William Osler Quotes - Page 2

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.

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

A physician who treats himself has a fool for a patient.

The young doctor should look about early for an avocation, a pastime, that will take him away from patients, pills, and potions.

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

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

Advice is sought to confirm a position already taken.

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.

Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Patients should have rest, food, fresh air, and exercise - the quadrangle of health.

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.

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

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

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.

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