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In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable and must be content with broken portions.

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
Seeking
Broken
Truth
Unattainable
Must
Portions
Aim
Absolutes
Absolute
Content

More quotes by William Osler

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We doctors have always been a simple trusting folk. Did we not believe Galen implicitly for 1500 years and Hippocrates for more than 2000?
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A man is sane morally at thirty, rich mentally at forty, wise spiritually at fifty-or never!
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Nothing is life is more wonderful than faith.
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Shed, as you do your garments, your daily sins, whether of omission or commission, and you will wake a free man, with a new life.
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The extraordinary development of modern science may be her undoing. Specialism, now a necessity, has fragmented the specialities themselves in a way that makes the outlook hazardous. The workers lose all sense of proportion in a maze of minutiae.
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Without egotism and full of feeling, laughter is the music of life.
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The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and beget.
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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.
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Happiness lies in the absorption in some vocation which satisfies the soul.
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To know just what has do be done, then to do it, comprises the whole philosophy of practical life.
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Work is the open sesame of every portal, the great equalizer in the world, the true philosopher's stone which transmutes all the base metal of humanity into gold.
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He who knows syphilis knows medicine
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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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No dreams, no visions, no delicious fantasies, no castles in the air, with which, as the old song so truly says, hearts are broken, heads are turned.
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Shut out all of your past except that which will help you weather your tomorrows.
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What is patience but an equanimity which enables you to rise superior to the trials of life.
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Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents.
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There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases a man must be familiar with their manifestations in many organs.
William Osler
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Fed on the dry husks of facts, the human heart has a hidden want which science cannot supply.
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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.
William Osler