Quotes by Cardiologists

A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.

Paul Dudley White

We can either change the complexities of life ... or develop ways that enable us to cope more effectively.

Herbert Benson

My idea of socialism is no state monopoly. There should be stress on the subjectivity of the human being. You need good material conditions, a high level of culture, much freedom and friendship. And it won't come today or tomorrow. It's a long and winding road

Marek Edelman

Indeed, this crisis was also spurred by the abandonment of professional ideals in the pursuit of profit that made managed care necessary in the first place.

Sandeep Jauhar

The wounded are instruments, singing pain.

Brendan Phibbs

In a dazzling vote of confidence for form over substance, our culture fawns over the fleetingness of being “in love” while discounting the importance of loving. (206)

Thomas Lewis

I am a fading phantasmagoria. Time has left me in partial glory."--Fidelis O Mkparu

Fidelis O Mkparu

Our friendship has survived betrayals and our ambitions. Even death is afraid to come between us. Welcome back to my life." ~ Fidelis O Mkparu, author of 'Love's Affliction' ‪#‎authors‬, ‪#‎friendship‬

Fidelis O Mkparu

The only mistake you can make is not asking for help.

Sandeep Jauhar

I am a fading phantasmagoria. Time has left me in partial glory.

Fidelis O Mkparu

Limbic pursuits sink slowly and steadily lower on America’s list of collective priorities. Top-ranking items remain the pursuit of wealth, physical beauty, youthful appearance, and the shifting, elusive markers of status. There are brief spasms of pleasure to be had at the end of those pursuits – the razor-thin delight of the latest purchase, the momentary glee of flaunting this promotion or that unnecessary trinket – pleasure here, but not contentment. Happiness is within range only for adroit people who give the slip to America’s values. These rebels will necessarily forgo exalted titles, glamorous friends, exotic vacations, washboard abs, designer everything – all the proud indicators of upward mobility – and in exchange, they may just get a chance at a decent life. (209)

Thomas Lewis

Advances in communication technology foster a false fantasy of togetherness by transmitting the impression of contact- phone calls, faxes, e-mail- without its substance. And when a relationship is ailing from frank time deprivation, both parties often aver that nothing can be done. Every activity they spend time on (besides each other) has been classified as indispensable: cleaning the house, catching the news, balancing the checkbook. (205)

Thomas Lewis

While genes are pivotal in establishing some aspects of emotionality, experience plays a central role in turning genes on and off. DNA is not the heart’s destiny; the genetic lottery may determine the cards in your deck, but experience deals the hand you can play. Scientists have proven, for example, that good mothering can override a disadvantageous temperament.(152)

Thomas Lewis

Everything a person is and everything he knows resides in the tangled thicket of his intertwined neurons. These fateful, tiny bridges number in the quadrillions, but they spring from just two sources: DNA and daily life. The genetic code calls some synapses into being, while experience engenders and modifies others.(148)

Thomas Lewis

Above all, man must learn once again what he is and why he was created.

Rama P. Coomaraswamy

The United States alone sports an inventive spectrum of psychotherapeutic sects and schools: Freudians, Jungians, Kleinians; narrative, interpersonal, transpersonal therapists; cognitive, behavioral, cognitive-behavioral practitioners; Kohutians Rogerians, Kernbergians; aficionados of control mastery, hypnotherapy, neurolingustic programming, eye movement desensitization- that list does not even complete the top twenty. The disparate doctrines of these proliferative, radiating divisions, often reach mutually exclusive conclusions about therapeutic propriety: talk about this, not that; answer questions, or don’t; sit facing the patient, next to the patient, behind the patient. Yet no approach has ever proven its method superior to any other. Strip away a therapist’s orientation, the journal he reads, the books on his shelves, the meetings he attends- the cognitive framework his rational mind demands – and what is left to define the psychotherapy he conducts?Himself. The person of the therapist is the converting catalyst, not his order or credo, not his spatial location in the room, not his exquisitely chosen words or denominational silences. So long as the rules of a therapeutic system do not hinder limbic transmission - a critical caveat - they remain inconsequential, neocortical distractions. The dispensable trappings of dogma may determine what a therapist thinks he is doing, what he talks about when he talks about therapy, but the agent of change is who he is. (186/7)

Thomas Lewis

Never ask me to reach for the moon when all I want is to hold your hand." -- Fidelis O Mkparu, author of 'Love's Affliction

Fidelis O Mkparu

Midnight sail and moonlight. I remember sunset, and gentle breeze. Leaving the city lights behind, and gazing at the moon. Mountains of clouds. Waves slapping our boat. It was easy to forget that love has no direction, or need for compass. Let it guide you to its destination. ~ Fidelis O Mkparu, 2016

Fidelis O Mkparu

When people have trouble with their emotions – a bout of anxiety or depression, say, or seasonal gloominess - they often want science to pinpoint an offending neurotransmitter in the way that a witness picks the perp out of a lineup. Is it excessive norepinephrine, too little dopamine, errant estrogen? The answer is apt to dissatisfy: no single suspect can be fingered with confidence because the question itself attributes a fallacious simplicity to the brain.(91)

Thomas Lewis

The emotional mind likewise transcends the facile and appealing dualism separating its psychological and biological aspects. Physical mechanisms produce one’s experience of the world. Experience, in turn, remodels the neurons whose chemoelectric messages create consciousness. Selecting one strand of that eternal braid and assigning it primacy is the height of capriciousness. (168)

Thomas Lewis

Being well regulated in relatedness is the deeply gratifying state that people seek ceaselessly in romance, religions, and cults; in husbands and wives, pets, softball teams, bowling leagues, and a thousand other features of human life driven by the thirst for sustaining affiliations. (157)

Thomas Lewis

But dividing the mind into “biological” and “psychological” is as fallacious as classifying light as a particle or a wave. The natural world makes no promise to align itself with preconceptions that humans find parsimonious or convenient. (167)

Thomas Lewis

LOVE is the most incendiary element ever known, once it sparks the heart, the flame is inextinguishable.

H.S. Rissam

Instead of fumbling with hot beakers andBunsen burners, I concentrated on the leisurely pursuit of fondling.

Fidelis O Mkparu

An outdoor café and your French beret are quick ways to my soul, but a good jazz is like standing next to my heart. Don't sail away without your sail-mate, because I've charted our course to a sunset paradise. ~ Fidelis O Mkparu (2016), author of 'Love's Affliction

Fidelis O Mkparu

We must convince each generation that they are transient passengers on this planet earth. It does not belong to them. They are not free to doom generations yet unborn. They are not at liberty to erase humanity's past nor dim its future.

Bernard Lown

A person cannot direct his emotional life in the way he bids his motor system to reach for a cup. He cannot will himself to want the right thing or to love the right person or to be happy after a disappointment, or even to be happy in happy times. People lack this capacity not through a deficiency of discipline but because the jurisdiction of will is limited to the latest brain and to those functions within its purview. Emotional life can be influenced, but it cannot be commanded.

Thomas Lewis