I had an uncle who, looking back, was probably not the most-educated physician around but he carried it off so well.
ABRAHAM VERGHESEWe must believe that ministering to others will heal our woundedness. And it can. but it can also deepen the wound.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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He was teaching me how to die, just as he’d taught me how to live.
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I 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.
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Your job is to preserve yourself, not to descend into their hole. It’s a relief when you arrive at this place, the point of absurdity, because then you are free, you owe them nothing.
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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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Empathy can be replaced by cynicism.
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The process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialised language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve;.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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How we treat the least of our brethren,… that’s the measure of this country.
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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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I think America is really in denial about the degree to which residents, particularly foreign medical graduates, man the county hospitals of this country, and but for their services, I’m not sure how exactly we could manage.
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The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.
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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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The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you
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Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion.
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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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If ‘ecstasy’ meant the sudden intrusion of the sacred into the ordinary, then it had just happened to me.
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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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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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I’m a great believer in geography being destiny.
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We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We’ll leave much unfinished for the next generation.
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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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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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A discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE