"It is my purpose in writing these Memoirs to adhere rigidly to truth, at least in its essence. Should I succeed in this, my work would be a very remarkable one, almost unique."

“In those days, and long after, an English clergyman dressed like a gentleman; he now wears a black livery, and he looks like a bishop's footman, in mourning, with his master, for some dead archbishop.”

“The more a writer deviates from simplicity, the less sincere he appears.”

“It may be boasted that free-trade in physic came before free-trade in corn, and from that time medical science began to flourish in this country.”

“Nothing that has been and has died out, will be revived. The skeleton, an osseous Apollo, will remain, and that is all.”

“Dr. Thomas Young, the illustrious inventor of the Undulatory Theory of Light, was then a physician at St. George's. I used to go round the wards with him. He was thought to be very undecided in his opinions of a case; the fact is, medicine is so uncertain a science, it was not good enough for such an intellect as his to work on.”

“I remember well the time when no gentleman was supposed to smoke; the habit was fit only for the vulgarian.”