Quotes by Physicians - Page 34

I feel that I am merely an agent, giving you some keys that have been given to me to pass on to you. These keys are to unlock doors out of your present prison. Doors opening onto new vistas. Doors beyond where you are now.
John C. Lilly
Four Characters in Consciousness—How does it go on? We notice immediately four important characters in the process, of which it shall be the duty of the present chapter to treat in a general way:1) Every 'state' tends to be part of a personal consciousness. 2) Within each personal consciousness states are always changing. 3) Each personal consciousness is sensibly continuous.4) It is interested in some parts of its object to the exclusion of others, and welcomes or rejects—chooses from among them, in a word—all the while.
William James
Superorganism. A biologist coined that word for our great African ant colonies, claiming that consciousness and intelligence resided not in the individual ant but in the collective ant mind. The trail of red taillights stretching to the horizon as day broke around us made me think of that term. Order and purpose must reside somewhere other than within each vehicle. That morning I heard the hum, the respiration of the superorganism. It's a sound the new immigrant hears but not for long. By the time I learned to say "6-inch Number 7 on rye with Swiss hold the lettuce," the sound, too, was gone. It became part of the what the mind would label silence. You were subsumed into the superorganism.
Abraham Verghese
My experience is what I agree to attend to.
William James
It may be that no religious reconciliation with the absolute totality of things is possible. Some evils, indeed, are ministerial to higher forms of good; but it may be that there are forms of evil so extreme as to enter into no good system whatsoever…
William James
Religion became the evil of our society when it started to teach resentment and hate instead of unconditional love and wisdom.
Debasish Mridha
The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.
Abraham Verghese
Evil doesn't die. It never dies. It just takes on a new face, a new name. Just because we've been touched by it once, it doesn't mean we're immune to ever being hurt again. Lightning can strike twice.
Tess Gerritsen
...a world where a sparrow's fate and that of a man can be decided in the blink of a cat's eye, such is the true measure of time.
Abraham Verghese
But something-luck, fate, conspiracy, whatever you want to call it-has thrown us together." He leaned forward, his gaze never leaving her face. "Of all the crazy places in the world, here we are, at the same table, in the same dirty Vietnamese cafe. And..." He paused, his brown eyes warm, his crooked smile a fleeting glimmer in his seriousness. "I'm beginning to think it's time we gave in and followed this crazy script. Time we followed our instincts.
Tess Gerritsen
Anna Petrovna: I am beginning to think, doctor, that fate has cheated me. The majority of people, who maybe are no better than I am, are happy and pay nothing for that happiness. I have paid for everything, absolutely everything! And how dearly! Why have I paid such terrible interest?
Anton Chekhov
The future was with Fate. The present was our own.~ The Poison Belt
Arthur Conan Doyle
Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The most tragic consequence of our criticism of a man is to block his way to humiliation and grace, precisely to drive him into the mechanisms of self justification and into his faults instead of freeing him from them. For him, our voice drowns the voice of God.
Paul Tournier
A man makes himself hard and inflexible in order to escape his guiltiness. The strange paradox present on every page of the Gospels and which we can verify any day, is that it is not guilt which is the obstacle to grace, as moralism supposes. On the contrary, it is the repression of guilt, self-justification, genuine self-righteousness and smugness which is the obstacle.
Paul Tournier
Of course love is never earned. It is a grace we give one another. Anything we need to earn is only approval.
Rachel Naomi Remen
The big blank spaces in the map are all being filled in, and there's no room for romance anywhere.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is the adventure and uncertainties of the journey that makes life so beautiful and interesting.
Debasish Mridha
Evenings were peaceful, smoke settling in the quiet air to soften the dusk, lights twinkling on the ridge we would camp on tomorrow, clouds dimming the outline of our pass for the day after. Growing excitement lured my thoughts again and again to the West Ridge….There was loneliness, too, as the sun set, but only rarely now did doubts return. Then I felt sinkingly as if my whole life lay behind me. Once on the mountain I knew (or trusted) that this would give way to total absorption with the task at hand. But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find what I really sought was something I had left behind.
Thomas F. Hornbein
We have got into the habit of admiring colossal bandits, whose opulence is revered by the entire world, yet whose existence, once we stop to examine it, proves to be one long crime repeated ad infinitum, but those same bandits are heaped with glory, honors, and power, their crimes are hallowed by the law of the land, whereas, as far back in history as the eye can see—and history, as you know is my business—everything conspires to show that a venial theft, especially of inglorious foodstuffs, such as bread crusts, ham, or cheese, unfailingly subjects its perpetrator to irreparable opprobrium, the categoric condemnation of the community, major punishment, automatic dishonor, and inexpiable shame, and this for two reasons, first because the perpetrator of such an offense is usually poor, which in itself connotes basic unworthiness, and secondly because his act implies, as it were, a tacit reproach to the community. A poor man’s theft is seen as a malicious attempt at individual redress . . . Where would we be? Note accordingly that in all countries the penalties for petty theft are extremely severe, not only as a means of defending society, but also as a stern admonition to the unfortunate to know their place, stick to their caste, and behave themselves, joyfully resigned to go on dying of hunger and misery down through the centuries forever and ever …
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The fastest and cheapest way to eradicate poverty is not by giving food but by giving hope, love, and education.
Debasish Mridha
A poor man in this world can be done to death in two main ways, by the absolute indifference of his fellows in peacetime or by their homicidal mania when there's a war.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
There would be nothing but darkness, same darkness as everywhere else, an enormous darkness that swallowed up the road two steps ahead of us, only a little sliver of road about the size of your tongue was spared by the darkness.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Darkness is a place that encourages us to seek light.
