"success in life .. a quarter hour before my time"

[Dan Goncharoff]

I don't know.

But I have an 1836 attribution that quotes Nelson as saying "to being
always twenty minutes before my time I owe all that I have on earth":

The guide to knowledge, Volume 4 (Google eBook)
[image: Front Cover]<http://books.google.com/books?id=ew_W1cyXHiUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0>
 William Pinnock
<http://books.google.com/books?id=ew_W1cyXHiUC&dq=Nelson+twenty+minutes+%22before+my+time%22&sitesec=reviews>
 0 Reviews<http://books.google.com/books?id=ew_W1cyXHiUC&dq=Nelson+twenty+minutes+%22before+my+time%22&sitesec=reviews>
Printed for the proprietor; and published by W. Edwards, 1836
DanG







On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 9:11 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      "success in life .. a quarter hour before my time"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The quotation "I owe my success in life to having always been a
> quarter of an hour before my time" is attributed to "Nelson" (Admiral
> Nelson, I presume).  See "Gas Industry", vol. 12, No. 4 (April,
> 1912), p. 209 [Google]; and the Evening Chronicle of Sept. 18, 1918
> [Newspaper Archive via Google].
>
> Is that attribution correct?
>
> Joel
>
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