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; 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?
I was taking care of people my age who were dying. The constant feeling, hearing from them, was that life is transient and can end very quickly, so don't postpone your dreams.
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.
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.
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.
I believe in black holes. I believe that as the universe empties into nothingness, past and future will smack together in the last swirl around the drain.
A beautiful literary collection that tells of today's country doctor, somewhat removed from our romantic black-bag image of days gone by, but still fulfilling an essential need in caring for spread-out populations. At times, with today's advances in technology, medicine in rural America looks very like it does in America's cities, but the variety of practices is enormous. 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.
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. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can can play the 'Gloria'? No, not Bach's 'Gloria.' Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.