Debasish Mridha
Remember, you are the light of love in the darkness.
Debasish Mridha
Nixon’s offences had been so long in the past, so much part of a different era that he now seemed like some lovable but bigoted uncle you tolerated at Christmas and Thanksgiving.
Jacob M. Appel
Raney flipped the book over and looked at the jacket cover, realized it was one of the books Bo had left at her house the first summer he'd been in Quentin--one of the few he hadn't read. "It's a novel, Grandpa. ENDER'S GAME by a man named Card. Orson Card," and she continued reading through the first page until he interrupted her again. "I just got out of the hospital--I don't want to hear a story about people having operations." "Well, what DO you want? LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE? "At least I'd learn something useful.
cassella carol
Choose old people for enemies. They die. You win.
Jacob M. Appel
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.
Abraham Verghese
My father, for whose skills as a surgeon I have the deepest respect, says, "The operation with the best outcome is the one you decide not to do." Knowing when not to operate, knowing when I am in over my head, knowing when to call for the assistance of a surgeon of my father's caliber--that kind of talent, that kind of "brilliance," goes unheralded.
Abraham Verghese
How you react to the issue, IS the issue.
Habib Sadeghi
Regardless of where I have been, I choose to step into my loving.
Habib Sadeghi
If God is love, and nothing imperfect can exist in the presence of God; then healing is simply the process of bringing love to the places within us that are hurting.
Habib Sadeghi
Nature does not know of the challenges that face us. No matter what money difficulties we have, the sun will continue to shine. If it is health challenges we face, the grass will continue to grow. If a relationship is causing us grief, the ocean breeze will continue to blow. Taking a breathe away from our challenges, and recognizing the nature around us, can help open the door to our Divine nature and allow the healing to begin.
Charles F. Glassman
getting angry and harbouring bitterness doesn’t help anybody, least of all the angry bitter person.
Jane Wilson-Howarth
What remains in diseases after the crisis is apt to produce relapses.
Hippocrates
Now, we shall be able to judge the extent of the spiritual undernourishment if we look at all these movements from another angle: not as errors but rather as attempts to find healing. I use this comparison: For a long time medical men combated fever as if it itself constituted the illness. Medicine today inclines rather to respect it, not only as a symptom of the disease but of the struggle of the organism against the disease. True, it is this struggle which makes it ill, and yet this very struggle is also the proof of its vitality and is the necessary way to healing.
Paul Tournier
The doctor of the future will be oneself.
Albert Schweitzer
Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you - all of the expectations, all of the beliefs - and becoming who you are. (in Bill Moyers' Healing and the Mind)
Rachel Naomi Remen
Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment, a strength on which to build a life. Silence is a place of great power and healing.
Rachel Naomi Remen
Wounding and healing are not opposites. They're part of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. It is our loneliness that helps us to to find other people or to even know they're alone with an illness. I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself I used to be ashamed of.
Rachel Naomi Remen
Opening the door to self-respect is a key of happiness.
Charles F. Glassman
For God's sake, have some self-respect and do not run off at the mouth if your brain is out to lunch.
Anton Chekhov
Anxiety, and the physical symptoms it causes, is merely fog along the path of independence and discovery.
Charles F. Glassman
Fear and anxiety many times indicates that we are moving in a positive direction, out of the safe confines of our comfort zone, and in the direction of our true purpose.
Charles F. Glassman
As soon as you see the need to change your partner to save the relationship, it is then time to end it.
Charles F. Glassman
As you see the need to change your partner to save the relationship, it is then time to end it.
Charles F. Glassman
If your comfort zone is misery, it's time to get uncomfortable.
Charles F. Glassman
A sure way to go broke is to spend your outer riches before you have saved enough of your inner ones.
Charles F. Glassman
Before searching for happiness in others, we must first find it in ourselves.
Charles F. Glassman
True self-confidence never needs to degrade the confidence of others in order to grow and survive. If it does, it’s not confidence at all…it’s ego.
Charles F. Glassman
True self-confidence never needs to degrade the confidence of others in order to grow. If it does, it’s not confidence at all…it’s ego.
Charles F. Glassman
It takes a rare person to care the same or more about you than themselves. So, until you find that person, please look after yourself.
Charles F. Glassman
We hurt ourselves much more than anyone can hurt us just by believing the stupid thoughts we get sometimes.
Charles F. Glassman
When a man is a mystery to himself you can hardly call him mysterious.
Abraham Verghese
I have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson," said he. "When your round is a short one you walk, and when it is a long one you use a hansom. As I perceive that your boots, although used, are by no means dirty, I cannot doubt that you are at present busy enough to justify the hansom." "Excellent!" I cried. "Elementary," said he. "It is one of those instances where the reasoner can produce an effect which seems remarkable to his neighbour, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction. The same may be said, my dear fellow, for the effect of some of these little sketches of yours, which is entirely meretricious, depending as it does upon your retaining in your own hands some factors in the problem which are never imparted to the reader.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious because it presents no new or special features from which deductions may be drawn. This murder would have been infinitely more difficult to unravel had the body of the victim been simply found lying in the roadway without any of those outré and sensational accompaniments which have rendered it remarkable. These strange details, far from making the case more difficult, have really had the effect of making it less so.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.
Rachel Naomi Remen
Some friend of yours, perhaps?""Except yourself I have none," he answered. "I do not encourage visitors.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Death is the midwife of very great things.... It brings about the birth and rebirth of forms a thousand times improved. This is the highest mystery of God.
Paracelsus