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Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.

Bill Bryson

As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.
BILL BRYSON

Ability Existence Human Multitude Privilege Singular
…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
Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.
BILL BRYSON

Giving Identity Personality
I think it’s only right that crazy people should have their own city, but I cannot for the life of me see why a sane person would want to go there.
BILL BRYSON

City Crazy Own Thinking
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
When each winding back highway and plump hillside is suddenly and infinitely splashed with every sharp shade that nature can bestow – flaming scarlet, lustrous gold, throbbing vermilion, fiery orange.
BILL BRYSON

Bestow Hobbing Nature Orange Shade Vermilion
More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to.
BILL BRYSON

English People Speak Trying
On the dashboard of our family car is a shallow indentation about the size of a paperback book. If you are looking for somewhere to put your sunglasses or spare change, it is the obvious place, and it works extremely well,
BILL BRYSON

Book Car Dashboard Family Long Moving
That’s the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it’s gone, it’s too late to get it back.
BILL BRYSON

Gone Late Mind Too
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
The remarkable position in which we find ourselves is that we don’t actually know what we actually know.
BILL BRYSON

Knows Position Remarkable
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
Yes, U.S. travelers dress better. The British are always so conspicuous in hot climates. They don’t seem to wear shorts. American men seem to be comfortable wearing hot-weather clothing.
BILL BRYSON

Climate Men Weather
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
Most of what has lived on Earth has left behind no record at all.
BILL BRYSON

Earth Left Behind Records
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

Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.

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Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.

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Popular Authors

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