William Osler Quotations | Page 2

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing is life is more wonderful than faith.

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."

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.

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.

A library represents the mind of its collector, fancies and foibles, strengths and weaknesses, prejudices and preferences.

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

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

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

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

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

That man can interrogate as well as observe nature was a lesson slowly learned in his evolution.

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.

Breathes there a man with soul so dead that it does not glow at the thought of what the men of his blood have done and suffered to make his country what it is? There is room, plenty of room, for proper pride of land and birth. What I inveigh against is a cursed spirit of intolerance, conceived in distrust and bred in ignorance, that makes the mental attitude perennially antagonistic, even bitterly antagonistic, to everything foreign, that subordinates everywhere the race to the nation, forgetting the higher claims of human brotherhood.

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

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.

Too many men slip early out of the habit of studious reading, and yet that is essential.

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.

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

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

Faith is a most precious commodity, without which we should be very badly off.

In the Mortality Bills, pneumonia is an easy second, to tuberculosis; indeed in many cities the death-rate is now higher and it has become, to use the phrase of Bunyan 'the captain of the men of death.'

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

Laughter is the music of life.

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.

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.

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

Engrossed late and soon in professional cares, getting and spending, you may may so lay waste your powers that you may find, too late, with hearts given away, that t here is no place in your habit-stricken souls for those gentler influences which make your life worth living.

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

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.

No man is really happy or safe without a hobby ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Save the fleeting minute; learn gracefully to dodge the bore.

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.

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.

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

The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and beget.