Nothing is so bitter as long suspense; some can endure more calmly to have their expectation cut off than deferred. Yet very many are led into this fault of postponing promised benefits by a perverted ambition to keep the crowd of their petitioners from becoming smaller; such are the tools of royal power, who delight in prolonging a display of arrogance, and deem themselves to be robbed of power unless they show long and often, to one after another, how, much power they have. They do nothing promptly, nothing once for all; their injuries are swift, their benefits slow. And therefore the words of the comic poet, you are to believe, are absolutely true,
Know you not this — the more delay you make,
The less of gratitude from me you take?1
And so a man cries out in an outburst of noble anger: “If you are going to do anything, do it;” and: “Nothing is worth such a price; I would rather have you say no at once.” When the mind has been, reduced to a state of weariness, and, while waiting for a benefit, begins loathe it, can one possibly feel grateful for it? Just as the sharpest cruelty is that which prolongs punishment, and there is a sort of mercy in killing swiftly because the supreme torture brings with it its own end, whereas the worst part of the execution that is sure to come is the interval that precedes it, so, in the case of a gift, gratitude for it will be the greater, the less long it has hung in the balance. For it is disquieting to have to wait even for blessings, and, since most benefits afford relief from some trouble, if a man leaves another to long torture when he might release him at once, or to tardy rejoicing, he has done violence to the benefit he confers. All generosity moves swiftly. and he who acts willingly is prone to act quickly; if a man gives help tardily, deferring it from day to day, he has not given it heartily. Thus he has lost two valuable things — time and the proof of his friendly intent; tardy goodwill smacks of ill-will.