William Osler Quotes - Page 4

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

Jaundice is the disease that your friends diagnose.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

No man is really happy or safe without a hobby.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.