Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by William Osler (Canadian Physician)

William Osler (1849–1919) was a renowned Canadian physician and author. He is frequently described as the “Father of Modern Medicine” for his impact on not only medical education but also the practice of medicine. He is the author of the first modern textbook of medicine. His Principles and Practice of Medicine, first published in 1892, went through seventeen editions and became the model for all subsequent medical textbooks.

During his time, Osler was regarded as the most celebrated physician in the history of the world. Harvey Cushing, his student, and first biographer wrote of Osler, “Everyone fortunate enough to have been brought in contact with him shared from the beginning in the universal feeling of devotion.”

Born in a remote part of Ontario known as Bond Head, Osler spent a year at Trinity College in Ontario before deciding on a career in medicine. He attended the Toronto Medical College for two years and in 1872 received his doctor of medicine degree from McGill University in Montreal. He pursued postgraduate studies in London, Berlin, and Vienna. Upon returning to Canada in 1874, he joined the medical faculty at McGill.

From 1888, as one of the four founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital, Osler revolutionized the medical curriculum of the United States and Canada, synthesizing the best of the English and German systems. He created the first residency program for specialty training of physicians. He also pioneered the practice of bringing third- and fourth-year medical students into the wards for bedside rounds where he and other physicians demonstrated the art of physical examination.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by William Osler

What is the student but a lover courting a fickle mistress who ever eludes his grasp?
William Osler
Topics: Learning

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it.
William Osler
Topics: Life and Living

It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has.
William Osler

To know just what has do be done, then to do it, comprises the whole philosophy of practical life.
William Osler
Topics: Decisions, Procrastination, Inaction, Getting Going

The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it.
William Osler
Topics: Vision, Secrets of Success, Success

Nothing in life is more wonderful than faith-the one great moving force which we can neither weigh in the balance nor test in the crucible.
William Osler
Topics: Faith

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

The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today’s work superbly well.
William Osler
Topics: Work, Future, Work Ethics, Excellence, Planning, Preparation

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
Topics: Acceptance, Complaining

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
William Osler
Topics: Ignorance

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

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…
William Osler

Shed, as you do your garments, your daily sins, whether of omission or co-mmission, and you will wake a free man, with a new life.
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
Topics: Observation

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

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

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
Topics: Ambition

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

The only way to treat the common cold is with contempt.
William Osler
Topics: Medicine

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
Topics: Truth

We are all dietetic sinners; only a small percent of what we eat nourishes us; the balance goes to waste and loss of energy.
William Osler
Topics: Eating

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

The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease
William Osler

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

Best possible way to prepare for tomorrow
is to concentrate all your intelligence,
on doing’s today’s work superbly today.
William Osler

We are here not to get all we can out of life for ourselves, but to try to make the lives of others happier.
William Osler
Topics: Happiness

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

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

The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest….
William Osler

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