When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away. it's best to let him run.

We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

Kindness is the only service that will stand the storm of life and not wash out.

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my best each and every day.

Keep your place in life and your place will keep you

Slow but steady wins the race.

You ridiculed the idea of my ever being able to help you, not expecting to receive from me any repayment of your favor; now you know that it is possible for even a Mouse to confer benefits on a Lion.

Perseverance is surer than swiftness.

Do your little bit of good where you are; it is those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it - oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.

Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot. But all too often the greedy eyes are only deceived; the fruit that seemed so precious is still green on the inside, and disrespected hands ungratefully toss aside what has so disappointed them.

Not everyone can wait: neither the sated nor the satisfied nor those without respect can wait. The only ones who can wait are people who carry restlessness around with them.