Quotes about Impatience

Patience is the support of weakness; impatience the ruin of strength.

She wanted something to happen - something, anything; she did not know what.

Thank everyone who calls out your faults, your anger, your impatience, your
egotism; do this consciously, voluntarily.
-Jean Toomer, poet and novelist
(1894-1967)

A little boy was having difficulty lifting a heavy stone.
His father came along just then.

Noting the boy's failure, he asked, "Are you using all your strength?"

"Yes, I am," the little boy said impatiently.

"No, you are not," the father answered. "I am right here just waiting, and you haven't asked me to help you."

The revelation of the secret of water will put an end to all manner of speculation or expediency and their excrescences, to which belong war, hatred, impatience and discord of every kind. The thorough study of water therefore signifies the end of monopolies, the end of all domination in the truest sense of the word and the start of a socialism arising from the development of individualism in its most perfect form. (1939)

'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, To give these mourning duties to your father: But, you must know, your father lost a father; That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound In filial obligation for some term To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever In obstinate condolement is a course Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief; It shows a will most incorrect to heaven, A heart unfortified, a mind impatient, An understanding simple and unschool'd: For what we know must be and is as common As any the most vulgar thing to sense, Why should we in our peevish opposition Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven, A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, To reason most absurd: whose common theme Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried, From the first corse till he that died to-day, 'This must be so.' We pray you, throw to earth This unprevailing woe, and think of us As of a father: for let the world take note, You are the most immediate to our throne; And with no less nobility of love Than that which dearest father bears his son, Do I impart toward you.

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.

Words That Encourage Darkness and The Adversary: Angry, Antagonistic, Appetites, Arrogant, Confused, Contention, Covetous, Critical, Depressed, Domineering, Doubt, Easily Offended, Evasive, Fear, Frustrated, Harshness, Impatience, Ineffective, Irritable, Jealousy, Negative, Pessimistic, Possessive, Resentful, Secretive, Self-C entered, Selfish, Troubled, Uncontrolled, Unhappy, Vindictive,

You may have great plans and may be impatient to carry them out now. Possibly you can. We usually can do far more than we have believed. But possibly the best time has not arrived and the best place selected. Then be patient while you persevere. Great things require time, and the important projects must pass through many stages. However, if you are determined to accomplish what you have in mind, and do your utmost as well as give yourself the required time, you will certainly do it. All things come to him who waits patiently while he works efficiently.

Theodore Roosevelt, impatient with the excesses of "purely sentimental historians," authored his own stirring vindication of America's relations with the Indians: Looked at from the standpoint of the ultimate result, there was little real difference to the Indian whether the land was taken by treaty or by war. . . . No treaty could be satisfactory to the whites, no treaty served the needs of humanity and civilization, unless it gave the land to the Americans as unreservedly as any successful war. Whether the whites won the land by treaty, by armed conflict, or, as was actually the case, by a mixture of both, mattered comparatively little so long as the land was won. It was all-important that it should be won, for the benefit of civilization and in the interests of mankind. It is, indeed, a warped, perverse, and silly morality which would forbid a course of conquest that has turned whole continents into the seats of mighty and flourishing civilized nations. . . . It is as idle to apply to savages the rules of international morality which obtain between stable and cultured communities, as it would be to judge the fifth-century English conquest of Britain by the standards of to-day. The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him. . . . It is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races.

Job endured everything - until his friends came to comfort him, then he grew impatient.

It seems to me probable that anyone who has a series of intolerable positions to put up with must have been responsible for them in some extent; not that it was simply "their fault" - I don't mean that - but that they have contributed to it by impatience, or intolerance, or brusqueness - or some provocation.

Consider what you have in the smallest well-chosen library-a company of the wisest and wittiest men which can be plucked out of all civilized countries in a thousand years. The men themselves were then hidden and inaccessible. They were solitary, impatient of interruption, and fenced by etiquette. But now they are immortal, and the thought they did not reveal, even to their bosom friends, is here written out in transparent words of light to us, who are strangers of another age.

On the whole, it is patience which makes the final difference between those who succeed or fail in all things. All the greatest people have it in an infinite degree, and among the less, the patient weak ones always conquer the impatient strong.

Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: "It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity."

Perhaps the believer never does more disservice to religion than to support the truth with bad arguments. The impatient listener, perceiving the obvious errors, often "throws out the baby with the bath" and turns away, even from true religion.

The sharpest sting of adversity it borrows from our own impatience.

Anger makes us strong, Blind and impatient, And it leads us wrong; The strength is quickly lost; We feel the error long.

The patient. The pine tree seems to listen, the fir tree to wait: and both without impatience: - they give no thought to the little people beneath them devoured by their impatience and their curiosity.

One thing which makes us find so few people who appear reasonable and agreeable in conversation is, that there is scarcely anyone who does not think more of what he is about to say than of answering precisely what is said to him. The cleverest and most complaisant people content themselves with merely showing an attentive countenance, while we can see in their eyes and minds a wandering from what is said to them, and an impatience to return to what they wish to say; instead of reflecting that it is a bad method of pleasing or persuading others to be so studious of pleasing oneself; and that listening well and answering well is one of the greatest perfections that can be attained in conversation.

One of the expressions of Western over-reliance on technology can be seen in the lack of patience in industrial society. When you deal with technology, everything happens at the touch of a button. This conditions you to become so impatient that when you have an emotional or personal crisis, you don't allow time for the solution to take effect. This leads to all sorts of rash responses, like quarrels, fights and so on.

The late Peter Marshall illustrated our trust or lack of trust with the following story: Suppose a child has a broken toy. He brings the toy to his father, saying that he himself has tried to fix it and has failed. He asks his father to do it for him. The father gladly agrees . . . takes the toy . . and begins to work. Now obviously the father can do his work most quickly and easily if the child make no attempt to interfere, simply sits quietly watching, or even goes about other business, with never a doubt that the toy is being successfully mended. But, what do most of God's children do in such a situation? Often we stand by offering a lot of meaningless advice and some rather silly criticism. We even get impatient and try to help, and so get our hands in the Father's way, generally hindering the work. . . Finally, in our desperation, we may even grab the toy out of the Father's hands entirely, saying rather bitterly that we hadn't really thought He could fix it anyway . . . that we'd given him a chance and He had failed us.

When on life's journey it becomes our lot to travel with criticism of skeptics, the hate of some, the rejection of others, the impatience of many, or a friend's betrayal, we must be able to pray in such a manner that an abiding faith and a strong testimony that the Lord will be with us to the end, will compel us to say, "Nevertheless, Father, Thy will be done, and with Thy help, in patience I will follow firmly on the path that takes me back to Thee."

A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe fruit at length falls into his lap.