Customer Reviews

A Way of Life

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The book is the text of an address that Sir William Osler gave at Yale University in 1913. He recommends approaching life as a series of "day-tight compartments," which he likens to the water-tight compartments that keep a ship afloat. (Interesting analogy just a year after the Titanic sank.)

His point is that worrying about either the past or the future is a burden that does nothing but reduce your effectiveness. If you focus your attention on what you have to do today, then over time, a string of successful days will make for a successful life. He quotes Thomas Carlyle: "Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand."

Osler primarily attributes his own success not to talent or intelligence, but to good habits, consistently practiced, day after day after day. This is a small book filled with simple, eloquent wisdom that is every bit as applicable today as it was in 1913.

Dale Carnegie and Stephen Covey, to name two self-help authors, were quite impressed with Dr. Osler's plan for a happy, successful life, which is summed up by the maxim: "Live in day-tight compartments." Full of flowery classical references, Dr. Osler's speech to the Yale graduating class of 1913 remains pleasant and inspirational, and if you'd like to know just a little bit more about Osler than his physical sign of endocarditis, it makes a fun read.

It's a "charming little book," practically new-polished with the rough pumice stone (reading Ivy League commencement addresses makes me quote Catullus. So sue me) - and it's pretty, bound in tan vinyl. I really would take exception to the type face, though, a too-cute number called Goudy Mediæval. It looks like something an old lady fond of antimacassars would call 'elegant.'

Would make a super gift for a college - or med school - grad!

This tiny book is way overpriced. If you want to get the whole idea of the speech, buy Dale Carnegie's "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living", which is much cheaper and much more valuable.

He concludes with a moment with Walt Whitman who "never spoke to me much of his poems though occasionally he would make a quotation; but I remember late one summer afternoon as we sat in the window of his little house in Camden there passed a group of workmen whom he greeted in his usual way. And then he said: 'Ah, the glory of the day's work, whether with hand or brain! I have tried

To exalt the present and the real, To teach the average man the glory of his daily work or trade.'

Dr. Osler concludes: "In this way of life each one of you may learn to drive the straight furrow and so come to the true measure of a man."