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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.

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
World
Humans
Five
Effective
Take
Age
Twenty
Vitalizing
Done
Moving
Treasure
Subtract
Great
Science
Twenties
Treasures
Even
Action
Miss
Priceless
Work
Art
Achievement
Practically
Would
Today
Missing
Ages
Men
Human
Literature
Forty

More quotes by William Osler

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The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.
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
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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
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Happiness lies in the absorption in some vocation which satisfies the soul.
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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Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition.
William Osler
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The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and beget.
William Osler
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By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy-indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction.
William Osler
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The great minds, the great works transcend all limitations of time, of language, and of race, and the scholar can never feel initiated into the company of the elect until he can approach all of life's problems from the cosmopolitan standpoint.
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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Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.
William Osler
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Half of us are blind, few of us feel, and we are all deaf.
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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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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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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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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The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest.
William Osler
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The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.
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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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