Drop by drop is the water pot filled.
Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha, lived in northern India around the fifth century BC. By tradition he gave up a privileged life to pursue the question of suffering. The teachings attributed to him were transmitted orally for several generations before being written down, so his original words cannot be reliably separated from later layers.
About this theme: Patience
Patience fares badly in an age measured in loading times. Yet nearly every tradition that wrote about it separates two things everyday speech runs together: waiting and enduring. The first is passive; the second is not. The Latin patientia comes from a verb meaning to suffer or bear — something actively carried, not an idle interval.
More by Buddha
- Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.
- Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.
- All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
- Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.
- You yourself must strive. The Buddhas only point the way.
More on Patience
- Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.— Ovid
- He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk.— Friedrich Nietzsche
- Grain by grain a loaf, stone by stone a palace.— Croatian Proverb
- I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.— Marie Curie
- Bake it first, then speak — think before you talk.— Croatian Proverb