…The virtue of hope entails four core elements: a sound apprehension of the good, a clear appreciation of the barriers to that good, a forward-looking orientation in the face of uncertainty, and an ability to spur direct effort and action to bring the good about.
"A man would deserve to be called insane and senseless if there were nothing that he feared, not even an earthquake nor a deluge, as is said to be the case with the Celts.”
"Learned and leisurely hospitality is the only antidote to the stance of deadly cleverness that is acquired in the professional pursuit of objectively secured knowledge. I remain certain that the quest for truth cannot thrive outside the nourishment of mutual trust flowering into a commitment to friendship"
"Of course," he said to himself, as though a logical, continuous, and clear chain of reasoning had brought him to an indubitable conclusion. In reality this "of course," that seemed convincing to him, was simply the result of exactly the same circle of memories and images through which he had passed ten times already during the last hour—memories of happiness lost forever. There was the same conception of the senselessness of everything to come in life, the same consciousness of humiliation. Even the sequence of these images and emotions was the same.
“All men by nature desire to know.”
“Compassion is embedded in a personal dynamic relationship. It is definable in terms of the interaction of two persons, not solely of one or the other.”
“Devotion is an act of the will to the effect that man surrenders himself readily to the service of God.”
“Doctors and nurses are pressured to process patients quickly rather than empathically engage with them… In this system, a good doctor or nurse is one that follows instructions rather than one that uses their judgment and initiative; one that deals quickly with the physiological aspect of disease, rather than someone who considers patients holistically and engages with them empathetically.”
“The strong cannot be brave. Only the weak can be brave; and yet … only those who are brave can be trusted … to be strong.”
“To trust and entrust is to become vulnerable and dependent on the goodwill and motivations of those we trust.”
“What drives the utility of feedback is not whether it's positive or negative, it's whether it focuses on the task or on the self. So, if I tell you that your work is terrible, you're going to get defensive. If I tell you that your work is great, you're going to get complacent. If I tell you, ‘here's the specific thing that I liked about your work,’ you're going to try to learn to repeat that. And if I tell you, ‘here's the thing I didn't like,’ you're going to try to see if you can fix it.”
An anachronistic division of the human condition into what is medical (having to do with the body) and what is nonmedical (the remainder) has given medicine too narrow a notion of its calling.
Briefly, the ends of medicine are ultimately the restoration or improvement of health and, more proximately, to heal, that is, to cure illness and disease or, when this is not possible, to care for and help the patient to live with residual pain, discomfort, or disability.
But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.
compassion encapsulates attentiveness and sensitivity to social signals of distress
compassion encapsulates attentiveness and sensitivity to social signals of distress
Compassion from the Latin words com (together) and pati (to suffer)
Compassion is “The Stuff of Healing”
Death is still a fearful, frightening happening, and the fear of death is a universal fear even if we think we have mastered it on many levels.
Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.
If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.
Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good.
He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.
Hope is the power to be cheerful in situations that we know to be desperate.
Human identity is primarily, even if not only, bodily and therefore animal identity and it is by reference to that identity that the continuities of our relationships to others are partly defined.
I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing.
I will use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment.
If we excel in anything, it is in our capacity for translating idealism into action.
Importantly, theological virtues are not exclusive to a theological worldview; they deal fundamentally with issues of transcendence and ultimate meaning, especially in allowing one to seek the good of others rather than exclusively the good of oneself.
In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.
it has been shown that compassion training increased attention to images depicting human suffering compared with neutral images
It is important to name hope in this way, not as a rose-colored optimism but as an eyes-open expectation of something good and worth fighting for, even if (and especially when) it is not guaranteed.
Leading with compassion is not necessarily predicated on empathy. Anyone can lead with compassion, but not everyone is stirred by empathy. And that’s OK.
Man, what are you talking about? Me in chains? You may fetter my leg but my will, not even Zeus himself can overpower.
Order is a unity of many elements systematically referred to each other. These must be different from one another but they must be in a possible relation to each other and in a real order also existent.
Our bodies exist for us. Better, they are us, but as visible.
Patients felt that compassion alleviated their suffering, enhanced overall well-being, and positively augmented the quality of care they received from their HCPs by allaying distress and enhancing their relationship with their HCPs
Prudence, properly construed, is an indispensable virtue of the medical life, essential to the telos of medicine – a right and good healing action for a particular patient – and essential as well to the telos of the physician qua human being, the life of fulfillment and flourishing.
Self-compassion entails a balanced, mindful response to distress that neither stifles and avoids nor amplifies and ruminates on uncomfortable emotions.
The object of hope is a future good, difficult but possible to obtain.
The technical is not just the machinery. The technical is a disposition to life.
To live without hope is to cease to live.
Treat a man as he appears to be and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he already were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.
True compassion simultaneously addresses the physical, interpersonal, moral, and intellectual finitude of the whole person, binding the wounds and expressing genuine concern.
Whatever performs the operations proper to a thing, is that thing; wherefore that which performs the operations of a man is man.
When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is." Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy.
But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics.
I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother's knee at the mere mention of it. No; the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud.
While intellectual virtues deal with the mind (wisdom, judgment, and knowledge) and moral virtues deal with the will (courage, honesty, and fortitude), theological virtues deal with one’s soul or essence.
