Abraham Verghese Quotes

The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you

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.

Now, as to the problem of how much health care costs and how we reform health care … it is another story altogether.

Certainly when I got to medical school, I had role models of the kind of physicians I wanted to be.

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.

Wasn’t that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted

And then by the end of the third year they completely lose that ability, partly because we teach them the specialized language of medicine.

How we treat the least of our brethren,… that’s the measure of this country.

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.

He was teaching me how to die, just as he’d taught me how to live.