Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.
Interpretation
While penicillin heals physical ailments, wine provides joy and happiness to people.
This quote by Alexander Fleming contrasts the medicinal properties of penicillin, which is critical for health and healing, with the joyful effects of wine, suggesting that while medicine addresses our physical needs, happiness and emotional well-being often come from other sources, such as social interactions and enjoyment of life.
In practice
This quote can be used in a toast at a celebration to emphasize the importance of happiness.
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.
Suggested remedy for the common cold: A good gulp of whiskey at bedtime-it's not very scientific, but it helps.
I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this-never neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening. It may be-usually is, in fact-a false alarm that leads to nothing, but may on the other hand be the clue provided by fate to lead you to some important advance.
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.
Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
We should enjoy food and have fun. It is one of the simplest and nicest pleasures in life.
The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modeled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object of his being.
Life is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of those tiny successes. The big ones come too infrequently. And if you don't collect all these tiny successes, the big ones don't really mean anything.
And lastly from that period I remember riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.
Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.
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