Patience : Patience, perseverance and endurance are some of the less glamorous virtues which pave the road to success and achievement. This compilation brings out the meaning and importance of these virtues.

You must arm yourself with an endless patience and endurance. You do a thing once, ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times if necessary, but you do it till it gets done. And not done only here and there, but everywhere and everywhere at the same time. This is the great problem one sets oneself. That is why, to those who come to tell me very light-heartedly, “I want to do yoga”, I reply, “Think it over, one may do the yoga for a number of years without noticing the least result. But if you want to do it, you must persist and persist with such a will that you should be ready to do it for ten lifetimes, a hundred lifetimes if necessary, in order to succeed.” I do not say it will be like that, but the attitude must be like that.

[CWM2, 4:251]

Sweet Mother, Too often the feeling of incapacity and of being far from you comes to discourage the will. I am tired of my way of living, of feeling—and it seems to have no end.

To realise anything one must be patient. And the vaster and more important the realisation, the greater the patience must be.

[CWM2, 14:167]

Patience is one of the most essential conditions of the spiritual life. One must know how to wait in order to receive.

[CWM2, 17:124]

Fix not the time and the way in which the ideal shall be fulfilled. Work and leave time and way to God all knowing.

This is exactly the attitude we should all have towards transformation: as much energy and ardour as if we were certain of achieving it in our present life, as much patience and endurance as if we needed centuries to realise it.

[CWM2, 10:301]

Here again, as always, Sri Aurobindo sees every aspect of the question and while preaching calm and patience to the restless, he rouses and preaches energy to the indolent. In the union of opposites lies true wisdom and total effectiveness.

[CWM2, 10:302]

…for with patience and endurance, there is no progress which cannot be made.

[CWM2 :12:359]

To be a good teacher one must have the insight and knowledge of a Guru with an unfailing patience.

[CWM2, 12:370]

The true Power is always quiet. Restlessness, agitation, impatience are the sure signs of weakness and imperfection.

[CWM2, 14:137]

Accomplishment is without any doubt the fruit of patience.

[CWM2, 14:165]

To know how to wait is to put Time on your side.

[CWM2, 14:166]

Yoga cannot be done in a hurry—it needs many many years. If you are “pressed for time” it means that you have no intention of doing yoga—is it so?

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One goes much faster when he is not in a hurry.

To really move forward, one should feel, with complete confidence, that eternity lies before him.

[CWM2, 14:167]

Never mistake rashness for courage, nor indifference for patience.

[CWM2, 14:170]