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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESEMake something beautiful of your life.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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Life for the Italians was what it was, no more and no less, an interlude between meals
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To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.
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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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We aren’t even fighting disease. Its poverty. Money for food, medicines… that helps.
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The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.
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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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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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Though I am fascinated by knowledge, I am even more fascinated by wisdom.
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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.
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Still, it’s an apt metaphor for our profession. But there’s another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides family.
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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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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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My intent wasn’t to save the world as much as to heal myself. Few doctors will admit this, certainly not young ones, but subconsciously, in entering the profession
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I had an uncle who, looking back, was probably not the most-educated physician around but he carried it off so well.
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…guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE