Delay

“ But on these instructive complications I must not enlarge more than to say that they could all be resumed in the one word: Delay.
A mankind which has invented the proverb, "Time is money," will understand my vexation. ”

“ Death and Devastation are the certain Consequences of Delay; every Moment is infinitely precious; an Hour lost may deluge your Country in Blood, and entail perpetual Slavery upon the few of your Posterity who may survive the Carnage. ”

“ Delay has done its healthy work; the last discovery has been understood and digested—we may make a fresh start. But if you force the journey, you may fail before the end. The river which circles slowly through the fiat, receives as much as it gives. ”

“ Pray let me entreat you, whether you take the one resolution or the other ultimately, not to delay nor put off one day a fixed resolution to use constant and sufficient exercise. I am sure any delay on that head is of a hundred times more consequence than all those which we have been lamenting. Nothing in the world could make up to you for the consequences which your omission in this respect (which I am grieved to learn from Hobart still continues) may bring upon you. ”

“ Let them neglect their high duties, and ruin must soon follow, “for if the light that is in us be darkness, how great is that darkness!” Delay is not merely dangerous, but fatal. Every day is pregnant with the destiny of years; every year stamps an indelible character on far succeeding generations. ”

“ It has seemed that long even to me waiting opportunity for service, yet 'tis scarcely eight hours since you were hurled into yonder hole. See; the sun in the sky tells the story truly. But every moment we delay only serves to increase our peril of discovery. Assist me, if you have strength, to relay this stone slab. ”

“ To push a case, to avoid delay, to secure delay, even to obtain a favourable decision, the letter or the personal intervention of a great man was powerful, the half-expressed desire of the King almost irresistible. ”

“ And I say, Do not delay, but now choose Him for your Redeemer, your Friend, your Helper, your Commander, your All; because delay is really decision in the wrong way. Do not delay, but take Jesus Christ as the Saviour of your sinful souls, and rest your hearts upon Him to-night before you sleep; because there is no real reason for delay. No season will be more convenient than the present season. Every time is the right time to do the right thing, every time is the right time to begin following Him. ”

“ Delay, sir, is a curse to a person in business; it is as dangerous as the blandishments of a harlot to the young—and so I found it. On the very night that the machinery and everything was completed, I allowed the spinners and others that I had engaged, to have a supper and dance in it wi' their wives and sweethearts. ”

“ There are various causes that bare contributed to the delay, which the world need not be informed of but the remote distance of our habitations, and the multiplicity of business is which each of us is statedly engaged, are circumstances pretty generally known, and which we hope will be admitted in excuse for some part of the delay, and some part the booksellers must answer for. ”

“ Nothing is gained by postponement and the pain is only prolonged. Hesitation and delay, Gorgo, are a barrier built up by your own hand between us and our happiness. You always had abundance of determination ”

“ Every hour you continue on this ill-chosen ground, your difficulties thicken around you; and therefore my conclusion is, remove from a bad position as quickly as you can. The disgrace, and the necessity of yielding, both of them, grow upon you every hour of your delay. ”

“ But when I feel that I have done all in my power, and that this delay may be designed by the wise disposer of all events for a trial of patience, I find relief and a disposition quietly to wait such issue as he shall direct, knowing that, if I sincerely have put my trust in him, he will not lead me astray, and my way will, in any event, be made plain. ”

“ Dip down upon the northern shore,
O sweet new-year delaying long;
Thou doest expectant nature wrong,
Delaying long, delay no more. ”

“ Not the weak delay of those who procrastinate what cannot be avoided; but the wise delay of a general who can bring up overpowering forces, only give him time. Understand me, there is more than one game on the cards ”

“ Even with these three means of escape in our minds, it is difficult to see how it was possible for anyone to get from the gallery to the court in the minute or so elapsing between the cry of the dying girl and the appearance at her side of the man studying coins in the adjoining section."
"You are right. There was a delay somewhere, as we shall find later on. But granting this delay, a man would have to move fast to go the full length of the court from the Curator's room even in the time which this small delay might afford him. ”

“ Waiting is possible only in time, but time has no meaning. You who made delay can leave time behind simply by recognizing that neither beginnings nor endings were created by the Eternal, Who placed no limits on His creation or upon those who create like Him. ”

“ The delays became legal matters to be taken up in due legal course; that is not the way of business. We think that a delay is a criticism of our work and is something at once to be investigated. That is business. ”

“ It might happen that, if aid is delayed and is not sent by you to us with all promptitude, the delay will prove a sufficient obstacle, so that no result will follow from the work that we have accomplished. I beg his majesty to send us some aid with the promptness, which rightly should not be less man in that city of España, where his majesty resides. ”

“ Whether the regularity be pleasant or not, (and to the most conscientious travellers it is the most agreeable,) the entries ought to be made daily, if possible. The loss incurred by delay is manifest to any one who has tried. The shortest entries are always those which have been deferred. The delay of a single day is found to reduce the matter unaccountably. ”

“ And last of all I say to you, give yourselves now to Jesus Christ, because no to-morrow may be yours. Delay is gambling, very irrationally, with a very uncertain thing—your life and your future opportunities. ”

“ You do well to prepare me for all possible delays, because in this life all sorts of disappointments are possible, and I shall do well, if any such delay of your journey should happen, to practise that lesson of patience which you inculcate. ”

“ Is leaden servitor to dull delay;
Delay leads impotent and snail-pac'd beggary:
Then fiery expedition be my wing,
Jove's Mercury, and herald for a king! ”

