110+ William Osler Quotes On Medicine, Teaching And Medical

William Osler was a Canadian physician and scientist who was one of the founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was a major figure in the development of modern medicine and is known as the "Father of Modern Medicine". He was one of the first to integrate scientific and clinical medicine and was a leader in medical education, emphasizing bedside teaching and the importance of clinical experience. Following is our collection on famous quotes by William Osler on medicine, teaching, medical.

Top 10 William Osler Quotes

1. The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.
2. Listen to your patient, he is telling you the diagnosis.
3. The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine.
4. The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head.
5. Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.
6. The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest.
7. There are three classes of human beings: men, women and women physicians.
8. 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.
9. Acquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility.
10. No man is really happy or safe without a hobby.

William Osler Image Quotes

Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability. — William Osler

No man is really happy or safe without a hobby. — William Osler

William Osler Short Quotes

• Every patient you see is a lesson in much more than the malady from which he suffers.
• The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
• Half of us are blind, few of us feel, and we are all deaf.
• Without faith a man can do nothing; with it all things are possible.
• What is the student but a lover courting a fickle mistress who ever eludes his grasp?
• Advice is sought to confirm a position already taken.
• A physician who treats himself has a fool for a patient.
• Too many men slip early out of the habit of studious reading, and yet that is essential.
• Patients should have rest, food, fresh air, and exercise - the quadrangle of health.
• The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and to beget.

William Osler Quotes About Medicine

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. — 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. — William Osler

The only way to treat the common cold is with contempt. — William Osler

He who knows syphilis knows medicine — William Osler

If it were not for the great variability among individuals, medicine might as well be a science, not an art. — William Osler

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

It is not... That some people do not know what to do with truth when it is offered to them, But the tragic fate is to reach, after patient search, a condition of mind-blindness, in which. The truth is not recognized, though it stares you in the face. — William Osler

Even in populous districts, the practice of medicine is a lonely road which winds up-hill all the way and a man may easily go astray and never reach the Delectable Mountains unless he early finds those shepherd guides of whom Bunyan tells, Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere. — William Osler

The first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine. — William Osler

William Osler Quotes About Teaching

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

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

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

William Osler Quotes About Medical

The hardest conviction to get into the mind of a beginner is that the education upon which he is engaged is not a college course, not a medical course, but a life course, for which the work of a few years under teachers is but a preparation. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

It is not as if our homeopathic brothers are asleep: far from it, they are awake - many of them at any rate - to the importance of the scientific study of disease. — William Osler

Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents. — William Osler

Now of the difficulties bound up with the public in which we doctors work, I hesitate to speak in a mixed audience. Common sense in matters medical is rare, and is usually in inverse ratio to the degree of education. — William Osler

William Osler Quotes About Work

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. — William Osler

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

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. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

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. — 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. — William Osler

Throw away all ambition beyond that of doing the day's work well. The travelers on the road to success live in the present, heedless of taking thought for the morrow. Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your wildest ambition. — William Osler

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

It is strange how the memory of a man may float to posterity on what he would have himself regarded as the most trifling of his works. — William Osler

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

William Osler Quotes About Life

Be calm and strong and patient. Meet failure and disappointment with courage. Rise superior to the trials of life, and never give in to hopelessness or despair. In danger, in adversity, cling to your principles and ideals. Aequanimitas! — 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. — William Osler

The young physician starts life with 20 drugs for each disease, and the old physician ends life with one drug for 20 diseases. — 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. — William Osler

Laughter is the music of life. — William Osler

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it. — William Osler

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

There is no more potent antidote to the corroding influence of mammon than the presence in the community of a body of men devoted to science, living for investigation and caring nothing for the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. — William Osler

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

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

William Osler Famous Quotes And Sayings

Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability. — William Osler

No man is really happy or safe without a hobby. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

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

Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day absorb all your interest, energy and enthusiasm. The best preparation for tomorrow is to live today superbly well. — William Osler

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

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

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

Patients rarely die of the disease from which they suffer. Secondary or terminal infections are the real cause of death. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants. — William Osler

Humanity has but three great enemies: fever, famine, and war; of these by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever. — William Osler

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

In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable, and must be content with finding broken portions. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

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

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. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

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

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

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

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

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

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

In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs. — William Osler

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

Save the fleeting minute; learn gracefully to dodge the bore. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

Happiness lies in the absorption in some vocation which satisfies the soul. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

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

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. — William Osler

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

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. — William Osler

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

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

Gentlemen, I have a confession to make. Half of what we have taught you is in error, and furthermore we cannot tell you which half it is — William Osler

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

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

Failure to examine the throat is a glaring sin of omission, especially in children. One finger in the throat and one in the rectum makes a good diagnostician. — William Osler

Personally, I do not see in Canada it would be a feasible thing if any Ministry organized taking over both the Health and the Disease of the entire community... even in the most favourable circumstances... there would be that absence of competition and that sense of independence... I do not believe it would be good for the profession or good for the Public. — William Osler

Nothing is life is more wonderful than faith. — William Osler

Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today ... The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty. — William Osler

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

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

By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy - indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction. — William Osler

The librarian of today, and it will be true still more of the librarians of tomorrow, are not fiery dragons interposed between the people and the books. They are useful public servants, who manage libraries in the interest of the public . . . Many still think that a great reader, or a writer of books, will make an excellent librarian. This is pure fallacy. — William Osler

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

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

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. — William Osler

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. — William Osler

Study until twenty five, investigate until forty, profession until sixty, at which age I would have him retired on a double allowance. — William Osler

Life Lessons by William Osler

1. William Osler believed in the importance of hard work and dedication to achieve success. He also valued the importance of humility and compassion in one's life, which he demonstrated through his own work. Lastly, he advocated for the importance of education and knowledge, encouraging everyone to never stop learning.