He wrote it in French — “La patience est l’art d’espérer” — as one of the numbered maxims appended to Introduction à la connoissance de l’esprit humain, the single volume he published anonymously in 1746, the year before he died. The familiar four-word English sentence is a translator’s rendering, and it matches Elizabeth Lee’s 1903 translation, page 180 ↗ word for word.
“Patience is the art of hoping” Patience is the art of hoping. — Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, Réflexions et maximes (1746), maxim 251; English translation by Elizabeth Lee, 1903. Verified at quotle.info
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Provenance
The maxim, in the book he published himself
Work
Réflexions et maximes
First published
Paris: Antoine-Claude Briasson, 1746 — appended to Introduction à la connoissance de l’esprit humain, issued anonymously
Maxim
No. 251 (CCLI) in the standard later numbering
Translation
Elizabeth Lee, 1903 (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co.), p. 180
The favourites of fortune or of fame topple from their pedestals before our eyes without diverting us from ambition. — Patience is the art of hoping. — Despair puts the last touch not only to our misery but also to our weakness.
Réflexions et maximes, 1746
Three maxims as they run consecutively in Elizabeth Lee’s 1903 translation. The French original of the middle one reads “La patience est l’art d’espérer.”
1940 — F. G. Stevens’s facing-page edition ↗ sets “La patience est l’art d’espérer.” against “Patience is the art of hoping.” and places it at maxim 251, between 250 and 252.
✓Public domain
Both halves of this quotation are out of copyright in the United States. The French original was first published in 1746, and the English wording matches Elizabeth Lee’s translation of 1903 — with the identical sentence already in print in an American anthology of 1880. F. G. Stevens’s 1940 translation happens to render it the same way, but nothing here depends on that later edition.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What gets lost, even though the attribution is right
This one is genuine, which makes it unusual for a quote this widely shared. What travels badly is everything around it: the man’s name, the translator’s name, and the date.
~
The wordingElizabeth Lee, translator — uncredited uncredited
Vauvenargues wrote in French, so the four-word English sentence is some translator’s work. It matches Lee’s 1903 text on p. 180 ↗ word for word — and that is the volume the quote sites name as their source, while printing no translator credit at all.
✕
The author“Luc de Clapiers”, filed as though a different writer same man
✓The thought and the sentence are both his: the 1746 first edition ↗ has “La patience est l’art d’espérer.” The English is the standard literal rendering, identical in De Finod (1880), Lee (1903) and Stevens (1940) — it is the Lee volume specifically that modern quote sites are reprinting.
Context
A man with very little time saying patience is a skill
Vauvenargues had reason to think hard about waiting. Born at Aix-en-Provence in 1715, he spent his twenties as an infantry officer, froze his legs during the retreat from the Siege of Prague in 1742, fought at Dettingen, and left the army with his health broken. He published one book, anonymously, in 1746 — Introduction à la connoissance de l’esprit humain, with the Réflexions and Maximes appended at the back — encouraged by Voltaire, who had been corresponding with him since 1743 and who pressed him toward a revised second edition. He died in Paris the following year, aged 31.
Read against that, the maxim is not a greetings-card sentiment. Patience as an art makes it something practised rather than possessed, and defining it by hoping rather than by endurance is the whole move: the waiting is not blank, it is aimed at something.
La patience est l’art d’espérer.
Why the maxim number changes from edition to edition
The 1746 first edition does not use that number, because it does not run one continuous sequence. Its maxims are numbered afresh inside each of three books, and this one stands as no. CV of the third, after “La nécessité comble les maux qu’elle ne peut soulager” and before the maxim on silence and reflection. Later collected editions renumbered the whole run straight through, which is where 251 comes from — so a citation to “maxim 251” and a citation to the 1746 book point at the same sentence.
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More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, was born at Aix-en-Provence in 1715 and served as an infantry officer, taking part in the Siege of Prague in 1742 and the Battle of Dettingen before ill health ended his career. In 1746 he published a single anonymous volume, Introduction à la connoissance de l’esprit humain, with his Réflexions et maximes appended; Voltaire, who had been corresponding with him since 1743, urged him into print and then toward a revised edition. He died in Paris in 1747 at 31, and is now read alongside La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère as one of the great French moralists — the warmest of the three.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, Introduction à la connoissance de l’esprit humain, suivie de Réflexions et de Maximes (Paris: Antoine-Claude Briasson, 1746), Réflexions, book III, no. CV — numbered 251 in later collected editions. English: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims, trans. Elizabeth Lee (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co., 1903), 180.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Patience is the art of hoping’?” Last verified 8 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/patience-is-the-art-of-hoping/