Delay

Delay is an unexpected period of time that a person must wait before an expected event occurs.

• Changing the length of a delay may utterly change behavior. [...] Overshoots, oscillations, and collapses are always caused by delays.
  • Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008, pages 104-105 (ISBN 9781603580557).

• For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
  The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
  The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
  The insolence of office, and the spurns
  That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
  When he himself might his quietus make
  With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,
  To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
  But that the dread of something after death, —
  The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
  No traveller returns, — puzzles the will,
  And makes us rather bear those ills we have
  Than fly to others that we know naught of?
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, scene i (c. 1601).

• An incompetent attorney can delay a trial for years or months. A competent attorney can delay one even longer.
  • Evelle J. Younger, California Attorney General, Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1971.

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 187.

• Delay always heeds danger.
  • Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605-15), Book IV, Chapter III.

• Il fornito
  Sempre con danno l'attender sofferse.
  • It is always those who are ready who suffer in delays.
  • Dante Alighieri, Inferno, XXVIII. 98.

• Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem,
  Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem.
  • One man by delay restored the state,
    for he preferred the public safety to idle report.
  • Ennius—Quoted by Cicero.

• With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
  • Homer, The Odyssey, Book I. 1. Pope's translation.

• Nulla unquam de morte cunctatio longa est.
  • When a man's life is at stake no delay is too long.
  • Juvenal, Satires (early 2nd century), VI. 221.

• Do not delay,
  Do not delay: the golden moments fly!
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Masque of Pandora, Part VII.

• Ah! nothing is too late
  Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Morituri Salutamus, Stanza 24.

• Tolle moras—semper nocuit differre paratis.
  • Away with delay—it always injures those who are prepared.
  • Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Pharsalia, I. 281.

• Longa mora est nobis omnis, quae gaudia differt.
  • Every delay that postpones our joys, is long.
  • Ovid, Heroides, XLX.. 3.

• Tardo amico nihil est quidquam iniquius.
  • Nothing is more annoying than a tardy friend.
  • Plautus, Panulus, III. 1. 1.

• Quod ratio nequiit, sspe sanavit mora.
  • What reason could not avoid, has often been cured by delay.
  • Seneca the Younger, Agamemnon, CXXX.

• Omnis nimium longa properanti mora est.
  • Every delay is too long to one who is in a hurry.
  • Seneca the Younger, Agamemnon, CCCCXXVI.

• Maximum remedium est irse mora.
  • Delay is the greatest remedy for anger.
  • Seneca the Younger, Delra, II. 28. (Same in, Book Ill, with "dilatio" for "mora.").

• Delays have dangerous ends.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I (c. 1588-90), Act III, scene 2, line 33. (See also Cervantes).

• Delay leads impotent and snail-paced beggary.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard III (c. 1591), Act IV, scene 3, line 53.

• Pelle moras; brevis est magni fortuna favoris.
  • Away with delay; the chance of great fortune is short-lived.
  • Silius Italicus, Punica, IV. 734.

• Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
  Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (published 1859-1885), Guinevere, line 169.

• And Mecca saddens at the long delay.
  • James Thomson, The Seasons, Summer (1727), line 979.

• Like St. George, always in his saddle, never on his way.
  • Proverb quoted in Clement Walker's History of Independency, The Mysterie of the Two Juntos.

Quotes reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 70.

• Delay will frequently have, as it ought to have, considerable influence upon the judgment which ought to be formed upon the evidence adduced.
  • Frederic Thesiger, 1st Lord Chelmsford, Cuno v. Cuno (1873), L. R. 2 Sc. & D. 302.

• It is not to be imagined that the King will be guilty of vexatious delays.
  • Sir Dudley Ryder, L.C.J., Rex v. Berkley and another (1754), Sayer's Rep. 124.

• Lex dilationes semper exhorret: The law always abhors delays.
  • 2 Inst. 240.

• Lex reprobat moram: The law dislikes delay.
  • Jenk. Cent. 35.

• In the one case, there is a straight road of a mile long, and without a turnpike in it: in the other case, you may go to, or at least towards, the same place by a road of a hundred miles in length—full, accordingly, of turnings and windings—full, moreover, of quicksands and pitfalls, and equally full of turnpikes. In conducting the traveller, nothing obliges the conductors to avoid the straight road, and drag him along the crooked one : nor would they ever have given themselves any such trouble, had it not been for the turnpikes, the tolls of which are so regularly settled, and the tills in such good keeping: learned feet, could they be prevailed on, are no less capable of treading the short road than unlearned ones.
  • The Law's delay—Benthamiana, or Select Extracts from the Works of Jeremy Bentham, 1843, p. 419.

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