“Waiting” typically refers to the act of staying in one place or remaining in a state of expectation for something to happen or someone to arrive. It involves being patient and anticipating a future event or outcome. It can also imply a period of time during which one is not actively engaged in a particular activity and is instead awaiting further instructions, information, or developments.
Waiting Quotes
1. “Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.”
— Joyce Meyer
2. “The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”
— Eden Phillpotts
3. “We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”
— Joseph Campbell
4. “There’s no such thing as failure – just waiting for success.”
— John Osborne
5. “Nothing’s going to come to you by sitting around and waiting for it.”
— Zoe Kazan
6. “You usually have to wait for that which is worth waiting for.”
— Craig Bruce
7. “A young man without ambition is an old man waiting to be.”
— Steven Brust
8. “Waiting is the great vocation of the dispossessed.”
— Mary Gordon
9. “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
— Sharon Begley
10. “Waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.”
— Matthew Arnold
11. “The opposite of talking isn’t listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.”
— Fran Lebowitz
12. “Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering.”
— Paulo Coelho
13. “Waiting and hoping are the whole of life, and as soon as a dream is realized it is destroyed.”
— Gian Carlo Menotti
14. “Sitting on my butt waiting on opportunities won’t do me any good.”
— Amber Liu
15. “There’s two times of the year for me: Football season, and waiting for football season.”
— Darius Rucker
16. “The best things in life are often waiting for you at the exit ramp of your comfort zone.”
— Karen Salmansohn
17. “I can imagine few things more trying to the patience than the long wasted days of waiting.”
— Robert Falcon Scott
18. “My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.”
— Tom Stoppard
19. “I am ready any time. Do not keep me waiting.”
— John Mason Brown
20. “There is a difference between listening and waiting for your turn to speak.”
— Simon Sinek
21. “What is delayed is not lost.”
— Juliette Drouet
22. “Patience is learned through waiting.”
— E’yen A. Gardner
23. “Waiting is a means of acquiring patience.”
— Adrian Thatcher
24. “You don’t get everything all at once. You wait.”
— Elizabeth Berg
25. “You don’t waste your entire life waiting to go back to dust.”
— Reba McEntire
26. “Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.”
— Paulo Coelho
27. “Your heart is full of fertile seeds, waiting to sprout.”
— Morihei Ueshiba
28. “If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you’ll never enjoy the sunshine.”
— Morris West
29. “But the important thing about learning to wait, I feel sure, is to know what you are waiting for.”
— Anna Neagle
30. “The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
31. “Each life is made up of mistakes and learning, waiting and growing, practicing patience and being persistent.”
— Billy Graham
32. “Whatever we are waiting for – peace of mind, contentment, grace, the inner awareness of simple abundance – it will surely come to us, but only when we are ready to receive it with an open and grateful heart.”
— Sarah Ban Breathnach
33. “Maturity includes the recognition that no one is going to see anything in us that we don’t see in ourselves. Stop waiting for a producer. Produce yourself.”
— Marianne Williamson
34. “If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?”
— Stephen Levine
35. “Most of us are waiting. We’re waiting for something interesting to happen. And I think we’re going to wait forever if we don’t do something more interesting with our lives.”
— Donald Miller
36. “You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”
— A. A. Milne
37. “Godot is whatever it is in life that you are waiting for: ‘I’m waiting to win the lottery. I’m waiting to fall in love’. For me, as a child, it was Christmas. At least that eventually came.”
— Ian McKellen
38. “Again and again, the impossible problem is solved when we see that the problem is only a tough decision waiting to be made.”
— Robert H. Schuller
39. “I want to do things – scuba diving, sky diving, seeing the world. I’m an avid supporter of living life to its fullest and not always waiting for tomorrow.”
— Teri Polo
40. “You cannot afford to wait for perfect conditions. Goal setting is often a matter of balancing timing against available resources. Opportunities are easily lost while waiting for perfect conditions.”
— Gary Ryan Blair
41. “On the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who, at the dawn of decision, sat down to wait, and waiting died.”
— George W. Cecil
42. “The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals.”
— Melody Beattie
43. “Life is difficult, and if you sit around waiting for the fun to show up, you’ll find yourself going without it more often than not.”
— Jill Biden
44. “Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.”
— Jules Renard
45. “It is strange that the years teach us patience; that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.”
