Quote

If 'ecstasy' meant the sudden intrusion of the sacred into the ordinary, then it had just happened to me.

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
Happened
Intrusion
Ecstasy
Sudden
Meant
Sacred
Ordinary

More quotes by Abraham Verghese

Image
How we treat the least of our brethren,... that's the measure of this country.
Abraham Verghese
Image
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.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school - not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.
Abraham Verghese
Image
My sense is that the wonderful technology that we have to visualize the inside of the body often leaves physicians feeling that the exam is a waste of time and so they may shortchange the ritual.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Though I am fascinated by knowledge, I am even more fascinated by wisdom.
Abraham Verghese
Image
The most important innovation in medicine to come in the next 10 years: the power of the human hand.
Abraham Verghese
Image
The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?... Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223... And pray, why would this number interest us? It is the only number that describes itself when you read it, 'One zero, two ones, three twos, two threes'.
Abraham Verghese
Image
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.
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
What treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?
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
No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.
Abraham Verghese
Image
We're losing a ritual. We're losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.
Abraham Verghese
Image
The only way to know where you are is by where you have just been.
Abraham Verghese
Image
That's the funny thing about America--the blessed thing. As many people as there are to hold you back, there are angels whose humanity makes up for all the others. I've had my share of angels.
Abraham Verghese
Image
She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life at stake.
Abraham Verghese
Image
He was teaching me how to die, just as he'd taught me how to live.
Abraham Verghese
Image
What did it say when a man had fewer clothes than books?
Abraham Verghese