[Ads-l] Request verification of quotation in 1919 magazine issue: Time is what keeps everything from happening at once

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Jul 8 00:57:05 UTC 2019


The version I heard, perhaps around 1980, was:

"Time is God's way of making sure everything doesn't happen at once."

JL

On Sat, Jul 6, 2019 at 11:28 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The Quote Investigator website now has an entry about the quotation in
> the subject line.
>
> https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/07/06/time/
>
> The first appearance apparently occurred in a short story titled "The
> Girl in the Golden Atom" by Ray Cummings published in an issue of
> "All-Story Weekly" dated March 15, 1919; however, the evidence I've
> gathered is indirect. I found the story reprinted in the following
> 1970 collection.
>
> [ref] 1970, Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "The
> Scientific Romance" in the Munsey Magazines: 1912-1920, Edited by Sam
> Moskowitz, The Girl in the Golden Atom by Ray Cummings (All-Story
> Weekly, March 15, 1919), Start Page 175, Quote Page 205, Holt,
> Rinehart and Winston, New York. (Verified with scans) [/ref]
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> "How would you describe time?"
> The Big Business Man smiled. "Time," he said, "is what keeps
> everything from happening at once."
> "Very clever," said the Chemist, laughing.
> [End excerpt]
>
> The goal of this request is to obtain direct verification of the
> quotation in the 1919 magazine issue using hardcopy or scans.
>
> This request is not new. Fred Shapiro sent a message to the American
> Dialect Society mailing list way back in 2006 asking about the same
> quotation, but no public respondent was able to verify the quotation.
> "The Yale Book of Quotations" has a 1921 citation which probably can
> be improved. Maybe the forthcoming second edition has the earlier
> citation?
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2006-November/064674.html
>
> Wikiquote has the 1921 citation, but suggests that an earlier citation
> might be possible. The Wikiquote discussion is in the "Misattributed"
> section of the Albert Einstein webpage.
>
> A bookseller on ABEbooks is selling pages from the 1919 issue of
> "All-Story Weekly" containing "The Girl In The Golden Atom" for $55.
> Perhaps I should ask the bookseller to attempt to verify the
> quotation. The verified presence of the quotation might enhance the
> value of the pages.
>
>
> https://www.abebooks.com/magazines-periodicals/All-Story-Weekly-Cover-Pages-Girl-Golden/12554344342/bd
>
> Garson O'Toole
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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