What Tolstoy grasps here is that patience and time aren't merely passive—they're *active forces* that work on your behalf while you sleep, while others grow impatient and abandon their posts. Most people mistake these virtues for weakness, imagining that real power comes from urgency and aggression, but Tolstoy inverts this entirely: the warrior who can simply *hold ground* eventually wins because everyone else has exhausted themselves. Consider the parent waiting out a child's tantrum without capitulating, or the writer who lets a manuscript rest between drafts—in both cases, the refusal to be hurried becomes the decisive advantage.