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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
Absolutes
Absolute
Content
Seeking
Broken
Truth
Unattainable
Must
Portions
Aim

More quotes by William Osler

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Conservatism and old fogeyism are totally different things the motto of one is Prove all things and hold fast that which is good and of the other Prove nothing but hold fast that which is old.
William Osler
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In the Mortality Bills, pneumonia is an easy second, to tuberculosis indeed in many cities the death-rate is now higher and it has become, to use the phrase of Bunyan 'the captain of the men of death.'
William Osler
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Nature, the great Moloch, which exacts a frightful tax of human blood, sparing neither young nor old taking the child from the cradle, the mother from her babe, and the father from the family.
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There are three classes of human beings: men, women and women physicians.
William Osler
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The Scots are the backbone of Canada. They are all right in their three vital parts - head, heart and haggis.
William Osler
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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
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The future belongs to Science. More and more she will control the destinies of the nations. Already she has them in her crucible and on her balances.
William Osler
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Shut out all of your past except that which will help you weather your tomorrows.
William Osler
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No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher.
William Osler
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The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and beget.
William Osler
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What is patience but an equanimity which enables you to rise superior to the trials of life.
William Osler
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Things cannot always go your way. Learn to accept in silence the minor aggravations, cultivate the gift of taciturnity and consume your own smoke with an extra draught of hard work, so that those about you may not be annoyed with the dust and soot of your complaints.
William Osler
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The higher the standard of education in a profession, the less marked will be the charlatanism.
William Osler
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To it, more than to anything else, I owe whatever success I have had - to this power of settling down to the day's work and trying to do it to the best of one's ability, and letting the future take care of itself.
William Osler
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The very first step toward success in any occupation is to become interested in it. Locke put this in a very happy way when he said, give a pupil a relish of knowledge and you put life into his work.
William Osler
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Happiness lies in the absorption in some vocation which satisfies the soul.
William Osler
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Now of the difficulties bound up with the public in which we doctors work, I hesitate to speak in a mixed audience. Common sense in matters medical is rare, and is usually in inverse ratio to the degree of education.
William Osler
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No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.
William Osler
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To have a group of cloistered clinicians away completely from the broad current of professional life would be bad for teacher and worse for student. The primary work of a professor of medicine in a medical school is in the wards, teaching his pupils how to deal with patients and their diseases.
William Osler
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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