Abraham Verghese Quotes, Dream Quotes, People Quotes

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.

4 years ago

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Dream Quotes , People Quotes

The flip side of suicide is that it leaves a lingering question in the minds of the people who survived. Its like a cancer thats metastasized. The suicide is the cancer and the metastasis is all these people saying, Why? Why? Why?

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Suicide Quotes , Cancer Quotes

I'm a great believer in geography being destiny.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Destiny Quotes , Geography 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.

4 years ago

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Teacher Quotes , Years Quotes

What did it say when a man had fewer clothes than books?

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Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school - not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.

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In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Writing Quotes , Cutting Quotes

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.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Broken Quotes , Tasks Quotes

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?' '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.

4 years ago

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Spiritual Quotes , Jobs Quotes

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.

4 years ago

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Judging Quotes

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

4 years ago

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Blessed Quotes , Thinking 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.

4 years ago

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Country Quotes , Godly Quotes

She died chasing greatness and never saw it each time it was in her hand, so she kept seeking it elsewhere, but never understood the work required to get it or to keep it.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Greatness Quotes , Hands Quotes

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

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.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Believe Quotes , Past Quotes

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.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Thinking Quotes , People Quotes

Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion.

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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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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Jobs Quotes , Relief Quotes

She had always assumed that she would have years to sort out the meaning of life... As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Children Quotes , Years Quotes

Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Baptism Quotes , President Quotes