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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
Absolute
Content
Seeking
Broken
Truth
Unattainable
Must
Portions
Aim
Absolutes

More quotes by William Osler

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Patients should have rest, food, fresh air, and exercise - the quadrangle of health.
William Osler
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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
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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
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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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It is much simpler to buy books than to read them and easier to read them than to absorb their contents.
William Osler
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Without faith a man can do nothing with it all things are possible.
William Osler
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Every patient you see is a lesson in much more than the malady from which he suffers.
William Osler
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To confess ignorance is often wiser than to beat about the bush with a hypothetical diagnosis.
William Osler
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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.
William Osler
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For the general practitioner a well-used library is one of the few correctives of the premature senility which is so apt to take him.
William Osler
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Patients rarely die of the disease from which they suffer. Secondary or terminal infections are the real cause of death.
William Osler
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Even in populous districts, the practice of medicine is a lonely road which winds up-hill all the way and a man may easily go astray and never reach the Delectable Mountains unless he early finds those shepherd guides of whom Bunyan tells, Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere.
William Osler
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Laughter is the music of life.
William Osler
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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.
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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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
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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
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A man is sane morally at thirty, rich mentally at forty, wise spiritually at fifty-or never!
William Osler
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Fed on the dry husks of facts, the human heart has a hidden want which science cannot supply.
William Osler
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Think not of the amount to be accomplished, the difficulties to be overcome, or the end to be attained, but set earnestly at the little task at your elbow, letting that be sufficient for the day.
William Osler