William Osler Quotes
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The only way to treat the common cold is with contempt.
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There is no disease more conducive to clinical humility than aneurysm of the aorta.
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In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable and must be content with broken portions.
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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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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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A well-trained, sensible doctor is one of the most valuable assets of a community.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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To have a group of cloistered clinicians away completely from the broad current of professional life would be bad for teacher and worse for student. The primary work of a professor of medicine in a medical school is in the wards, teaching his pupils how to deal with patients and their diseases.
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The most essential thing for happiness is the gift of friendship.
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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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Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.
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The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it.
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Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day absorb all your interest, energy and enthusiasm. The best preparation for tomorrow is to live today superbly well.
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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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Jaundice is the disease that your friends diagnose.
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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.
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Start at once a bedside library and spend the last half hour of the day in communion with the saints of humanity.