Bill Bryson Quotes

Yet it has 58 uses as a noun, 126 as a verb, and 10 as a participial adjective. Its meanings are so various and scattered that it takes the OED 60,000 words—the length of a short novel—to discuss them...

Yet it would be nearly impossible to overstate Lyell’s influence. The Principles of Geology went through twelve editions in his lifetime and contained notions that shaped geological thinking far into...

You can get some sense of the immaterial quality of clouds by strolling through fog—which is, after all, nothing more than a cloud that lacks the will to fly.

You can’t go to East Anglia and not visit Sutton Hoo. Well, you can, obviously, but you shouldn’t.

You can’t have a more civilized community than one in which hospital staff play cricket at the end of a summer’s day and lunatics can wander and mingle without exciting comment or alarm. It was wonder...

You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties; no special ambitions and only the smallest, least complicated of wants; you exist in a tranquil tedium, serenely beyond the reach of exasp...

You have your whole life ahead of you. But here's the thing to remember. You will always have your whole life ahead of you. That never stops and you shouldn't forget it.

You look at the modern humans that a lot of us have slept with and it is hardly a surprise if a Neanderthal maiden or two might have twinkled by the campfire light.

You shall be led from hence to the place whence you came…and your body shall be opened, your heart and bowels plucked out, and your privy members cut off and thrown into the fire before your eyes.

[About Uluru] I'm suggesting nothing here, but I will say that if you were an intergalactic traveler who had broken down in our solar system, the obvious directions to rescuers would be: Go to the thi...

[Australia] is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the largest monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now-official, more respectful Aboriginal name). It ha...

A basic unit of measure in chemistry, which was named for Avogadro long after his death. It is the number of molecules found in 2.016 grams of hydrogen gas (or an equal volume of any other gas). Its v...

A little change in the Earth’s dynamics can have repercussions beyond our imagining.

Affinity denotes a mutual relationship. Therefore, strictly speaking, one should not speak of someone or something having an affinity for another, but rather should speak of an affinity with or betwee...

All intents and purposes is colourless, redundant and hackneyed. Almost any other expression would be an improvement. ‘He is, to all intents and purposes, king of the island’ (Mail on Sunday) would be...

An atmosphere ultraviolet rays from the sun, even from a weak sun, would have tended to break apart any incipient bonds made by molecules. And yet right there—she tapped the stromatolites—you have org...

An obligatory manifestation of matter, bound to arise wherever conditions are appropriate.

Arachibutyrophobia.

As the biologist J. B. S. Haldane once famously observed: The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose. The

Avenge, revenge. Generally, avenge indicates the settling of a score or the redressing of an injustice. It is more dispassionate than revenge, which indicates retaliation taken largely for the sake of...