One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.

Penicillin sat on a shelf for ten years while I was called a quack.

Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.

It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.

One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. When I woke up just after dawn on Sept. 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I guess that was exactly what I did.

(The discovery of penicillin) was a triumph of accident, a fortunate occurrence which happened while I was working on a purely academic bacteriological problem.

If penicillin can cure those that are ill, Spanish sherry can bring the dead back to life.