She died chasing greatness and never saw it each time it was in her hand, so she kept seeking it elsewhere, but never understood the work required to get it or to keep it.
ABRAHAM VERGHESEI 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.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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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.
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When you win, you often lose, that’s just a fact. There’s no currency to straighten a warped spirit, or open a closed heart, a selfish heart.
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My sense is that the wonderful technology that we have to visualize the inside of the body often leaves physicians feeling that the exam is a waste of time and so they may shortchange the ritual.
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If you keep saying your slippers aren’t yours, then you’ll die searching, you’ll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more.
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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.
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Make something beautiful of your life.
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By visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not cure.
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Certainly when I got to medical school, I had role models of the kind of physicians I wanted to be.
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I’ve had my share of angels.
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I believe in black holes. I believe that as the universe empties into nothingness, past and future will smack together in the last swirl around the drain.
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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. .
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Empathy can be replaced by cynicism.
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I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient; it’s only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.
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There are moments as a teacher when I’m conscious that I’m trotting out the same exact phrase my professor used with me years ago.
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We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we forget, is the common lot.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE






