# A Short History of Nearly Everything - Author: [Bill Bryson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson.md) - Quotes: 10 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything ## Quotes > 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. p. 53 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything/in-france-a-chemist.md) > It is natural human impulse to think of evolution as a long chain of improvements, of a never-ending advance towards largeness and complexity — in a word, towards us. We flatter ourselves. Most of the real diversity in evolution has been small-scale. We large things are just flukes — an interesting side branch. p. 311 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything/it-is-natural.md) > Disassemble the cells of a sponge (by passing them through a sieve, for instance), then dump them into a solution, and they will find their way back together and build themselves into a sponge again. You can do this to them over and over, and they will doggedly reassemble because, like you and me and every other living thing, they have one overwhelming impulse: to continue to be. p. 380 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything/disassemble-the-cells.md) > 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. p. 336 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything/but-what-is-life.md) > Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you. p. 3 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything/consider-the-fact.md) > As Edward P. Tryon of Columbia University once put it: "In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our universe is simply one of those things that happen from time to time." To which adds Guth: "Although the creation of a universe might be very unlikely, Tryon emphasized that no one had counted the failed attempts." [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything/as-edward-p-tryon.md) > Despite declining catches, New England fishermen continue to receive state and federal tax incentives that encourage them — in some cases all but compel them — to acquire bigger boats and to harvest the seas more intensively. Today the fishermen of Massachusetts are reduced to fishing the hideous hagfish, for which there is a slight market in the Far East, but even their numbers are now falling. p. 285 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything/despite-declining-catches.md) > Absolute brain size does not tell you everything — or possibly sometimes even much. Elephants and whales both have brains larger than ours, but you wouldn't have much trouble outwitting them in contract negotiations. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything/absolute-brain-size.md) > It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything/it-is-a-slightly.md) > All that can really be said is that at some indeterminate point in the very distant past, for reasons unknown, there came the moment known to science as t = 0. We were on our way. p. 10 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/a-short-history-of-nearly-everything/all-that-can.md)