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 OslerI 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.
William OslerIn seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable and must be content with broken portions.
William OslerPatients rarely die of the disease from which they suffer. Secondary or terminal infections are the real cause of death.
William OslerWe are all dietetic sinners; only a small percent of what we eat nourishes us; the balance goes to waste and loss of energy.
William OslerThe 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 OslerThe 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.
William OslerHe who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all.
William OslerAcquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility.
William OslerThat man can interrogate as well as observe nature was a lesson slowly learned in his evolution.
William OslerTo know just what has do be done, then to do it, comprises the whole philosophy of practical life.
William OslerThe 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 OslerNo bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher.
William OslerThe 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 OslerA man is sane morally at thirty, rich mentally at forty, wise spiritually at fifty-or never!
William OslerVariability 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 OslerThe desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.
William OslerEven 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 OslerIn 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 OslerOne of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.
William OslerThe good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.
William OslerThe young physician starts life with 20 drugs for each disease, and the old physician ends life with one drug for 20 diseases.
William OslerWe doctors have always been a simple trusting folk. Did we not believe Galen implicitly for 1500 years and Hippocrates for more than 2000?
William OslerTo have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals - this alone is worth the struggle.
William OslerThere 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 OslerA library represents the mind of its collector, fancies and foibles, strengths and weaknesses, prejudices and preferences.
William OslerConservatism 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 OslerIf it were not for the great variability among individuals, medicine might as well be a science, not an art.
William OslerThink 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 OslerShed, as you do your garments, your daily sins, whether of omission or commission, and you will wake a free man, with a new life.
William OslerThe philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.
William OslerIt is much simpler to buy books than to read them and easier to read them than to absorb their contents.
William OslerThe practice of medicine will be very much as you make it - to one a worry, a care, a perpetual annoyance; to another, a daily job and a life of as much happiness and usefulness as can well fall to the lot of man, because it is a life of self-sacrifice and of countless opportunities to comfort and help the weak-hearted, and to raise up those that fall.
William Osler