“Cavendish is a book in himself. Born into a life of sumptuous privilege- his grandfathers were dukes, respectively, of Devonshire and Kent-… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
It is not as if farming brought a great improvement in living standards either. A typical hunter-gatherer enjoyed a more varied diet… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“If you imagine the 4,500-bilion-odd years of Earth's history compressed into a normal earthly day, then life begins very early, about 4… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
It is a curious feature of our existance that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“If your pillow is six years old (apparently average age for a pillow) it has been estimated that one tenth of its… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
The number of people on whose cooperative efforts your eventual existence depends has risen to approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, which is several thousand times… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
I once joked in a book that there are three things you can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company,… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“At depth, microbes shrink in size and become extremely sluggish. The liveliest of them may divide no more than once a century18,… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“More recently, during a debate in the House of Lords in 1978 one of the members said: "If there is a more… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“Somewhere in all this, it was thought, there also resided a mysterious élan vital, the force that brought inanimate objects to life.… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
I once joked in a book that there are three things you can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company,… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“So why, you are bound to ask at some point in your life, do microbes so often want to hurt us? What… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“The field attracted many extraordinary figures, not least the aforementioned Murchison, who spent the first thirty or so years of his life… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“The 1920s was a great time for reading altogether—very possibly the peak decade for reading in American life. Soon it would be… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
I think it's only right that crazy people should have their own city, but I cannot for the life of me see… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“When the Earth was only about a third of its eventual size, it was probably already beginning to form an atmosphere, mostly… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
The food is excellent. The beer is cold. The sun nearly always shines. There is coffee on every corner. Life doesn’t get… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“Pepys recorded in his diary a rather more prosaic milestone in his life. On September 25, 1660, he tried a new hot… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
I became quietly seized with that nostalgia that overcomes you when you have reached the middle of your life and your father… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Because we humans are big and clever enough to produce and utilize antibiotics and disinfectants, it is easy to convince ourselves that… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding. — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Most big companies don't like you very much, except hotels, airlines and Microsoft, which don't like you at all. — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“But Welsh spellings are as nothing compared with Irish Gaelic, a language in which spelling and pronunciation give the impression of having been devised… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“Pantaloons were often worn tight as paint and were not a great deal less revealing, particularly as they were worn without underwear. . .… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
If you go out on the Appalachian Trail, you have to bring so much more equipment - a tent, sleeping bag - but if… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“The dining table was a plain board called by that name. It was hung on the wall when not in use, and was perched… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“From almost nothing, France in four years built up an aircraft industry that employed nearly 200,000 people and produced some 70,000 planes. Britain built… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week. For 93 percent of… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“A diarist named George Templeton Strong recorded in the winter of 1866 that even with two furnaces alight and all the fireplaces blazing, he… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
As a rule of thumb, I would submit that if you need to call your floss provider, for any reason, you are probably not… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Nobody gets excited about the future at all, ever. The future is something we find depressing and worrisome. — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“What made this particularly interesting is that John Howard is by far the dullest man in Australia. Imagine a very committed funeral home director… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
