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bce9781
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I mentioned my observation that the world seems to be filling up with imbeciles. They explained to me that this is simply an affliction of age.
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Bill Bryson |
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5828680
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In 1649 the laws were tightened even further--to the extent that swearing at a parent became punishable by death.
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Bill Bryson |
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5e0c3db
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If 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 quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better."
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Bill Bryson |
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f2cfee2
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To agree with Ingold is no to say that everything must be local first and last, nor to deny that there are environmental problems on a planetary scale. It is to say that they are not the planet's problems. They are ours.
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Bill Bryson |
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b2cd061
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A quick Google search reveals there to be seven, ten, five, four or eight 'years to save the planet', depending on your headline writer and expert of choice ('Eleven years to save the planet' seems at the moment a rallying cry still up for grabs).
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Bill Bryson |
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3145918
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And to see a plant grow armed with the knowledge that it does so out of thin air - that is, after all, where the carbon that makes up most of its mass comes from - is to realise that something else must be restoring that nutritive goodness to the atmosphere.
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Bill Bryson |
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4a1381f
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Very little arrives (those asteroid impacts are few and far between), and only a whisper of gas escapes. Everything else must be endlessly recycled: and so it is. The rain becomes the ocean and the ocean becomes the rain, the mountains are ground down to cover the sea-floors with silt, ancient silts rise up to make new mountains.
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Bill Bryson |
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68aa058
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Several of the houses have been mildly disfigured by the careless addition of electrical wires to their facades (something that other less intellectually distracted nations would put inside) but never mind.
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Bill Bryson |
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fb693d7
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To a British crossword enthusiast, the clue "An important city in Czechoslovakia" instantly suggests Oslo. Why? Look at Czech(OSLO)vakia again. "A seed you put in the garage" is caraway, while "HIJKLMNO" is water because it is H-to-O or H2O"
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Bill Bryson |
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e47f66f
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Even Christ reputedly made a pun when He said: "Thou art Peter: upon this rock I shall build my Church." It doesn't make a lot of sense from the wordplay point of view until you realize that in ancient Greek the word for Peter and for rock was the same."
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Bill Bryson |
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1662efb
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As the Bhagavad Gita says, 'There never was a time when I was not . . . there will never be a time when I will cease to be.' Since time and space began together - as both St Augustine and the big bang attest - the Bhagavad Gita has a point. The chicken and the egg arrived at the same time.
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Bill Bryson |
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05e6abb
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Bacon's dichotomy is still germane today: a former President of the Royal Society, George Porter, encapsulated it by the maxim 'there are two kinds of science, applied and not yet applied'.
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Bill Bryson |
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8317618
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It may seem topsy-turvy that cosmologists can speak confidently about galaxies billions of light years away, whereas theories of diet and child rearing - issues that everyone cares about - are still tentative and controversial
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Bill Bryson |
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55b7c4b
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But astronomy is, quite genuinely, far simpler than the human sciences.
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Bill Bryson |
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0f7c29d
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I sat there for some time, a young man with more on his mind than in it.
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Bill Bryson |
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7145b98
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Perhaps for our last words on the subject of usage we should turn to the last words of the venerable French grammarian Dominique Bonhours, who proved on his deathbed that a grammarian's work is never done when he turned to those gathered loyally around him and whispered: "I am about to--or I am going to--die; either expression is used."
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Bill Bryson |
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e3fdeb3
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Built in the hope of distracting workers from the peril of drink, it contained a gymnasium, a laboratory, a billiards room, a library, a reading room, and a lecture and concert hall. Never before had manual workers been given a more lavish opportunity to better themselves, an opportunity that many scores enthusiastically seized. One James Waddington, an untutored woolsorter, became a world authority on linguistics and a leading light of the..
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Bill Bryson |
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20a8ae6
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Consider the oft-quoted statement "the exception proves the rule." Most people take this to mean that the exception confirms the rule, though when you ask them to explain the logic in that statement, they usually cannot. After all, how can an exception prove a rule? It can't. The answer is that an earlier meaning of prove was to test (a meaning preserved in proving ground) and with that meaning the statement suddenly becomes sensible--the e..
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Bill Bryson |
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6adcf7a
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I was about to say it was an awful place, but in fact, like most things connected with one's adolescence, it was wonderful and awful at the same time.
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Bill Bryson |
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a5a8c04
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It was a haven, a little island of light in the darkness of the downtown, very like the diner in Edward Hopper's painting 'The Nighthawks'.
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Bill Bryson |
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c697c43
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An Association for Prevention of Premature Burial was established in Britain in 1899 and an American society was formed the following year.
