Vital Signs Quotes

When patients are admitted to hospital for elective surgery or non-urgent conditions, their vital signs are only monitored every four hours, unless they have been identified as being at high risk of deterioration. ~ Chris Toumazou

Still other winters average their rain months into a long, cold season of relentless sog and little color. At such times, looking out through the spattered glass, I feel, deep in some spongy, unignorable organ, that we will have floods, and damage, and losses; we will have gray till the cows come home, and there will be no more cows
they'll all just rot, drown, or simply wash away. We will have rain until the very hills dissolve. And when the dirty cotton swaddling of fog finally falls away, we will all be desperate for vital signs. ~ Robert Michael Pyle

Where today people surf the Web and check their e-mail on their cell phones, tomorrow they will be checking their vital signs. ~ Eric Topol

There she was, up on that bed pushing and pushing just as they'd practiced. She was dilated and the tension had been building to this moment all day. He had never been so glad to be a writer. It meant that he could be here and he could be at home, helping her as much as he liked after the baby was born. Wendy was sweating and bleary-eyed, focusing so very hard on the movement of her baby down the birth canal that it took her a moment to hear what anyone said to her. The pain was clearly unimaginable and he wished he could have taken some of it from her, but she'd insisted on a natural birth and that's just what she was doing.
"Are you okay, Babe?" She'd grown extra quiet in the last few moments, tension lines growing deeper in her face, her hands clawing at the bed rails as she pushed. She was trying so hard to endure and to get through that he had to ask again. "Are you okay?"
She looked at him from the bed with all the nurses and the doctor flitting about the room watching her vital signs, monitoring the baby's heart rate and her own and of course, guiding the course of the birth itself. She said something he barely heard. "No, no something is…"and then they all knew. ~ Amanda M. Lyons

His vital signs were taken, an electrocardiogram ... which revealed occasional ventricular premature contractions. An intern took his history ... and then he was promptly ... simply ... forgotten to death. ~ Paddy Chayefsky

People after death become complete again. The blind can see, the deaf can hear, cripples are no longer crippled after all their vital signs have ceased to exist. ~ Elisabeth Kubler Ross

Our problems are solvable if they are clearly defined. To do so, we need to monitor our planetary life support systems the way doctors monitor a patient's vital signs and then use that information to protect ecosystem services as though our lives depend on it, because they do. ~ Edith Widder

I like the vegetables, the fruits, the beans, the stuff I eat now ... All my blood tests are good, and my vital signs are good, and I feel good, and I also have, believe it or not, more energy. ~ William J. Clinton

Somebody gotta tell you this:
Cancer kills way more Americans than any Arabic terrorist.
We use more money to fight them than finding a cure,
So a little kid sits there with his chemo-therapist.
Hair falling out while his vital signs weaken ...
He'll be dead while his parent are in debt for his treatment. ~ Crooked I

Don't ignore your discomforts about a place or person. They are normally vital signs for you to change. ~ Jacinta Mpalyenkana

The world of 1906 ... was a stable and a civilized world in which the greatness and authority of Britain and her Empire seemed unassailable and invulnerably secure. In spite of our reverses in the Boer War it was assumed unquestioningly that we should always emerge "victorious, happy and glorious" from any conflict. There were no doubts about the permanence of our "dominion over palm and pine", or of our title to it. Powerful, prosperous, peace-loving, with the seas all round us and the Royal Navy on the seas, the social, economic, international order seemed to our unseeing eyes as firmly fixed on earth as the signs of the Zodiac in the sky. ~ Violet Bonham Carter

The universe speaks in clues and signs, gentle nudges and hints, rather than pontifications and proverbs, commandments and condemnations. I have trusted its signs all my life, which is why I listened when it seemed like it wanted me back here. ~ Bianca Marais

Waiting politely won't get you across the street in Boston," he informs me, "at least not in 1905. There aren't any of those blinking idiot signs that show a hand and count down the seconds for you. ~ Rysa Walker

It's easy to look back on those strange days at the end of September 2003 and identify the warnings signs about Putin and Russia that American policy makers missed. But it would be unfair to them, and unfair to history, to do so without recognizing that the way things turned out was not inevitable. There really was the spore of a bright, new future in 2003, and it is certainly true that Russia itself had the resources and the capability to go in another direction. That things turned out as they did is a tragedy, a sprawling but explicable tragedy. And it is not Russia's alone. ~ Rachel Maddow

