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

Abraham Verghese

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Abraham Verghese
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Intrusion
Ecstasy
Sudden
Meant
Sacred
Ordinary
Happened

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Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.
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The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.
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He was teaching me how to die, just as he'd taught me how to live.
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I love to read poetry but I haven't written anything that I'm willing to show anybody.
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The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.
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There are moments as a teacher when I'm conscious that I'm trotting out the same exact phrase my professor used with me years ago. It's an eerie feeling, as if my old mentor is not just in the room, but in my shoes, using me as his mouthpiece.
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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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Though I am fascinated by knowledge, I am even more fascinated by wisdom.
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I was angry with myself because I still loved her, or at least I loved that dream of our togetherness. My feelings were unreasonable, irrational, and I couldn't change them. That hurt.
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Your job is to preserve yourself, not to descend into their hole. It's a relief when you arrive at this place, the point of absurdity, because then you are free, you owe them nothing.
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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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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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