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Before, prior to. There is no difference between these two except length and a certain affectedness on the part of 'prior to.' To paraphrase Bernstein, if you would use 'posterior to' instead of 'after,' then by all means use 'prior to' instead of 'before.

Bill Bryson

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Bill Bryson
Age: 72
Born: 1951
Born: December 8
Author
Autobiographer
Journalist
Science Communicator
Science Writer
Travel Writer
Writer
Des Moines
Iowa
William Bryson
William Bill McGuire Bryson
William McGuire Bryson
Means
Paraphrase
Two
Prior
Part
Length
Certain
Except
Mean
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Would
Instead
Differences
Posterior
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Bernstein

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The universe is not only queerer than we suppose it is queerer than we can suppose
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Germans are flummoxed by humor, the Swiss have no concept of fun, the Spanish think there is nothing at all ridiculous about eating dinner at midnight, and the Italians should never, ever have been let in on the invention of the motor car.
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A cough so robust that I tapped into two new seams of phlegm.
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It was an odd situation. For a century and a half, men got rid of their own hair, which was perfectly comfortable, and instead covered their heads with something foreign and uncomfortable. Very often it was actually their own hair made into a wig. People who couldn't afford wigs tried to make their hair look like a wig.
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I don't know whether I'm misanthropic. It seems to me I'm constantly disappointed. I'm very easily disappointed.
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But what is life to a lichen ? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on.
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My mother only ever said two things. She said,'I don't know, dear.'And she said,'Can I get you a sandwich, honey?
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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.
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Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.
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In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe
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Language is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines.
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Perhaps it's my natural pessimism, but it seems that an awfully large part of travel these days is to see things while you still can.
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I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive than America in the 1950s. No country had ever known such prosperity.
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... it occurred to me that never again would he be seven years, one month and six days old, so we had better catch these moments while we can.
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You can be a scientist and believe in god: the two can go hand in hand.
Bill Bryson
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In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one's face.
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Taxonomy is described sometimes as a science and sometimes as an art, but really it’s a battleground.
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For anyone of a rational disposition, fashion is often nearly impossible to fathom. Throughout many periods of history – perhaps most – it can seem as if the whole impulse of fashion has been to look maximally ridiculous. If one could be maximally uncomfortable as well, the triumph was all the greater.
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Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.
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I tell the kids that, even in a childhood marked by despair and deprivation, I knew that no matter what happened, I still had my family, or at least the remnants of a family ripped apart by divorce and then glued back together in various odd arrangements through a series of ill- advised remarriages. It was good to know I had a solid foundation.
Bill Bryson