All THINGS may come soon enough if we can have the patience to stay for them

Meaning & Analysis

With sufficient patience, desired outcomes will arrive at the right time; what matters is waiting, not hurrying.

Insights

Right-time arrival

Treats events as ripening on their own schedule; patience aligns us with fruition so that when things come, they are ‘soon enough’—timely, not premature.

Delayed gratification

Urges restraint against impulsive grabbing; waiting accrues value—skills mature, opportunities clarify, and rewards compound for those who can endure delay.

Strategic non-action

Sometimes the wisest move is to pause; by holding position, we let noise pass, gather information, and preserve optionality until decisive action actually pays.

Trust over control

Patience shifts focus from forcing outcomes to stewarding the present; it cultivates confidence that diligent constancy outperforms anxious haste.

Kairos vs. speed

The proverb prizes kairos—opportune timing—over velocity. ‘Soon enough’ encodes sufficiency: the aim is ripeness, not earliness, a rebuke to hurry as a false virtue.

Patience cluster

It converses with fellows like ‘He that can have patience can have what he will’ and ‘Patience, time, and money accommodate all things,’ framing patience as a universal solvent for difficulty and delay.

Psychology of time

Humans discount the future, preferring smaller-sooner rewards; training patience counteracts this bias, converting waiting from felt loss into a tool for larger, later gains.

Moral economy of haste

Hurry often makes waste—half-baked deals, brittle solutions, scorched relationships. The saying recasts restraint as productive, not passive.

Limits and counterweights

Patience is not passivity: paired proverbs—‘Strike while the iron is hot’—remind us some windows close. The wisdom here is conditional: wait until the time is right, not forever.

Rhetorical Devices

Conditional structure

The ‘if we can have the patience’ clause makes the promise contingent, teaching that timing benefits depend on a practiced virtue.

Hyperbole

‘All things’ overstates to impress the scope of patience’s power, granting it near-universal efficacy.

Gnomic future

‘May come’ and ‘soon enough’ deliver a calm, proverbial assurance rather than a guarantee, giving the line oracular poise.

Antithesis (implied)

Sets patience against haste without naming haste, letting ‘soon enough’ quietly oppose ‘too soon.’

Euphonious balance

Parallel cadence (‘All things may come… if we can have…’) gives the sentence a steady, measured rhythm that mirrors patience itself.

patiencetimingkairosdelayedgratificationprudencesufficiency
Analyzed with gpt-5.0-thinking on November 14, 2025

Transcription

Quotations

All things may come time inough if we can haue the pacience to stay.

1596, DEL., s. P5v
1616, DR., no. 1597

All things are to be overcome with patience.

1616, WITHALS, p. 545

All Things come to passe who can stay for them.

1623, WOD., p. 519

Cross References

Original Scan

All THINGS may come soon enough if we can have the patience to stay for them - a scanned entry from Tilley's 1950 Dictionary of Proverbs.
Scan courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library.
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.

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Last updated: January 27, 2026