Prayers
1. O Thou kind Lord! Thou hast created all humanity from the same stock. Thou hast decreed that all shall belong to the same household. In Thy Holy Presence they are all Thy servants, and all mankind are sheltered beneath Thy tabernacle; all have gathered together at Thy Table of Bounty; all are illumined through the light of Thy Providence.
O God! Thou art kind to all, Thou hast provided for all, dost shelter all, conferrest life upon all. Thou hast endowed each and all with talents and faculties, and all are submerged in the Ocean of Thy Mercy.
O Thou kind Lord! Unite all. Let the religions agree and make the nations one, so that they may see each other as one family and the whole earth as one home. May they all live together in perfect harmony.
O God! Raise aloft the banner of the oneness of mankind.
O God! Establish the Most Great Peace.
Cement Thou, O God, the hearts together.
O Thou kind Father, God! Gladden our hearts through the fragrance of Thy love. Brighten our eyes through the Light of Thy Guidance. Delight our ears with the melody of Thy Word, and shelter us all in the Stronghold of Thy Providence.
Thou art the Mighty and Powerful, Thou art the Forgiving and Thou art the One Who overlooketh the shortcomings of all mankind.
Abdu’l-Baha, Baha’i
2. Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred … let me sow love,
Where there is injury … pardon,
Where there is doubt … faith,
Where there is despair … hope,
Where there is darkness … light,
Where there is sadness … joy.
O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled … as to console,
To be understood … as to understand,
To be loved … as to love,
For it is in giving … that we receive,
It is in pardoning … that we are pardoned,
It is in dying … that we are born to eternal life.
Prayer of St Francis, Christianity
3. Grandfather, the flowering stick you gave me and the nation’s sacred hoop I have given to the people. Hear me, you who have the power to make grow! Guide the people that they may be as blossoms on your holy tree, and make it flourish deep in Mother Earth and make it full of leaves and singing birds.
Sioux, Native American
What
4. Patience is quiet hope and expectation based on trust that, in the end, everything will be all right. Patience means waiting. It is enduring a delay or troublesome situation without complaining.
It means having self-control because you can’t control the way someone else is acting or when things don’t go as you’d like. Patience is being calm and tolerant when difficult things happen.
Patience is persevering- sticking with something for as long as it takes to finish it. When you are patient, you know that things take time, just like a seed you plant will someday grow into a flower or a fruit-bearing tree. Patience is a commitment to the future. It is doing something now so that later something good will happen. It is also putting up with all of the things necessary to make it happen. Patience is seeing the end in the beginning – doing what you can and then calmly waiting, with trust that the results will come.
The Virtues Guide
5. Hare stretched and yawned and began to run again, but it was too late. Tortoise was over the line.
After that, Hare always reminded himself, “Don’t brag about your lightning pace, for Slow and Steady won the race!”
Aesop
6. Patience is a virtue you develop when you go grocery shopping with someone, whom I won’t name, takes five minutes to choose which kind of peanut butter she wants.
Keith J. Kresge
Trials and Tribulations
7. O SON OF MAN!
For everything there is a sign. The sign of love is fortitude under My decree and patience under My trials.
Baha’u’llah, Baha’i
8. We glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope …
Romans 5, Christian
9. Moreover, consider the hardships and the bitterness of the lives of those Revealers of the Divine Beauty (Messengers of God). Reflect, how single-handed and alone they faced the world and all its peoples, and promulgated the Law of God! No matter how severe the persecutions inflicted upon those holy, those precious, and tender Souls, they still remained, in the plenitude of their power, patient, and, despite their ascendancy, they suffered and endured.
Baha’u’llah, Baha’i
10. Long-suffering patience is the supreme ascetic practice. Nirvana is supreme, say the Buddhas. He is certainly not an ascetic who hurts others, and nor is he a man of religion who causes suffering to others.
He who endures undisturbed criticism, ill-treatment and bonds, strong in patience, and that strength his power – that is what I call a brahmin.
Whoever is patient, free from hate and fear, is said to be wise.
Dhammapada, Buddhist
11. When people said to Abdu’l-Baha how happy they were that He was now free, He replied:
“Freedom is not a matter of place, but of condition. I was happy in prison, for those days were passed in the path of service. To me prison was freedom. Troubles are a rest to me. Death is life. To be despised is honour.
Therefore was I full of happiness all through that prison time. When one is released from the prison of self, that is indeed freedom! For self is the greatest prison. When this release takes place one can never be imprisoned.
Unless one accepts dire vicissitudes, not with dull resignation, but with radiant acquiescence, one cannot attain this freedom.”
Abdu’l-Baha, Baha’i
12. Little by little, through patience and repeated effort, the mind will become stilled in the self.
Bhagavad Gita, Hindu
13. We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.
Helen Keller
14. People need trouble — a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don’t mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.
William Faulkner
15. What is a minority? The chosen heroes of this earth have been in a minority. There is not a social, political, or religious privilege that you enjoy today that was not bought for you by the blood and tears and patient suffering of the minority. It is the minority that have stood in the van of every moral conflict, and achieved all that is noble in the history of the world.
John B. Gough, social reformer
16. How poor are they who have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees.
William Shakespeare
17. The mind and spirit of man advance when he is tried by suffering. The more the ground is ploughed the better the seed will grow, the better the harvest will be. Just as the plough furrows the earth deeply, purifying it of weeds and thistles, so suffering and tribulation free man from the petty affairs of this worldly life until he arrives at a state of complete detachment. His attitude in this world will be that of divine happiness.
Abdu’l-Baha, Baha’i
18. Help us to be the always hopeful
gardeners of the spirit
who know that without darkness
nothing comes to birth
as without light
nothing flowers.
May Sarton, Poet
With Others
19. Be humble always and gentle, and patient too, putting up with one another’s failings in a spirit of love.
Ephesians 4, Christian
20. Love of God, and consequently of men, is the essential foundation of every religion, our own included. A greater degree of love will produce a greater unity, because it enables people to bear with each other, to be patient and forgiving.
Shoghi Effendi, Baha’I
21. Quanto, patiensa, giegiewoli gavigi.
Katherine Rosenberry, Elaine’s mom
With Yourself
22. Be patient with everyone, but above all be patient with thyself. I mean, do not be disheartened by your imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them – every day begin the task anew.
St. Francis De Sales
23. When clouds form in the skies we know that rain will follow but we must not wait for it. Nothing will be achieved by attempting to interfere with the future before the time is ripe. Patience is needed.
I Ching
24. Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson:
Wisdom:
25. A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe fruit at length falls into his lap.
Abraham Lincoln
26. Patience is power; with time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown.
Chinese Proverb
27. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood is ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence … What are the fruits of silence? They are self-control, true courage or endurance, patience, dignity and reverence. Silence is the cornerstone of character.
Ohiyesa, Santee Sioux
28. Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
29. If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.
Isaac Newton
30. Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.
Leonardo da Vinci
Genius is eternal patience.
Michelangelo
31. Be generous in your days of plenty, and be patient in the hour of loss. Adversity is followed by success and rejoicings follow woe. Guard against idleness and sloth, and cling unto that which profiteth mankind, whether young or old, whether high or low. Beware lest ye sow tares of dissension among men or plant thorns of doubt in pure and radiant hearts.
Baha’u’llah, Baha’i
32. We all, verily, are patient in God.
Baha’u’llah, (the last line in the prayer for the departed.)