With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes silk - that's a Chinese proverb and here's an Italian proverb - The world is his, who has patience.
Cyrus Field toiled with ceaseless patience for thirteen years and that in the face of the most difficult and discouraging circumstances before the Atlantic cable was laid. We can understand Wellington's victory at Waterloo when we hear him saying to his men, "Hard pounding, gentlemen! But we will see who can pound the longest." Mr. Edison's phonograph, we are told, long refused to the say the word 'special'. It dropped the 's' and could only say 'pecial'. Edison worked for seven months to make the phonograph utter that sound.
Commenting along this line, columnist John R. Gunn writes, "We magnify genius, but too often we forget that the chief ingredient of genius is patience. Some years ago, a news item told of a great steamship that was stopped in Mid-Atlantic by a flaw in the engine shaft. Compared with the size of the entire shaft, that flaw was a small thing, but it was enough to stop the vessel. The main shaft of man's life is purpose and the flaw in it is often the lack of patience - a small flaw it may seem, but it will cause a man to stop short of reaching his goal.
No matter what other qualities a man may possess, no matter how well equipped in brain and brawn, if he lacks patience, he will never win any great success. The history of great success is largely a history of the achievements of patience."