The Qur'an (Oxford World's Classics)

280
The Quran 35: 43
yet further away, 43 became more arrogant in the land, and intensified
their plotting of evil – the plotting of evil only rebounds on those
who plot. Do they expect anything but what happened to earlier
people? You will never find any change in God’s practice; you will
never find any deviation there. 44 Have they not travelled in the land
and seen how those before them met their end, although they were
superior to them in strength? God is not to be frustrated by anything
in the heavens or on the earth: He is all knowing, all powerful. 45 If
God were to punish people [at once] for the wrong they have done,
there would not be a single creature left on the surface of the earth.
He gives them respite for a stated time and, whenever their time
comes, God has been watching His servants.