Jerome Groopman Quotes

Omniscience about life and death is not within a physician's purview. A doctor should never write off a person a priori. ~ Jerome Groopman

It took more than science to make hope real. ~ Jerome Groopman

Statistics cannot substitute for the human being before you; statistics embody averages, not individuals. ~ Jerome Groopman

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 differs from optimism. Hope does not arise from being told to "Think Positively," or from hearing an overly rosy forecast. Hope, unlike optimism, is rooted in unalloyed reality. Although there is no uniform definition of hope, I found on that seemed to capture what my patients had taught me. Hope is the elevating feeling we experience when we see - in the mind's eye- a path to a better future. Hope acknowledges the significant obstacles and deep pitfalls along that path. True hope has no room for delusion. ~ Jerome Groopman

I feel that I have to do everything better just to be judged as okay. It is something I wish I could let go of. It's something that I wish just wasn't there. ~ Jerome Groopman

Certainly the primary imperative of a physician is to be skilled in medical science, but if he or she does not probe a patient's soul, then the doctor's care is given without caring, and part of the sacred mission of healing is missing. ~ Jerome Groopman

This is the vicious cycle. When we feel pain from our physical debility, that pain amplifies our sense of hopelessness; the less hopeful we feel, the fewer endorphins and enkephalins and the more CCK we release. The more pain we experience due to these neurochemicals, the less able we are to feel hope. ~ Jerome Groopman

Hope, true hope, has proved as important as any medication I might prescribe or any procedure I might perform. ~ Jerome Groopman

Help, then, is the ballast that keeps us steady, that recognizes where along the path are the dangers and pitfalls that can throw us off; hope tempers fear so we can recognize dangers and then bypass or endure them. ~ Jerome Groopman

Also risks of taking statins. To be sure, seeing a person in front of you has a greater impact than hearing about side effects secondhand. But even secondhand stories affect the way people think. We have also observed in ~ Jerome Groopman

Researchers are learning that a change in mind-set has the power to alter neurochemistry. Belief and expectation - the key elements of hope - can block pain by releasing the brain's endorphins and enkephalins, mimicking the effects of morphine. ~ Jerome Groopman

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

This skewing of physicians' thinking leads to poor care. What is remarkable is not merely the consequences of a doctor's negative emotions. Despite research showing that most patients pickup on the physician's negativity, few of them understand its effect on their medical care and rarely change doctors because of it. ~ Jerome Groopman

Many years before when I had serious back pain from a sports injury, the surgeons said they would explore my spine and "figure it out." Out of frustration I had impulsively opted for the procedure. They ended up fusing the vertebrae. It left me debilitated. In hindsight, I blamed myself more than the surgeons. I had pressed them for a solution when in fact none was apparent because the cause of the pain was obscure. ~ Jerome Groopman

Hope is the elevating feeling we experience when we see - in the mind's eye - a path to a better future. ~ Jerome Groopman

The cerebral processing of that visceral input as a signal of death was accurate. Without the kinds of therapy that had been developed over the decades, this cancer would have been fatal. Hope, then, is constructed not just from rational deliberation, from the conscious weighing of information; it arises as an amalgam of thought and feeling, the feelings created in part by neural input from the organs and tissues. ~ Jerome Groopman

To taking an action that could make life even worse. Psychologists call this "loss aversion." Research in cognitive ~ Jerome Groopman

Even when there is no longer hope for the body, there is always hope for the soul. ~ Jerome Groopman

While it is a convenient construct to divide hope into a cognitive and an affective component, the two are tightly coupled. Feelings and emotions mold logical thinking and eliberate decision making...True hope, then, is not initiated and sustained by completely erasing the emotions, like fear and anxiety, that are often its greatest obstacles. An equilibrium needs to be established, integrating the genuine threats and dangers that exist into the proposed strategies to subsume them. So when a person tells me that he doesn't want to know about the problems and risks, that he believes ignorance is necessary for bliss, I acknowledge that yes, yunbridled fear can shatter a fragile sense of hope. But I assert that he still needs to know a minimum amount of information about his diagnosis and the course of his problem; otherwise his hope is false, and false hope is an insubstantial foundation upon which to stand and weather the vicissitudes of difficult circumstances. It is only true hope that carries its companions, courage and resilience, through. False hope causes them to ultimately fall by the wayside as reality intervenes and overpowers illusion. ~ Jerome Groopman

A book is an experiment, and as with all experiments, there is a sense of uncertainty about how it will turn out. ~ Jerome Groopman

The freedom of patient speech is necessary if the doctor is to get clues about the medical enigma before him. If the patient is inhibited, or cut off prematurely, or constrained into one path of discussion, then the doctor may not be told something vital. Observers have noted that, on average, physicians interrupt patients within eighteen seconds of when they begin telling their story. ~ Jerome Groopman

