56 Quotes About Waiting

In today's fast-paced world, patience can often feel like a rare virtue. Yet, the moments we spend waiting, whether for a loved one, an opportunity, or a dream to come true, offer us the space to reflect, grow, and gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and our desires. To honor these moments of pause, we’ve curated a collection of the top 56 quotes about waiting. These nuggets of wisdom from authors, philosophers, and thought leaders remind us that waiting is not just a passive activity but a journey that shapes our experiences and enriches our lives. Dive in and discover the beauty and insight that can be found in the art of waiting.

1. “For a while" is a phrase whose length can't be measured.At least by the person who's waiting.” - Haruki Murakami

2. “Then I thought, boy, isn't that just typical? You wait and wait and wait for something, and then when it happens, you feel sad.” - Sharon Creech

3. “It's hard being left behind. (...) It's hard to be the one who stays.” - Audrey Niffenegger

4. “Is that why you've been pushing me away? Because of how you look? [...] I waited for you my whole life. Yearned for you my whole life. After Tersa told me you were coming, I spent seven hundred years searching for you[....] I never gave a damn what you looked like--tall, short, fat, thin, plain, beautiful, ugly. Why would I care about what you looked like? The flesh was the shell that housed the glory[....] Even if I couldn't be your physical lover, there are other ways to be a lover and I know them all. So don't stand there and tell me how you feel depends on how you look!” - Anne Bishop

5. “It is said there are flowers that bloom only once in a hundred years. Why should there not be some that bloom once in a thousand, in ten thousand years? Perhaps we never know about them simply because this "once in a thousand years" has come today.” - Zamyatin

6. “He was still immersed in the dim, wet wonder of the folded wings that might open if someone loved him; he still hoped, probably, in a butterfly's unthinking way, for spring and warmth. How the wings ache, folded so, waiting; that is, they ache until they atrophy.” - Harold Brodkey

7. “Patience, he thought. So much of this was patience - waiting, and thinking and doing things right. So much of all this, so much of all living was patience and thinking.” - Gary Paulsen

8. “Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one's thoughts.” - Elizabeth Elliot

9. “Standing on a street corner waiting for no one is power.” - Gregory Corso

10. “There was nothing new in sitting on this dock, on this or that wooden bench, watching for his boat to come. In some ways, she was always waiting for him.” - Ann Brashares

11. “You know, I wouldn’t have done this a month ago. I wouldn’t have done it then. Then I was avoiding. Now I’m just waiting. Things happen to me. They do. They have to go ahead and happen. You watch – you wait… Things still happen here and something is waiting to happen to me. I can tell. Recently my life feels like a bloodcurdling joke. Recently my life has taken on *form* Something is waiting. I am waiting. Soon, it will stop waiting – any day now. Awful things can happen any time. This is the awful thing.” - Martin Amis

12. “We will wait. We will wait till all is made righteous (glorious) according to the word of God.” - John Piper

13. “I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them.” - E. V. Lucas

14. “[...] wszystko, co budzi zachwyt wywołany wiecznym zbliżaniem się do celu, czeka zagłada.” - Vladimir Nabokov

15. “After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting.” - Chuck Palahniuk

16. “Men trust God by risking rejection. Women trust God by waiting.” - Carolyn McCulley

17. “I’ve learned that waiting is the most difficult bit, and I want to get used to the feeling, knowing that you’re with me, even when you’re not by my side.” - Paulo Coelho

18. “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

19. “Time felt slower when we do nothing but wait.” - Toba Beta

20. “Always too eager for the future, wePick up bad habits of expectancy.Something is always approaching; every dayTill then we say,Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear,Sparkling armada of promises draw near.How slow they are! And how much time they waste,Refusing to make haste!Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalksOf disappointment, for, though nothing balksEach big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked,Each rope distinct,Flagged, and the figurehead with golden titsArching our way, it never anchors; it'sNo sooner present than it turns to past.Right to the lastWe think each one will heave to and unloadAll good into our lives, all we are owedFor waiting so devoutly and so long.But we are wrong:Only one ship is seeking us, a black-Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her backA huge and birdless silence. In her wakeNo waters breed or break.- Next, Please” - Philip Larkin

21. “In contravention of my belief that any life ending in death is essentially pointless, I needed my friends to open up that plastic bag and take one last look at me. Someone had to remember me, if only for a few more minutes in the vast silent waiting room of time.” - Gary Shteyngart

22. “I'll come back to you," I say. "I promise you, if it's the last thing I do, I'll come back to you."Her face is buried in my neck. She nods."I'll count the minutes until you do." she says.” - Pittacus Lore

23. “Ich werde stehen und warten.Ich werde müde werden.Ich werde nicht einschlafen.Ich werde sterben.” - Hermann Hesse

24. “I don't care how wonderful heaven is, I won't be content waiting thirty years for you.” - Jason F. Wright

25. “He had felt that a moment before his making the turn, someone had been there. The air seemed charged with a special calm as if someone had waited there, quietly, and only a moment before he came, simply turned to a shadow and let him through. Perhaps his nose detected a faint perfume, perhaps the skin on the backs of his hands, on his face, felt the temperature rise at this one spot where a person's standing might raise the immediate atmosphere ten degrees for an instant. There was no understanding it. Each time he made the turn, he saw only the white, unused, buckling sidewalk, with perhaps, on one night, something vanishing swiftly across a lawn before he could focus his eyes or speak.But now, tonight, he slowed almost to a stop. His inner mind, reaching out to turn the corner for him, had heard the faintest whisper. Breathing? Or was the atmosphere compressed merely by someone standing very quietly there, waiting?He turned the corner.” - Ray Bradbury

