Ed Stapleton > Ed Stapleton's Quotes

“Reading old Gray?  That's right.  Physician's library just three books:  'Gray's Anatomy' and Bible and Shakespeare.  Study.  You may become great doctor.”
― Sinclair Lewis, SINCLAIR LEWIS PREMIUM COLLECTION Volume II. 5 NOVELS + 4 Short Stories

“An unusual problem developed when a case of smallpox was brought to the hospital. Smallpox was too contagious to be allowed on the wards. Its victims had to be specially isolated. But where? Osler drove the patient up to the mayor of Hamilton’s home, a sure way of getting action. Special accommodation was arranged in a secluded house. Osler visited the patient twice a day until he died, and then did an autopsy on the spot, helped by the German housekeeper.”
― Michael Bliss, William Osler: A Life in Medicine

“except for military lawyers and legal aid/public defenders, who reported the highest job satisfaction.106”
― Susan Swaim Daicoff, Lawyer, Know Thyself: A Psychological Analysis of Personality Strengths and Weaknesses

“Criminal lawyers reported greater job satisfaction than did litigators and those not specifying an area of practice.”
― Susan Swaim Daicoff, Lawyer, Know Thyself: A Psychological Analysis of Personality Strengths and Weaknesses

“Second-generation lawyers may fare better. Children of lawyers who followed in their parent’s footsteps were more satisfied than most lawyers.”
― Susan Swaim Daicoff, Lawyer, Know Thyself: A Psychological Analysis of Personality Strengths and Weaknesses

“Geopolitical and demographic forces are so rooted in the unchangeable that political action often generates little but noise.”
― Peter Zeihan, The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

“I mean no disrespect to the gentlemen of the bench, but it is no secret that our system of justice, praised throughout Europe for its severity and its swiftness, is a terrible and fearful thing, and no man, guilty or innocent, wishes to stand before it.”
― David Liss, A Conspiracy of Paper

“Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“For we are all killers, on land and on sea; Bonapartes and Sharks included.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Miracles prove nothing except to those whose faith is bought very cheap, sir.”
― Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union

“The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
― T.S. Eliot

“A note for physicians: if you listen carefully to what patients say, they will often tell you not only what is wrong with them but also what is wrong with you.”
― Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins

“Besides, the conflict is not really between royalty and democracy. It is between both and plutocracy, which, having destroyed the royal power by frank force under democratic pretexts, has bought and swallowed democracy.”
― Russell Kirk, Eliot and His Age: T. S. Eliot's Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century

“At a minimum it must involve renouncing any desire or ambition to become wealthy or famous; fostering vertical solidarity between rich and poor as well as horizontal solidarity between consumers and producers; rendering effective assistance to marginalized groups in society such as the poor and immigrants; a shared commitment to traditional values, particularly with respect to sex and marriage, as well as a recognition of the importance of families and children; opposition to abortion; an emphasis on environmental stewardship and caring for creation; and a commitment to nonviolence.”
― Solidarity Hall, Radically Catholic In the Age of Francis: An Anthology of Visions for the Future

“Since the gap between the rich countries and the poor can be removed, it will be. If we are shortsighted, inept, incapable either of good-will or enlightened self-interest, then it may be removed to the accompaniment of war and starvation: but removed it will be. The questions are, how, and by whom.”
― C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures

“What sort of soldier are you? she asked. Not much of one. Using his book, he tapped the triangular brown patch with its inset green circle sewn on his tunic shoulder. 2/7th Casualty Clearing Station. I’m a doctor. He”
― Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

“My only idea ever, Dorrigo had confessed, is to advance forward and charge the windmill. Taylor had laughed, but Dorrigo had meant it. It’s only our faith in illusions that makes life possible, Squizzy, he had explained, in as close to an explanation of himself as he ever offered. It’s believing in reality that does us in every time. He”
― Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

“He was a bad son, a bad husband and a bad king, but a gallant and splendid soldier.”
― John Man, Saladin: The Sultan Who Vanquished the Crusaders and Built an Islamic Empire

“The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant. —Salvador Dalí”
― Gabriel Wyner, Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It

“Danny the whole idea of proving that people weren’t rational felt a bit like proving that people didn’t have fur. Obviously people were not rational, in any meaningful sense of that term.”
― Michael Lewis, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

“Whether the lightning bewildered me and made me take a false turn, I cannot tell; for the hardest thing to understand, in intellectual as well as moral mistakes, is—how we came to go wrong.”
― George MacDonald, The Portent and Other Stories

“Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are.’ ”
― Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge . . . says Darwin in The Descent of Man, his study of the evolution of humans from our hairier ancestors.”
― Adam Rutherford, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes

“Nonetheless, to the extent that there is a favored theory in physics and philosophy, it is certainly eternalism.”
― Dean Buonomano, Your Brain is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time

“It took me quite a while to realize that my youthful excitability was right and my father’s wealth of experience was wrong; that there are things that cannot be dealt with by calm skepticism.”
― Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler: A Memoir

“As is true of most men who wield their power like a weapon, Conkling was widely feared, slavishly obeyed, and secretly despised.”
― Candice Millard, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President

“My hair is beginning to go. I’ll soon be glabrous.”
― Graham Greene, The Collected Novels Volume Five: A Burnt-Out Case, The Captain and the Enemy, The Comedians, and The Man Within