This is my life, I thought…I have excised the cancer from my past, cut it out; I have crossed the high plains, descended into the desert, traversed oceans, and planted my feet in new soil
ABRAHAM VERGHESEI always wondered if the good people who send us bibles really think that hookworm and hunger are healed by scripture? Our patients are illiterate.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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?
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
We’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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
If ‘ecstasy’ meant the sudden intrusion of the sacred into the ordinary, then it had just happened to me.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Why is my leg broken on the ski trip and not anyone else’s?’ And I think that medicine has done a terrible job of addressing that spiritual violation.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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 -
I had an uncle who, looking back, was probably not the most-educated physician around but he carried it off so well.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
No matter what ailed you, you went to see the barber surgeon who wound up cupping you, bleeding you, purging you.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
That’s the funny thing about America–the blessed thing. As many people as there are to hold you back, there are angels whose humanity makes up for all the others.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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.
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 -
We aren’t even fighting disease. Its poverty. Money for food, medicines… that helps.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE