"For he who can wait, everything comes in time"
About this Quote
The subtext is slightly barbed. Waiting is not passive; its opposite is the frantic grasping that makes people manipulable. If you cannot sit with uncertainty, you will buy certainty from whoever sells it: institutions, dogmas, charlatans, even your own worst impulses. A clergyman saying this also carries a theological echo. Christianity trains believers to live inside deferral - salvation, justice, meaning, all promised on a timetable humans dont control. The quote turns that spiritual training into a social strategy: if you can resist immediate appetites, you outlast rivals, outmaneuver panic, and let consequences ripen in your favor.
It works because it compresses a whole psychology into one calm certainty. "Everything" is an intentionally sweeping guarantee, almost suspiciously absolute, which is precisely the point: the sentence is less a factual claim than a discipline mantra. Rabelais offers patience as a counterspell to the era's volatility, and maybe to his own: in a world of doctrinal conflict and fragile reputations, sometimes survival is simply staying put long enough for the storm to pick a different target.
Quote Details
| Topic | Perseverance |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Rabelais, Francois. (2026, January 17). For he who can wait, everything comes in time. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/for-he-who-can-wait-everything-comes-in-time-78742/
Chicago Style
Rabelais, Francois. "For he who can wait, everything comes in time." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/for-he-who-can-wait-everything-comes-in-time-78742/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"For he who can wait, everything comes in time." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/for-he-who-can-wait-everything-comes-in-time-78742/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.












