I’m kind of a big kettle. It takes time to get boiled, but then I’m always hot.

When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole.

It is a fine game to play – the game of politics – and it is well worth waiting for a good hand before really plunging.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

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

Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.

He that can have patience can have what he will.

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.

It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.

One word from the Lord is like a piece of gold to a believer, who is like a jeweler, shaping and hammering out the promise for a number of weeks.

These wretched babies don’t come until they are ready.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

Don’t complain. The Israelites wasted forty years murmuring and complaining in the wilderness, when they could have just obeyed God and entered into their Promised Land.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

If I spent all my time criticising myself, I wouldn’t be able to function. There are actors who theorise till the cows come home. I haven’t the patience for them. It’s maybe shallow, but that’s why I’ll never be part of the acting set.

Many a man thinks he is patient when, in reality, he is indifferent.

Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.

Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.

It seems that I have always been ahead of my time. I had to wait nineteen years before Niagara was harnessed by my system, fifteen years before the basic inventions for wireless which I gave to the world in 1893 were applied universally.

Danger is sauce for prayers.

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.

Great loves too must be endured.

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

When I say ‚Crush your enemy‘, I don’t literally mean it.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.

The universe can take quite a while to deliver.

Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.

God always has patience.

Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.

Every day I go to my study and sit at my desk and put the computer on. At that moment, I have to open the door. It’s a big, heavy door. You have to go into the Other Room. Metaphorically, of course. And you have to come back to this side of the room. And you have to shut the door.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

Endurance is patience concentrated.

The one thing about the business of entertainment is that you have to learn patience.

We should meet abuse by forbearance. Human nature is so constituted that if we take absolutely no notice of anger or abuse, the person indulging in it will soon weary of it and stop.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.

There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

When I tell a child something the first time, I’m nice. The 15th time, I start to get aggravated.

When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out.

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

Genius is patience.

I read to my kid, but I can’t stand reading.

I have learned that I really do have discipline, self-control, and patience. But they were given to me as a seed, and it’s up to me to choose to develop them.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

O wise man! Give your wealth only to the worthy and never to others. The water of the sea received by the clouds is always sweet.

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.