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We are so used to the notion of our own inevitability as life’s dominant species that it is hard to grasp that we are here only because of timely extraterrestrial bangs and other random flukes.

Bill Bryson

To understand what anyone is saying to us we must separate these noises into words and the words into sentences so that we might in our turn issue a stream of mixed sounds in response.
BILL BRYSON

Noises Sentences Separate Stream Understand
As a rule of thumb, I would submit that if you need to call your floss provider, for any reason, you are probably not ready for this level of oral hygiene.
BILL BRYSON

Hygiene Needs Thumbs
Britain still has the most reliably beautiful countryside of anywhere in the world. I would hate to be part of the generation that allowed that to be lost.
BILL BRYSON

Beautiful Generations Hate
England was full of words I’d never heard before – streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha beacon, serviettes, high tea, ice-cream cornet.
BILL BRYSON

Country Ice Cream Sides Standard Tea
It was one of those sumptuous days when the world is full of autumn muskiness and tangy, crisp perfection: vivid blue sky, deep green fields, leaves in a thousand luminous hues. It is a truly astounding sight when every tree in a landscape becomes individual.
BILL BRYSON

Autumn Fields Green Muskiness Sight Sumptuous
But what is life to a lichen ? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on.
BILL BRYSON

Believe Rocks Strong
Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A mile becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles whopping, fifty miles at the very limits of conception.
BILL BRYSON

Distance Feet Two
Four times I was honked at for having the temerity to proceed through town without the benefit of metal.
BILL BRYSON

Benefits Hiking Journey
Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead.
BILL BRYSON

Excitable People Self Wondered
“Croissant”: However you choose to pronounce it at home, it is perhaps worth nothing that outside the United States, the closer you can come to saying “kwass-ohn,” the sooner you can expect to be presented with one.
BILL BRYSON

Croissants Home United States
If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by ‘we’ I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement.
BILL BRYSON

Appreciate Book Mean
A sign in the yard of a church next door said CHRIST IS THE ANSWER. (The question, of course, is: What do you say when you strike your thumb with a hammer?)
BILL BRYSON

Church Doors Yards
Perhaps it’s my natural pessimism, but it seems that an awfully large part of travel these days is to see things while you still can.
BILL BRYSON

Memorable Pessimism Travel
I had spent the whole of my savings … on a suit for the wedding – a remarkable piece of apparel with lapels that had been modelled on the tail fins of a 1957 Coupe de Ville and trousers so copiously flared that when I walked you didn’t see my legs move.
BILL BRYSON

Fashion Moving Pieces
My favourite fellow of the Royal Society is the Reverend Thomas Bayes, an obscure 18th-century Kent clergyman and a brilliant mathematician who devised a complex equation known as the Bayes theorem, which can be used to work out probability distributions.
BILL BRYSON

Distribution Out Royal Science Work
Clearly, some time ago makers and consumers of American junk food passed jointly through some kind of sensibility barrier in the endless quest for new taste sensations.
BILL BRYSON

Drug Effort Food Sensibility
Nearly a quarter of American men were in the Armed forces. The rest were in school, in prison, or were George W. Bush.
BILL BRYSON

Men Prison School
As the saying goes, it takes all kinds to make the world go around, though perhaps some shouldn’t go quite so far around it as others.
BILL BRYSON

Kind Life World
Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.
BILL BRYSON

Kind Physics Simplicity
…and it occurred to me, with the forcefulness of a thought experienced in 360 degrees, that that’s really what history mostly is: masses of people doing ordinary things.
BILL BRYSON

Degree Ordinary People
You may find that your parents are the most delightful people, but you don’t want to live with them.
BILL BRYSON

May Parents People
I don’t know whether I’m misanthropic. It seems to me I’m constantly disappointed. I’m very easily disappointed. Disappointed in the things that people do; disappointed in the things that people construct. I want things to be better all the time.
BILL BRYSON

Disappointed Misanthropic People Time Want
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.
BILL BRYSON

Balance Guess Happy Insights Morning Outing Profounded
There is something about the momentum of travel that makes you want to just keep moving, to never stop.
BILL BRYSON

Momentum Moving Want
There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.
BILL BRYSON

Age Along Lightning Rolling
People don’t talk like this, theytalklikethis. Syllables, words, sentences run together like a watercolour left in the rain.
BILL BRYSON

Issues Rain Running
It had no practical application in his lifetime, but today, thanks to computers, is routinely used in the modelling of climate change, astrophysics and stock-market analysis.
BILL BRYSON

Analysis Astrophysics Market Modelling Practical Social

We are so used to the notion of our own inevitability as life’s dominant species that it is hard to grasp that we are here only because of timely extraterrestrial bangs and other random flukes.

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We are so used to the notion of our own inevitability as life’s dominant species that it is hard to grasp that we are here only because of timely extraterrestrial bangs and other random flukes.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bill Bryson Quotes