A book is a device to ignite the imagination.

I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.

Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.

The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don't.

A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.

It [Cambridge] wasn't a holy grail in the sense that I'd never been to Cambridge. But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.

There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world. Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.