Quote

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.

Abraham Verghese

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Abraham Verghese
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Never
Greatness
Time
Died
Saws
Understood
Chasing
Hand
Elsewhere
Keep
Required
Hands
Kept
Work
Seeking

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...guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.
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Geography is destiny.
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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.
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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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He was teaching me how to die, just as he'd taught me how to live.
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The only way to know where you are is by where you have just been.
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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.
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The most important innovation in medicine to come in the next 10 years: the power of the human hand.
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Tell us please, what treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?....I met his gaze and I did not blink. Words of comfort, I said to my father.
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We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds.
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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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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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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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Yesterday misspent can't be recall'd Vanity makes beauty contemptible Wisdom is more valuable than riches.
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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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There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed-
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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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It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.
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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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When you win, you often lose, that's just a fact. There's no currency to straighten a warped spirit, or open a closed heart, a selfish heart.
Abraham Verghese