Quotes on patience

Above all, trust the slow work of the spirit.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown,
something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability--
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you,
your ideas mature gradually--let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of your tomorrow.

Who can say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be?
Give yourself the benefit of believing that the Spirit is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of felling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

 

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Can you be patient unil the mud settles and the water is clear? 

Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?

Stephen Mitchell