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In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one’s face.

Bill Bryson

We may be all there is. It’s an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe’s supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.
BILL BRYSON

Achievement Nightmare Simultaneously Worst
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 are going to have a day without even the tiniest of pleasures; you are going to drive across Ohio.
BILL BRYSON

Across Country Even Going Without
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
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
Traveling is more fun – hell, life is more fun – if you can treat it as a series of impulses.
BILL BRYSON

Fun Hell Life
Every last bit of it, good and bad – old churches, country lanes, people saying ‘Mustn’t grumble,’ and ‘I’m terribly sorry but,’ people apologizing to ME when I conk them with a careless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, seaside piers.
BILL BRYSON

Apologizing Church Every Grumble Last Old People
18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available.
BILL BRYSON

Alternatives Century Scientist
Every dog on the face of the earth wants me dead.
BILL BRYSON

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

Benefits Hiking Journey
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
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
Finally, this being America, there is the constant possibility of murder.
BILL BRYSON

Country Murder Possibility
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

Common Real Veins
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

In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one’s face.

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In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one’s face.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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