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Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson Quotes

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Famous Bill Bryson Quotes

“Everything that has ever lived, plant or animal, dates its beginning from the same primordial twitch. At some point in an unimaginably distant past, some little bag of chemicals fidgeted to life. It absorbed some nutrients, gently pulsed, had a brief existence. This much may have happened many times before. But this ancestral packet did something additional and extraordinary. It cleaved itself and produced an heir. A tiny bundle of genetic material passed from one living entity to another, and has never stopped moving since. It was the moment of creation for us all.”

MayLittlesMomentsPastMovingAnimalExistenceHappenedCreationMaterialsPlantExtraordinaryTinyBagsChemicalsEntityHeirsBundlesNutrients
Book:A Short History of Nearly Everything
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“At the foot of the mountain, the park ended and suddenly all was squalor again. I was once more struck by this strange compartmentalization that goes on in America -- a belief that no commercial activities must be allowed inside the park, but permitting unrestrained development outside, even though the landscape there may be just as outstanding. America has never quite grasped that you can live in a place without making it ugly, that beauty doesn't have to be confined behind fences, as if a national park were a sort of zoo for nature.”

IfsMayAmericaBeliefBehindsFeetStrangeGoes OnDevelopmentActivityMountainUglyLandscapeParksFenceConfinedOutstandingZoosNational ParksSqualor
Book:The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-town America
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“Your pillow alone may be home to 40 million bed mites. (To them your head is just one large oily bon-bon). And don't think a clean pillow-case will make a difference... Indeed, if your pillow is six years old--which is apparently about the average age for a pillow--it has been estimated that one-tenth of its weight will be made up of sloughed skin, living mites, dead mites and mite dung.”

IfsThinkingYearsMayHas BeensMadeHomeAgeDifferencesMillionsCasesBedSixSkinsWeightCleanAverageJust OneMaking A DifferencePillowSix Year Olds
Author:Bill Bryson
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“Because we humans are big and clever enough to produce and utilize antibiotics and disinfectants, it is easy to convince ourselves that we have banished bacteria to the fringes of existence. Don't you believe it. Bacteria may not build cities or have interesting social lives, but they will be here when the Sun explodes. This is their planet, and we are on it only because they allow us to be.”

BelieveHumansMayEnoughBigsSocialEasyInterestingCitiesExistenceSunProducePlanetsCleverConvinceFringeSocial LifeBacteriaAntibiotics
Book:A Short History of Nearly Everything
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“So here I am, my affections torn between a postal service that never feeds me but can tackle a challenge and one that gives me free tape and prompt service but won't help me out when I can't remember a street name. The lesson to draw from this, of course, is that when you move from one country to another you have to accept that there are some things that are better and some things worse, and there is nothing you can do about it. That may not be the profoundest of insights to take away from a morning's outing, but I did get a free doughnut as well, so on balance I guess I'm happy.”

GivingWellsMayI CanCountryHelpingRememberMovingCoursesNamesCan DoChallengesAcceptingMorningStreetsBalanceLessonsDrawsGive MeAffectionInsightHelp MeTapeTornHere I AmPromptsDoughnutPostal Service
Author:Bill Bryson
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“If you were designing an organism to look after life in our lonely cosmos, to monitor where it is going and keep a record of where it has been, you wouldn't choose human beings for the job. But here's an extrememly salient point: we have been chosen, by fate or Providence or whatever you wish to call it. As far as we can tell, we are the best there is. We may be all there is. It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.”

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Author:Bill Bryson
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