constantly shows us that we need to be patient on an ongoing basis, not just every now and then, if we´re going to realize true inner peace, happiness, and fulfillment.” - Lama Surya Das
78. “I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” - Rainer Maria Rilke
79. “A noble deed is a dream before it is reality. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul, a beautiful world waits to be realized.” - James Allen
80. “It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.” - George Eliot
81. “Brazen it out! Throw away the scabbard! Grit your teeth, buckle down, and die with your boots on! Or in other words, be determined and resolved until you accomplish the thing you set out to accomplish.” - Richelle E. Goodrich
82. “Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot. But all too often the greedy eyes are only deceived; the fruit that seemed so precious is still green on the inside, and disrespected hands ungratefully toss aside what has so disappointed them.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
83. “ridicule is often harder to bear than self-denial.” - Louisa May Alcott
84. “What is a woman's greatest virtue?Patience.” - India Edghill
85. “We must arm ourselves with patience and wisdom and listen to the poor what they want. This is the best way to avoid the trap of ignorance, ideology and inertia on our side.” - Abhijit V. Banerjee
86. “Truth is patient. It can afford to be for eventually it will have its way.” - Richard Paul Evans
87. “There are seasons when to be still demands immeasurably higher strength than to act.” - Margaret Bottome
88. “Waiting does not exist in the experience of those who recognize the presence of love wherever they are.” - Alan Cohen
89. “My mothering needed a tad more Mother Theresa and a lot less Lizzy Borden.” - Irene Tomkinson
90. “Patience is learned through waiting” - E'yen A. Gardner
91. “This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don't get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can't do anything, don't get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it's ready to come undone. You have to realize it's going to be along process and that you'll work on things slowly, one at a time.” - Haruki Murakami
92. “We are all tired of the stress.” - K. Howard Joslin
93. “Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time.” - Habeeb Akande
94. “Don’t let mental blocks control you. Set yourself free. Confront your fear and turn the mental blocks into building blocks.” - Dr Roopleen
95. “Give me the discipline to get rid of the stuff that's not important, the freedom to savor the stuff that gives me joy, and the patience not to worry about the stuff that's messy but not hurting anybody.” - Vinita Hampton Wright
96. “Psalm 139 and Jeremiah 29:11” - Bible N T Gospels Selections
97. “...when people oppose your view, you can become a lightning rod, but if I were you, I'd let them stew...” - John Geddes
98. “The Man of Power is one who presides—By persuasion. He uses no demeaning words or behavior, does not manipulate others, appeals to the best in everyone, and respects the dignity andagency of all humankind—men, women, boys, and girls.By long-suffering. He waits when necessary and listens to the humblest or youngest person. He is tolerant of the ideas of others and avoids quick judgments and anger. By gentleness. He uses a smile more often than a frown. He is not gruff or loud or frightening; he does not discipline in anger.By meekness. He is not puffed up, does not dominate conversations, and is willing to conform his will to the will of God.By love unfeigned. He does not pretend. He is sincere, giving honest love without reservation even when others are unlovable.By kindness. He practices courtesy and thoughtfulness in little things as well as in the more obvious things. By pure knowledge. He avoids half-truths and seeks to be empathetic. Without hypocrisy. He practices the principles he teaches. He knows he is not always right and is willing to admit his mistakes and say ‘I’m sorry.'Without guile. He is not sly or crafty in his dealings with others, but is honest and authentic when describing his feelings.” - H. Burke Peterson
99. “You cannot have a moral holiday and remain moral, nor can you have a spiritual holiday and remain spiritual. God wants you to be entirely his, and this means that you have to watch to keep yourself fit. It takes a tremendous amount of time. Some of us expect to “clear the numberless ascensions”* in about two minutes.” - Oswald Chambers
100. “Learn a little patience. You never know what might be around the corner.” - Chris D'Lacey
101. “sometimes is good to be in patience, it can be mean understand, sometimes patience can describe as sacrifice , but everytime it hurting ourself” - Tun Teja
102. “We must remember balance and moderation. Patience can be spiritually enriching and virtuous… but when taken in excess, it turns to procrastination, the poison of inaction.” - Steve Maraboli
103. “You can’t expect to conquer the world in one day, you know. All good things will come in time.” - Peter Koevari
