Thomas Jefferson, in letter to Madame de Tessé (25 Apr 1788). In Thomas Jefferson Correspondence: Printed from the Originals (1916), 7.
Posthumous publications, On botany
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 569.
“Men disappoint me so, I disappoint myself so, yet courage, patience, shuffle the cards …”
Letter to Reverend William Henry Channing http://web.csustan.edu:80/english/reuben/pal/chap4/channing_henry.html (21 February 1841) quoted in Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1898) by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p. 112.
Lecture notes ms. (c. 1935); as quoted in: Curt D. Meine, Richard L. Knight (1999) The Essential Aldo Leopold: Quotations and Commentaries. p. 162.
1930s
“Of all the schools of patience and lucidity, creation is the most effective.”
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Absurd Creation
Context: Of all the schools of patience and lucidity, creation is the most effective. It is also the staggering evidence of man's sole dignity: the dogged revolt against his condition, perseverance in an effort considered sterile. It calls for a daily effort, self-mastery, a precise estimate of the limits of truth, measure, and strength. It constitutes an ascesis. All that "for nothing," in order to repeat and mark time. But perhaps the great work of art has less importance in itself than in the ordeal it demands of a man and the opportunity it provides him of overcoming his phantoms and approaching a little closer to his naked reality.
19
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), Poetry as Enchantment (2015)
Variant: You have passed through the two hardest tests on the spiritual road: the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what you encounter.
Source: Veronika Decides to Die
“…we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.”
Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 64
