What we are fighting isn’t godlessness–this is the most godly country on earth.
ABRAHAM VERGHESEI think we can see how blessed we are in America to have access to the kind of health care we do if we are insured, and even if uninsured, how there is a safety net.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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What treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?
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 -
We must believe that ministering to others will heal our woundedness. And it can. but it can also deepen the wound.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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 -
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 -
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 -
Pray tell us, what’s your favorite number?”… “Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223″… “
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
If seems almost un-American to enjoy delays, and perhaps enjoy is not the best word, but certainly a delayed flight
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
He was teaching me how to die, just as he’d taught me how to live.
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 -
Pray tell us, what’s your favorite number?
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
We aren’t even fighting disease. Its poverty. Money for food, medicines… that helps.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Yesterday misspent can’t be recall’d Vanity makes beauty contemptible Wisdom is more valuable than riches.
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 -
The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
I love to read poetry but I haven’t written anything that I’m willing to show anybody.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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.
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 -
How we treat the least of our brethren,… that’s the measure of this country.
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 -
When a man is a mystery to himself you can hardly call him mysterious.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE