What is Patience? Best Patience Quotes and Definitions

Patience is both a skill and a quality. It is the ability to wait for things. It isn’t a passive thing. It’s an active thing. It is the balance between the two extremes of impatience and complacency.

[Let us know in the comments about your favorite patience story or inspiration.]

Patience is one of the qualities/skills for healthy relationships included in my Relationship Booster card set. 

What is patience?

Patience is both a skill and a quality. 

Healthy patience is the ability to wait for things. 

It allows for both delayed gratification and proactivity. 

“Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is active; it is concentrated strength.” ― Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

What is Too Little Patience?

We're pretty familiar with what it looks like to have too little patience. It extracts a cost to ourselves, our ability to achieve things, and our relationships. 

Examples of what's on the too little end of the patience continuum:

• impatience
• need for instant gratification
• frustration with people who need time to do something
• pushiness
• rushing things that need more time
• anxiety about things that need more time
• prematurely giving up on goals
• false urgency

“The biggest pitfall as you make your way through life is impatience. Remember that being impatient is simply a way of punishing yourself. It creates stress, dissatisfaction, and fear.” ―Susan Jeffers

The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it. ―Arnold H. Glasow

What is Too Much Patience?

We don't as often talk about the downsides of being too much of something that is considered a virtue, but when patience is taken too far it becomes unhealthy. Like too little patience, too much patience extracts a cost to ourselves, our ability to achieve things, and our relationships. 

Examples of what's on the too much end of the patience continuum:

• waiting too long
• complacency
• inaction
• not holding people accountable
• giving people too many chances to change
• waiting for things to just come to you rather than being proactive and trying to make things happen

"Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice." ― George Jackson

What is the Meaning of Patience?: Inspiring Quotes About Patience

1. “Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind.” ― David G. Allen

2. "Sometimes things aren't clear right away. That's where you need to be patient and persevere and see where things lead." ― Mary Pierce

3. "Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish." ― John Quincy Adams

4. "Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears." ― Barbara Johnson

5. In the fake it until you can make it category:

"Patience is the art of concealing your impatience." ― Guy Kawasaki

6. "Our patience will achieve more than our force." ― Edmund Burke

7. "We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world." ― Helen Keller

8. "There is something good in all seeming failures. You are not to see that now. Time will reveal it. Be patient." ― Swami Sivananda

9. "If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought." ― Isaac Newton

10. Patience helps you listen to other people ― a key to healthy relationships:

 "Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk." ― Doug Larson 

11. "Wise to resolve, and patient to perform." ― Homer

12. "Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown." ― Soren Kierkegaard

13. "I'm patient." ― Michael Jordan

14. "You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience." ― Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

15. "Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience." ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

16. "Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet." ― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

17. "He that can have patience can have what he will." ― Benjamin Franklin

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