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 VERGHESEBy visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not cure.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life at stake.
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If seems almost un-American to enjoy delays, and perhaps enjoy is not the best word, but certainly a delayed flight
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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.
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A discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me.
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I love to read poetry but I haven’t written anything that I’m willing to show anybody.
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It’s an eerie feeling, as if my old mentor is not just in the room, but in my shoes, using me as his mouthpiece.
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The most important innovation in medicine to come in the next 10 years: the power of the human hand.
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My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they’ll leave in people’s hearts.
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What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it.
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In America, we have always taken it as an article of faith that we ‘battle’ cancer; we attack it with knives, we poison it with chemotherapy or we blast it with radiation.
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I have been the apprentice, paid my dues, and have just become master of my ship. But when I look down, why do I see the ancient, tarred, mud-stained slippers that I buried at the start of the journey still stuck to my feet?
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I was taking care of people my age who were dying. The constant feeling, hearing from them, was that life is transient and can end very quickly, so don’t postpone your dreams.
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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.
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I think we learn from medicine everywhere that it is, at its heart, a human endeavor, requiring good science but also a limitless curiosity and interest in your fellow human being, and that the physician-patient relationship is key; all else follows from it.
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If we are fortunate, we ‘beat’ the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having ‘succumbed after a long battle.’
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Sandip Roy has broken new ground in this tale of the modern Indian family. A lovely read
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No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.
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Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward. It is only when you stop and look to the rear that you see the corpse caught under your wheel.
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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.
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We must believe that ministering to others will heal our woundedness. And it can. but it can also deepen the wound.
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What we are fighting isn’t godlessness–this is the most godly country on earth.
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The only way to know where you are is by where you have just been.
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I always wondered if the good people who send us bibles really think that hookworm and hunger are healed by scripture? Our patients are illiterate.
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The Country Doctor Revisited captures the trials and tribulations of medicine, but also the satisfaction and the extraordinary rewards that come to those who embrace such a practice.
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For one who has an interest in the body as text, airports are treasure troves of information.
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You live it forward, but understand it backward.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE