top of page
.png){kind=small}
"I know a man who drives 600 yards to work. I know a woman who gets in her car to go a quarter of a mile to a college gymnasium to walk on a treadmill, then complains passionately about the difficulty of finding a parking space. When I asked her once why she didn't walk to the gym and do five minutes less on the treadmill, she looked at me as if I were being willfully provocative. 'Because I have a program for the treadmill,' she explained. 'It records my distance and speed, and I can adjust it for degree of difficulty.' It hadn't occurred to me how thoughtlessly deficient nature is in this regard."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Contradiction quotes
"Did everyone make the most ghastly blunders at regularly intervals through their life and live to regret them ever afterward? Was everyone's life filled with confusing and contradictory mix of guilt and innocence, hatred and love, concern and unconcern, and any number of other pairings of polar opposites? Or were most people one thing or the other - good or bad, cheerful or crotchety, generous or miserly, and so on."
"Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy."
"Even the respectable have a small anarchist hidden on the inside."
"Isn't it a shame that some people's 'weaknesses' can be so strong."
"Man thrives where angels would die of ecstasy and where pigs would die of disgust."
"I know a man who drives 600 yards to work. I know a woman who gets in her car to go a quarter of a mile to a college gymnasium to walk on a treadmill, then complains passionately about the difficulty of finding a parking space. When I asked her once why she didn't walk to the gym and do five minutes less on the treadmill, she looked at me as if I were being willfully provocative. 'Because I have a program for the treadmill,' she explained. 'It records my distance and speed, and I can adjust it for degree of difficulty.' It hadn't occurred to me how thoughtlessly deficient nature is in this regard."
Explore more quotes by Bill Bryson
"There'd never been a more advantageous time to be a criminal in America than during the 13 years of Prohibition. At a stroke, the American government closed down the fifth largest industry in the United States - alcohol production - and just handed it to criminals - a pretty remarkable thing to do."
"Linguist say parties in the conversation will tolerate silence for four seconds before interjecting anything, however unrelated."
"It seems impossible that you could get something from nothing, but the fact that once there was nothing and now there is a universe is evident proof that you can."
"I ordered a coffee and a little something to eat and savored the warmth and dryness. Somewhere in the background Nat King Cole sang a perky tune. I watched the rain beat down on the road outside and told myself that one day this would be twenty years ago."
"Worse still, it isn't actually necessary to look to space for petrifying danger. As we are about to see, Earth can provide plenty of danger of its own."
"It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively, that was merely an unintended side effect."
"When 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 gotten going, it seemed in very little hurry to move on."
"Open your refrigerator door, and you summon forth more light than the total amount enjoyed by most households in the 18th century. The world at night, for much of history, was a very dark place indeed."
"There 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."
"If we should be worrying about anything to do with the future of English, it should not be that the various strands will drift apart but that they will grow indistinguishable. And what a sad, sad loss that would be."
bottom of page