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. ~ Jerome Groopman

Make knowledge of the Scripture your love ... Live with them, meditate on them, make them the sole object of your knowledge and inquiries. ~ St. Jerome

And why is Saint Paula a Saint? She dumps her four kids at a convent. She runs off to Hajira with Saint Jerome. How is that a saint?
You've got shitty mothers all over America who would love to dump their kids and travel. ~ Amy Bloom

Put a hat on the soldier. The soldiers don't need to have an egg for breakfast, unless you want to buy breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for the next eighteen years. Let's have fun, but keep it safe. ~ Eric Jerome Dickey

Before Summer Rain


Suddenly, from all the green around you,
something-you don't know what-has disappeared;
you feel it creeping closer to the window,
in total silence. From the nearby wood

you hear the urgent whistling of a plover,
reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:
so much solitude and passion come
from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour

will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide
away from us, cautiously, as though
they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.

And reflected on the faded tapestries now;
the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long
childhood hours when you were so afraid ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

'Suttree' is a fat one, a book with rude, startling power and a flood of talk. Much of it takes place on the Tennessee River, and Cormac McCarthy, who has written 'The Orchard Keeper' and other novels, gives us a sense of river life that reads like a doomed 'Huckleberry Finn.' ~ Jerome Charyn

One we discover how to appreciate the timeless values in our daily experiences, we can enjoy the best things in life. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

Our only competition in the theater is boredom, because if I'm bored with a play, if I'm revolted by a play on stage, with the Broadway prices, especially today, I'm going to walk out and not come back and pay that price again. ~ Jerome Lawrence

Begin now what you will be hereafter. ~ St. Jerome

She's a smart woman. I love that. Intelligence is a wonderful and powerful aphrodisiac. To me, it enhances beauty, makes an ordinary woman look like a movie star. ~ Eric Jerome Dickey

The argument has long been made that we humans are by nature compassionate and empathic despite the occasional streak of meanness, but torrents of bad news throughout history have contradicted that claim, and little sound science has backed it. But try this thought experiment. Imagine the number of opportunities people around the world today might have to commit an antisocial act, from rape or murder to simple rudeness and dishonesty. Make that number the bottom of a fraction. Now for the top value you put the number of such antisocial acts that will actually occur today.

That ratio of potential to enacted meanness holds at close to zero any day of the year. And if for the top value you put the number of benevolent acts performed in a given day, the ratio of kindness to cruelty will always be positive. (The news, however, comes to us as though that ratio was reversed.)

Harvard's Jerome Kagan proposes this mental exercise to make a simple point about human nature: the sum total of goodness vastly outweighs that of meanness. 'Although humans inherit a biological bias that permits them to feel anger, jealousy, selfishness and envy, and to be rude, aggressive or violent,' Kagan notes, 'they inherit an even stronger biological bias for kindness, compassion, cooperation, love and nurture – especially toward those in need.' This inbuilt ethical sense, he adds, 'is a biological feature of our species. ~ Daniel Goleman

Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble longings and of noble strivings! And oh, these wise, clever days when we know that money is the only prize worth striving for, when we believe in nothing else but meanness and lies, when we care for no living creature but ourselves! ~ Jerome K. Jerome

We drink one another's health and spoil our own. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

I like cats ... When I meet a cat, I say, "Poor Pussy!" and stoop down and tickle the side of its head; and the cat sticks up its tail in a rigid, cast-iron manner, arches its back, and wipes its nose up against my trousers; and all is gentleness and peace. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

Once desire was turned on, combustion gave it a life of its own. Once it was turned on it became a raging wildfire, uncontrollable and uncontainable, the type of conflagration that had to be allowed to burn itself out. ~ Eric Jerome Dickey

Opportunities flit by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

A full moon is a flashlight so everyone can see your drama! ~ Eric Jerome Dickey

When evening fell and the grey twilight spread its dusky robe upon the waters, she stretched her arms out to the silent river that had known her sorrow and her joy. And the old river had taken her into its gentle arms, and had laid her weary head upon its bosom, and had hushed away the pain. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

To ignore Scripture is to ignore Christ. ~ St. Jerome

It would be nice if nobody ever had to make anybody do anything. ~ Jerome Lawrence

