William Osler Quotes & Sayings

Now the way of life that I preach is a habit to be acquired gradually by long and steady repetition. It is the practice of living for the day only, and for the day's work. — William Osler

At the outset do not be worried about this big question-Truth. It is a very simple matter if each one of you starts with the desire to get as much as possible. 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. In this unsatisfied quest the attitude of mind, the desire, the thirst-a thirst that from the soul must arise!-the fervent longing, are the be-all and the end-all. — William Osler

It is astonishing with how little reading a doctor can practice medicine, but is not astonishing how badly he may do it. — William Osler

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

Perhaps no sin so easily besets us as a sense of self-satisfied superiority to others. — William Osler

When schemes are laid in advance, it is surprising how often the circumstances will fit in with them. — William Osler

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

Nature, the great Moloch, which exacts a frightful tax of human blood, sparing neither young nor old; taking the child from the cradle, the mother from her babe, and the father from the family. — William Osler

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

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

The great minds, the great works transcend all limitations of time, of language, and of race, and the scholar can never feel initiated into the company of the elect until he can approach all of life's problems from the cosmopolitan standpoint. — William Osler

Care more for the individual patient than for the special features of the disease ... Put yourself in his place ... The kindly word, the cheerful greeting, the sympathetic look - these the patient understands. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

Every patient you see is a lesson in much more than the malady from which he suffers. — William Osler

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

Happiness lies in the absorption in some vocation which satisfies the soul. — William Osler

We may indeed be justly proud of our apostolic succesion. THESE ARE OUR METHODS - to carefully observe the phenomena of life in all its stages , to cultivate reasoning faculty so as to be able to know the true from the false. THIS IS OUR WORK - to prevent disease, to relieve suffering and to heal the sick. — William Osler

The future belongs to Science. More and more she will control the destinies of the nations. Already she has them in her crucible and on her balances. — William Osler

Half of us are blind, few of us feel, and we are all deaf. — William Osler

Start at once a bedside library and spend the last half hour of the day in communion with the saints of humanity. — William Osler

Ask not what disease the person has, but rather what person the disease has — William Osler

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. — William Osler

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

The future is today. — William Osler

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

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

It is strange how the memory of a man may float to posterity on what he would have himself regarded as the most trifling of his works. — William Osler

It is not as if our homeopathic brothers are asleep: far from it, they are awake - many of them at any rate - to the importance of the scientific study of disease. — William Osler

There are only two sorts of doctors; those who practise with their brains, and those who practise with their tongues. — William Osler

There is a form of laughter that springs from the heart, heard every day in the merry voice of childhood, the expression of a laughter - loving spirit that defies analysis by the philosopher, which has nothing rigid or mechanical in it, and totally without social significance. Bubbling spontaneously from the heart of child or man. Without egotism and full of feeling, laughter is the music of life. — William Osler

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

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. — William Osler

Think not of the amount to be accomplished, the difficulties to be overcome, or the end to be attained, but set earnestly, at the little task at your elbow, letting that be sufficient for the day. — William Osler

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

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

Acquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility. — William Osler

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.' — William Osler

The extraordinary development of modern science may be her undoing. Specialism, now a necessity, has fragmented the specialities themselves in a way that makes the outlook hazardous. The workers lose all sense of proportion in a maze of minutiae. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

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

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

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. — William Osler

Nothing in life is more wonderful than faith - the one great moving force which we can neither weigh in the balance nor test in the crucible. — William Osler

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." — William Osler

To have a group of cloistered clinicians away completely from the broad current of professional life would be bad for teacher and worse for student. The primary work of a professor of medicine in a medical school is in the wards, teaching his pupils how to deal with patients and their diseases. — William Osler

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

He who knows syphilis knows medicine — William Osler

Gentlemen, I have a confession to make. Half of what we have taught you is in error, and furthermore we cannot tell you which half it is — William Osler

