
Longfellow's translation of Friedrich von Logau, "Retribution", Sinngedichte III, 2, 24. http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2002/05/21/452.html.
Retribution. (Sinngedichte III, 2, 24, published c. 1654, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). Compare: "God's mill grinds slow, but sure", George Herbert. Jacula Prudentum. Sextus Empiricus is the first writer who has presented the whole of the adage cited by Plutarch in his treatise "Concerning such whom God is slow to punish".
Longfellow's translation of Friedrich von Logau, "Retribution", Sinngedichte III, 2, 24. http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2002/05/21/452.html.
“God's mills grind slow,
But they grind woe.”
"Delayed Retribution", p. 123.
Poetry of the Orient, 1865 edition
“743. God's mill grinds slow but sure.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
“Who first shall reach the mill, he first shall grind.”
Chi prima giugne al mulin, prima macina.
Gli Sciamiti, Act II., Scene III.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 270.
“153. The mill cannot grind with water that's past.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
“And a proverb haunts my mind
As a spell is cast,
"The mill cannot grind
With the water that is past."”
Poem: Lesson of the Water-Mill.
Part VIII
The City of Dreadful Night (1870–74)
L’esser d’ un’ avvocato, chi ben pensa,
E un molino, ove a macinar concorre
D’ogni sorte di genti copia immensa.
Satire, I., IX. — "Peccadigli degli Avvocati."
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 334.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 563.
Remark to Lucy Masterman (early 1909), quoted in Lucy Masterman, C. F. G. Masterman (Nicholson and Watson, 1939), p. 150.
Chancellor of the Exchequer