William Osler Quotes
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When schemes are laid in advance, it is surprising how often the circumstances will fit in with them.
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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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Personally, I do not see in Canada it would be a feasible thing if any Ministry organized taking over both the Health and the Disease of the entire community... even in the most favourable circumstances... there would be that absence of competition and that sense of independence... I do not believe it would be good for the profession or good for the Public.
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The only way to treat the common cold is with contempt.
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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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Save the fleeting minute; learn gracefully to dodge the bore.
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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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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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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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In the Mortality Bills, pneumonia is an easy second, to tuberculosis; indeed in many cities the death-rate is now higher and it has become, to use the phrase of Bunyan 'the captain of the men of death.'
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Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.
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For the general practitioner a well-used library is one of the few correctives of the premature senility which is so apt to take him.
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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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The librarian of today, and it will be true still more of the librarians of tomorrow, are not fiery dragons interposed between the people and the books. They are useful public servants, who manage libraries in the interest of the public . . . Many still think that a great reader, or a writer of books, will make an excellent librarian. This is pure fallacy.
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If it were not for the great variability among individuals, medicine might as well be a science, not an art.
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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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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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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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Laughter is the music of life.
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We doctors have always been a simple trusting folk. Did we not believe Galen implicitly for 1500 years and Hippocrates for more than 2000?
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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.