26. “Time doesn't heal all wounds, only distance can lessen the sting of them.” - Shannon Alder

27. “He tried to tell me week after week to accept things as they were and move on with my life. But if there was one man who had put his life on hold to wait for something or someone, it was him.” - Cecelia Ahern

28. “The Indian danced on alone. The crowd clapped up the beat. The Indian danced with a chair. The crowd went crazy. The band faded. The crowd cheered. The Indian held up his hands for silence as if to make a speech. Looking at the band and then the crowd, the Indian said, "Well, what're you waiting for? Let's DANCE.” - Robert Fulghum

29. “You have to imaginea waiting that is not impatientbecause it is timeless.” - R.S. Thomas

30. “Waiting is a form of passive persistence.” - Ogwo David Emenike

31. “Even a snail will eventually reach its destination.” - Gail Tsukiyama

32. “Waiting turns men into bears in a barn, and women into cats in a sack.” - Robert Jordan

33. “The day drags along, you make thousands of plans, you imagine every possible conversation, you promise to change your behavior in certain ways–and you feel more and more anxious until your loved one arrives. But by then, you don't know what to say. The hours of waiting have been transformed into tension, the tension has become fear, and the fear makes you embarrassed about showing affection.” - Paulo Coelho

34. “I sat taller, to suppress my impatience. It was infuriating, this waiting. I was thirty-seven years old. And like a child, an infant, really, I was at the mercy of others. Hour after hour of my life was spent waiting.” - Rosie Sultan

35. “I want no blood from you--not until we're both sweaty and naked and you're screaming my name.” - Nalini Singh

36. “Deep under our feet the Earth holds its molten breath, while the bones of countless generations watch us and wait.” - Isaac Marion

37. “So much of control is not authoritative action but mindful waiting.” - Cameron Conaway

38. “They lived their lives only for the hour that lay ahead of them.” - Ann Patchett

39. “Wait. This was the first lesson I had learned about love. The day drags along, you make thousands of plans, you imagine every possible conversation, you promise to change your behavior in certain ways -- and you feel more and more anxious until your loved one arrives. But by then, you don't know what to say. The hours of waiting have been transformed into tension, the tension has become fear, and the fear makes you embarrassed about showing affection.” - Paulo Coelho

40. “so if you love him, why keep him waiting for 13 years?""Because I was afraid. Afraid of not being worthy, afraid of not knowing how to love him, afraid of waking up one day and not loving him anymore.” - Guillaume Musso

41. “Instead,she's as stillas a leaf-littered pond,dark water evaporating,waiting desperately for rain.” - Emma Cameron

42. “Not everyone can wait: neither the sated nor the satisfied nor those without respect can wait. The only ones who can wait are people who carry restlessness around with them.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

43. “This is torture, torture, torture.Why is this so hard?? I survived whole days not talking to you before. What happened???I'm not as nice in the world today. I am scowly. I am trying to be good and not fussy, but frankly, this is less fun. And I am getting grumpy about the prospect of many, many more days like this ahead.” - Bill Shapiro

44. “Waiting does not exist in the experience of those who recognize the presence of love wherever they are.” - Alan Cohen

45. “Se è tardi a trovarmi, insisti, se non ci sono in un posto, cerca in un altro, perché io son fermo da qualche parte ad aspettare te.” - Walt Whitman

46. “Tides do what tides do–they turn.” - Derek Landy

47. “Q: When is the perfect time? A: Who can say, but probably somewhere between haste and delay - and it's usually most wise to start today.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

48. “The thing was, if I had found a way to escape- even for just a little while- I knew the pain would be there waiting for me when I got back.” - Neal Shusterman

49. “But an intelligent man like you would know that to live in an unrealistic hope is a very foolish way to spend a life." - Lena Gray” - Maeve Binchy

50. “I thought I loved him when he went away; I love him now in another degree: he is more my own. [ . . . ] Oh! a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice, but it was not uttered--not uttered till; when the hush came, some could not feel it: till, when the sun returned, his light was night to some!” - Charlotte Brontë

51. “In life one has a choice to take one of two paths: to wait for some special day - or to celebrate each special day.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

52. “You remember how he used to be girl on either arm? You really don't see that guy too much anymore. Why do you think that is? He's waiting for you. I know you're dealing with stuff but you cannot ask him to wait forever! Unless of course, you're okay with him pulling away.""What if it doesn't work out? What if it ends up like you and Javier?""Well at least we gave it a shot. And so it didn't work out, so what? Now, we can move on give or take the occasional booty call.""I just don't wanna lose what we have, you know?""Girl please! What exactly do you have, really?""A friendship.""No. What you and I have is a friendship. What you and castle have is a holding pattern. How long can you circle before the fuel runs out?” - Richard Castle

53. “Did you ever think about boys?' I say, staring up into the dark. 'There wasn't room,' she whispers, and her voice is unbelievably sad. 'At first, after Connor, I was just waiting. I was going to get a new boyfriend soon- as soon as I was prettier or better, more perfect. But after a while there was no room for anything else. If I though about kissing or sex, I just started feeling ugly, too awful for anything good.” - Brenna Yovanoff

54. “A minute or so passed by--not long, but long enough to make me wonder whether Oliver was setting up mood lighting or hiding dead bodies. Or if someone was up there waiting to stab me again. Or if someone was up there waiting to hand me a crown and tell me I was the long-lost princess of Genovia. Or if I'd tumble into a pit of lava, only to get saved at the last second by a flying carpet.” - Lindsay Ribar

55. “When I awake thinking of dreams I slept on, I often wonder, if the dreams ever wake up thinking of me?” - Anthony Liccione

56. “Remember it is your choice; you can either wait for someone or end someone’s waiting.” - M.F. Moonzajer