This much may have happened many times before. But this ancestral packet did something additional and extraordinary. It cleaved itself and produced an heir.
BILL BRYSONEven 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.
More Bill Bryson Quotes
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There is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to split an infinitive, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren’t available to the Romans.
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We are each so atomically numberous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms-up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested-probably once belonged to Shakespeare.
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There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.
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More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to.
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I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted, or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored.
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Anyone who has read my books will know that I don’t tend to use guides when I am travelling. It’s not a pride thing, but it is certainly a fact.
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“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.
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You don’t need a science degree to understand about science. You just need to think about it.
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But here’s an extrememly salient point: we have been chosen, by fate or Providence or whatever you wish to call it. As far as we can tell, we are the best there is.
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England was full of words I’d never heard before – streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha beacon, serviettes, high tea, ice-cream cornet.
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Your pillow alone may be home to 40 million bed mites. (To them your head is just one large oily bon-bon). And don’t think a clean pillow-case will make a difference…
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It’s an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe’s supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.
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I don’t know whether I’m misanthropic. It seems to me I’m constantly disappointed. I’m very easily disappointed.
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You can be a scientist and believe in god: the two can go hand in hand.
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Now they are a little like those desperate junkies who have tried every known drug and are finally reduced to mainlining toilet bowl cleanser in an effort to get still higher.
BILL BRYSON