“To hope under the most extreme circumstances is an act of defiance that permits a person to live his life on his own terms. It is part of the human spirit to endure and give a miracle a chance to h...”

“Hope can be imagined as a domino effect, a chain reaction, each increment making the next increase more feasible... There are moments of fear and doubt that can deflate it.”

“I had learned that every patient has the right to hope, despite long odds, and it was my role to help nurture that hope.”

“... omniscience about life and death is not within a physician's purview. A doctor should never write off a person a priori.”

“It took more than science to make hope real.”

“Hope is one of our central emotions, but we are often at a loss when asked to define it. Many of us confuse hope with optimism, a prevailing attitude that "things turn out for the best." But hope d...”

“Mother Nature is relentless and forward. When we do not live according to her laws she rewards us with disease.”

“In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.”

“They are very good odds. And I know that my scientific brain believes them, if not my panic-ridden, maternal one. Those odds should have made a difference to my reaction. I should have been able to...”

“A doctor must work eighteen hours a day and seven days a week. If you cannot console yourself to this, get out of the profession.”

“In the words of the philosopher Sceptum, the founder of my profession: am I going to get paid for this?”

“Do not work primarily for money; do your duty to patients first and let the money follow; our life is short, we don't live twice; the whirlwind will pick up the leaves and spin them, but then it wi...”

“The disease of the soul is both more common and more deadly than the disease of the body. Just as medicine is the art devoted to healing the body, so philosophy is the art devoted to healing the so...”

“Popular medicine and popular morality belong together and ought not to be evaluated so differently as they still are: both are the most dangerous pseudo-sciences.”

“One of the essential qualities of the clinician is interest in humanity, for the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient.”