Believe me, a highly strung brain such as yours demands occasional relaxation from the strain of domestic surroundings. Forget for a little while that children want music lessons, and boots, and bicycles, with tincture of rhubarb three times a day; forget there are such things in life as cooks, and house decorators, and next-door dogs, and butchers' bills. Go away to some green corner of the earth, where all is new and strange to you, where your over-wrought mind will gather peace and fresh ideas. Go away for a space and give me time to miss you, and to reflect upon your goodness and virtue, which, continually present with me, I may, human-like, be apt to forget, as one, through use, grows indifferent to the blessing of the sun and the beauty of the moon. Go away, and come back refreshed in mind and body, a brighter, better man - if that be possible - than when you went away. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

hate is a virus, revenge its only cure! ~ Eric Jerome Dickey

He does love prophesying a misfortune, does the average British ghost. Send him out to prognosticate trouble to somebody, and he is happy. Let him force his way into a peaceful home, and turn the whole house upside down by foretelling a funeral, or predicting a bankruptcy, or hinting at a coming disgrace, or some other terrible disaster, about which nobody in their senses would want to know sooner than they could possible help, and the prior knowledge of which can serve no useful purpose whatsoever, and he feels that he is combining duty with pleasure. He would never forgive himself if anybody in his family had a trouble and he had not been there for a couple of months beforehand, doing silly tricks on the lawn or balancing himself on somebody's bedrail.

("Introduction" to TOLD AFTER SUPPER) ~ Jerome K. Jerome

Getting an education at MIT is like taking a drink from a fire hose. ~ Jerome Wiesner

I opened the bag and packed the boots in; and then, just as I was going to close it, a horrible idea occurred to me. Had I packed my tooth-brush? I don't know how it is, but I never do know whether I've packed my tooth-brush.
My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I'm travelling, and makes my life a misery. I dream that I haven't packed it, and wake up in a cold perspiration, and get out of bed and hunt for it. And, in the morning, I pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get it, and it is always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I repack and forget it, and have to rush upstairs for it at the last moment and carry it to the railway station, wrapped up in my pocket-handkerchief. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

as for exercise! why, you'll get more exercise, sitting down on that ship, than you would turning somersaults on dry land. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

Far too often, to be charged with a crime is to become something less than human. ~ Jerome F. Buting

Harris said: If you never try a new thing, how can you tell what it's like? It's men such as you that hamper the world's progress. Think of the man who first tried German sausage! ~ Jerome K. Jerome

Tonight I was stealing the time of another woman. ~ Eric Jerome Dickey

For hardly any of the ecclesiastical writers have handled the Divine Scriptures more ineptly and absurdly than Origen and Jerome. ~ Martin Luther

Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to temptation! ~ Eric Jerome Dickey

Neither Britain, a land fertile in tyrants, nor the people of Ireland, knew Moses and the prophets. ~ St. Jerome

Among all nations there should be vast temples raised where people might worship in silence and listen to it, for it is the voice of God ~ Jerome K. Jerome

In Germany to-day one hears a good deal concerning Socialism, but it is a Socialism that would only be despotism under another name. Individualism makes no appeal to the German voter. He is willing, nay, anxious to be controlled and regulated in all things.

'You get yourself born,' says the German Government to the German citizen, 'we do the rest. Indoors and out of doors, in sickness and in health, in pleasure and in work, we will tell you what to do, and we will see to it that you do it. Don't you worry yourself anything.'

And the German doesn't.

[published in 1900] ~ Jerome K. Jerome

We need to conceive of ourselves as "agents" impelled by self-generated intentions. ~ Jerome Bruner

Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best. ~ St. Jerome

Lady Mary nodded and smiled sadly. "There is nothing in this life that is certain but death," she stated pensively.
"And tariffs, Mama," added Jerome. At that Lady Mary laughed. ~ Jocelyn Murray

Action without a name, a 'who' attached to it, is meaningless. ~ St. Jerome

Strictly speaking, one should not even rightly compare virginity to marriage because you cannot make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil. ~ St. Jerome

Trojan is a no-blow-job- condom. The flavor is horrible. Someone should come up with a barbecue-flavored condom for the hood. But greedy bitches would probably start chewing dicks. ~ Eric Jerome Dickey

It seems to me so shocking to see the precious hours of a man's life - the priceless moments that will never come back to him again - being wasted in a mere brutish sleep. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.
You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work has almost become a passion with me: my study is so full of it now, that there is hardly an inch of room for any more. I shall have to throw out a wing soon.
And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn't a finger-mark on it. I take a great pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do.
But, though I crave for work, I still like to be fair. I do not ask for more than my proper share. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

I write music to both the situations and the lyrics in plays. ~ Jerome Kern

Since the time of St. Jerome, it was mandatory for any kind of scholar or thinker to spend time out in the desert in solitude. It's no coincidence that the desert has been a major part of the visionary or mystical experience from the beginning of time. ~ Bill Viola

jokes are used to hide the truth! ~ Eric Jerome Dickey

Compared with my brother, I always felt like Richard III, some clever humpbacked thing who surpassed him in the end. He was the one who read books, but I became the writer. He painted and drew, but I was the one who got accepted by the High School of Music and Art. ~ Jerome Charyn