Waiting quotes
4.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside waiting — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"But I was too restless to watch long; I'm too Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours - that's another matter."
"I was afraid to board a streetcar because of the conductor; I was afraid to enter the Kabuki Theater for fear of the usherettes standing along the sides of the red-carpeted staircase at the main entrance; I was afraid to go into a restaurant because I was intimidated by the waiters furtively hovering behind me waiting for my plate to be emptied."
"Droplets, droplets: we are all identical drips and drops of people, hovering, waiting to be tipped, waiting for someone to show us the way, to pour us down a path."
"It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed."
"It is impossible for an abortion clinic to have a waiting list of more than nine months."
"All good things arrive unto them that wait - and don't die in the meantime."
"If you will change everything will change for you. Don’t wait for things to change. Change doesn’t start out there, change starts within....All change starts with you."
"It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer."
"It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth."
"Loving others always costs us something and requires effort. And you have to decide to do it on purpose. You can't wait for a feeling to motivate you."
"Wait for the idea. It may not come at first, but you must be patient, never doubting, waiting in faith. It will come."
"Lies are ants, the truth is the sun, and questions are a magnifying glass waiting to be picked up by the curious."
"All truths wait in all things,/They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it"
"I don't think you should wait. I think you should speak now."
"Most of us go through life as failures, because we are waiting for the 'time to be right' to start doing something worthwhile. Do not wait. The time will never be 'just right.' Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along."
"But standing in that hallway, it was all coming back to me. Memories were waiting at the edges of things, beckoning to me."
"All writers are waiting for replies. That’s what I’ve learned. Maybe all human beings are"
"I had learned that there were times when fighting was impossible, when the best thing to do was to wait and to learn."
"Planning is like "pointing yourself" in the direction of a target...no more than that. Let your power then redefine the target, and re-point you in the correct direction. Think of it like this: An arrow is never going to hit the target unless it's in flight. If you sit around and wait for God to shoot the arrow, nothing is going to happen."
"Do the best you can do and wait the results in peace."
