Quote

We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.

Abraham Verghese

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Abraham Verghese
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Leave
Unfinished
Next
Fixing
Much
Task
Tasks
Lifetime
Generation
Generations
Broken

More quotes by Abraham Verghese

Image
You live it forward, but understand it backward.
Abraham Verghese
Image
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.'
Abraham Verghese
Image
The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.
Abraham Verghese
Image
We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted
Abraham Verghese
Image
Be careful! Travel expands the mind and loosens the bowels.
Abraham Verghese
Image
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.
Abraham Verghese
Image
There is that lovely feeling of one reader telling another, 'You must read this.' I've always wanted to write a book like that, with the sense that you are contributing to the discourse in middle America, a discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me.
Abraham Verghese
Image
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.
Abraham Verghese
Image
There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed-
Abraham Verghese
Image
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.
Abraham Verghese
Image
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
Image
Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?
Abraham Verghese
Image
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.
Abraham Verghese
Image
I'm a great believer in geography being destiny.
Abraham Verghese
Image
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.
Abraham Verghese
Image
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.
Abraham Verghese
Image
To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Geography is destiny.
Abraham Verghese