William Osler Quotes
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In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable and must be content with broken portions.
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A well-trained, sensible doctor is one of the most valuable assets of a community.
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There is no disease more conducive to clinical humility than aneurysm of the aorta.
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We are all dietetic sinners; only a small percent of what we eat nourishes us; the balance goes to waste and loss of energy.
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The very first step toward success in any occupation is to become interested in it. Locke put this in a very happy way when he said, give a pupil "a relish of knowledge" and you put life into his work.
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The only way to treat the common cold is with contempt.
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Fed on the dry husks of facts, the human heart has a hidden want which science cannot supply.
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I desire no other epitaph - no hurry about it, I may say - than the statement that I taught medical students in the wards, as I regard this as by far the most useful and important work I have been called upon to do.
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Save the fleeting minute; learn gracefully to dodge the bore.
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The Scots are the backbone of Canada. They are all right in their three vital parts - head, heart and haggis.
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Acquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility.
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To confess ignorance is often wiser than to beat about the bush with a hypothetical diagnosis.
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It cannot be too often or too forcibly brought home to us that the hope of the profession is with the men who do its daily work in general practice.
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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.
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Variability is the law of life, and as no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike, and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under the abnormal conditions which we know as disease.
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But whatever you do, take neither yourselves nor your fellow-creatures too seriously. There is tragedy enough in our daily routine, but there is room too for a keen sense of the absurdities and incongruities of life, and in the shifting panorama no one sees better than the doctor the perennial sameness of men’s ways.
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The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.
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One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong.
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Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.
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Engrossed late and soon in professional cares, getting and spending, you may may so lay waste your powers that you may find, too late, with hearts given away, that t here is no place in your habit-stricken souls for those gentler influences which make your life worth living.
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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.
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The most essential thing for happiness is the gift of friendship.
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What is patience but an equanimity which enables you to rise superior to the trials of life.
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Even in populous districts, the practice of medicine is a lonely road which winds up-hill all the way and a man may easily go astray and never reach the Delectable Mountains unless he early finds those shepherd guides of whom Bunyan tells, Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere.