William Osler Quotes
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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.
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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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The Scots are the backbone of Canada. They are all right in their three vital parts - head, heart and haggis.
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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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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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The higher education so much needed today is not given in the school, is not to be bought in the market place, but it has to be wrought out in each one of us for himself; it is the silent influence of character on character.
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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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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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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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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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We are constantly misled by the ease with which our minds fall into the ruts of one or two experiences
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Laughter is the music of life.
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Now of the difficulties bound up with the public in which we doctors work, I hesitate to speak in a mixed audience. Common sense in matters medical is rare, and is usually in inverse ratio to the degree of education.
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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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No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher.
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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 practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head. Often the best part of your work will have nothing to do with potions and powders, but with the exercise of an influence of the strong upon the weak, of the righteous upon the wicked, of the wise upon the foolish.
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The higher the standard of education in a profession, the less marked will be the charlatanism.
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The great majority gave no signs one way or the other; like birth, their death was a sleep and a forgetting.
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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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The clean tongue, the clear head, and the bright eye are birthrights of each day.
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Perhaps no sin so easily besets us as a sense of self-satisfied superiority to others.
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If it were not for the great variability among individuals, medicine might as well be a science, not an art.