“All things come in time to him who has the strength to wait”

“All things come in time to him who has the strength to wait” is a maxim attributed to the French minister Villesle that Yakov Petrovitch Golyadkin invokes while hiding on the back stairs of Olsufy Ivanovitch’s house. It gives his prolonged hesitation the sound of a principle: he waits for the right moment to enter a ball to which he was not invited, even as his repeated self-reassurances expose how difficult he finds taking that step.

The maxim in the hiding place

Golyadkin has reached the landing and passage behind the stairs, but has not dared to go farther. He stands in a dark, cold corner, partly screened by a large cupboard and an old screen and surrounded by rubbish. He tells himself he is merely watching as a disinterested spectator, and that he could go in whenever he chose. In practice, he has been there for nearly three hours, waiting for a chance to slip through the refreshment-room and into the gathering.

The maxim, which he remembers from a book on an unrelated subject, seems momentarily suited to his predicament. Its formal confidence lends dignity to an awkward vigil: if waiting can be called strength, his delay can appear deliberate rather than fearful. Yet the narration keeps that justification beside the physical facts—the cold, the darkness, and his hidden position—so that the borrowed wisdom cannot fully disguise his reluctance.

A borrowed principle, repeatedly questioned

The saying does not settle Golyadkin’s thoughts. He moves from Villesle to other remembered figures and stories, then to the Jesuit principle that any means are justified if the end is achieved. He uses these allusions to encourage himself to enter by way of the refreshment-room, tea-room, card-room, and finally the ballroom. But he also interrupts his own reasoning, wondering what Villesle has to do with the matter and how he is supposed to walk in. The maxim recurs as one item in a restless, self-contradictory chain of thought, not as a stable conviction.

When the refreshment-room briefly appears empty, Golyadkin reaches its door and opens it, then retreats behind the screen. He reproaches himself for being scared and considers going home for tea, worrying that Petrushka may grumble if he returns late. The long wait has not made entry easier; the opportunity itself intensifies his indecision. At last he suddenly dashes forward, removes his overcoat and hat in the refreshment-room, and makes his way through the tea-room and past the absorbed card-players into the drawing room.

Meaning and dramatic contrast

The maxim’s importance lies in the gap between its promise and Golyadkin’s conduct. Its language praises endurance directed toward an eventual reward, while his waiting remains concealed, anxious, and uncertain about whether he will act at all. The narrative makes that gap visible by returning from elevated historical references to the small circumstances of the landing: a hidden man, a little window, an empty room, and a door he opens only to withdraw from.

His eventual entrance does not prove that the maxim has guided him steadily toward success. He goes in on an abrupt impulse, and the scene presents him as so absorbed in reaching the drawing room that he scarcely notices the people around him. The saying therefore functions both as a self-protective rationalization and as an ironic measure of the distance between Golyadkin’s imagined composure and his faltering action.