Osler Quotes & Sayings

Avoid wine and women - choose a freckly-faced girl for a wife; they are invariably more amiable. — 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

As it can be maintained that all the great advances have come from men under forty, so the history of the world shows that a very large proportion of the evils may be traced to the sexagenarians, nearly all the great mistakes politically and socially, all of the worst poems, most of the bad pictures, a majority of the bad novels and not a few of the bad sermons and speeches. — 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

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

Personally, I do not see in Canada it would be a feasible thing if any Ministry organized taking over both the Health and the Disease of the entire community ... even in the most favourable circumstances ... there would be that absence of competition and that sense of independence ... I do not believe it would be good for the profession or good for the Public. — 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

Every patient you see is a lesson in much more than the malady from which he suffers. — 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 best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well. — 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

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

Emulating the persistence and care of Darwin, we must collect facts with open-minded watchulness, unbiased by crotchets or notions; fact on fact, instance on instance, experiment upon experiment; facts which neatly fit the idea of their relationship, may establish a general principle."

Sir William Osler, Counsels and Ideals — Hillary Johnson

The future is today. — 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

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

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

Listen to your patient; he is telling you the diagnosis. — William Osler

In the first place, in the physician or surgeon no quality takes rank with imperturbability, and I propose for a few minutes to direct your attention to this essential bodily virtue. — William Osler

To it, more than to anything else, I owe whatever success I have had - to this power of settling down to the day's work and trying to do it to the best of one's ability, and letting the future take care of itself. — 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

To do today's work well and not to bother about tomorrow is the secret of accomplishment — William Osler

Jaundice is the disease that your friends diagnose. — William Osler

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

I'll beat you like a red headed stepchild. — Mark Osler

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

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

There are three classes of human beings: men, women, and women physicians. - SIR WILLIAM OSLER — Sidney Sheldon

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

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

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

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. — 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

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

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

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

The higher the standard of education in a profession, the less marked will be the charlatanism. — William Osler

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

More is missed by not looking than not knowing — Thomas McCrae Osler

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

Reading books about gardens is a potent pastime; books nourish a gardener's mind in the same way as manure nourishes plants. — Mirabel 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

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

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

This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high attainments in their specialties-for example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted and Osler-men who knew nothing whatever about the so-called science of pedagogy, and would have derided its alleged principles if they had heard them stated. — H.L. Mencken

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

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. — 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

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life. — 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

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

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

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

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. — William Osler

Surely ruminating and lolling, squandering slivers of time as you ponder on this or that plant; perching about the place on seats chosen for their essential and individual quality, are other whole aspects of being a gardener. Why shouldn't we? We sit in other people's gardens, why not in our own. — Mirabel Osler

Laughter is the music of life. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

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

I'm not a garden expert in any sense of the meaning, only someone who blunders about in the shrubbery. — Mirabel Osler

In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs. — William Osler

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

Nothing is life is more wonderful than faith. — 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

Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition. — William Osler

At the heart of gardening there is a belief in the miraculous. — Mirabel 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

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

The person who takes medicine must recover twice,once from the disease ,and once from the medicine. — 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

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

Have you ever noticed how few sitting places you find in private gardens? How seldom the versatility and importance of benches is considered? True gardeners, with their peerless taste, dexterity and inspired planting, never stop ... To sit is almost an offence, a sign of depravity and an outrage towards every felicitous refinement that has gone into making a garden. — Mirabel 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 failure to cultivate the power of peaceful concentration is the greatest single cause of mental breakdown, the great physician William Osler told the students of Yale ... — Elisabeth Elliot

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

One of the first essentials in securing a good-natured equanimity is not to expect too much of the people amongst whom you dwell. — William Osler