Taciturnity Quotes (2 quotes)
No special virtues are needed [other than those of an ordinary woman, are needed for a nurse], but the circumstances demand the exercise of them in a special way. There are seven, the mystic seven, your lamps to lighten at … tact, tidiness, taciturnity, sympathy, gentleness, cheerfulness, all linked together by charity.
In Harvey Cushing, The Life of Sir William Osler (1929), Vol. 2, 361. From a letter replying when asked for his opinion whether “special virtues are needed for a nurse,” to which he referred in a commencement address (7 May 1913) to the Johns Hopkins nurses, Johns Hopkins Hospital Nurses' Alumnae Magazine, (Jul 1913), xii, 72-81, as cited in above book.
Things cannot always go your way. Learn to accept in silence the minor aggravations, cultivate the gift of taciturnity and consume your own smoke with an extra draught of hard work, so that those about you may not be annoyed with the dust and soot of your complaints.
In Harvey Cushing, The Life of Sir William Osler (1926), Vol. 1, 619. 'The Master-Word in Medicine' was written for a festival (1903) for inauguration of new laboratories at the University of Toronto. It was published as No. 18 in Aequanimitas and other Addresses (1904, 1906), 385.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
