And to await a pleasure, is itself a pleasure.
[Und ein Vergnügen erwarten, ist auch ein Vergnügen.]Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781) German playwright, philosopher, dramaturg, writer
Minna von Barnhelm, Act 4, sc. 6 [Minna] (1763) [tr. Holroyd/Bell (1888)]
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Quotations about:
waiting
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
He that waits upon Fortune, is never sure of a Dinner.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard (1734 ed.)
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“Yet doth he live!” exclaims th’ impatient heir,
And sighs for sables which he must not wear.
Anyway, one of the first things you learn in space is not to thrash. If you have nothing constructive to do, the most constructive thing you can do is often nothing at all. In a mindful sense, I mean. Thrashing is the thing that gets people killed. Not sitting still.
Elizabeth Bear (b. 1971) American author [pseud. for Sarah Bear Elizabeth Wishnevsky]
Ancestral Night (2019)
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So everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.
May Sarton (1912-1995) Belgian-American poet, novelist, memoirist [pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton]
Journal of a Solitude (1973)
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I was waiting for
something extraordinary to
happenbut as the years wasted on
nothing ever did unless I
caused itCharles Bukowski (1920-1994) German-American author, poet
“two kinds of hell” (c. 1990)
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While this sounds motivational, in the context of the poem, the "extraordinary" things (bar fights, dalliances) always end up poorly.
First published in Third Lung Review, #8 (1992); collected in an edited version in The People Look Like Flowers at Last (2007).
I am the world’s original gradualist. I just think ninety-odd years is gradual enough.
Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) American lawyer, US Supreme Court Justice (1967-1991)
Quoted in I. F. Stone’s Weekly (19 May 1958)
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In response to Eisenhower's speech to the National Newspaper Publishers Association, where the President called for "patience and forbearance" on civil rights reform.
Also that year, during the effort by Autherine Lucy to be admitted to the segregated University of Alabama, Marshall similarly quipped, "Maybe you can't override prejudice overnight, but the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1864, ninety-odd years ago. I believe in gradualism, and I also believe that ninety-odd years is pretty gradual."
Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.
There are two kinds of people in one’s life — people whom one keeps waiting — and the people for whom one waits.
S. N. Behrman (1893-1973) American playwright, screenwriter, biographer, writer [Samuel Nathaniel Behrman]
Biography, Act 1 [Feydak] (1933)
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It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now.
Hugh Laurie (b. 1959) English actor, writer, musician, singer
Interview with Sophie Harris, Time Out: New York (1 Sep 2012)
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Now because 18 months ago the first dawn, three months ago broad daylight, but a very few days ago the full sun of the most highly remarkable spectacle has risen — nothing holds me back. I can give myself up to the sacred frenzy, I can have the insolence to make a full confession to mortal men that I have stolen the golden vessel of the Egyptians to make from them a tabernacle for my God far from the confines of the land of Egypt. If you forgive me I shall rejoice; if you are angry, I shall bear it; I am indeed casting the die and writing the book, either for my contemporaries or for posterity to read, it matters not which: let the book await its reader for a hundred years; God himself has waited six thousand years for his work to be seen.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) German astronomer
The Harmonies of the World [Harmonices Mundi], Book 5, Introduction (1618)
Alt. trans.:
- "It may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer." [in David Brewster, The Martyrs of Science; or, the Lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler (1841)]
- "It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer."
- "I feel carried away and possessed by an unutterable rapture over the divine spectacle of heavenly harmony ... I write a book for the present time, or for posterity. It is all the same to me. It may wait a hundred years for its readers, as God has also waited six thousand years for an onlooker." [in S Krantz and B Blank, Calculus: Multivariable (2006)]
- "I am stealing the golden vessels of the Egyptians to build a tabernacle to my God from them, far far away from the boundaries of Egypt. If you forgive me, I shall rejoice.; if you are enraged with me, I shall bear it. See, I cast the die, and I write the book. Whether it is to be read by the people of the present or of the future makes no difference: let it await its reader for a hundred years, if God himself has stood ready for six thousand years for one to study him."
Man’s greatest strength is shown in standing still.
Edward Young (1683-1765) English poet
The Complaint: Or, Night Thoughts, Vol. 2, No. 8 “Night the Eighth: Virtue’s Apology,” l. 922 (1745-03) (1748)
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My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.
Tom Stoppard (b. 1937) Czech-English playwright and screenwriter
Lord Malquist and Mr Moon, ch. 2 “A Couple of Deaths and Exits” (1966)
God’s Mill grinds slow, but sure.
George Herbert (1593-1633) Welsh priest, orator, poet.
Jacula Prudentum, or Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, &c. (compiler), # 747 (1640 ed.)
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Why did we wait for any thing? — why not seize the pleasure at once? — How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!
Jane Austen (1775-1817) English author
Emma, Vol. 2, ch. 12 (ch. 30) [Frank Churchill] (1816)
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A Man who is a Master of Patience is Master of everything else.
George Savile, Marquis of Halifax (1633-1695) English politician and essayist
“Patience,” Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections (1750)
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