William Osler Quotes

Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Taking a lady's hand gives her confidence in her physician.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Happiness lies in the absorption in some vocation which satisfies the soul.

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

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.

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.

Without egotism and full of feeling, laughter is the music of life.

Save the fleeting minute; learn gracefully to dodge the bore.

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

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

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

Nothing is life is more wonderful than faith.

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

The true poetry of life: the poetry of the commonplace, of the ordinary man, of the plain, toil-worn woman, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and their griefs.

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

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

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.

It is not the delicate neurotic person who is prone to angina, but the robust, the vigorous in mind and body, the keen and ambitious man, the indicator of whose engines is always at full speed ahead.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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."

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

A library represents the mind of its collector, fancies and foibles, strengths and weaknesses, prejudices and preferences.

To talk of diseases is a sort of Arabian Nights entertainment.

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

The good physician treats the disease the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.