Famous William Osler Quotations

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"There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language."
by William Osler
"In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs."
by William Osler
"Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability."
by William Osler
"Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition."
by William Osler
"Half of us are blind, few of us feel, and we are all deaf."
by William Osler
"The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals."
by Sir William Osler
"A physician who treats himself has a fool for a patient."
by William Osler
"It is not the delicate neurotic person who is prone to angina, but the robust, the vigorous in mind and body, the keen and ambitious man, the indicator of whose engines is always at full speed ahead."
by William Osler
"Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought."
by Sir William Osler
"No dreams, no visions, no delicious fantasies, no castles in the air, with which, as the old song so truly says, hearts are broken, heads are turned."
by William Osler
"Nothing in life is more wonderful than faith - the one great moving force which we can neither weigh in the balance nor test in the crucible"
by William Osler
"One of the most appalling comments on our present way of life is that half of all the beds in our hospitals are reserved for patients with nervous and mental troubles, patients who have collapsed under the crushing burden of accumulated yesterdays and fearful tomorrows. Yet a vast majority of those people would be walking the streets today, leading happy, useful lives, if they had only heeded the words of Jesus: 'Have no anxiety about the morrow'; or the words of Sir William Osler; 'Live in day-tight compartments."
by Dale Carnegie
"One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine."
by Sir William Osler
"Shut out all of your past except that which will help you weather your tomorrows."
by Sir William Osler
"The future is today."
by William Osler
"To study the phenomenon of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all."
by Sir William Osler
"We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it."
by William Osler
"Things cannot always go your way. Learn to accept in silence the minor aggravations, cultivate the gift of taciturnity and consume your own smoke with an extra draught of hard work, so that those about you may not be annoyed with the dust and soot of your complaints."
by William Osler
"By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy - indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction."
by William Osler
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism."
by William Osler
"There is a form that springs from the heart, heard every day in the merry voice of childhood, the expression of a laughter-loving spirit that defies analysis by the philosopher, which has nothing rigid or mechanical in it, and is totally without social significance. Bubbling spontaneously from the artless heart of child or man, without egoism and full of feeling, laughter is the music of life."
by William Osler
"There is a form of laughter that springs from the heart, heard every day in the merry voice of childhood, the expression of a laughter -- loving spirit that defies analysis by the philosopher, which has nothing rigid or mechanical in it, and totally without social significance. Bubbling spontaneously from the heart of child or man. Without egotism and full of feeling, laughter is the music of life."
by William Osler
"What is the student but a lover courting a fickle mistress who ever eludes his grasp?"
by William Osler
"The only way to treat the common cold is with contempt."
by William Osler
"Failure to examine the throat is a glaring sin of omission, especially in children. One finger in the throat and one in the rectum makes a good diagnostician."
by William Osler
"When schemes are laid in advance, it is surprising how often the circumstances will fit in with them."
by William Osler
"Study until twenty five, investigate until forty, profession until sixty, at which age I would have him retired on a double allowance."
by William Osler
"No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition."
by William Osler
"In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable, and must be content with finding broken portions."
by William Osler
"Work is the open sesame of every portal, the great equalizer in the world, the true philosopher's stone which transmutes all the base metal of humanity into gold."
by William Osler


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