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The real problem you get with humour is that you only have so many kinds of jokes within you, and you mine that vein a lot. This isn’t just common to me; it’s anybody who’s funny.

Bill Bryson

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

Benefits Hiking Journey
There is more difference between a zebra and a horse, or between a dolphin and a porpoise, than there is between you and the furry creatures your distant ancestors left behind when they set out to take over the world.
BILL BRYSON

Differences Horse Zebras
Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact.
BILL BRYSON

Luck Sound Together
I have long known that it is part of God’s plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth.
BILL BRYSON

Long People Stupid
Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment.
BILL BRYSON

Order Quests Tiny
A world without newspapers or a world where the newspapers are purely electronic and you read them on a screen is not a very appealing world.
BILL BRYSON

Newspapers Screens World
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you would think that if one nation ought by now to have mastered the science of drainage, Britain would be it.
BILL BRYSON

Country Mastered Nation Ought
It’s an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe’s supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.
BILL BRYSON

Achievement May T Nightmare Wors
18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available.
BILL BRYSON

Alternatives Century Scientist
They make you feel small & confused & vulnerable, like a small child lost in a crowd of strange legs. Stand in a desert or prairie & you know you are in a big space. Stand in the woods and you only sense it. They are vast, featureless nowhere. And they are alive.
BILL BRYSON

Confuse Crowd Feel Smart Space Stand
All the things that are part of your heritage make you British – that makes this country what it is. It’s part of your history. And here, unlike America, it’s still living history.
BILL BRYSON

Country Heritage History Thing
Everywhere throughout New England you find old, tumbledown field walls, often in the middle of the deepest, most settled- looking woods- a reminder of just how swiftly nature reclaims the land in America.
BILL BRYSON

Country Deepest Land Look Wall
Maine is wonderful. It can be very hard. I mean, if you look at the profile maps it doesn’t look it, but somehow when you get out there it’s really steep and hard.
BILL BRYSON

Looks Maps Mean Wonderful
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
I don’t know whether I’m misanthropic. It seems to me I’m constantly disappointed. I’m very easily disappointed.
BILL BRYSON

Disappoint Knows Misanthropic
By the most astounding stroke of luck an infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist.
BILL BRYSON

Eternity Moment Time Together Universe
By the time I had finished my coffee and returned to the streets, the rain had temporarily abated, but the streets were full of vast puddles where the drains where unable to cope with the volume of water.
BILL BRYSON

Coffee Rain Thinking Volumen Water
Time, you discover, has wrought changes that leave you feeling mildly foolish and out of touch.
BILL BRYSON

Discover Feeling Leave Touch
For a long time, I’d been vaguely fascinated by the idea that Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic and Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in the same summer.
BILL BRYSON

Fascinated Home Run Running Summer
I can wear a baseball cap; I am entitled to wear a baseball cap. I am genetically pre-disposed to wear a baseball cap, whereas most English people look wrong in a baseball cap.
BILL BRYSON

Baseball Cap Looks People Wear
So that buildings and structures you normally pass without a glance suddenly become arresting, even beautiful? Well, they seem to have that light in Australia nearly all the time.
BILL BRYSON

Arresting Building Country Nearly Structures Time
It’s hard not to be kind of pessimistic about human beings generally, because we do tend to mess things up. If you just look at the history of extinctions, we’ve killed off an awful lot of animals – and I don’t think we’re doing a very good job of looking after the planet.
BILL BRYSON

Animal History Human Jobs Pessimistic Thinking
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
Language is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines.
BILL BRYSON

Fashion Matter Writing
Beulah has a husband?’ I know. It’s a miracle. There can’t be more than two people on the planet who’d be willing to sleep with her, and here we are both in the same town.
BILL BRYSON

Husband Sleep Two
What is it about maps? I could look at them all day, earnestly studying the names of towns and villages I have never heard of and will never visit.
BILL BRYSON

Looks Names Travel
You can be a scientist and believe in god: the two can go hand in hand.
BILL BRYSON

Believe Hands Scientist

The real problem you get with humour is that you only have so many kinds of jokes within you, and you mine that vein a lot. This isn’t just common to me; it’s anybody who’s funny.

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The real problem you get with humour is that you only have so many kinds of jokes within you, and you mine that vein a lot. This isn’t just common to me; it’s anybody who’s funny.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bill Bryson Quotes