Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine, as perhaps it may be thought, the true poetry of life - the poetry of the commonplace, of the ordinary man, of the plain, toil-worn woman, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and their griefs. - Sir William Osler

Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses....Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert. 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. {a recollection of Osler's advice: Belkin BM, Neelon FA. The art of observation: William Osler and the method of Zadig. Ann Int Med 1992;116:863-6.} - Sir William Osler

Nothing is life is more wonderful than faith. - Sir William Osler

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." - Sir William Osler

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. - Sir William Osler

Gentlemen, - Farewell, and take with you into the struggle the watchword of the good old Roman - Aequanimitas. - Sir William Osler

It cannot be too often or too forcibly brought home to us that the hope of the profession is with the men who do its daily work in general practice. - Sir William Osler

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. - Sir William Osler

Beware of people who call you 'Doc.' They rarely pay their bills. - William Osler

To have striven, to have made an effort, to have been true to certain ideals -- this alone is worth the struggle. We are here to add what we can to, not to get what we can from, life. - William Osler

The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well. - William Osler