104. “Bread – like real love – took time, cultivation, strong loving hands and patience. It lived, rising and growing to fruition only under the most perfect circumstances.” - Melissa Hill
105. “Now there are many, many people in the world, but relatively few with whom we interact, and even fewer who cause us problems. So when you come across such a chance for practicing patience and tolerance, you should treat it with gratitude. It is rare. Just as having unexpectedly found a treasure in your own house, you should be happy and grateful toward your enemy for providing you that precious opportunity. Because if you are ever to be successful in your practice of patience and tolerance, which are critical factors in counteracting negative emotions, it is due to your own efforts and also the opportunity provided by your enemy.” - The Dalai Lama
106. “It is a kind of love, is it not?How the cup holds the tea,How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,How the floor receives the bottoms of shoesOr toes. How soles of feet knowWhere they're supposed to be.I've been thinking about the patienceOf ordinary things, how clothesWait respectfully in closetsAnd soap dries quietly in the dish,And towels drink the wetFrom the skin of the back.And the lovely repetition of stairs.And what is more generous than a window?” - Pat Schneider
107. “Grant me the wisdom to know when to keep trying and when to stop wasting time, the patience to keep going with the 1st, and the courage & serenity to let go of the 2nd.” - jay woodman
108. “Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit.Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.What is anything in life compared to peace of soul?” - Francis de Sales
109. “everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death” - Thomas Bernhard
110. “Patience is the training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed.” - Pema Chodron
111. “Patience is the antidote to the restless poison of the Ego. Without it we all become ego-maniacal bulls in china shops, destroying our future happiness as we blindly rush in where angels fear to tread. In these out-of-control moments, we bulldoze through the best possible outcomes for our lives, only to return to the scene of the crime later to cry over spilt milk.” - Anthon St. Maarten
112. “God is never in a hurry, but he is always on time.” - Rick Warren
113. “Simplify and focus on the good. The beauty of the journey ahead will flourish on its own.” - Erik Tomblin
114. “God often grants in a moment what He has long denied.” - Thomas A. Kempis
115. “We must strive for literacy and education that teach us to never quit questioning and probing at the assumptions of the day.” - Bryant McGill
116. “He will unfailingly be pleased with our patience and take note of our diligence and perseverance.” - St. Francis de Sales
117. “The acts of daily forbearance, the headache, or toothache, or heavy cold; the tiresome peculiarities of husband or wife, the broken glass...all of these sufferings, small as they are, if accepted lovingly, are most pleasing to God's Goodness.” - St. Francis de Sales
118. “Oppose vigorously any tendency to sadness ... You must persevere. By means of sorrow the enemy tries to make us weary of good works, but if he sees that we don't give them up and that being done in spite of his opposition they have become very meritorious, he will stop troubling us.” - St. Francis de Sales
119. “He enables [his children] to walk before him; he holds their hand in difficulties; he himself carries them along in hardships that he sees as being otherwise unbearable to them.” - St. Francis de Sales
120. “Be patient and one day you will be in Heaven, where there will be only peace and joy ... You will possess an enduring tranquility and rest.” - St. Francis de Sales
121. “We must unceasingly ask for [perseverance] by making use of the means which God has taught us for obtaining it: prayer, fasting, almsgiving, frequenting the sacraments, association with good companions, and hearing and reading Holy Scripture.” - St. Francis de Sales
122. “Everybody finds themselves sometimes deficient in what they need, and put to inconvenience ... the richest people may easily be without something they want, and that is practically to suffer poverty. Accept such occurrences cheerfully, rejoice in them, bear them willingly.” - St. Francis de Sales
123. “Why couldn’t I find one action that would make the need to binge automatically disappear? Because there is no magic action to make that horrible prebinge feeling go away. The cool thing is that we are designed so that the feeling will pass through us on its own—in time. All we have to do is sit there and feel what is going on inside of us. We must experience the feelings. To help us deal with the feelings, we can call someone on our support team. We can also express the feelings by focusing on our breath or even hitting a pillow. The important thing to remember is that no matter how terrible, feelings do pass. It takes patience and trust—not food . . .” - Jenni Schaefer
