Abraham Verghese Quotes, Greatness Quotes, Hands 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

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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She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life at stake.

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I'm a great believer in geography being destiny.

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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.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Dream Quotes , People Quotes

By visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not cure.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Home Quotes , Helping 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.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Judging Quotes

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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A rich man's faults are covered with money, but a surgeon's faults are covered with earth.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Men Quotes , Earth 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

My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Regret Quotes , Heart Quotes

What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it. 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; empathy can be replaced by cynicism.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , School Quotes , Sight Quotes

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

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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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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.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Son Quotes , Play 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.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Imagination 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

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. I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to become a physician. My intent wasn't to save the world as much as to heal myself. Few doctors will admit this, certainly not young ones, but subconsciously, in entering the profession, we must believe that ministering to others will heal our woundedness. And it can. but it can also deepen the wound.

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Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Believe Quotes , Doctors Quotes