Richard Selzer Quotes

• Surgery is the red flower that blooms among the leaves and thorns that are the rest of medicine.

  Richard Selzer

  Flower, Technology, Medicine

  Richard Selzer (1996). “Letters to a Young Doctor”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• And If the surgeon is like a poet, then the scars you have made on countless bodies are like verses into the fashioning of which you have poured your soul.

  Richard Selzer

  Soul, Body, Scar

  Richard Selzer (1996). “Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery”, p.94, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The surgeon knows all the parts of the brain but he does not know his patient's dreams.

  Richard Selzer

  Dream, Brain, Doe

  Mortal Lessons p. 21. Chatto & Windus, London (1981)

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• You cannot separate passion from pathology any more than you can separate a person's spirit from his body.

  Richard Selzer

  Passion, Body, Spirit

  Richard Selzer (1996). “Letters to a Young Doctor”, p.11, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• You do not die all at once. Some tissues live on for minutes, even hours, giving still their little cellular shrieks, molecular echoes of the agony of the whole corpus.

  Richard Selzer

  Echoes, Agony, Giving

  Richard Selzer (1996). “Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery”, p.136, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Autopsies give us the facts but not the truth.

  Richard Selzer

  Giving, Facts, Autopsy

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• A minor operation is one that is done on someone else

  Richard Selzer

  Doctors, Done, Operations

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• Each is like a river that leaves behind its name and shape, the whole course of its path , to vanish into the vast sea of God.

  Richard Selzer

  Life, Sea, Names

  Richard Selzer (1987). “Taking the World in for Repairs”, Penguin Group USA

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• The heart is pure theater throbbing in its cage palpably as any nightingale.

  Richard Selzer

  Heart, Cages, Theater

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• The liver, that great maroon snail: No wave of emotion sweeps it. Neither music nor mathematics gives it pause in its appointed tasks.

  Richard Selzer

  Giving, Tasks, Emotion

  Richard Selzer (1996). “Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery”, p.64, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I contemplate the body, dead and diseased as well as alive and healthy.

  Richard Selzer

  Healthy, Alive, Body

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• Cutting for Stone is nothing short of masterful -a riveting tale of love, medicine, and the complex dynamic of twin brothers. It is beautifully conceived and written. The settings are wonderfully pictorial. There is no doubt in my mind that Cutting for Stone will endure in the permanent literature of our time.

  Richard Selzer

  Brother, Cutting, Medicine

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• Thus is the fruit of the Earth taken, its flesh torn. Thus is it given over standing, toward rot. It is the principle of corruption, the death of what is, the birth of what is to be. You are wine.

  Richard Selzer

  Taken, Wine, Principles

  Richard Selzer (1996). “Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery”, p.130, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The Country Doctor Revisited is a fine achievement. Purporting to be an overview of the practice of medicine in rural areas, it is a splendid portrait of the practice of medicine everywhere. The special conditions that prevail in the countryside as opposed to the cities are examined, and each of these is illustrated by a case history that is as compelling as it is informative. It is presented in a highly readable form that would be accessible to the general public as well as to the deliverers of health care. I recommend it most highly.

  Richard Selzer

  Country, Doctors, Practice Of Medicine

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