God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by–by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don’t think God cares what doctrine we embrace.
ABRAHAM VERGHESEWe’re losing a ritual. We’re losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
When I use the word ‘healing’, by that I mean that every disease has a physical element that we’re very good at handling, but there’s always a sense of the violation. ‘Why me?’ ‘
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Another day in paradise’ was his inevitable pronouncement when he settled his head on his pillow. Now I understand what that meant: the uneventful day was a precious gift.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
You are an instrument of God. Don’t leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. .
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
It is the task of a lifetime. We’ll leave much unfinished for the next generation.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
He had so many ways of climbing into the tree house in his head, escaping the madness below, and pulling the ladder up behind him.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
It was all I had, all I’ve ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Tell us please, what treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?”….I met his gaze and I did not blink. “Words of comfort,” I said to my father.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Literature is a beautiful way of keeping the imagination alive, of visiting worlds you would never have time to in your day-to-day life. It keeps you abreast of a wider spectrum of human activities.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school – not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don’t.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
When I wake to the gift of yet another sunrise my first thought is to rouse him and say, I owe you the sight of morning.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Why settle for ‘Three Blind Mice’ when you can can play the ‘Gloria’? No, not Bach’s ‘Gloria.’ Yours! Your ‘Gloria’ lives within you.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE