Quotes about Patience

There are some nights when sleep plays coy, aloof and disdainful. And all the wiles that I employ to win its service to my side are useless as wounded pride, and much more painful.

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

Every storm runs out of rain.

The wise woman thinks twice and speaks once or, better yet, does not speak at all.

On my way out of the house one morning she said, "Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait." Another time she reminded me that "God helps those who help themselves.

He turned his back and went through the door into the cool beyond. Momma backed up inside herself for a few minutes. I forgot everything except her face which was almost a new one to me. She leaned over and took the doorknob, and in her everyday soft voice she said, "Sister, go on downstairs. Wait for me. I'll be there directly.

Upon certain subject I am able to hold my tongue and hope that time will right wrongs.

Did I learn to be kinder, To be more patient, And more generous, More loving, More ready to laugh, And more easy to accept honest tears? If I accept those legacies of my departed beloveds, I am able to say, Thank You to them for their love and Thank You to God for their lives.

I have waited toes curled, hat rolled heart and genitals in hand on the back porches of forever in the kitchens and fields of rejections on the cold marble steps of America's White Out-House in the drop seats of buses and the open flies of war

Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait

In that second I was wounded. My mind struck a truth as an elbow can strike a table edge. A poor, uneducated servant in Africa was so secure he could ignore established White rudeness. No Black American I had ever known knew that security. Our tenure in the United States, though long and very hard-earned, was always so shaky, we had developed patience as a defense, but never as aggression.

We turned other cheeks so often our heads seemed to revolve on the end of our necks, like old stop and go signs.