Let’s dive into some timeless wisdom with 121 amazing quotes on delayed gratification!
Life has a funny way of trying our patience. Delayed gratification refers to the ability to choose a more valued future reward over an immediate one.
In this case, a reward might be described as something that provides comfort or pleasure. Many people associate delayed gratification with self-control, but it also refers to a future goal or expectation that includes a greater valuable reward than what we would receive if we gave in to the temptation.
For example, what happens when you want a piece of chocolate cake but you try to stick to your health goals? Deferred gratification at work is saying “no” to what you want now in order to get something better later.
So in this post, we’ll explore 121 powerful quotes on delayed gratification for what we want can lead to even sweeter rewards.
More posts for you:
Table of Contents
- Quotes on Delayed Gratification
- Short Delayed Gratification Quotes
- Love Delayed Gratification Quotes
- Instant Gratification Quotes
- Delayed Gratification Quotes for Friends
- Success Delayed Gratification Quotes
- Conclusion
Quotes on Delayed Gratification
1. “Our willingness to wait reveals the value we place on the object we’re waiting for.” — Charles Stanley
2. “Our attention spans have been reduced by the immediate gratification provided by smartphones and social media.” — Katherine Ryan
3. “The gratification comes in the doing, not in the results.” — James Dean
4. “Delayed gratification is one of the greatest virtues our nation and churches need to embrace.” — Sunday Adelaja
5. “One must learn to give up momentary, uncertain and destructive pleasure for delayed, restrained, but dependable pleasure.” — Sigmund Freud
6. “Be careful not to compromise what you want most for what you want now.” — Zig Ziglar
7. “The need for patience if big profits are to be made from investment.” — Philip Arthur Fisher
8. “Most of the gains in life come from suffering in the short term so you can get paid in the long term.” — Naval Ravikant
9. “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.” — Shigeru Miyamoto
10. “Great investing requires a lot of delayed gratification.” — Charlie Munger
11. “Delayed gratification is the one thing we ignore these days. And if you delay it, it becomes more pleasurable later in life.” — Greg Gutfeld
12. “Years of happiness can be lost in the foolish gratification of a momentary desire for pleasure.” — Ezra Taft Benson
13. “We live in a time of instant everything, courtesy of the electronic highway. It creates a community of toddlers. When they don’t get immediate gratification, they get petulant and sulky.” — Faye Kellerman
14. “My gratification in working comes from the preparation and the building of the character.” — Cicely Tyson
15. “When you’re a young man and you’re on self-improvement and you’re delaying gratification, there’s not that many people like you just in the world.” — Hamza
16. “Being willing to delay pleasure for a greater result is a sign of maturity.
” — Dave Ramsey
17. “Time and effort invested in delayed gratification will always yield greater rewards.”
18. “Delay is ever fatal to those who are prepared.
” — Lucan
19. “Patience expands your options. If you insist on immediate gratification, your choices are severely limited.” — Ralph Marston
20. “A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work.” — Colin Powell
Also read: 51 Amazing Patience is a Virtue Quotes for Perfect Life
Short Delayed Gratification Quotes
21. “Giving up on our long-term goals for immediate gratification, my friends, is procrastination.” — Dan Ariely
22. “Rule your mind or it will rule you.” — Horace
23. “Never give up what you want most for what you want today.” — Neal A. Maxwell
24. “All things come to those who wait.” — Violet Fane
25. “Instant gratification takes too long.” — Carrie Fisher
26. “The most powerful outcomes are delayed.” — James Clear
27. “Maturity is the ability to postpone gratification.” — Sigmund Freud
28. “Immaturity is the inability to delay self gratification.” — Mike Murdock
29. “Delay is hateful, but it gives wisdom.
” — Publilius Syrus
30. “It is difficult to be patient but to waste the rewards of patience is worse.” — Abu Bakr
31. “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
” — Seneca
32. “Entrepreneurship is all about deferred gratification.” — N. R. Narayana Murthy
33. “The senselessness of indefinitely delayed gratification.” — Bill Perkins
34. “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” — Mark Twain
35. “Delay is the deadliest form of denial.
