46 Waiting Quotes

What shall I do with all the days and hours That must be counted ere I see thy face? How shall I charm the interval that lowers Between this time and that sweet time of grace?

My father Time is weak and gray With waiting for a better day; See how idiot-like he stands, Fumbling with his palsied hands!

Deep down, all the while, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she kept casting desperate glances over the solitary waster of her life, seeking some white sail in the distant mists of the horizon. She had no idea by what wind it would reach her, toward what shore it would bear her, or what kind of craft it would be - tiny boat or towering vessel, laden with heartbreaks or filled to the gunwhales with rapture. But every morning when she awoke she hoped that today would be the day; she listened for every sound, gave sudden starts, was surprised when nothing happened; and then, sadder with each succeeding sunset, she longed for tomorrow.

'The man for whom time stretches out painfully is one waiting in vain, disappointed at not finding tomorrow already continuing yesterday.'

He stood, and heard the steeple Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town. One, two, three, four, to market-place and people It tossed them down. Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck; And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck.

Hamm: Look at the ocean! (Clov gets down, takes a few steps towards window left, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, turns the telescope on the without, looks at length. He starts, lowers the telescope, examines it, turns it again on the without.) Clov: Never seen anything like that! Hamm (anxious): What? A sail? A fin? Smoke? Clov (looking): The light is sunk. Hamm (relieved): Pah! We all knew that. Clov (looking): There was a bit left. Hamm: The base. Clov (looking): Yes. Hamm: And now? Clov (looking): All gone. Hamm: No gulls? Clov (looking): Gulls! Hamm: And the horizon? Nothing on the horizon? Clov (lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, exasperated): What in God's name could there be on the horizon? (Pause.) Hamm: The waves, how are the waves? Clov: The waves? (He turns the telescope on the waves.) Lead. Hamm: And the sun? Clov (looking): Zero. Hamm: But it should be sinking. Look again. Clov (looking): Damn the sun. Hamm: Is it night already then? Clov (looking): No. Hamm: Then what is it? Clov (looking): Gray. (Lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, louder.) Gray! (Pause. Still louder.) GRRAY! (Pause. He gets down, approaches Hamm from behind, whispers in his ear.) Hamm (starting): Gray! Did I hear you say gray? Clov: Light black. From pole to pole.

You know my Doctor, Doctor Vinny BoomBots... I called and told him I had a bad case of diarrhea. - He put me on hold!

'It cannot be said that we are lacking in faith. Even the simple fact of our life is of a faith-value that can never be exhausted.' 'You suggest there is some faith-value in this? One cannot not-live, after all.' 'It is precisely in this 'Cannot, after all' that the mad strength of faith lies; it is in this negation that it takes on form.' There is no need for you to leave the house. Stay at your table and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't even wait, be completely quiet and alone. The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked; it can't do otherwise; in raptures it will writhe before you.

Today I dialed a wrong number... The other person said, 'Hello?' and I said, 'Hello, could I speak to Joey?'... They said, 'Uh... I don't think so...he's only 2 months old.' I said, 'I'll wait.'

Monica Swinton, twenty-nine, of graceful shape and lambent eye, went and sat in her living room, arranging her limbs with taste. She began by sitting and thinking; soon she was just sitting. Time waited on her shoulder with the maniac slowth it reserves for children, the insane, and wives whose husbands are away improving the world.

Each hour until we meet is as a bird That wings from far his gradual way along The rustling covert of my soul.

By dawn he was gone. We have stood here since, in our new life. We have waited. He does not return.

At first flash of Eden, We race down to the sea. Standing there on Freedom's shore. Waiting for the sun...

'Don't you know you've kept him waiting?' 'Look who's here to see you!'

Not one of us would dare to break The silence And, oh how we have longed For something that would Make us feel so...

You walk down the street at night. It's raining out. The only sound is that of your own feet. There are city sounds too, but these you don't hear because at the end of the street is the woman you've been waiting for for seven long years and each muffled tread of your footsteps takes you closer and closer and the sound of them marks off seconds and days and months of waiting. Then, suddenly, you're there, outside a dark-faced building, a brownstone anachronism that stares back dully with the defiant expression of the moronic and you have an impending sense of being challenged.

No place is comfortable, when you are waiting for someone else to do a job you think of as your own.

So there he was with... No career, and, to put it candidly, no life. It was as if he had been running a long, long race and finally realized that there was nobody else in it with him, he had crossed the finish line years ago and didn't notice it because not a soul was there to cheek for him and clap him on the back and say 'Good run... Good run!' Or come to think of it, maybe they were there, only [he] himself didn't care what they thought of him and so he sloughed off their praise and their friendship because he was waiting for the one voice he'd never hear again.

And I was waiting over here for life to begin, I was looking for the new thing And you were the sunshine heading my front line. I was alone you, were just around the corner from me. ~ 'Life On A Chain'

'You wait and you wait for somethin' big to happen... and then you find out you gon' die.

Anton Chekhov wrote that 'one must not put a loaded rifle on stage if no one is thinking of firing it.' Good drama requires spare and purposive action, sensible linking of potential causes with realized effects. Life is much messier; nothing happens most of the time. Millions of Americans (many hotheaded) own rifles (many loaded), but the great majority, thank God, do not go off most of the time. We spend most of real life waiting for Godot, not charging once more unto the breach.

We're overdue for a dream come true. Long time nothing new. We're overdue for a dream come true.

Waiting for the sun to shine And you know sometimes it gets so painful Just like talking to yourself When everything don't seem to have no rhyme or reason we all go Do do loo do do, do do loo do do Waiting for the sun to shine.

O when may it suffice? That is heaven's part, our part To murmur name upon name.

Although I enter not, Yet round about the spot Ofttimes I hover; And near the sacred gate With longing eyes I wait, Expectant of her.

We are waiting for the long-promised invasion. So are the fishes.

O'er the wires the electric message came, 'He is no better; he is much the same.'

And I never thought this life was possible,You're the yellow bird that I've been waiting for.

The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house All that cold, cold, wet day.

I really want to see you, Really want to be with you, Really want to see you lord, But it takes so long, my lord.

The principal part of faith is patience.

To take what there is, and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived - to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that - this doubtless is the right way to live.

It's odd how people waiting for you stand out far less clearly than people you are waiting for.

Waiting for the miracle There's nothing left to do. I haven't been this happy since the end of World War II.

I will never fully understand; that is the nature of such creatures. Or is this Inner Truth now, this that is happening to me? I will wait. I will see. Which it is. Perhaps it is both.

Life is short, but the years are long.

There is no sign of leaf or bud, A hush is over everything - Silent as women wait for love, The world is waiting for the spring.

We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long. (closing line)