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

William Osler

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William Osler
Age: 70 †
Born: 1849
Born: July 12
Died: 1919
Died: December 29
Physician
Professor
Sir William Osler
Sir William
WO
Medical
Medicine
Science
Art
Probability
Uncertainty

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Acquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility.
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The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
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To do today's work well and not to bother about tomorrow is the secret of accomplishment
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Courage and cheerfulness will not only carry you over the rough places in life, but will enable you to bring comfort and help to the weak-hearted and will console you in the sad hours.
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One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.
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He who knows syphilis knows medicine
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Save the fleeting minute learn gracefully to dodge the bore.
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Perhaps no sin so easily besets us as a sense of self-satisfied superiority to others.
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In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable and must be content with broken portions.
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Every patient you see is a lesson in much more than the malady from which he suffers.
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A library represents the mind of its collector, fancies and foibles, strengths and weaknesses, prejudices and preferences.
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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.
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Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents.
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The higher the standard of education in a profession, the less marked will be the charlatanism.
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The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine.
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Humanity has but three great enemies: fever, famine, and war of these by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.
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I desire no other epitaph - no hurry about it, I may say - than the statement that I taught medical students in the wards, as I regard this as by far the most useful and important work I have been called upon to do.
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The most essential thing for happiness is the gift of friendship.
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The great majority gave no signs one way or the other like birth, their death was a sleep and a forgetting.
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The teacher's life should have three periods, study until twenty-five, investigation until forty, profession until sixty, at which age I would have him retired on a double allowance.
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