What, then, is the virtue of patience? It’s what enables you to bear patiently all the annoying happenings to be encountered in life without growing angry; or, if you do forget yourself, you recollect yourself immediately in order to calm the turmoil. So, you must have a good fund of patience, dear Sisters; for, even if we didn’t have anything to put up with from other persons, alas! we’re so weak that we’ll find enough in ourselves; and we’re so fickle that we have plenty of things that have to be borne with, and this can’t be done without patience.

St. Vincent de Paul, Conference of 14 July 1658. (Coste X, p. 428)