Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes

If you always wanted to wait for something better, you'd never buy anything, right?

The educator must above all understand how to wait; to reckon all effects in the light of the future, not of the present.

There's still the part of me that wants to leap at every opportunity, but now there's the other side that says, 'Let's just wait a minute and see what happens.' That's intuition, and it comes with age and experience.

The best thing Jay-Z ever taught me was patience.

Think of the long view of life, not just what's going to happen today or tomorrow. Don't give up what you most want in life for something you think you want now.

Be careful not to compromise what you want most for what you want now.

Wisdom means to choose now what will make sense later.

A wise man in China asked his gardener to plant a shrub. The gardener objected that it only flowered once in a hundred years. "In that case," said the wise man, "plant it immediately." [On the importance of fundamental research.]

Romance says, ' I want it now!'. Wisdom urges patience

Experience has further taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by impatience.

Age had taught him patience. Youth had taught me to get frustrated at the lack of progress.

A man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry.

Patience expands your options. If you insist on immediate gratification, your choices are severely limited.

Wisdom begins with sacrifice of immediate pleasures for long-range purposes.

It's better to stay too long than to leave too soon.

I never think of what it's going to be like later. I only think in the present tense. The only time I think backwards is when I have to reissue something.

Keep what you've got till you get what you need, y'all. You gotta give a lot just to get what you need sometimes, y'all.

The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardner objected that the tree was slow growing and wouldn't reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, "In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!

Maturity is many things. It is the ability to base a judgment on the big picture, the long haul.

It is madness to risk losing what you need in pursuing what you simply desire.

Vision rarely require immediate action. It requires patience.

You have to do what you think is the right thing, but just make sure it’s the right thing in the long run, and not just for the moment.

The person who forgets the ultimate is a slave to the immediate.

One way to define wisdom is the ability to see, into the future, the consequences of your choices in the present. That ability can give you a completely different perspective on what the future might look like.

Now I must wait and be still and say nothing I don't know, nothing I haven't lived over and over, and that's everything.