William Osler famous quotes

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

#Inspirational #Success #Congratulations

Advice is sought to confirm a position already taken.
-- William Osler

#Taken #Advice #Already Taken

We doctors have always been a simple trusting folk. Did we not believe Galen implicitly for 1500 years and Hippocrates for more than 2000?
-- William Osler

#Believe #Simple #Years

One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.
-- William Osler

#Education #Health #Healing

The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest.
-- William Osler

#Blessing #Nurse #Humanity

The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.
-- William Osler

#Disease #Physicians #Patient

He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all.
-- William Osler

#Book #Sea #Medicine

Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine, as perhaps it may be thought, the true poetry of life.
-- William Osler

#May #Routine #Humdrum

By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy-indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction.
-- William Osler

#Honesty #Integrity #Character

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life.
-- William Osler

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.
-- William Osler

#Common Sense #Water #Soap

The hardest conviction to get into the mind of a beginner is that the education upon which he is engaged is not a college course, not a medical course, but a life course, for which the work of a few years under teachers is but a preparation.
-- William Osler

#Teacher #Educational #College

The young physician starts life with 20 drugs for each disease, and the old physician ends life with one drug for 20 diseases.
-- William Osler

#Drug #Disease #Physicians

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.
-- William Osler

#Hard Work #Dust #Aggravation

Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents.
-- William Osler

#Grandparent #Veins #Results

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.
-- William Osler

#Wise #Art #Strong

The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.
-- William Osler

#Good Life #Vision #Experience

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

#Teacher #Teaching #Successful

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.
-- William Osler

#Humanity #Gold #World

Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.
-- William Osler

#Wise #Science #Looks

Be calm and strong and patient. Meet failure and disappointment with courage. Rise superior to the trials of life, and never give in to hopelessness or despair. In danger, in adversity, cling to your principles and ideals. Aequanimitas!
-- William Osler

#Strong #Disappointment #Adversity

The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.
-- William Osler

#Birthday #Truth #Philosophy

That man can interrogate as well as observe nature was a lesson slowly learned in his evolution.
-- William Osler

#Men #Lessons #Evolution

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.
-- William Osler

#Education #Desire #Important

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.
-- William Osler

#Philosophy #Practice #Smell

It is much simpler to buy books than to read them and easier to read them than to absorb their contents.
-- William Osler

#Book #Easier

Humanity has but three great enemies: fever, famine, and war; of these by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.
-- William Osler

#War #Humanity #Enemy

Listen to your patient, he is telling you the diagnosis,
-- William Osler

#Diagnosis #Patient

We are all dietetic sinners; only a small percent of what we eat nourishes us; the balance goes to waste and loss of energy.
-- William Osler

#Life #Loss #Balance

Without faith a man can do nothing; with it all things are possible.
-- William Osler

#Faith #Men

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.
-- William Osler

#Art #Practice #Medicine

Shut out all of your past except that which will help you weather your tomorrows.
-- William Osler

#Past #Weather #Tomorrow

The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine.
-- William Osler

#Health #Medicine #Disease

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
-- William Osler

#Spiritual #Atheist #Ignorance

It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has.
-- William Osler

#Important #Disease #Patient

In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable and must be content with broken portions.
-- William Osler

#Broken Heart #Broken Promises #Unattainable

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals - this alone is worth the struggle.
-- William Osler

#Perseverance #Struggle #Effort

Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.
-- William Osler

#Art #Science #Medicine

The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.
-- William Osler

#Health #Exercise #Men