Bill BrysonEating in Sweden is really just a series of heartbreaks. ✨ Bill Bryson (1991). Neither here nor there: travels in Europe, Harvill Secker371Love
Bill BrysonConsider the Lichen. Lichens are just about the hardiest visible organisms on Earth, but the least ambitious. ✨ Bill Bryson (2014). A Short History of Nearly Everything, p.3… ▶351DeathReflection
Bill BrysonI turned to my own bunk and examined it with a kind of appalled fascination. If the mattress stains were anything to go by, a previous user had not so much suffered from incontine… ▶362Thought
Bill BrysonThere are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.373HumanityTruth
Bill BrysonThe food is excellent. The beer is cold. The sun nearly always shines. There is coffee on every corner. Life doesn’t get much better than this. ✨ Bill Bryson (2001). In a Su… ▶341Life
Bill Bryson...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.352HumanityLifeThought
Bill BrysonAnd I find chopsticks frankly distressing. Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious enough to invent paper, gunpowder, kites and any number of other useful objects, a… ▶363HumanityThought
Bill BrysonMy favourite fellow of the Royal Society is the Reverend Thomas Bayes, an obscure 18th-century Kent clergyman and a brilliant mathematician who devised a complex equation known as… ▶364HumanityLifeTime
Bill BrysonA significant fraction of thru-hikers reach Katahdin, then turn around and start back to Georgia. They just can't stop walking, which kind of makes you wonder. ✨ Bill Bryson… ▶331Sadness
Bill BrysonI understand cricket - what's going on, the scoring - but I can't understand why. ✨ Interview with Jon Bernstein, www.newstatesman.com. October 25, 2010.375Politics
Bill BrysonBy 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 … ▶342ThoughtTime
Bill BrysonIsn´t it strange how wealth is always wasted on the rich? ✨ Bill Bryson (2010). Neither Here, Nor There: Travels in Europe, p.119, Random House365Reading
Bill Bryson99.99 percent of all species that have ever lived are no longer with us.333Reflection
Bill BrysonEverything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being.355Humanity
Bill BrysonIf you were designing an organism to look after life in our lonely cosmos, to monitor where it is going and keep a record of where it has been, you wouldn't choose human beings fo… ▶355HumanityLifeReading
Bill BrysonAs my father always used to tell me, 'You see, son, there's always someone in the world worse off than you.' And I always used to think, 'So?323Thought
Bill Bryson18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available.334Hope
Bill BrysonFour times I was honked at for having the temerity to proceed through town without the benefit of metal. ✨ Bill Bryson (2010). A Walk In The Woods: The World's Funniest Trav… ▶301Time
Bill BrysonPhysics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness. ✨ Bill Bryson (2014). A Short History of Nearly … ▶334Life
Bill BrysonIf this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quit… ▶323HumanityLifeReading
Bill BrysonHunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old. ✨ 1998 Notes from a Big Country.378Politics
Bill BrysonIn three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe ✨ Bill Bryson (2014). A Short History of Nearly Everything, p.1… ▶357Hope
Bill BrysonHuman beings would split the atom and invent television, nylon, and instant coffee before they could figure out the age of their own planet. ✨ Bill Bryson (2014). A Short Hi… ▶313Humanity
Bill BrysonWhen you consider it from a human perspective, and clearly it would be difficult for us to do otherwise, life is an odd thing. It couldn't wait to get going, but then, having gott… ▶346HumanityLifeReflection
Bill BrysonI do find London exciting. Much as I hate to agree with that tedious old git Samuel Johnson, and despite the pompous imbecility of his famous remark about when a man is tired of L… ▶357Life
Bill BrysonWhere I grew up, in Des Moines, Iowa, there is hardly any downtown economic activity now. Everybody shops in malls - you don't find a sense of community in malls.324Philosophy
Bill BrysonI'm not a natural story-teller. Put a keyboard in front of me and I'm fine, but stand me up in front of an audience and I'm actually quite shy and reserved.357Death
Bill BrysonComing back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like waking from a long coma. Time, you discover, has wrought change… ▶291Time
Bill BrysonCheapness is a great virtue.368Truth
Bill BrysonHe had the sort of face that makes you realize God does have a sense of humor.368Humor
