Haste

Haste or hurry is rushed action. When one is "in a hurry" (adverbial phrase) it means one is doing things quickly and often impatiently.

Quotes

• Festina lente.
  • Hurry slowly.
  • Attributed to Augustus by Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, "Divus Augustus", sect. 25.

• Hâtez-vous lentement ; et, sans perdre courage,
  Vingt fois sur le métier remettez votre ouvrage.
  • Hasten slowly, and without losing heart,
    Put your work twenty times upon the anvil.
  • Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, L'Art Poétique (The Art of Poetry, 1674), Canto I, l. 171.

• Ther nis no werkman, whatsoevere he be,
  That may bothe werke wel and hastily.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, "The Merchant's Tale".

• The more haste, ever the worst speed.
  • Charles Churchill, The Ghost (1763), Book IV, line 1,162.

• Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
  • Max Ehrmann, "Desiderata" (1927).

• The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing that we ought to do, we have no time for anything else—we are the busiest people in the world.
  • Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition (1973), § 156.

• Celerity is never more admired
  Than by the negligent.
  • William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1600s), Act III, scene 7, line 25.

• Nay, but make haste; the better foot before.
  • William Shakespeare, King John (1598), Act IV, scene 2, line 170.

• Stand not upon the order of your going,
  But go at once.
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act III, scene 4, line 119.

• Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow.
  • William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act III, scene 2, line 101.

• He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
  With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard II (c. 1595), Act II, scene 1, line 36.

• It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
  Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
  Ere one can say "It lightens."
  • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act II, scene 2, line 118.

• Wisely, and slow; they stumble that run fast.
  • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act II, scene 3, line 94.

• Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry.
  • John Wesley (1703–1791). Letter to a member of the Society, 10th December 1777, Select Letters (1837).

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 353-54.

• Festination may prove Precipitation;
  Deliberating delay may be wise cunctation.
  • Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, Part I, Section XXIII (paraphrasing Cæsar).

• Then horn for horn they stretch and strive;
  Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive.
  • Robert Burns, To a Haggis.

• Festina lente.
  • Hasten deliberately.
  • Augustus Cæsar, quoting a Greek Proverb, according to Aullus Gellius, X, 11, 5.

• I'll be with you in the squeezing of a lemon.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer, Act I, scene 2.

• Sat cito, si sat bene.
  • Quick enough, if good enough.
  • St. Jerome, Epistle. LXVI. Par. 9. (Valler's ed.) Quoted from Cato. Phrase used by Lord Eldon. In Twiss's Life of Lord C. Eldon, Volume I, p. 46.

• Haste is of the Devil.
  • The Koran.

• Le trop de promptitude à l'erreur nous expose.
  • Too great haste leads us to error.
  • Molière, Sganarelle, I. 12.

• Stay awhile that we may make an end the sooner.
  • Attributed to Sir Amice Pawlet by Francis Bacon, Apothegms, No. 76.

• On wings of winds came flying all abroad.
  • Alexander Pope, Prologue to the Satires, line 208.

• Festinatio tarda est.
  • Haste is slow.
  • Quintus Curtius Rufus, IX, 9, 12.

Unsourced

• No two things differ more than hurry and despatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, despatch of a strong one. A weak man in office, like a squirrel in a cage, is laboring eternally, but to no purpose, and in constant motion without getting on a jot; like a turnstile, he is in everybody's way, but stops nobody; he talks a great deal, but says very little; looks into everything, but sees into nothing; and has a hundred irons in the fire, but very few of them are hot, and with those few that are he only burns his fingers.
  • Colton

Anonymous

• Haste makes waste.
  • English proverb. Reported in John Heywood, Dialogue of Proverbs (1546), part 1, Chapter 2