One of the main reasons these two things are so necessary is because it's unfair to your horse if you neglect to use them. If your horse is "trained" without patience and/or diligence, he either does not learn very many things properly (and so they may not stay present in his mind), or else he may become jumpy, head-shy, or even to simply dislike people in general. That is one of the most horrible things I've seen happen because of a lack of patience, especially because it is just unnecessary.
I don't know if anyone could accept my advice in this regard, but I feel that the importance of it warrants my stating it. If you don't think you have the patience to train a horse properly, to allow him to learn and apply the methods you want to teach him, then please, please let someone else train him who does have that patience. This is not to say that all trainers should never feel impatience with a horse or to feel many things. But the main thing is not to act on those feelings, and if you think that you would be unable to just feel impatience, anger, etc., without allowing them to surface with negative results to your horse, then I'm talking to you.
As far as diligence is concerned, the reason it's so important is this: if you do have the patience I mentioned above and the discipline to not allow your feelings to come out every time you feel impatient or angry with your horse, but then you don't have the diligence to follow through with the lessons you've been teaching your horse, then those lessons and patience were in vain. A horse, just like a human, needs some repetition to learn. And just like people, some horses may need more repetition than others. So it's important to remain diligent and focused when training your horse to make sure that he understands what it is you've been trying so hard to teach him.
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