The Thammasat University Library has acquired a new book that should be useful to students of anthropology, sociology, philosophy, literature, biology, ecology, and related fields. Ethnographies of Waiting: Doubt, Hope and Uncertainty was edited by Manpreet K. Janeja and Andreas Bandak. It is shelved in the General Stacks of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan Campus. As the book explains:

Ethnographies of Waiting explores the social phenomenon of waiting and its centrality in human society. Using waiting as a central analytical category, the book investigates how waiting is negotiated in myriad ways. Examining the politics and poetics of waiting, it offers fresh perspectives on waiting as the uncertain interplay between doubting and hoping, and asks ‘When is time worth the wait?’ Waiting thus conceived is intrinsic to the ethnographic method at the heart of the anthropological enterprise. Features eight detailed ethnographies from Japan, Georgia, England, Ghana, Norway, Russia and the United States…

While the skill of how to wait, or patience, is taught by parents to small children, in psychology and in cognitive neuroscience, patience is studied as a decision-making problem, involving the choice of either a small reward in the short-term, versus a more valuable reward in the long-term. Humans, like all other animals, prefer short-term rewards over long-term rewards, when given the choice.

As many TU students know, in Buddhism, patience is one of the perfections that a bodhisattva trains in and practices to realize perfect enlightenment. In Buddhism, patience refers to not returning harm, rather than merely enduring a difficult situation. It is the ability to control one’s emotions even when being criticized or attacked. Verse 184 of the Dhammapada states that ‘enduring patience is the highest austerity.’

Here are some thoughts on the subjects of waiting and patience. Many are by authors whose books are in the TU Library collection :

Blessings may appear under the shape of pains, losses, and disappointments; but let him have patience, and he will see them in their proper figures.

• Joseph Addison The Guardian no. 117; 25 July 1713.

Patience is a nobler motion than any deed.

• A. Bartol, Radical Problems (1872).

Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

• Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary.

There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honours too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience.

• La Bruyère, Les Caractères (1688)

There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

• Edmund Burke, Observations on a Late Publication, Intituled, “The Present State of the Nation”.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

• Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Patience is not only a virtue, but an acquired trait.

• Christian Calhoun, The Story of My Life.

Beware the fury of a patient man.

• John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel (1681).

He that can have patience can have what he will.

• Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack June 1736.

Let him that hath no power of patience retire within himself, though even there he will have to put up with himself.

• Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, (1647).

Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity.

• Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

Patience makes lighter / What sorrow may not heal.

• Horace, Hor. Carm. 1.24.

We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

• Abraham Lincoln, White House speech 11 April 1865.

Have patience and endure; this unhappiness will one day be beneficial.

• Ovid, Amorum (16 BC), III. 11. 7.

Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.

• Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living, 1946-09-15.

Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains.

• William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude In Reflections And Maxims (1682) no. 234.

Patience will benefit you in every hour, every time and every opportunity. It helps you to overcome your opponent, howsoever strong he may be. It will help you in times of distress and hardships, in battles and in war and peace.

• Abd al-Karim Qasim (1959) The historical extempore speech at the Reserve Officers’ College.

Let us apply patience as well, for without patience nothing can be achieved. Verily, very often people give up a brilliant beginning only because of lack of patience. They forget that all great tasks are accompanied by difficulties, but by shunning those difficulties they condemn themselves to a fatiguing and endlessly reiterative course.

• Helena Roerich, Letters of Helena Roerich I, (21 October 1931)

Though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod.

• William Shakespeare, Henry V Act II, scene i.

I will with patience hear, and find a time

Both meet to hear and answer such high things.

Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this.

• William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), Act I, scene 2, line 169.

A high hope for a low heaven: God grant us patience!

• William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost (c. 1595-6), Act I, scene 1, line 195.

I do oppose

My patience to his fury, and am arm’d

To suffer, with a quietness of spirit,

The very tyranny and rage of his.

• William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act IV, scene 1, line 10.

How poor are they that have not patience!

What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

• William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act II, scene 3, line 376.

Had it pleas’d heaven

To try me with affliction…

I should have found in some place of my soul

A drop of patience.

• William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act IV, scene 2, line 47.

She sat like patience on a monument

Smiling at grief.

• William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02), Act II, scene 4, line 117.

Patience is the art of hoping.

• Marquis De Vauvenargues Reflections and Maxims (1746) no. 251.

Persevere and preserve yourselves for better circumstances.

• Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), I. 207.

Every misfortune is to be subdued by patience.

• Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), V. 710.

I worked with patience which means almost power.

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1856), Book III, line 205.

But there are times when patience proves at fault.

• Robert Browning, Paracelsus, scene 3.

Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.

• Benjamin Disraeli, Contarini Fleming, Part IV, Chapter V.

By time and toil we sever

What strength and rage could never.

• Jean de La Fontaine, Fables, II. 11.

All things come round to him who will but wait.

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn, The Student’s Tale, Part I.

Endurance is the crowning quality,

And patience all the passion of great hearts.

• James Russell Lowell, Columbus, line 241.

Every one ought to bear patiently the results of his own conduct.

• Phaedrus, Fables, I. 26. 12.

There is nothing so disagreeable, that a patient mind can not find some solace for it.

• Seneca the Younger, De Animi Tranquilitate, X.

Patience is the art of hoping.

• Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, Réflexions, CCLI.

Never think that God’s delays are God’s denials. Hold on! hold fast! hold out! Patience is genius.

• Count De Buffon

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)