Forbearance Quotes

“Patience is the antidote to the restless poison of the Ego. Without it we all become ego-maniacal bulls in china shops, destroying our future happiness as we blindly rush in where angels fear to tread. In these out-of-control moments, we bulldoze through the best possible outcomes for our lives, only to return to the scene of the crime later to cry over spilt milk.”
― Anthon St. Maarten, Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny

“Common man's patience will bring him more happiness than common man's power.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Conquer with forbearance
The excesses of insolence.”
― Tiruvalluvar, Kural

“As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly scattered in those books [the Bible], they make no part of this pretended thing, revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and the bonds by which society is held together, and without which it cannot exist; and are nearly the same in all religions, and in all societies. The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous. When it is said, as in the Testament, 'If a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,' it is assassinating the dignity of forbearance, and sinking man into a spaniel.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I took note of the Buddha's teaching that in one sense a supposed enemy is more valuable than a friend, for an enemy teaches you things, such as forbearance, that a friend generally does not.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“On Wednesday night, November 13, (1861), Lincoln went with Seward and Hay to McClellan's house. Told that the general was at a wedding, the three waited in the parlor for an hour. When McClellan arrived home, the porter told him the president was waiting, but McClellan passed by the parlor room and climbed the stairs to his private quarters. After another half hour, Lincoln again sent word that he was waiting, only to be informed that the general had gone to sleep. Young John Hay was enraged, " I wish here to record what I consider a portent of evil to come," he wrote in his diary, recounting what he considered an inexcusable "insolence of epaulettes," the first indicator "of the threatened supremacy of the military authorities." To Hay's surprise, Lincoln "seemed not to have noticed it specially, saying it was better at this time not to be making points of etiquette & personal dignity." He would hold McClellan's horse, he once said, if a victory could be achieved.

Though Lincoln, the consummate pragmatist, did not express anger at McClellan's rebuff, his aides fumed at every instance of such arrogance. Lincoln's secretary, William Stoddard, described the infuriating delay when he accompanied Lincoln to McClellan's anteroom. "A minute passes, then another, and then another, and with every tick of the clock upon the mantel your blood warms nearer and nearer its boiling-point. Your face feels hot and your fingers tingle, as you look at the man, sitting so patiently over there...and you try to master your rebellious consciousness." As time went by, Lincoln visited the haughty general less frequently. If he wanted to talk with McClellan, he sent a summons for him to appear at the White House.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

“The good husbandman may pluck His roses and gather in His liles at midsummer, and, for ought I dare say, in the beginning of the first summer month; and He may transplant young trees out of the lower ground to the higher, where they have more of the sun, and a more free air, at any season of the year. What is that to you or me? The goods are his own.”
― Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ

“Forbearance and genuine tenderheartedness are much tougher than niceness, and sometimes…tough love is confrontational (p. 54).”
― D.A. Carson, Love in Hard Places

“Leadership was not an act of bravery but rather forbearance and the strength to move forward with humility in the belief of what is righteous”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“England's traditional tolerance was outraged at last.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914

“And this is the most provocative situation, is it not? It invites abuse, manipulation, tyranny, subjection. A person is supposed to accommodate herself--himself--absolutely to another person. It is unnatural. OK, but it's nature that sets it up in the first place. Of course, of course.

It is unnatural and provocative and precarious and challenging. It demands forbearance and stamina and abnormal powers of empathy and perception.

It is also... And yes, it is also all those other things. The opposite. The converse. The place you want to be.”
― Penelope Lively, The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories

“There is enough cruelty in the world without adding to it with tales of vengeance.”
― Daniel Thorman, Calamity at Conclave

“Patience, among other things, also means to appreciate the time we have and to create the time we don’t have.”
― Giannis Delimitsos

“He thought how the world would feel if it were populated solely by elderly women--a world of forbearance, where all touches were careful.”
― Lydia Millet, How the Dead Dream

“I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.”
― Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam