patience

1. Had the patience of a man who worked a step at a time through month-long laboratory experiments —Elizabeth Spencer
2. Mute and patient, like an old sheep waiting to be let out —Flannery O’Connor

   See Also: SILENCE

3. Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains —William Penn
4. Patience is passion tamed —Lyman Abbott
5. Patience is so like fortitude that she seems either her sister or her daughter —Aristotle
6. The patience of someone who finds a wounded animal in the woods and stays with it —Sharon Olds
7. Patient as a turtle —Mary Hedin
8. (I’ll be as) patient as a gentle stream —William Shakespeare
9. Patient as the matador —George Garrett
10. Patient, like an old man who has just dug his grave —Sharon Olds
11. Patiently as the spider weaves the broken web —Edward Bulwer-Lytton
12. Patiently, like a weaver at his loom —Beryl Markham
13. Stood as patiently as a horse being groomed —John D. MacDonald
14. Tolerance … like that of a grandparent for unpredictable and troublesome children —William Faulkner
15. Waiting patiently, in silence, as a cat does at a mousehole —Frank Swinnerton

patient as Griselda Extraordinarily patient, humble, and submissive. In Boccaccio’s Decameron (1353), Griselda was a common woman who married the Marquis of Saluzzo, a wealthy nobleman who subjected her to numerous tests of her womanly virtues. Griselda endured these tests without complaint, thus proving her patience, obedience, and meekness. The Griselda personage soon became the paragon of patience in the medieval miracle plays, and was further popularized by an appearance in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The name Griselda is still used in reference to a persevering, exceedingly patient woman.

sit tight To wait patiently; to bide one’s time; to await (sometimes anxiously) the results of an earlier activity; to refrain from voicing one’s opinions or ideas. This expression was originally a poker term applied to a person who, when it was his turn, neither bet nor threw in his cards, choosing instead to await the outcome of the game. Thus, while sit tight once smacked of stinginess, in contemporary applications, it usually implies patience.