While there I had picked up a few vital crumbs of information, and I knew the first twenty-four hours of any investigation were crucial. The more time passed, the colder the trail grew. In a missing person case, that meant the chances of finding that missing person alive dropped by the hour.
The first twenty-four had come and gone. The first forty-eight were waving good-bye from the window of the "you suck at your job" train. ~ Ilona Andrews

I believe that perseverance is vital to success in any endeavor, whether spiritual or temporal, large or small, public or personal ... All significant achievement results largely from perseverance. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

Global energy security is a vital part of America's national security. ~ Joe Biden

These signs have marked me extraordinary, And all the courses of my life do show I am not in the roll of common men. ~ William Shakespeare

What opposite discoveries we have seen!
(Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.)
One makes new noses, one a guillotine,
One breaks your bones, one sets them in their sockets;
But vaccination certainly has been
A kind antithesis to Congreve's rockets, ... ~ Lord Byron

The web was such a vital part of my life. It was like an oracle, a book that never ran out of pages, and a window into a million different rooms all at once. ~ Max Harms

Do crazy things if you must, they told me all the while, forever prying to unearth the mysterious, tel tale signs of heartbreak which, in their clumsy, intrusive, devoted way, both would instantly wish to heal, as if I were a soldier who had strayed into their garden and needed his wound immediately stanched or else he'd die. You can always talk to me. I was your age once, my father used to say. The things you feel and think only you have felt, believe me, I've lived and suffered through all of them, and more than once - some I've never gotten over and others I'm as ignorant about as you are today, yet I know almost every bend, every toll-booth, every chamber in the human heart. ~ Andre Aciman

We are in a time when the Peace Corps mission is more vital than ever, and the organization is at a 30-year high in the number of volunteers in the field. The Peace Corps is currently in 69 posts and serving 75 countries across the globe. ~ Kenny Marchant

The way you feel is your point of attraction, and so, the Law of Attraction is most understood when you see yourself as a magnet getting more and more of the way you feel. When you feel lonely, you attract more loneliness. When you feel poor, you attract more poverty. When you feel sick, you attract more sickness. When you feel unhappy, you attract more unhappiness. When you feel healthy and vital and alive and prosperous-you attract more of all of those things. ~ Esther Hicks

One begins to go about with the sluggish step of a philosopher or a clochard, as more and more vital gestures become reduced to mere instincts of preservation, to a conscience more alert not to be deceived than to grasp truth. ~ Julio Cortazar

Boredom is therefore a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it. ~ Bertrand Russell

The Commonwealth is a vital and positive partnership between countries striving to develop trade relations and promote democracy and human rights, united by shared values. ~ Douglas Alexander

And there were no signs whatever of the disagreements among capitalists - or of the Anglo-American war - that Stalin's ideological illusions had led him to expect. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an alien world - all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation ... the vastness of St. Peter's the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina. ~ George Eliot

A minister who moves about in society is in a position to read the signs of the times even in a festive gathering, but one who remains shut up in his office learns nothing. ~ Etienne Francois, Duc De Choiseul

An army is a vital national institution but a nation is more than its army. It needs a vibrant economy, an educated and competitive workforce, as well as intellectual and scientific curiosity and creativity. ~ Husain Haqqani

America experienced its first oil shock. Within days of the cutoff, oil prices rose from $2.90 to $11.65 a barrel; gasoline prices soared from 20 cents to $1.20 a gallon, an all-time high. Across America, fuel shortages forced factories to close early and airlines to cancel flights. Filling stations posted signs: 'Sorry, No Gas Today.' If a station did have gasoline, motorists lined up before sunrise to buy a few gallons; owners limited the amount sold to each customer. Motorists grew impatient. Fistfights broke out, and occasionally, gunfire. President Nixon called for America to end its dependence on foreign oil. 'Let us set as our national goal ... that by the end of this decade we will have developed the potential to meet our own energy needs without depending on any foreign energy source,' he said. We have still not met this goal. ~ Albert Marrin

Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence! Satan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams! Satan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit! Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification! ~ Anton Szandor LaVey