“ Next you have the delay caused by the conversion of direction through a whole right angle. That cause of delay is serious. For when you are dealing with very large bodies of men, such as half a dozen army corps, to change suddenly from the direction S (see Sketch 29) for which your Staff work was planned, and to break off at a moment's notice in direction E, while you are on the march towards S, is impossible. [Pg 196] You have to think out a whole new set of dispositions, and to re-order all your great body of men. ”

“ It can only denote that because delay occupies or consumes time, but this sense of the noun is not found in the New Testament. It is found, however, in the verb χρονίζω, to linger, to delay, to be long in coming, Mat. xxv. 5; Lu. i. 21. (b) The absence of the article—“time,” not “the time”—would naturally give it a general signification, unless there was something in the connection to limit it to some well-known period under consideration. See Notes on ch. viii. 2; x. 3. ”

“ If a salesman is uppish with me, he takes his uppishness elsewhere within twenty-four hours. Whenever any one forgets his place, put him back in it without delay. Delay makes for uncertainty, and uncertainty is fatal in business and everywhere else. ”

“ The delay thus gained might not be more than a second in duration—but that second may be critical; for in the constant rising and falling of considerations in the mind, where two associated systems of them are nearly in equilibrium it is often a matter of but a second more or less of attention at the outset, whether one system shall gain force to occupy the field and develop itself, and exclude the other, or be excluded itself by the other. ”

“ Every delay makes us all the more indolent, and cradles us still more deeply in the habit of familiarity with our wretched condition. Then, too, the external motives to reflection can never be stronger or more urgent. He who is not aroused by the present situation has beyond a doubt lost all power of feeling. ”

“ He who has not spared his own Son, how shall he not with him freely give us all things? Do not deem that delay is proof of his indifference. Delaying to bestow is not proof of indifference in God; but ceasing to ask is proof of indifference in man. ”

“ For many a time a policy of delay adopted at the opportune moment has brought more benefit than the opposite course, and haste displayed at an unseason [113] able time has upset for many men their hope of success. ”

“ But rises in demand for her delay; 319
She makes a scourge of past prosperity,
To sting thee more, and double thy distress. ”

“ The delay thus involved, added to the time required for the brain itself to act on the message from the eye, is distinctly appreciable, and every one is aware that individuals differ as to their reaction time. ”

“ The delay may be for thy good, to lay thee lower in the dust of self-abasement, or to make thee more earnest for the blessing. Possibly the Lord intends to try thy faith, that, like the woman of Syrophenicia, thou mayst reflect honor on Him by thy confidence in Him. ”

“ If they want to do something or to have something, they can not wait, they must do it or have it at once. When they are compelled to wait, the time seems very long and their impatience grows with every delay. They can not quietly and patiently wait for anything. ”

“ We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow; and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse using the word with no comprehension of the principle. ”

“ If he moves early, it is not only a sign but a proof that he expects no reinforcement, and his delay will prove that he either waits for the arrival of a plan to go upon, or force to execute it, or both; in which case our strength will increase more than his, therefore in any case we cannot be wrong if we do but proceed. ”

“ The resulting period of delay, of suspended and postponed overt action, is the period in which activities that are refused direct outlet project imaginative counterparts. It signifies, in technical phrase, the mediation of impulse. For an isolated impulse is immediate, narrowing the world down to the directly present. Variety of competing tendencies enlarges the world. It brings a diversity of considerations before the mind, and enables action to take place finally in view of an object generously conceived and delicately refined, composed by a long process of selections and combinations. ”

“ No one can regret more than myself the delay which has taken place, but it has been unavoidable, as I have had every part of the reduction to execute myself, and the construction of the various catalogues, charts, and minute details of every kind consume a world of 167time, quite disproportioned to their apparent extent. ”

“ It will never do to be always borrowing, and so waiting till others can lend, and the season has glided away. Delay is always bad policy:—
"The work-deferrer never
Sees full his barn, nor he that leaves work ever,
And still is gadding out. Care-flying ease
Gives labour ever competent increase:
He that with doubts his needful business crosses
Is always wrestling with uncertain losses."
—C. 48-53.
Accordingly, on the principle of having all proper implements of one's own, the poet proceeds to give instructions for the most approved make of a wain, a plough, a mortar, a pestle, and so forth. ”

“ So in the long run, I suppose, while delay and failure and interruption may keep a piece of work very small, yet in the end they enter into the quality of it and bring it a little nearer to the real thing, which is always more or less of a secret. ”

“ CITY POINT, VA., December 11, 1864.—4 P.M.
MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS,
Nashville, Tenn.
If you delay attack longer the mortifying spectacle will be witnessed of a rebel army moving for the Ohio River, and you will be forced to act, accepting such weather as you find. Let there be no further delay. Hood cannot even stand a drawn battle so far from his supplies of ordnance stores. If he retreats and you follow, he must lose his material and much of his army. I am in hopes of receiving a dispatch from you to-day announcing that you have moved. Delay no longer for weather or reinforcements. ”

“ If delays occur on the way, and long periods of waiting, as often happen, we should be patient and cheerful over the matter ourselves, and thus help others to be so. Good-nature is contagious at such times. It is of no use to tire the conductor and brakemen with repeated questions: they are rarely responsible for the delay, which is more vexatious to them than to us. ”

“ I had supposed that in a country, and on a public route, where during the summer there must be considerable travel, it would hardly be possible that so long a delay could take place; but in this I was mistaken. The slow-stations are emphatically slow; the keepers are slow, the horses are slow, the whole concern is slow. ”

“ This may be done in several ways, such as, for example, by recording the total time of delays avoidable and unavoidable, caused by each man, and from this computing individual records. This method of recording is psychologically right, because the recording of the delay will serve as a warning to the man, and as a spur to him not to cause delay to others again. ”