Bill Bryson is an American-British author, born in 1951. He wrote a number of books such as “A Short History of Nearly Everything” (2003), “Notes from a Small Island” (1995) and “The Mother Tongue” (1990).
This is a collection of quotes by Bill Bryson.
Showing results 1 to 30 of 33
"Oh, you will see plenty of Africa," Kentice assures me when we convene at the bar for a round of medicinal hydration. "We're going to show you lots of exotic things. Have you ever eaten camel?"
Bill BrysonSource: Bill Bryson's African Diary
Altogether your private load of microbes weighs roughly three pounds, about the same as your brain.
Bill BrysonSource: The Body
As Dr. John Maunder of the British Medical Entomology Centre has put it: "If you wash lousy clothing at low temperatures, all you get is cleaner lice."
Bill BrysonSource: At Home
Before most people had ever tasted a potato, the Royal Society debated the practicality of making it a staple crop in Ireland (ironically, as a hedge against famine).
Bill BrysonSource: Seeing further: the story of science & the Royal Society
Can there anywhere be a breed of people more irritating and imbecilic than disc jockeys?
Bill BrysonSource: Lost Continent
Cornstarch is used in the manufacture of soda pop, chewing gum, ice cream, peanut butter, library paste, ketchup, automobile paint, embalming fluid, gunpowder, insecticides, deodorants, soap, potato chips, surgical dressings, nail polish, foot powder, salad dressing, and several hundred things more.
Bill BrysonSource: At Home
Do you want zillions off your state taxes even at the risk of crippling education?
'Oh, yes!' the people cry.
Do you want TV that would make an imbecile weep?
'Yes, please!'
Shall we indulge ourselves with the greatest orgy of consumer spending that the world has ever known?
'Sounds neat! Let's go for it!'
Bill Bryson'Oh, yes!' the people cry.
Do you want TV that would make an imbecile weep?
'Yes, please!'
Shall we indulge ourselves with the greatest orgy of consumer spending that the world has ever known?
'Sounds neat! Let's go for it!'
Source: Lost Continent
Every once in a while you come across a farm or some dead little town where the liveliest thing is the flies.
Bill BrysonSource: Lost Continent
Farming was independently invented at least seven times—in China, the Middle East, New Guinea, the Andes, the Amazon basin, Mexico, and West Africa.
Bill BrysonSource: At Home
Great economic success doesn't produce national happiness. It produces Republicans and Switzerland.
Bill BrysonSource: The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island
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.
But then it occured to me that musing is a pointless waste of anyone's time, ...
Bill BrysonBut then it occured to me that musing is a pointless waste of anyone's time, ...
Source: Lost Continent
I see litter as part of a long continuum of anti-social behaviour.
Bill BrysonI'm not allowed a smartphone of my own because I would lose it.
Bill BrysonSource: The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
If you are truly stupid you not only do things stupidly but are in all likelihood too stupid to realize how stupidly you are doing them.
Bill BrysonSource: The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
If you think the only people you should have in your country are the people you produce yourselves, you are an idiot.
Bill BrysonSource: The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
If you took all the young men in southern England with those caps and that slouch and collected them all together in one room, you still wouldn't have enough IQ points to make a halfwit.
Bill BrysonSource: The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
Imagine Italian food without tomatoes, Greek food without eggplant, Thai and Indonesian foods without peanut sauce, curries without chilies, hamburgers without French fries or ketchup, African food without cassava.
Bill BrysonSource: At Home
Effect of the distribution of new world crops
In Britain corn has meant any grain since the time of the Anglo-Saxons. It also came to signify any small round object, which explains the corns on your feet. Corned beef is so called because originally it was cured in kernels of salt. Because of the importance of maize in America, the word corn became attached to maize exclusively in the early eighteenth century.
Bill BrysonSource: At Home
It was so quiet in there you could have heard a fly fart.
Bill BrysonSource: Lost Continent
Out of the thirty thousand types of edible plants thought to exist on Earth, just eleven - corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, cassava, sorghum, millet, beans, barley, rye, and oats - account for 93 percent of all that humans eat, and every one of them was first cultivated by our Neolithic ancestors.
Bill BrysonSource: At Home
The barmaid was friendly. She wore butterfly glasses and a beehive hairdo.
Bill BrysonSource: Lost Continent
The day had been a complete washout. I had had no lunch, no life-giving infusions of coffee. It had been a day without pleasure or reward.
Bill BrysonSource: Lost Continent
The difference between herbs and spices is that herbs come from the leafy part of plants and spices from the wood, seed, fruit, or other nonleafy part.
Bill BrysonSource: At Home
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is essentially being too stupid to appreciate how stupid you are.
Bill BrysonSource: The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
The fact is that we will never be able to speak as quickly as we can hear.
Bill BrysonSource: The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way
The lepidopterist who records in her notebook that a butterfly is blue may not stop to consider that this is true only because the giant ball of nuclear fuel ninety-three million miles away happens to maintain a surface temperature just right for shedding certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation on the Earth; that the eyes of humans have evolved to be sensitive to those wavelengths; that the eye can discriminate slightly different wavelengths as colours; that one of those colours has, by cultural consensus, been defined as 'blue', and so on. Nevertheless, science benefits from the lepidopterist's note that the butterfly is blue.
Bill BrysonSource: Seeing further: the story of science & the Royal Society
The older you get the more it seems the world belongs to other people.
Bill BrysonSource: The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
The rest of the evening was mostly filled with drinking too much and recounting our afflictions, but as my afflictions are principally to do with memory loss I don't recall the details.
Bill BrysonSource: The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
There is no question that a Neanderthal could easily beat us up. So, too, presumably could their women, which may be why we are only 2 percent Neanderthal instead of 50 percent. Those bitches were too scary for us.
Bill BrysonSource: The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island
To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.
Bill Bryson