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

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

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.

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

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.

Two of the hardest tests in life: The patience to wait for the right moment and the courage to accept whatever you encounter.

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

A patient man will eat ripe fruit.

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

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.

It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.

In reading lives of great people, I found the first victory won was over themselves.

I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the “oughtness” that forever confronts him.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

I do nothing upon myself, and yet am mine own executioner.

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.

Any one thing in creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence to a humble and grateful mind.

The clearest way in the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.

Be grateful for your life, every detail of it, and your face will come to shine like a sun, and everyone who sees it will be made glad and peaceful.

Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living.

If you have no time for prayer and meditation, you will have lots of time for sickness and trouble.

Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom.

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.

Work is love made visible.

The richest people in the world look for and build networks, everyone else looks for work.

Think enthusiastically about everything; but especially about your job. If you do, you'll put a torch of glory in your life. If you love your job with enthusiasm, you'll shake it to pieces. You'll love it into greatness, you'll upgrade it, you'll fill it with prestige and power.

It’s not when you realize that nothing can help you—religion, pride, anything—it’s when you realize that you don’t need any aid.