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

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

Advice is sought to confirm a position already taken.
—William Osler
Topics: Advice

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

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals—this alone is worth the struggle.
—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…
—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
Topics: Ambition

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

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

Care more for the individual patient than for the special features of the disease… . Put yourself in his place … The kindly word, the cheerful greeting, the sympathetic look—these the patient understands.
—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.
—William Osler

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

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.
—William Osler
Topics: Mistakes

Best possible way to prepare for tomorrow
is to concentrate all your intelligence,
on doing’s today’s work superbly today.
—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
Topics: Life and Living, Health

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
Topics: Apathy

Though a little one, the master-word (work) looms large in meaning. It is the open sesame to every mortal, the great equalizer in the world, the true philosopher’s stone which transmutes all the base metal of humanity into goal.
—William Osler
Topics: Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
Topics: Medicine

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

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
Topics: Doctors

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

Banish the future. Live only for the hour and its allotted work. 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.
—William Osler
Topics: The Present

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

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

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