Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.

If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owning more to patient attention, than to any other talent.

Many people resented my impatience and honesty, but I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.

Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.

No thing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you. So act toward children, so act toward a wife, so toward office, so toward wealth.

Real excellence does not come cheaply. A certain price must be paid in terms of practice, patience, and persistence—natural ability notwithstanding.

Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There’s no greater investment.

Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies.

And, more importantly, reach for the stars. And realize that it is never too late—not now, not ever—for you to pursue you passion, your pursuit of perfection. And most importantly, your perseverance for making it happen.

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise.

For great and low there's but one test: 'Tis that each man do his best.

Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

Half-finished work generally proves to be labor lost.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

If we all can persevere, if we can in every land and office look beyond our own shores and ambitions, then surely the age will dawn in which the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.