” — C. Northcote Parkinson
36. “Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.” — Mark Twain
37. “The harder it was to get, the more you want to keep it.” — Jay Mark Mateo Balmes
38. “Delayed gratification helps to limit the animalistic desire of human flesh.” — Sunday Adelaja
39. “Instant gratification is not soon enough.” — Meryl Streep
40. “Delay is a bitter tonic, but it increases appetite.
” — Austin O’Malley
Also read: 75 Life Emotional Heart Touching Quotes When You Feel Sad
Love Delayed Gratification Quotes
41. “Delayed gratification in love reveals the depth of our feelings and the strength of our intentions.”
42. “In the quiet moments of waiting, love deepens and grows roots that no storm can shake.”
43. “I think we live in the fast instant gratification generation. We want our love like our food, our films, our deliveries… fast and instant. Dating can be quite disposable now, with a swipe of a finger you’re gone.” — Asim Chaudhry
44. “The sweetest love is one that doesn’t rush but savors each step along the way.”
45. “Delayed gratification is important first and foremost in training children.” — Bill Hybels
46. “Hard work is painful when life is devoid of purpose. But when you live for something greater than yourself and the gratification of your own ego, then hard work becomes a labor of love.” — Steve Pavlina
47. “The heart learns patience through love, growing stronger in the waiting.”
48. “When love is willing to wait, it shows that its worth goes beyond the here and now.”
49. “Comfort addicts us to instant gratification and short-term pleasure.” — Michael Easter
50. “Love that waits doesn’t weaken; it grows resilient with every passing moment.”
51. “Delayed gratification is the key to achieving your true potential.”
52. “Never put off till to-morrow the fun you can have to-day.” — Aldous Huxley
53. “The beauty of delayed gratification is in knowing that real love is worth the wait.”
54. “If there is one thing that marks families with money in the long term it is this: delayed gratification.” — Bill Bonner
55. “In love, delayed gratification isn’t sacrifice; it’s the nurturing of something lasting.”
56. “When love can wait, it shows that its strength isn’t just in presence but in faith.”
57. “True love knows that the best things in life are worth waiting for, growing stronger with time.”
58. “Patience is love’s silent promise that what’s to come is better than what could be rushed.”
59. “Patience is love’s way of saying, ‘I trust that what’s ahead is worth it.’”
60. “Only love that embraces waiting truly understands its own depth.”
Also read: 71 Unexpressed Hidden Love Quotes (Love in Shadows)
Instant Gratification Quotes
61. “Cleaners don’t care about instant gratification. The invest in the long-term payoff.” — Tim Grover
62. “Delayed gratification is a sweet lesson whose teacher knows the best is not right now, it is yet to be.” — Maximillian Degenerez
63. “Hip-hop is an instant gratification, winners and losers circle, and often those who are losing give up after three or four, five years.” — Questlove
64. “The key to true happiness is learning to delay gratification.”
65. “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” — Pablo Picasso
66. “Fame introduced me to a world of instant gratification and decadence I hadn’t seen before.” — Jesse Metcalfe
67. “Instant gratification may feel good in the moment, but it rarely leads to long-term satisfaction.”
68. “Reading a novel in which all characters illustrate patience, hard work, chastity, and delayed gratification could be a pretty dull experience.” — Thomas Perry
69. “I mean, I get all the gratification in the world from doing a show. It’s a great feeling.” — Dusty Hill
70. “Delayed gratification is the secret to achieving your dreams.”
71. “I don’t mean to romanticise the struggle, that leads to all kinds of terrible violence and absurdities that are even worse than the perverse immediate gratification.” — John Maus
72. “Patience is a quality that sets successful people apart from the rest.”
73. “America’s greatest sin is the refusal to delay gratification.” — M. Scott Peck
74. “Those who are patient enough to wait for the right moment will always come out on top.”
75. “People invite me to dinner not because I can cook, but because I like to clean up. I get immediate gratification from windex. Yes, I do windows.” — Carol Burnett
76. “Nobody gives a care about the fate of labor as long as they can get their instant gratification.” — Squidward Tentacles
77. “Success is not about how fast you can get what you want, but how you handle the obstacles along the way.”
