
“743. God's mill grinds slow but sure.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
"Delayed Retribution", p. 123.
Poetry of the Orient, 1865 edition
“743. God's mill grinds slow but sure.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
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".
“153. The mill cannot grind with water that's past.”
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.
“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.
"Geological Reform", Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Vol. 25 (1869); as reprinted in Huxley, Discourses, Biological and Geological essays (1909), pp. 335–336
1860s
Letter to his friend the Scots composer Erik Chisholm (1904-65) upon completion of Opus clavicembalisticum, 1930; quoted by pianist John Ogdon.