SEMPRONIUS: Oh! think what anxious moments pass between
The birth of plots, and their last fatal periods,
Oh! ’tis a dreadful interval of time,
Filled up with horror all, and big with death!
Destruction hangs on every word we speak,
On every thought, till the concluding stroke
Determines all, and closes our design.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman

Cato, Act 1, sc. 3, l. 50ff (1713)
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