78. “No one wants to be patient. No one wants to wait for anything. They want it right now – that instant gratification.” — P. J. Tucker
79. “The obsession with instant gratification blinds us from our long-term potential.” — Mike Dooley
80. “Instant gratification is like a quick fix – it may provide temporary relief, but it won’t solve the underlying problem.”
Also read: 90 Inspiring Health and Fitness Quotes from Famous Authors
Delayed Gratification Quotes for Friends
81. “A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.” — Jim Watkins
82. “Good things come to those who wait.” — Jess C Scott
83. “Maturity is achieved when a person postpones immediate pleasures for long-term values.” — Joshua L. Liebman
84. “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” — Tim Notke
85. “The good life is using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification.” — Martin Seligman
86. “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” — C.G. Jung
87. “Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.” — Soren Kierkegaard
88. “An entire sea of water can’t sink a ship unless it gets inside the ship. Similarly, the negativity of the world can’t put you down unless you allow it to get inside you.” — Goi Nasu
89. “Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” — Earl Nightingale
90. “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” — Confucius
91. “It’s waiting that helps you as an investor, and a lot of people just can’t stand to wait. If you didn’t get the deferred-gratification gene, you’ve got to work very hard to overcome that.” — Charlie Munger
92. “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.” — Albert Einstein
93. “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.” — Suzy Kassem
94. “The first step to getting anywhere is deciding you’re no longer willing to stay where you are.” — Anonymous
95. “Were talking about an attitude. Delayed gratification is there, planning, be able to give up something now to get something later.” — Joe Hill
96. “True happiness comes from gaining insight and growing into your best possible self. Otherwise all you’re having is immediate gratification pleasure, which is fleeting and doesn’t grow you as a person.” — Aristotle
97. “Rich and very rich people have developed the discipline of delayed gratification. Millionaires do today what others don’t, so they can have tomorrow what others won’t.” — Keith Cameron Smith
98. “If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.” — Lao Tzu
99. “A year from now you may wish you had started today.” — Karen Lamb
100. “The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.” — Paulo Coelho
Also read: 65 Amazing Kindness is Contagious Quotes: Be the Spark
Success Delayed Gratification Quotes
101. “If you don’t want to be average, don’t rush into doing what the crowd is doing” — C.C. Friday
102. “The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable prerequisite for success.” — Brian Tracy
103. “Have the willpower to focus on long-term success instead of instant gratification.” — Jaspreet Singh
104. “Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.” — Amos Bronson Alcott
105. “Work hard in silence, let your success be your noise.” — Anonymous
106. “Don’t give up what you want most for what you want now.” — Richard G. Scott
107. “Success is not a destination, it’s a journey.“ — Zig Ziglar
108. “Let’s not make happiness and success about the size of our homes, but about the size of our hearts; let’s not make it about gratification but gratitude.” — Jay Shetty
109. “Success is actually a short race – a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over.” — Gary Keller
110. “The successful among us delay gratification. The successful among us bargain with the future.” — Jordan B. Peterson
111. “That delay is our surest protection which enables us to deliberate on the merits of our intentions
.” — Publilius Syrus
112. “Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow. Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done.
” — Aaron Burr
113. “The reward for good habits is growth, and there is a reward for bad ones with instant gratification.” — Lewis Howes
114. “When it comes to success, it will come when it comes. A delay does not mean a denial.
” — Les Brown
115. “There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
116. “If there is a way to delay an important decision, the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
” — C. Northcote Parkinson
117. “Economists say the inability to delay gratification is a primary predictor of economic failure in life.” — Brian Tracy
118. “Patience is a virtue that leads to success.”
119. “Success is not about how fast you can achieve your goals, but how well you can sustain them.”
120. “The path to success is paved with patience and persistence.”
121. “Success is not about how quickly you reach your destination, but how you enjoy the journey.”
Also read: 90 Work Hard Stay Humble Quotes for a Successful Life
Conclusion
I hope you enjoy these quotes on delayed gratification and you’ll begin cultivating this skill.
One of the simplest ways to improve delayed gratification is to become aware of when you aren’t doing it. And the easiest way to do so is to create a strategy for your finances, health, or business. This is because the vast majority of delayed gratification breaches are not planned for.
Did any of these quotes resonate with you? Or do you have a favorite quote on delayed gratification that always speaks to you? Leave the comment below!
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