Explore Quotes by William Osler

The first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.

To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.

The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.

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.

The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and to beget.

There is no disease more conducive to clinical humility than aneurysm of the aorta.

Faith is a most precious commodity, without which we should be very badly off.

Let each hour of the day have its allotted duty, and cultivate that power of concentration which grows with its exercise.

It is not... That some people do not know what to do with truth when it is offered to them, But the tragic fate is to reach, after patient search, a condition of mind-blindness, in which. The truth is not recognized, though it stares you in the face.

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.

The clean tongue, the clear head, and the bright eye are birthrights of each day.

What is patience but an equanimity which enables you to rise superior to the trials of life.

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.

There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases a man must be familiar with their manifestations in many organs.

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.

The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it.

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.

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.

What is the student but a lover courting a fickle mistress who ever eludes his grasp?

No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher.

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.