Jean (John) Chardin

Sir Jean Chardin was a Huguenot jeweller who spent years in Safavid Persia and published his celebrated Voyages en Perse et autres lieux de l’Orient. He did not coin this saying — he recorded it, as one of the Persian proverbs he gathered. The full proverb runs closer to “patience is a tree whose root is bitter, but whose fruit is very sweet.” His 1711 text puts the line in print a year before Rousseau was even born.