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. — William Osler

Breathes there a man with soul so dead that it does not glow at the thought of what the men of his blood have done and suffered to make his country what it is? There is room, plenty of room, for proper pride of land and birth. What I inveigh against is a cursed spirit of intolerance, conceived in distrust and bred in ignorance, that makes the mental attitude perennially antagonistic, even bitterly antagonistic, to everything foreign, that subordinates everywhere the race to the nation, forgetting the higher claims of human brotherhood. — William Osler

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

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

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. — William Osler

Quit worrying about your health. It'll go away. — William Osler

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

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. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

If it were not for the great variability among individuals, medicine might as well be a science, not an art. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

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

Beware of people who call you 'Doc.' They rarely pay their bills. — William Osler

The Scots are the backbone of Canada. They are all right in their three vital parts - head, heart and haggis. — William Osler

Imperturbability means coolness and presence of mind under all circumstances, calmness amid storm, clearness of judgment in moments of grave peril, immobility, impassiveness, or, to use an old and expressive word, phlegm. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

Few diseases present greater difficulties in the way of diagnosis than malignant endocarditis, difficulties which in many cases are practi- cally insurmountable. It is no disparagement to the many skilled physicians who have put their cases upon record to say that, in fully one-half the diagnosis was made post mortem. — William Osler

No dreams, no visions, no delicious fantasies, no castles in the air, with which, as the old song so truly says, hearts are broken, heads are turned. — William Osler

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

To know just what has do be done, then to do it, comprises the whole philosophy of practical life. — William Osler

It cannot be too often or too forcibly brought home to us that the hope of the profession is with the men who do its daily work in general practice. — William Osler

The great majority gave no signs one way or the other; like birth, their death was a sleep and a forgetting. — William Osler

The only way to treat the common cold is with contempt. — William Osler

We are constantly misled by the ease with which our minds fall into the ruts of one or two experiences — William Osler

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

Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today ... The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

There is no more potent antidote to the corroding influence of mammon than the presence in the community of a body of men devoted to science, living for investigation and caring nothing for the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. — William Osler

To confess ignorance is often wiser than to beat about the bush with a hypothetical diagnosis. — William Osler

The successful teacher is no longer on a height, pumping knowledge at high pressure into passive receptacles ... — William Osler

Laughter is the music of life. — William Osler

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

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. — William Osler

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

Patients rarely die of the disease from which they suffer. Secondary or terminal infections are the real cause of death. — William Osler

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

Save the fleeting minute; learn gracefully to dodge the bore. — William Osler

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

The most essential thing for happiness is the gift of friendship. — William Osler

A well-trained, sensible doctor is one of the most valuable assets of a community. — William Osler

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

The uselessness of men above sixty years of age and the incalculable benefit it would be in commercial, in political, and in professional life, if as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age. — William Osler

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

No man is really happy or safe without a hobby ... — William Osler

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. — William Osler

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

Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in you humdrum routine, the true poetry of life - the poetry of the commonplace, of the ordinary person, of the plain, toilworn, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and griefs. — William Osler

Fed on the dry husks of facts, the human heart has a hidden want which science cannot supply. — William Osler

A man is sane morally at thirty, rich mentally at forty, wise spiritually at fifty-or never! — William Osler

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. — William Osler

Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the classroom. Let not your conceptions of disease come from words heard in the lecture room or read from the book. See, and then reason and compare and control. But see first. — William Osler

I would like to issue a Mt. Carmel-like challenge to any 10 unvaccinated priests of Baal. I will go into the next severe epidemic with 10 selected vaccinated persons and 10 selected unvaccinated persons, I should prefer to choose the later, 3 members of parliament,3 anti-vaccination doctors if they can be found, and 4 anti-vaccination propagandists. And I will make this promise, neither to jeer nor jibe when they catch the disease but to look after them as brothers and for the four or five who are certain to die, I will try to arrange the funerals with all the pomp and ceremony of an anti-vaccination demonstration. — William Osler