— Elizabeth Taylor
46. “There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right. But they hesitate, waiting for the other fellow to make the first move – and he, in turn, waits for you.”
— Marian Anderson
47. “Waiting is a period of learning. The longer we wait, the more we hear about him for whom we are waiting.”
— Henri Nouwen
48. “I was taught to think the next week or month or year will only get better than it is today. So I just keep waiting to see how great it will get!”
— Stevie Ray Vaughan
49. “Infuse your life with action. Don’t wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen… yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.”
— Bradley Whitford
50. “But if we learn to think of it as anticipation, as learning, as growing, if we think of the time we spend waiting for the big things of life as an opportunity instead of a passing of time, what wonderful horizons open out!”
— Anna Neagle
51. “Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached.”
— Ian McEwan
52. “Waiting is a form of passive persistence.”
— Ogwo David Emenike
53. “Before the first before and after the last after, there is night waiting.”
— Dejan Stojanovic
54. “Sometimes one does wonder if one lives quietly from choice or if in reality one is merely waiting for something that may never come.”
— Mary Balogh
55. “Waiting for someone is a terrible time, and feeling that we cannot describe in words.”
— Ehsan Sehgal
56. “Whatever you are waiting for won’t come to you; you have to go for it.”
— Israelmore Ayivor
57. “Patience isn’t simply waiting, it is caring enough about the situation and those involved to remain calm and courteous throughout the wait.”
— Richelle E. Goodrich
58. “There had been nothing worse than waiting for it to come; the void that followed was easier to bear than the solid weight of those days.”
— Jhumpa Lahiri
59. “I can have patience for anything, but it’s waiting for love, that kills me a little each day.”
— Anthony Liccione
60. “Waiting is not wasting. It is a strategy for champing for greater things.”
— Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
61. “Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.”
— Cesare Pavese
62. “Don’t waste the waiting.”
— Sadie Huff
63. “And sure enough even waiting will end…if you can just wait long enough.”
— William Faulkner
64. “You are not just waiting in vain. There is a purpose behind every delay.”
— Mandy Hale
65. “Our willingness to wait reveals the value we place on the object we’re waiting for.”
— Charles Stanley
66. “I believe that a trusting attitude and a patient attitude go hand in hand. You see, when you let go and learn to trust God, it releases joy in your life. And when you trust God, you’re able to be more patient. Patience is not just about waiting for something… it’s about how you wait, or your attitude while waiting.”
— Joyce Meyer
67. “I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.”
— J. B. Priestley
68. “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
— Barack Obama
69. “Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke
70. “In life one has a choice to take one of two paths: to wait for some special day – or to celebrate each special day.”
— Rasheed Ogunlaru
71. “Sometimes if you have a difficult decision to make, just stall until the answer presents itself.”
— Tina Fey
72. “When that day comes, we’ll be waiting. Waiting for Charlie St. Cloud to come home to us. Until then we offer these parting words… May he live in peace.”
— Ben Sherwood
73. “Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.”
— Khaled Hosseini
74. “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
— Sophia Amoruso
75. “Jon warned me that sometimes this took great patience—even years.’But in the end,’ he said, ‘people will show you their good side. Almost everybody has a good side. Just keep waiting. It will come out.”
— Randy Pausch
76. “It was lovely to realize that while the fat farmer was sitting up there on the hill waiting for them to starve, he was also giving them their dinner without knowing it.”
— Roald Dahl
77. “She crept back into the silent house, past the closed bedroom door inside which the other mother and the other father […] what? she wondered. Slept? Waited?”
— Neil Gaiman
78. “Nate had been spying on the candy shop for almost thirty minutes. His hour had to be waning. If he was going to risk a direct assault on the shop, he knew it was now or never.”
— Brandon Mull
79. “We wait. We are bored. No, don’t protest, we are bored to death, there’s no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. …In an instant, all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness.”
— Samuel Beckett
80. “Do not wait. The time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”
— Napoleon Hill
81. “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
82. “Patience, persistence, and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.”
— Napoleon Hill
83. “Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come.”
— Robert H. Schuller
84. “Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.”
— John Quincy Adams
85. “A man who is a master of patience is master of everything else.”
— George Savile
86. “He that can have patience can have what he will.”
— Benjamin Franklin
87. “Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.”
— Saadi
88. “Patience is the art of hoping.”
