Daily Inspiration Quote by B. C. Forbes

Self-control is a flattering story men like to tell about themselves; Forbes punctures it by suggesting the calmer explanation is often the colder one. “Many a man” widens the target from a personal failing to a social pattern, the kind a journalist of the early 20th century would have watched play out in offices, boardrooms, and marriages: restraint praised as virtue, emotional distance rewarded as professionalism. The line’s bite comes from how easily “patient” passes as moral achievement while “indifferent” lands as moral vacancy. One word is aspirational, the other accusatory, and the difference often depends less on behavior than on motive.

Forbes is doing reputational forensics. Patience implies friction: you care, you’re irritated, you’re choosing not to erupt. Indifference implies no friction at all: you can wait because you’re not invested enough to mind. That’s why the quote works; it doesn’t argue against patience, it questions the credibility of the performance. Calm becomes suspicious. The man who never seems ruffled may not be enlightened, just disengaged.

The subtext is a warning about misreading temperament as character. In a culture that often codes male emotion as weakness, indifference can masquerade as maturity and earn social points: the steady executive, the unbothered husband, the “reasonable” guy in an argument. Forbes reminds us that detachment isn’t the same as discipline. Sometimes the absence of reaction isn’t strength; it’s the absence of stakes.