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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

I come from Des Moines. Someone had to.
BILL BRYSON

Des Moines Someone
The upshot of all this is that we live in a universe whose age we can’t quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don’t altogether know, filled with matter we can’t identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don’t truly understand.
BILL BRYSON

Distance Law Stars
Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you.
BILL BRYSON

Names Numbers Stars
That is jargon – the practice of never calling a spade a spade when you might instead call it a manual earth-restructuring implement – and it is one of the great curses of modern English.
BILL BRYSON

Cruise English Implement Modern Restructuring
Those who sniff decay in every shift of sense or alteration of usage do the language no service. Too often for such people the notion of good English has less to do with expressing ideas clearly than with making words conform to some arbitrary pattern.
BILL BRYSON

Decay Ideas People Usage Writing
I tell the kids that, even in a childhood marked by despair and deprivation, I knew that no matter what happened,
BILL BRYSON

Childhood Deprivation Divorce Kids
There is the odd exception, like Albert Einstein, but as a breed, scientists tend not be very good at presenting themselves.
BILL BRYSON

Odd Scientist Very Good
If you believe in god, it’s much more fantastic to believe that he created this universe billions of years ago and set in motion this long train of activities that eventually resulted in us. I think that’s so much more satisfying, more thrilling, than the idea that it was all done in seven days.
BILL BRYSON

Believe Thinking Years
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
In order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result — eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly — in you.
BILL BRYSON

Astoundingly Briefly Combination Result
I have a small tattered clipping that I sometimes carry with meand pull out for purposes of privateamusement. It’s a weather forecast from theWestern Daily Mail and it says, in toto: ‘Outlook: Dry and warm, but cooler with some rain.
BILL BRYSON

Daily Mail Rain Weather
The average Southerner has the speech patterns of someone slipping in and out of consciousness. I can change my shoes and socks faster than most people in Mississippi can speak a sentence.
BILL BRYSON

Average People Shoes
Even though sugar was very expensive, people consumed it till their teeth turned black, and if their teeth didn’t turn black naturally, they blackened them artificially to show how wealthy and marvelously self-indulgent they were.
BILL BRYSON

Black People Self
In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe
BILL BRYSON

Matter Minutes Three
Woods are not like other spaces. To begin with, they are cubic. Their trees surround you, loom over you, press in from all sides. Woods choke off views & leave you muddled & without bearings.
BILL BRYSON

Children Confused Loom Press Views
The English invented cricket to make other human endeavors look interesting.
BILL BRYSON

Cricket Interesting Looks

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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