Quote of the Day: Saint Francis de Sales on Daily Inspiration

Notice he says “have patience” rather than “be patient.” The verb matters: “be” can sound like a personality trait you either possess or don’t, while “have” suggests something you can carry, practice, even retrieve when it slips from your hands. And then he sharpens the point with “first of all,” an ordering that turns a general virtue into a personal discipline: “Have patience with all things, But, first of all with yourself.”

We usually treat patience as a social virtue, waiting in line without snapping, tolerating delays, giving others room to fumble. But Francis de Sales starts upstream. If you’re at war with yourself, your kindness will be brittle, your standards weaponized, your “high expectations” a thin disguise for irritation. Inner impatience doesn’t stay private; it leaks into tone, into judgment, into the quiet contempt that can sit behind competence.

Self-patience is not permission to stall. It’s the refusal to confuse speed with seriousness. Growth has a biology: habits change by repetition, not revelation. When you can meet your own missteps without theatrics, neither excuse nor self-contempt, you gain something sturdier than motivation: steadiness. That steadiness is a form of resilience, and it makes room for compassion that isn’t performative, because it’s grounded in lived knowledge of how hard improvement actually is.

As a bishop, spiritual writer, and founder of the Visitation, Saint Francis de Sales guided ordinary people through anxious, turbulent times with a program of gentleness and incremental change. He understood how the inner critic can masquerade as zeal, and how quickly it curdles into discouragement.

November 11 is widely observed as Veterans Day in the United States and Remembrance Day elsewhere, a date that honors endurance rather than glamour. Apply the same ethic inward: return to the work, quietly, without self-punishment, and let time do what force cannot.