5 Quotes on the Importance of Knowing How to Be Patient

Knowing how to be patient is a true art. Whoever has developed that skill proves that they’ve reached a higher level of personal growth. It implies self-control, ability to tolerate frustration, self-restraint, and the ability to see things in perspective.

When we’re born, we’re quite the opposite. Babies don’t put off satisfying their needs. They want their desires to be fulfilled instantly. If they don’t get what they want, they get frustrated and start crying.

Therefore, knowing how to be patient is an ability that only comes with time, experience, and persistent self-work. It’s a great virtue that protects and strengthens us in the face of adversity. It allows you to cope with hardship while maintaining a great attitude. The great thinkers knew all of this, which is why they’ve left us great quotes on this subject. These are some of them.

1. The pleasure of knowing how to be patient

If anybody understands the importance of knowing how to be patient, it’s hunters and fishermen. That’s why Joseph-Antoine René Joubert once said: “The pleasure of hunting is the pleasure of waiting”. As you can see, for hunters being patient is not a sacrifice but rather a source of satisfaction.

A hunter’s patience is active. It’s part of the challenge involved in capturing a prey. The only way to trap it is by giving it time to come out of its hiding place and being there to act on time.

The same goes for fishermen. In reality, it’s a metaphor for life. Not every moment is the right moment. You have to be patient and know how to act when the right moment does show up.

2. The best way to be patient

The following quote is by Gustave Flaubert: “You have to wait when you are desperate, and go on when you wait”. That’s precisely the paradox that knowing how to be patient presents. It doesn’t mean we have to be passive. Instead, we should move in the right direction.

Active patience means we don’t watch the time pass by. Instead, it means being aware of how important it is to keep moving in the right direction, even if that progress is minimal or isn’t exactly what we were hoping for.

3. Better not get ahead

Part of the art of knowing how to be patient is trying not to dwell on future problems. Many times we try to solve problems that haven’t even arisen yet.

Julia Navarro reminded us of something similar when she said: “When we get to that river, we’ll talk about that bridge”. This means that we don’t know if we’ll even reach the river. Maybe we won’t, but we spend a lot of time building bridges in our minds.

4. Waiting with hope

Samuel Johnson said: “Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded; for hope itself is happiness, and its frustration, however, frequent, are less dreadful than its extinction”.

As Johnson says, hope in itself is happiness. It means waiting for tomorrow with optimism and positive expectations. Even if what we’re waiting for doesn’t arrive, a good attitude will make us see things in a positive light. On the contrary, despair is the death of all future dreams. Life itself begins to lose all value.

5. All things come…

This is a simple quote but it’s one of the most relevant ones. Henry W. Longfellow said: “All things come to those who wait”. He summarized all that can be said about the art of knowing how to be patient in one quote.

Many times we don’t get what we want because we don’t persevere enough. Sometimes it takes a lot of time. Perhaps that long wait may lead us to rush into action or abandon our goal ahead of time. We forget that the longer we persevere, the greater the chances are of getting what we want.

Knowing how to be patient is part of being mature. It’s one of the most difficult challenges in life, but also one of the most rewarding. Whoever knows how to be patient, knows how to live.