A liberal education may be had at a very slight cost of time and money. Well filled though the day be with appointed tasks, to make the best possible use of your one or of your ten talents, rest not satisfied with this professional training, but try to get the education, if not of a scholar, at least of a gentleman. Before going to sleep read for half an hour, and in the morning have a book open on your dressing table. You will be surprised to find how much can be accomplished in the course of a year. I have put down a list of ten books which you may make close friends. There are many others; studied carefully in your student days these will help in the inner education of which I speak.

I. Old and New Testament.
II. Shakespeare.
III. Montaigne.
IV. Plutarch’s Lives.
V. Marcus Aurelius.
VI. Epictetus.
VII. Religio Medici.
VIII. Don Quixote.
IX. Emerson.
X. Oliver Wendell Holmes—Breakfast-Table Series.

Excerpt from Aequanimitas with Other Addresses by Sir William Osler, Bt., MD, FRS. Published in 1947 by The Blakiston Company, Philadelphia.

Highlighted in Frontispiece Winter 2012 – Volume 4, Issue 1

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