Abraham Verghese Quotes, Teaching Quotes, Taught Quotes

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

6 years ago

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Teaching Quotes , Taught Quotes

Certainly when I got to medical school, I had role models of the kind of physicians I wanted to be. I had an uncle who, looking back, was probably not the most-educated physician around but he carried it off so well.

6 years ago

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Uncles Quotes , School Quotes

I think we learn from medicine everywhere that it is, at its heart, a human endeavor, requiring good science but also a limitless curiosity and interest in your fellow human being, and that the physician-patient relationship is key; all else follows from it.

6 years ago

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Heart Quotes , Thinking Quotes

For one who has an interest in the body as text, airports are treasure troves of information. It seems almost un-American to enjoy delays, and perhaps enjoy is not the best word, but certainly a delayed flight, if it does nothing else, allows one the opportunity to make prolonged observations about one's fellow travelers.

6 years ago

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Opportunity Quotes , Airports Quotes

In an emergency, what treatment is given by ear? Words of Comfort.

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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. If we are fortunate, we 'beat' the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having 'succumbed after a long battle.'

6 years ago

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Cancer Quotes , Taken Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Imagination Quotes

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. It's an eerie feeling, as if my old mentor is not just in the room, but in my shoes, using me as his mouthpiece.

6 years ago

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Teacher Quotes , Years Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Jobs Quotes , Relief Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Motivation Quotes , Believe Quotes

Being the first born gives you great patience.

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He had so many ways of climbing into the tree house in his head, escaping the madness below, and pulling the ladder up behind him.

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Be careful! Travel expands the mind and loosens the bowels.

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According to Shiva, life is in the end about fixing holes. Shiva didn't speak in metaphors. fixing holes is precisely what he did. Still, it's an apt metaphor for our profession. But there's another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides family. Sometimes this wound occurs at the moment of birth, sometimes it happens later. We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.

6 years ago

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

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No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.

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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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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Morning Quotes , Sight Quotes

What we are fighting isn't godlessness--this is the most godly country on earth. We aren't even fighting disease. Its poverty. Money for food, medicines... that helps. When we cannot cure or save a life, our patients can at least feel cared for. It should be a basic human right.

6 years ago

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Make something beautiful of your life.

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The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Omission Quotes , World Quotes