The kernels of wheat entered the aperture virtually in single file, as if passing between a thumb and an index finger. To mill any faster risked overheating the stone, which in turn risked damaging the flour. In this fact, Dave explained, lies the origin of the phrase "nose to the grindstone": a scrupulous miller leans in frequently to smell his grindstone for signs of flour beginning to overheat. (So the saying does not signify hard work as much as attentiveness.) A wooden spout at the bottom of the mill emitted a gentle breeze of warm, tan flour that slowly accumulated in a white cloth bag. I leaned in close for a whiff. Freshly milled whole-grain flour is powerfully fragrant, redolent of hazelnuts and flowers. For the first time I appreciated what I'd read about the etymology of the word "flour" -- that it is the flower, or best part, of the wheat seed. Indeed. White flour has little aroma to speak of; this flour smelled delicious. ~ Michael Pollan

The American Congress votes through the Declaration of Independence, with John Adams proclaiming the date to stand in history as the founding of America in freedom. Nobody actually signs anything on 4 July, which was instead the date the printers finished the broadsheet versions for publication and so dated their work. ~ Graeme Donald

A giant octopus living way down deep at the bottom of the ocean. It has this tremendously powerful life force, a bunch of long, undulating legs, and it's heading somewhere, moving through the darkness of the ocean ... It takes on all kinds of different shapes - sometimes it's 'the nation,' and sometimes it's 'the law,' and sometimes it takes on shapes that are more difficult and dangerous than that. You can try cutting off its legs, but they just keep growing back. Nobody can kill it. It's too strong, and it lives too far down in the ocean. Nobody knows where its heart is. What I felt then was a deep terror. And a kind of hopelessness, a feeling that I could never run away from this thing, no matter how far I went. And this creature, this thing doesn't give a damn that I'm me or you're you. In its presence, all human beings lose their names and their faces. We all turn into signs, into numbers. ~ Haruki Murakami

It was as if a volcano were cracking open, yet the people at the foot of the mountain ignored the sudden fissures, the black fumes, the boiling trickles, and went on believing that their only danger was to acknowledge the reality of these signs. ~ Ayn Rand

Because I've been around forever and ever, like wallpaper, people ask me for secrets ... it's the same with my skin care range; that's out of necessity. As soon as I saw the first signs, I bought everything in the market. ~ Lulu

You know, Equal Interest played at the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival Awards and not one musician from that category was even thought of. Even thought of! The idea, that here's this vital energy, and that element doesn't even know it exists! ~ Joseph Jarman

The times, the seasons, the signs may have been mythical; but the sufferings were not. I lay in the dark with the breathing of men around me and knew that then, at that selfsame moment, where dawn groped across the sea, my brethren lay bound in ships, one body atop another, smelling of their green wounds and faeces; I knew in dark houses, there was torture, arms held down, firebrands approaching the soft skin of the belly or arm; and still - there is screaming in the night; there is flight; mothers sob for children they shall not see again; girls feel the weight of men atop them; men cry for their wives; boys dangle dead in the barn; and we smoke their sorrow contentedly; and we eat their sorrow; and we wear their sorrow; and wonder how it came so cheap.
It was for this that we labored and fought, risking our very lives. ~ M.T. Anderson

Every night is Christmas Eve on old East Main,
Sailors and their sweethearts all agree.
Neon signs of red and green
Shine upon the friendly scene,
Welcoming you in from off the sea.
Santa's bag is filled with all your dreams come true:
Nickel beers that sparkle like champagne,
Barmaids who all love to screw,
All of them reminding you
It's Christmas Eve on old East Main. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Oh, it's mysterious lamplit evenings, here in the galaxy, one after the other. It's one of those nights when I wander from window to window, looking for a sign. But I can't see. Terror and a beauty insoluble are a ribband of blue woven into the fringes of garments of things both great and small. No culture explains, no bivouac offers real haven or rest. But it could be that we are not seeing something. Galileo thought that comets were an optical illusion. This is fertile ground: since we are certain that they're not, we can look at what scientists are saying with fresh hope. What if there are really gleaming castellated cities hung upside-down over the desert sand? What limpid lakes and cool date palms have our caravans passed untried? Until, one by one, by the blindest of leaps, we light on the road to these places, we must stumble in darkness and hunger. ~ Annie Dillard