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  • Abraham Verghese Quotes   84
  • 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.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Baptism Quotes , President Quotes
  • We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients. And then by the end of the third year they completely lose that ability, partly because we teach them the specialized language of medicine.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Years Quotes , Medicine 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.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Spiritual Quotes , Jobs Quotes
  • 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.'
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Cancer Quotes , Taken 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.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Opportunity Quotes , Airports Quotes
  • 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?
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Cancer Quotes , Ocean Quotes