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Bill Bryson |
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d4ea227
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To avoid arousal more generally, women were instructed to get plenty of fresh air, avoid stimulating pastimes like reading and card games, and above all never to use their brains more than was strictly necessary.
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Bill Bryson |
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03223b3
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It's easy to make bricks, but making houses requires far more than throwing a pile of bricks in the air.
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Bill Bryson |
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e62dcb7
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It is entirely possible that some terrestrial microbes are the products of different biogenesis events, in effect 'alien organisms', constituting a type of shadow biosphere
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Bill Bryson |
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5b2c90e
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The universal tree of life on Earth might actually be a forest.
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Bill Bryson |
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c25bf89
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Today's mathematics is intimately bound up with two key areas of human knowledge and activity: the natural world, and the society in which we live.
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Bill Bryson |
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90c00ea
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But one must be careful when speaking of 'experimental science' before the Enlightenment, for it often meant demonstrating what one already knew to be the case - and if experiment seemed to contradict axiomatic reason, so much the worse for experiment.
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Bill Bryson |
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fc77c10
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Almost all languages change. A rare exception is written Icelandic, which has changed so little that modern Icelanders can read sagas written a thousand years ago, and if Leif Ericson appeared on the streets of Reykjavik he could find his way around, allowing for certain difficulties over terms like airport and quarter-pound cheeseburger.
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Bill Bryson |
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The fact that 'pure' and 'applied' science are useful and meaningful terms seduces us sometimes into thinking that they are real, absolute and distinct categories.
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Bill Bryson |
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79722ac
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We need to understand why in a society so dependent on technology, a society that benefits so richly from the results of engineering, a society that rewards engineers so well, engineering isn't perceived as a desirable profession.
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Bill Bryson |
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5e07061
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People want everything. That's their problem.
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Bill Bryson |
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e0a530e
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Science is about making stuff, just as much as it is about understanding stuff.
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Bill Bryson |
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Despite the ambiguities I have just confessed to, most of me wants very badly not to die just yet, and I am sure the majority of writers and scientists working in this area agree.
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Bill Bryson |
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7e0bbc6
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Instead, we look for patterns in the facts, and some of these patterns we have come to call the laws of Nature, while others have achieved only the status of by-laws.
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Bill Bryson |
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eff9bfe
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To call human beings 'stewards' of this planet is like accepting that Jack the Ripper is the right man to start a Home for the Care and Protection of Fallen Women.
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Bill Bryson |
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049ce18
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Not only were the Anglo-Saxons relatively uncultured, they were also pagan, a fact rather quaintly preserved in the names of four of our weekdays, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, which respectively commemorate the gods Tiw, Woden, and Thor, and Woden's wife, Frig. (Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, to complete the picture, take their names from Saturn, the sun, and the moon.)
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Bill Bryson |
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c2eaad0
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Generally speaking - which is of course always a dangerous thing to do, generally speaking - Americans revere the past only as long as there is some money in it somewhere and it doesn't mean going without air-conditioning, free parking and other essential conveniences.
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Bill Bryson |
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efe5e07
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If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anaesthetic to a background accompaniment of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what popular Turkish music is like.
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Bill Bryson |
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b49dfe4
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Isn't it strange how wealth is always wasted on the rich?
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Bill Bryson |
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a58538f
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Eventually we crossed a plank over a narrow ditch, made our way across a grassless yard and entered a four-storey building that looked only half-finished. A cement mixer was standing by the stairwell. I was beginning to have my doubts. This was just the place for an ambush.
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Bill Bryson |
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c0d9a09
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I read once that it takes 75,000 trees to produce one issue of the Sunday New York Times - and it's well worth every trembling leaf. So what if our grandchildren have no oxygen to breathe? Fuck 'em.
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Bill Bryson |
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54e1e16
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Incorporated into many of the facades are parts of the original structure - stairways that go nowhere, columns supporting nothing, niches that once clearly held Roman busts. The effect is that the houses look as if they grew magically out of the ruins. It is entrancing and there is no other place in Europe like it.
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Bill Bryson |
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b7bba85
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On the way out my attention was caught by a machine making a lot of noise. A woman had just won $600. For ninety seconds the machine just poured out money, a waterfall of silver. When it stopped, the woman regarded the pile without pleasure and began feeding it back into the machine. I felt sorry for her. It was going to take her all night to get rid of that kind of money.
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Bill Bryson |
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2e3f973
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In Florence, the annual ratio of tourists to locals is 14:1. How can any place preserve any kind of independent life when it is so manifestly overwhelmed? It can't. It's as simple as that.
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Bill Bryson |