Quote

English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin, a language with which it has precious little in common.

Bill Bryson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Common
Confusing
Simple
Latin
Language
Precious
Littles
Complexes
Reason
Complex
Little
English
Infinitive
Rules
Terminology
Based
Grammar

More quotes by Bill Bryson

Image
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.
Bill Bryson
Image
My mother only ever said two things. She said,'I don't know, dear.'And she said,'Can I get you a sandwich, honey?
Bill Bryson
Image
Consider the Lichen. Lichens are just about the hardiest visible organisms on Earth, but the least ambitious.
Bill Bryson
Image
Taxonomy is described sometimes as a science and sometimes as an art, but really it’s a battleground.
Bill Bryson
Image
Those who sniff decay in every shift of sense or alteration of usage do the language no service. Too often for such people the notion of good English has less to do with expressing ideas clearly than with making words conform to some arbitrary pattern.
Bill Bryson
Image
Eating in Sweden is really just a series of heartbreaks.
Bill Bryson
Image
A cough so robust that I tapped into two new seams of phlegm.
Bill Bryson
Image
If you drive to, say, Shenandoah National Park, or the Great Smoky Mountains, you'll get some appreciation for the scale and beauty of the outdoors. When you walk into it, then you see it in a completely different way. You discover it in a much slower, more majestic sort of way.
Bill Bryson
Image
We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.
Bill Bryson
Image
It is not as if farming brought a great improvement in living standards either. A typical hunter-gatherer enjoyed a more varied diet and consumed more protein and calories than settled people, and took in five times as much viatmin C as the average person today.
Bill Bryson
Image
Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.
Bill Bryson
Image
I don't know whether I'm misanthropic. It seems to me I'm constantly disappointed. I'm very easily disappointed.
Bill Bryson
Image
In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe
Bill Bryson
Image
All the things that are part of your heritage make you British - that makes this country what it is. It's part of your history. And here, unlike America, it's still living history.
Bill Bryson
Image
Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.
Bill Bryson
Image
Have you ever seen Glenn Beck in operation? It is the most terrifying thing. It's so bad that you think he's going to announce in a minute that it's all a great con. He makes Sarah Palin look reasonable and steady.
Bill Bryson
Image
I think it's only right that crazy people should have their own city, but I cannot for the life of me see why a sane person would want to go there.
Bill Bryson
Image
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.
Bill Bryson
Image
People don't talk like this, theytalklikethis. Syllables, words, sentences run together like a watercolour left in the rain. To understand what anyone is saying to us we must separate these noises into words and the words into sentences so that we might in our turn issue a stream of mixed sounds in response.
Bill Bryson
Image
Life just wants to be but it doesn't want to be much.
Bill Bryson