William Osler Quotes

Quotes about:

• Listen to your patient, he is telling you the diagnosis.

  William Osler

  Diagnosis, Patient

  204 Copy quote

• The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.

  William Osler

  Practice Of Medicine, Physicians, Disease

  225 Copy quote

• The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine.

  William Osler

  Health, Medicine, Disease

  201 Copy quote

• 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

  Health, Practice Of Medicine, Important

  180 Copy quote

• Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.

  William Osler

  Art, Science, Medicine

  Sir William Osler, Mark E. Silverman, T. J. Murray, Charles S. Bryan, American College of Physicians--American Society of Internal Medicine (2003). “The Quotable Osler”, p.46, ACP Press

  142 Copy quote

• 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. Often the best part of your work will have nothing to do with potions and powders, but with the exercise of an influence of the strong upon the weak, of the righteous upon the wicked, of the wise upon the foolish.

  William Osler

  Wise, Art, Strong

  Sir William Osler (1963). “Aequanimitas, and Other Papers that Have Stood the Test of Time. [With an Introd. by Paul Dudley White]”

  205 Copy quote

• 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

  Errors, Gentleman, Half

  172 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Practice Of Medicine, Sea

  159 Copy quote

• 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

  Life, Strong, Disappointment

  202 Copy quote

• 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

  Special, Cheerful, Looks

  185 Copy quote

• One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.

  William Osler

  Education, Healing, Health

  In Aphorisms from his Bedside Teachings (1961) p. 105

  120 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Practice Of Medicine, Disease

  152 Copy quote

• 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

  Past, Preparation, Each Day

  53 Copy quote

• 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.

  William Osler

  Art, Practice Of Medicine, Calling

  Sir William Osler (2001). “Osler's "a Way of Life" and Other Addresses, with Commentary and Annotations”, p.13, Duke University Press

  171 Copy quote

• 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.

  William Osler

  Philosophy, Practice, Smell

  91 Copy quote

• 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

  Teacher, Educational, College

  Sir William Osler (2001). “Osler's "a Way of Life" and Other Addresses, with Commentary and Annotations”, p.339, Duke University Press

  165 Copy quote

• 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

  Practice Of Medicine, Drug, Physicians

  44 Copy quote

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

  William Osler

  Art, Medicine, Might

  20 Copy quote

• The practice of medicine will be very much as you make it - to one a worry, a care, a perpetual annoyance; to another, a daily job and a life of as much happiness and usefulness as can well fall to the lot of man, because it is a life of self-sacrifice and of countless opportunities to comfort and help the weak-hearted, and to raise up those that fall.

  William Osler

  Jobs, Fall, Sacrifice

  130 Copy quote

• There are three classes of human beings: men, women and women physicians.

  William Osler

  Men, Class, Physicians

  "Women in Medicine". Book by Carol Lopate and Josiah Macy, Jr., 1968.

  106 Copy quote

• Patients should have rest, food, fresh air, and exercise - the quadrangle of health.

  William Osler

  Exercise, Air, Should Have

  Sir William Osler: Aphorisms Ch. 3

  22 Copy quote

• The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.

  William Osler

  Good Life, Vision, Experience

  William Osler (1927). “Aequanimitas”, p.61, Ravenio Books

  73 Copy quote

• We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life.

  William Osler

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Sir William Osler (2001). “Osler's "a Way of Life" and Other Addresses, with Commentary and Annotations”, p.301, Duke University Press

  123 Copy quote

• Every patient you see is a lesson in much more than the malady from which he suffers.

  William Osler

  Suffering, Lessons, Patient

  Sir William Osler, Mark E. Silverman, T. J. Murray, Charles S. Bryan, American College of Physicians--American Society of Internal Medicine (2003). “The Quotable Osler”, p.190, ACP Press

  52 Copy quote

• The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

  William Osler

  Spiritual, Atheist, Learning

  Montreal Medical Journal Sept. 1902, p. 696

  39 Copy quote

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