— Luc de Clapiers
89. “Sometimes things aren’t clear right away. That’s where you need to be patient and persevere and see where things lead.”
— Mary Pierce
90. “Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.”
— Joseph Addison
91. “Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.”
— Leo Tolstoy
92. “The greatest art is to sit, and wait, and let it come.”
— Harbhajan Singh Yogi
93. “All good things come to those who wait.”
— Paullina Simons
94. “Those who do not hope cannot wait; but if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.”
— Charles Spurgeon
95. “There is no great achievement that is not the result of patient working and waiting.”
— J. G. Holland
96. “Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.”
— William S. Burroughs
97. “We are waiting for the next moment to contain what this moment does not.”
— Tara Brach
98. “Waiting is learning, learning is waiting.”
— Lin Min-Tzu
99. “Waiting is just the period of time right before action!”
— Jennifer J. Weiss
100. “Waiting is something we all do, whether it is waiting in line, waiting for a stoplight or just waiting for the days, hours and minutes to pass.”
— Bruce Wright
101. “This silence belongs to us… and every single person out there, is waiting for us to fill it with something.”
— Kousei Arima
102. “Waiting your turn is often the worst way to get what you want.”
— John Taylor Gatto
103. “Sometimes we sit around waiting for someone or a situation to change but patience isn’t always the answer sometimes you just need to change your direction and approach.”
— Hopal Green
104. “If something is not going well in your life, you can be sure that you’re not on the move but waiting for something! The way to fix things is action, not standing still!”
— Mehmet Murat ildan
105. “Life’s too short to wait, but sometimes, a few things, a few people, a few magicks, a few miracles are worth the wait.”
— Radhika Mundra
106. “Waiting earns two results; disappointment or enjoyment.”
— Ehsan Sehgal
107. “We are all of us in this room still waiting to be transformed.”
— Louise Glück
108. “For a moment with you, I wait an eternity.”
— Caroline George
109. “There is no worship like waiting on God.”
— Lailah Gifty Akita
110. “There is a hero in every heart just waiting for ignition.”
— Sijin Bt
111. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
— Ally Carter
112. “I’ve already found the right person. I’m just waiting for her to be ready.”
— Jessica Clare
113. “If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed, races won, or lasting happiness achieved.”
— Maurice Chevalier
114. “I have enough patience to wait for the fulfillment of my wishes.”
— Lailah Gifty Akita
115. “Waiting does not exist in the experience of those who recognize the presence of love wherever they are.”
— Alan Cohen
116. “The thing about waiting is that the longer you wait, the more impatient you become.”
— Ashay Abbhi
117. “Remember it is your choice; you can either wait for someone or end someone’s waiting.”
— M.F. Moonzajer
118. “It takes patience to make a man – the patience to listen, watch and wait.”
— Ogwo David Emenike
119. “Waiting is not always a bad thing; it can bring its own joy —the thrill of anticipation.”
— David Jeremiah
120. “Some things are worth the wait. A little suspense heightens the pleasure.”
— Jocelyn Murray
121. “All things come to him who waits.”
— Woodrow Wilson
122. “Love will fan the flame, and that flame will warm the heart that’s waiting.”
— Michael W. Smith
123. “Biblically, waiting is not just something we have to do until we get what we want. Waiting is part of the process of becoming what God wants us to be.”
— John Ortberg
124. “Waiting is our active response to the intrinsically ethical sociality of being.”
— Joshua B. Davis
125. “You have to imagine a waiting that is not impatient because it is timeless.”
— R.S. Thomas
126. “Waiting is one of the great arts.”
— Margery Allingham
127. “The waiting itself is beneficial to us: it tries faith, exercises patience, trains submission, and endears the blessing when it comes.”
— Charles Spurgeon
128. “What we are waiting for is not as important as what happens to us while we are waiting. Trust the process.”
— Mandy Hale
129. “Waiting indicates that we are engaged in, and have expectations from, life; that we are on the lookout for what life is going to throw our way.”
— Ghassan Hage
130. “Waiting is not a mere empty hope. It has the inner certainty of reaching the goal.”
— I Ching
131. “Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”
— William Jennings Bryan
132. “A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer.”
— Novalis
133. “Waiting, waiting, waiting. All my life, I’ve been waiting for my life to begin, as if somehow my life was ahead of me, and that someday I would arrive at it.”
— Camryn Manheim
134. “I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.”
