Sir William Osler

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

I have three personal ideals. One to do the day's work well and not bother about tomorrow. It has been urged that this is not a satisfactory ideal. It is; and there is not one which the student can carry with him into practice with greater effect. 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. - Sir William Osler

Nothing is life is more wonderful than faith. - Sir William Osler

To have a group of cloistered clinicians away completely from the broad current of professional life would be bad for teacher and worse for student. The primary work of a professor of medicine in a medical school is in the wards, teaching his pupils how to deal with patients and their diseases. - Sir 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. - Sir 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... - Sir William Osler

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

Look wise, say nothing and grunt; speech was given to conceal thought. - Sir William Osler

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

Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine, as perhaps it may be thought, 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. - Sir William Osler

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. - Sir William Osler

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." - Sir William Osler

Gentlemen, - Farewell, and take with you into the struggle the watchword of the good old Roman - Aequanimitas. - Sir William Osler

It is much simpler to buy books than to read them and easier to read them than to absorb their contents. Too many men slip early out of the habit of studious reading, and yet that is essential... - Sir William Osler

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

A well-trained, sensible doctor is one of the most valuable assets of a community. - Sir William Osler

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

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

Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses....Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert. 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. {a recollection of Osler's advice: Belkin BM, Neelon FA. The art of observation: William Osler and the method of Zadig. Ann Int Med 1992;116:863-6.} - Sir William Osler

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

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. - Sir William Osler

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