Who is C.R. Lawton?

January 7, 2014 7:47 AM

I was searching for a quote when I came across this one by someone named C.R. Lawton. Who is he?

Forgive me if I should know who he is. Google has turned up several nice Hondas on Lawton's Craiglist, but that isn't much help. Is the quote misattributed? Was he just some random guy with a catchy quote? Am I going insane?

Please help me out.

posted by Silvertree to Grab Bag (3 answers total)

Perhaps Colin Robert Lawton, Australian educator?
posted by Admiral Haddock at 7:57 AM on January 7, 2014

Most references to the Australian CR Lawton are from the 1950s/60s, and this quote was popular beginning in 1915 or so. If you search Google Books for various parts of the quote you'll find a lot of examples. Most attribute the full quote to the New York World (a newspaper) and some refer to Lawton as a newspaperman, so maybe that. But you can see how certain portions of the quote were in use before 1920 and others didn't get added to the quote until afterwards, so perhaps CR Lawton, whoever he is, did not wholly originate this quote.
posted by acidic at 8:23 AM on January 7, 2014

The earliest I can find the quote is in this 1922 issue of "Everybody's Poultry" [should be popular with metafilter]. It is not attributed to anybody, just one of those inspiring quotes.
posted by interplanetjanet at 8:29 AM on January 7, 2014