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William Osler Quotes
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History is simply the biography of the mind of man; and our interest in history, and its educational value to us, is directly proportionate to the completeness of our study of the individuals through whom this mind has been manifested.
William Osler
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To wrest from nature the secrets which have perplexed philosophers of all ages, to track to their sources the causes of disease, to correlate the vast stores of knowledge, that they may be quickly available for the prevention and cure of disease — these are our ambitions.
William Osler
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In war the microbe kills more than the bullet.
William Osler
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Use your five senses. The art of the practice of medicine is to be learned only by experience; 'tis not an inheritance; it... cannot be revealed. Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone can you become expert.
William Osler
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'Tis no idle challenge which we physicians throw out to the world when we claim that our mission is of the highest and of the noblest kind, not alone in curing disease but in educating the people in the laws of health, and in preventing the spread of plagues and pestilences...
William Osler
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Perhaps no sin so easily besets us as a sense of self-satisfied superiority to others.
William Osler
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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
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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
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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
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Every medical student should remember that his end is not to be a chemist, or a physiologist or an anatomist, but to learn how to recognize and treat disease, to become a practical physician.
William Osler
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The higher the standard of education in a profession, the less marked will be the charlatanism.
William Osler
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To investigate the causes of death, to examine carefully the condition of organs, after such changes have gone on in them as to render existence impossible and to apply such Knowledge to the prevention and treatment of disease, is one of the highest objects of the Physician.
William Osler
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With reason, science never parts company, but with feeling, emotion, passion, what has she to do? They are not of her; they owe her no allegiance. She may study, analyze, and define, she can never control them, and by no possibility can their ways be justified to her.
William Osler
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Happiness lies in the absorption in some vocation which satisfies the soul.
William Osler
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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
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Worse still is the "lock and key" laboratory in which suspicion and distrust reign, and everyone is jealous and fearful least the other should know of or find out about his work.
William Osler
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I am firmly convinced that the best book in medicine is the book of Nature, as written large in the bodies of men.
William Osler
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To confess ignorance is often wiser than to beat about the bush with a hypothetical diagnosis.
William Osler
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Keen sensibility is doubtless a virtue of high order, when it does not interfere with steadiness of hand or coolness of nerve; but for the practitioner in his working-day world, a callousness which thinks only of the good to be effected, and goes ahead regardless of smaller considerations, is the preferable quality.
William Osler
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A man is sane morally at thirty, rich mentally at forty, wise spiritually at fifty-or never!
William Osler
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Every patient you see is a lesson in much more than the malady from which he suffers.
William Osler
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To prevent disease, to relieve suffering and to heal the sick — this is our work.
William Osler
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What, after all, is education but a subtle, slowly-affected change, due to the action upon us of the Externals; of the written record of the great minds of all ages, of the beautiful and harmonious surroundings of nature and of art, and of the lives, good or ill, of our fellows — these alone educate us, these alone mould the developing minds.
William Osler
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Professional chemists look askance at physiological chemistry, and physiological chemists criticize pretty sharply the work of some clinical chemists, but there can be no doubt of the value to the physicians of a very thorough training in methods and ways of organic chemistry.
William Osler
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It must be confessed that the practice of medicine among our fellow creatures is often a testy and choleric business.
William Osler
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Quote of the day
Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.
Martin Luther
William Osler
Creative Commons
Born:
July 12, 1849
Died:
December 29, 1919
(aged 70)
Bio:
Sir William Osler, 1st Baronet was a Canadian physician and one of the four founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Known for:
The Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892)
The quotable Osler
Counsels and ideals
Most used words:
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medicine
science
man
work
faith
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sense
study
knowledge
truth
twenty
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William Osler on Wikipedia
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