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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 31fbb57 | I used to give X-ray vision a lot of thought because I couldn't see how it could work. I mean, if you could see through people's clothing, then surely you would also see through their skin and right into their bodies. You would see blood vessels, pulsing organs, food being digested and pushed through coils of bowel, and much else of a gross and undesirable nature. Even if you could somehow confine your X-rays to rosy epidermis, any body you.. | imagination kids | Bill Bryson | |
| 55c5608 | Only one man had the circumstances and gifts to give us such incomparable works, and William Shakespeare of Stratfrod was unquestionably that man -- whoever he was. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 17725c4 | Perhaps nothing speaks more eloquently of the variability of spelling in the age than the fact that a dictionary published in 1604, A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Words, spelled "words" two ways on the title page." | Bill Bryson | ||
| 8be75bb | Every human body consists of about 10 quadrillion cells, but about 100 quadrillion bacterial cells. They are, in short, a big part of us. From the bacteria's point of view, of course, we are a rather small part of them. | Bill Bryson | ||
| b446d57 | and let's face it, the French Army couldn't beat a girls hockey team | france | Bill Bryson | |
| e9653ce | One consequential change is that people used to get most of their calories at breakfast and midday, with only the evening top-up at suppertime. Now those intakes are almost exactly reversed. Most of us consume the bulk--a sadly appropriate word here--of our calories in the evening and take them to bed with us, a practice that doesn't do any good at all. | calories dinner food lunch mealtime | Bill Bryson | |
| 4baed05 | I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains. | Bill Bryson | ||
| c8e029c | I like being in a country where when cows attack, word of it gets around. That's what I mean when I say Britain is cozy. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 48b2698 | Americans] were, for one thing, so smitten with the idea of progress that they invented things without having any idea whether those things would be of any use. | invention progress | Bill Bryson | |
| 64205bb | You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 X 10^18 joules of potential energy--enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point. Everything has this kind of energy trapped within it. We're just not very good at getting it out. Even a uranium bomb--the most ener.. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 13b27a7 | I had come to realize that I didn't have any feelings towards the AT that weren't thoroughly contradictory. I was weary of the trail, but captivated by it; found the endless slog increasingly exhausting but ever invigorating; grew tired of the boundless woods but admired their boundlessness; enjoyed the escape from civilization and ached for its comforts. All of this together, all at once, every moment, on the trail or off. | Bill Bryson | ||
| e4cac10 | By the 1920s if you wanted to work behind a lunch counter you needed to know that 'Noah's boy' was a slice of ham (since Ham was one of Noah's sons) and that 'burn one' or 'grease spot' designated a hamburger. 'He'll take a chance' or 'clean the kitchen' meant an order of hash, 'Adam and Eve on a raft' was two poached eggs on toast, 'cats' eyes' was tapioca pudding, 'bird seed' was cereal, 'whistleberries' were baked beans, and 'dough well .. | humor language | Bill Bryson | |
| 4e90515 | As James Surowiecki noted in a New Yorker article, given a choice between developing antibiotics that people will take every day for two weeks and antidepressants that people will take every day for ever, drug companies not surprisingly opt for the latter. Although a few antibiotics have been toughened up a bit, the pharmaceutical industry hasn't given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 9d87133 | A billion hours ago, human life appeared on earth. A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged. A billion seconds ago, the Beatles changed music. A billion Coca-Colas ago was yesterday morning. --Robert Goizueta, chief executive of the Coca-Cola Company, April 1997 | globalization history | Tom Standage | |
| c2fc074 | Even though the discples were not aware of it, the presence was with them while they were reviewing the scriptures together on the road. Henceforth, we will catch only a fleeting glimpse of it -- in the study of sacred writings, in other human beings, in liturgy, and in communion with strangers. But these moments remain us that our fellow men and women are themselves sacred; there is something about them taht is worthy of absolute reverence.. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 6015294 | Like science and technology, mythology, as we shall see, is not about opting out of this world, but about enabling us to live more intensely within it. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 3bd8225 | On the night of New Year's Day, I thought of a wonderful New Year's resolution for the men who run the world: get to know the people who only live in it. | power war | Martha Gellhorn | |
| 60e0a3e | that real love comes over time, once that initial draw you're talking about takes on a different form. When you get to understand there is something more concrete between you. Something that is worth preserving... | Laura Dave | ||
| 63f00d3 | When everything gets messy and brutal and complicated, the truth is the first thing to go, isn't it? | Laura Dave | ||
| 11546ae | maybe just once in this life someone loves us for the us we don't even know how to be yet. And if we lose him too early--in the name of all the promises in the world: a new job, a new city, an old love offering us happily ever after--we may just lose that chance to be our best self. | Laura Dave | ||
| 9f324aa | Tackle life with as much energy as Goku! I'll try to do the same! | dragon-ball-z inspirational manga | Akira Toriyama | |
