Quotes from Sir William Osler

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

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.

My second fixed idea is the uselessness of men above sixty years of age, and the incalculable benefit it would be in commercial, political, and in professional life, if as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age.

To study the phenomenon of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

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

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

Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.

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

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

The doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.

Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in you humdrum routine, the true poetry of life - the poetry of the commonplace, of the ordinary person, of the plain, toilworn, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and griefs.

It is astonishing with how little reading a doctor can practice medicine, but is not astonishing how badly he may do it.

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.

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.

The clean tongue, the clear head and the bright eye are birth rights of each day

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