— Khaled Hosseini
135. “I’m always open to new stuff. I don’t sit and try to figure out what to do, I just wait for an idea to come.”
— Neil Young
136. “I will not rule out anything. I don’t speculate on my own future. I’ll wait and see what happens.”
— Tyrone Willingham
137. “If you want something you have to wait.”
— Lemar
138. “Hope, love and faith are in the waiting.”
— Dean Koontz
139. “I’m sure great scripts are hard to find, but I’m definitely open, and waiting to see what comes my way.”
— Lenny Kravitz
140. “I have enough patient to wait for the fulfillment of my wishes.”
— Lailah Gifty Akita
141. “We can no more enjoy life by hoping for a future result than we can enjoy music by waiting for the final note.”
— Vernon Howard
142. “God aims to exalt Himself by working for those who wait for Him.”
— John Piper
143. “I believe the greatest successes you will ever attain are still waiting for you on the road ahead.”
— Brian Tracy
144.”I have been waiting twenty years for someone to say to me: “You have to fight fire with fire” so that I could reply, “That’s funny-I always use water.””
— Howard Gossage
145. “The resurrection and the judgement will demonstrate before all worlds who won and who lost. We can wait!”
— David Berg
146. “I took a course in speed waiting. Now I can wait an hour in only ten minutes.”
— Steven Wright
147. “I am a prince I have it all, and I hear your foot steps on the wall, I wait in silence for your call, and take a shot and watch you fall.”
— Trey Anastasio
148. “The music dictates to me which instrument I use. I’m basically waiting for orders as it were.”
— John McLaughlin
149. “You have to constantly be doing something and not just wait for someone to call you with an opportunity, you have to develop your own projects.”
— Kate del Castillo
150. “I never sit down to write or say, “Today, I have to record something.” I wait to hear it and then I go for it.”
— Lenny Kravitz
151. “Waiting, like nothing else, reveals our complex human relationship with time.”
— Margaret Whipp
152. “What really matters is the cost of one’s waiting experience, not just in money but in frustration, aanger, and other stresses.”
— Harold Schweizer
153. “What matter if I stand alone? / I wait with joy the coming years; / My heart shall reap where it hath sown, / And garner up its fruit of tears.”
— John Burroughs
154. “I’ve learned that waiting is the most difficult bit, and I want to get used to the feeling, knowing that you’re with me, even when you’re not by my side.”
— Paulo Coelho
155. “After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting.”
— Chuck Palahniuk
156. “Being supportive often means waiting and listening and more waiting until you’re better able to understand the drama.”
— Fred Rogers
157. “We’ve been waiting for seven hundred years, you can have the seven minutes.”
— Michael Collins
158. “To know how to wait is the great secret of success.”
— De Maistre
159. “If you wait for opportunities to occur, you will be one of the crowd.”
— Edward de Bono
160. “Though sleep is called our best friend, it is a friend who often keeps us waiting!”
— Jules Verne
161. “I just work – however people feel about it, I mean, at the end of the day, if I’m waiting for accolades, I could be waiting all my life, but I don’t need that stuff to validate me. I just do what makes me happy.”
— Nick Cannon
162. “I’ve been waiting for that bright sunshine to show up and shine in my back door someday.”
— Luther Allison
163. “I kept thinking I was always going to meet the right man, but I never did. Kept waiting for this knight in shining armour. ‘When’s he coming? He’s taking a long time, isn’t he?’”
— Samantha Fox
164. “The world is full of genies waiting to grant your wishes.”
— Percy Ross
165. “I don’t sit in the corner waiting for death: death has to pursue me. I’m going strong. I hope to reach 100 and ask for an extension, just like my grandmother did.”
— Compay Segundo
166. “I have spent probably years of time waiting in studio lounges – waiting on a mix, waiting on my time to sing, waiting on, waiting on, waiting on. That’s just the nature of life.”
— Amy Grant
167. “To stay ahead, you must have your next idea waiting in the wings.”
— Rosabeth Moss Kanter
168. “For every problem or confusion and for every desire or ambition there is an available force waiting for your call.”
— Vernon Howard
169. “The single biggest advantage a value investor has is not IQ. It’s patience and waiting. Waiting for the right pitch, and waiting for many years for the right pitch.”
— Mohnish Pabrai
170. “Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.”
— Karl Lagerfeld