| 49d10ce | I discovered what a mental stimulant physical labor could be; not mere physical labor, I should add, but absolutely spine-bending, lung-racking, gut-ripping, ligament-tearing, and ball-breaking physical labor. But as long as the task is both onerous and repetitive, I discovered, the mind is not only free to wander to more imaginative climes, it actually flees to higher planes. | Dan Simmons | ||
| 7bfeedb | This is some sort of joke, isn't it?" asks Hunt, staring at the flawless blue sky and distant fields. I cough as lightly and briefly as possible into a handkerchief I have made from a towel borrowed from the inn. "Probably," I say. "But then, what isn't?" | cynicism cynicism-reality joke-life | Dan Simmons | |
| 3e6163e | THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER MISUSE OF THIS CHANNEL. YOU ARE DISTURBING OTHERS WHO ARE USING IT TO SERIOUS PURPOSE. ACCESS WILL BE RESTORED WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS FOR. GOODBYE | Dan Simmons | ||
| a69e75c | Sol had not known he was lonely until he met Sarai. | Dan Simmons | ||
| 5040c1b | a comment with the idle arrogance common of such nobodies who have just come into a small bit of power. | Dan Simmons | ||
| 702352f | It has been my experience that immediately after certain traumatic separations--leaving one's family to go to war, for instance, or upon the death of a family member, or after parting from one's beloved with no assurances of reunion--there is a strange calmness, almost a sense of relief, as if the worst has happened and nothing else need be dreaded. | Dan Simmons | ||
| 716bd7a | When you've spent thirty years entering rooms filled with strangers you feel less pressure than when you've had only half that number of years of experience. You know what the room and the people in it probably hold for you and you go looking for it. If it's not there, you sense it earlier and leave to go about your business. You just know more about what is, what isn't, and how little time there is to learn the difference. | knowing | Dan Simmons | |
| 6c57759 | No lifetime is long enough for those who wish to create, Raul. Or for those who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives. It is, perhaps, the curse of being human, but also a blessing. | death meaning-of-life | Dan Simmons | |
| f927496 | There would be no more offerings. Not this day. Not any day. Humankind had suffered enough for its love of gods, its long search for God. He thought of the many centuries in which his people, the Jews, had negotiated with God, complaining, bickering, decrying the unfairness of things but always - always - returning to obedience at whatever the cost. Generations dying in the ovens of hatred. Future generations scarred by the cold fires of ra.. | hatred obedience religion searching suffering | Dan Simmons | |
| de068a6 | We thought we were special, opening our perceptions, honing our empathy, spilling that cauldron of shared pain onto the dance floor of language and then trying to make a minuet out of all that chaotic hurt. It doesn't matter a damn bit. We're no avatars, no sons of god or man. We're only us, scribbling our conceits alone, reading alone, and dying alone. | Dan Simmons | ||
| d5d03bb | Choose again. | Dan Simmons | ||
| c9006a7 | People always pay a lot of money for things that make them stupid. | Dan Simmons | ||
| 29bd8ee | The problem with being passionately in love ... is that it deprives you of too much sleep. | Dan Simmons | ||
| 59f887d | He enjoyed the soft sound of night wind and the knowledge that he was the only boy -- perhaps the only human being -- out there in the dark on the windy, frozen-grass meadows on this night that smelled of coming snow, alienated from the lighted windows and the warm hearths, very aware that he was of the village but not part of it at that moment. It was a thrilling, almost erotic feeling -- an illicit discovery of self separated from everyon.. | Dan Simmons | ||
| 6d4a0c1 | Both Jamie and Claudia had acquired a talent for being near but never part of a group. (Some people, Saxonberg, never learn to do that all their lives, and some learn it all too well.) | E.L. Konigsburg | ||
| e37ccde | Uncle had learned long ago that obeying a rule in fact but not in spirit was very hard on people who say we for I and who do not allow dogs on their premises. | E.L. Konigsburg | ||
| c63516c | The other day as I was stepping out of Star Grocery on Claremont Avenue with some pork ribs under my arm, the Berkeley sky cloudless, a smell of jasmine in the air, a car driving by with its window rolled down, trailing a sweet ache of the Allman Brothers' "Melissa," it struck me that in order to have reached only the midpoint of my life I will need to live to be 92. That's pretty old. If you live to be ninety-two, you've done well for your.. | death mortality religion soul | Michael Chabon | |
| cf71218 | Writers, unlike most people, tell their best lies when they are alone. | Michael Chabon | ||
| 6610044 | You have to look at Jews like Bina Gelbfish, to explain the wide range and persistence of the race. Jews who carry their homes in an old cowhide bag, on the back of a camel, in the bubble of air at the center of their brains. Jews who land on their feet, hit the ground running, ride out the vicissitudes, and make the best of what falls to hand, from Egypt to Babylon, from Minsk Gubernya to the district of Sitka. Methodological, organised, p.. | judaism | Michael Chabon | |
| bb099cd | See you in the funny papers," he said. Jaunty, he reminded himself; always jaunty. In my panache is their hope for salvation." | Michael Chabon | ||
| ba7ab77 | It holds my essential stuff, including a book--for true contentment, one must carry a book at all times, and great books so rarely fit, my friends, into one's pocket[...] | Michael Chabon | ||
| 18c27b7 | It really is a shame that through our sad neglect of wonders, hopefulness, and trust we allowed so much clutter and debris to build up in the space that once connected us to Diamond Green. | Michael Chabon | ||
| ceb6977 | The natural fragrance of her body was a spicy, angry smell like that of fresh pencil shavings. | Michael Chabon |