William Osler Quotes
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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.
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Laughter is the music of life.
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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 teacher's life should have three periods, study until twenty-five, investigation until forty, profession until sixty, at which age I would have him retired on a double allowance.
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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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It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has.
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Perhaps no sin so easily besets us as a sense of self-satisfied superiority to others.
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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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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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Let each hour of the day have its allotted duty, and cultivate that power of concentration which grows with its exercise.
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The higher the standard of education in a profession, the less marked will be the charlatanism.
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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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Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses. Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert.
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A library represents the mind of its collector, his fancies and foibles, his strength and weakness, his prejudices and preferences. Particularly is this the case if, to the character of a collector, he adds - or tries to add - the qualities of a student who wishes to know the books and the lives of the men who wrote them. The friendships of his life, the phases of his growth, the vagaries of his mind, all are represented.
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Patients rarely die of the disease from which they suffer. Secondary or terminal infections are the real cause of death.
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Avoid wine and women - choose a freckly-faced girl for a wife; they are invariably more amiable.
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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.
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Listen to your patient, he is telling you the diagnosis.
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Courage and cheerfulness will not only carry you over the rough places in life, but will enable you to bring comfort and help to the weak-hearted and will console you in the sad hours.
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Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.
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The clean tongue, the clear head, and the bright eye are birthrights of each day.
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Conservatism and old fogeyism are totally different things; the motto of one is "Prove all things and hold fast that which is good" and of the other "Prove nothing but hold fast that which is old."
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Jaundice is the disease that your friends diagnose.
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Shed, as you do your garments, your daily sins, whether of omission or commission, and you will wake a free man, with a new life.