Quotes from The Physician

“And though you study medicine for a score of lifetimes, there will come to you people whose illnesses are mysteries, for the anguish of which you speak is part and parcel of the profession of healing and must be lived with.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“I think of the separation between life and Paradise as a river,” Mirdin said. “If there are many bridges that cross the river, should it be of great concern to God which bridge the traveler chooses?”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“Medicine is like the slow raising of masonry,” Rob said. “We are fortunate, in a lifetime, to be able to lay a single brick. If we can explain the disease, someone yet unborn may devise a cure.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“—Lo que me atormenta es mi propia ignorancia y mi incapacidad. En Ispahán aprenderé a ayudar a aquellos por los que ahora no puedo hacer nada.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“It is just as easy to bring death to man, and I’ve done so. It’s harder to keep hold of life, harder still to maintain a grasp on health. Those are the tasks to which we must keep our minds.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“Why is it, Master,” he asked bitterly, “that despite all a physician is able to do, he is as a leaf before the wind, and the real power lies only with Allah?”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“Esta Pérsia parecia tentar fazer de cada homem um cornudo, à vez”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“As substâncias eram imprevisíveis e difíceis de controlar, mas por vezes os cirurgiões conseguiam operar sem os tremores convulsivos e os gemidos e gritos de dor. As receitas pareciam-lhe mais magia do que medicina”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“Por vezes Mary falava e Fara escutava uma efusão de gaélico que não compreendia; por vezes era Fara que falava a Língua para uma Mary completamente em branco.
Curiosamente, as palavras não eram importantes. O que importava era a representação das emoções nas expressões do rosto, a expressividade das mãos, o que a voz transmitia, segredos que os olhos contavam”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“If you desire it, you must punish yourself for the sake of learning, seek every advantage in keeping up with the other clerks and in excelling them. You must study with the fervor of the blessed or the cursed.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“To hold a human soul in the palm of your hand like a pebble. To feel somebody slip away, yet by your actions to bring her back! Not even a king had such power.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“The study of medicine was, in its own way, something to love in place of a missing family.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“Mankind is close to savagery and must live by rules. If not, we would sink into our own animal nature and perish.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“The four elements: earth, water, fire and air; the qualities recognized by touch: cold, heat, dryness, and moisture; the temperaments: sanguineous, phlegmatic, choleric, and saturnine; the faculties: natural, animal, and vital.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“You must never forget that dealing with a monarch is not like dealing with an ordinary man,” Ibn Sina said. “A king is not like you or me. He drops a hand carelessly and someone like us is put to death. Or he wiggles a finger and someone is allowed to live. That is absolute power, and no man born of woman is able to resist it. It drives even the best of monarchs slightly mad.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“Pero no debes temer que el aprendizaje se convierta en una parte de ti mismo, de modo que te resulte tan natural como respirar. Tienes que expandir tu mente lo suficiente como para que asimile todo”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“Despite his failings she couldn’t shun Nathanael, she was too fond of fleshly delight. He kept her belly large, pumping her full of child as soon as she was emptied, and whenever she was nearing term he avoided their home. Their life conformed almost exactly to the dire predictions made by her father when, with Rob J. already in her, she had married the young carpenter who had come to Watford to help build their neighbor’s barn. Her father had blamed her schooling, saying that education filled a woman with lascivious folly”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“drays. Never did he see one but that he thought of his”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“Pese a todo lo que puede hacer un médico, maestro ¿por qué es una hoja al viento y el auténtico poder sólo está en manos de Alá?”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“—Podría haber ido a cualquier otro sitio sin necesidad de imposturas. Al Califato occidental... Toledo, Córdoba... Pero había oído hablar de un hombre, Avicena, cuyo nombre árabe me acometió como un hechizo y me sacudió como un estrecimiento. Abu Ali at-Husain ibn Abdullah Ibn Sina. Para tocar el borde de tus vestiduras. El médico más grande del mundo—susurró Rob.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“Mirdin, el más delicado de los hombres delicados, le había enseñado como se razonaba con los camellos. Le propinó tal puñetazo en las costillas que la camella soltó el aire entre sus amarillentos dientes cuadrados.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“To rise at six, dine at ten, Sup at five, to bed at ten, Makes man live ten times ten.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“The late fall weather was perfect for the picking of herbs, and they scoured the woods and moors. Barber especially wanted purslane; steeped in the Specific, it produced an agent that would cause fevers to break and dissipate. To his disappointment, they found none. Some things were more easily gathered, such as red rose petals for poultices, and thyme and acorns to be powdered and mixed with fat and spread on neck pustules. Others required hard work, like the digging of yew root that would help a pregnant woman to hold back her fetus. They collected lemon grass and dill for urinary problems, marshy sweet flag to fight deterioration of memory because of moist and cold humors, juniper berries to be boiled for opening blocked nasal passages, lupine for hot packs to draw abscesses, and myrtle and mallow to soothe itchy rashes.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“Where else was I to go? My family had no desire to apprentice me to a physician, for though the admission grieves me, over most of Europe my profession is composed of a poor lot of leeches and knaves. There is a large hospital in Paris, the Hôtel Dieu, that is merely a pesthouse for the poor into which screaming men are dragged to die. There is a medical school in Salerno, a sorry place. Through communication with other Jewish merchants my father was aware that in the countries of the East the Arabs have made a fine art of the science of medicine. In Persia the Muslims have a hospital at Ispahan that is truly a healing center. It is in this hospital and in a small academy there that Avicenna makes his doctors.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“IOX. Io means ‘shout.’ X is ten. It’s a Roman cheer for victory: ‘Shout ten times!”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“Galen tells us that the heart and all the arteries pulsate with the same rhythm, so that from one you can judge of all, and that a slow and regular pulse signifies good health. But since Achmed, I have found that the pulse also may be used to determine the state of a patient’s agitation or peace of mind. I have done so many times, and the pulse has proven to be The Messenger Who Never Lies.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“Men were sometimes comforters and often brutes but they were always puzzles,”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

“They say some are born healers. Selected.” The Jew smiled at him. “Of course, others are simply lucky,”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician

About the author

Popular quotes

“Yet each disappointment Ted felt in his wife, each incremental deflation, was accompanied by a seizure of guilt; many years ago, he had taken the passion he felt for Susan and folded it in half, so he no longer had a drowning, helpless feeling when he glimpsed her beside him in bed: her ropy arms and soft, generous ass. Then he’d folded it in half again, so when he felt desire for Susan, it no longer brought with it an edgy terror of never being satisfied. Then in half again, so that feeling desire entailed no immediate need to act. Then in half again, so he hardly felt it. His desire was so small in the end that Ted could slip it inside his desk or a pocket and forget about it, and this gave him a feeling of safety and accomplishment, of having dismantled a perilous apparatus that might have crushed them both. Susan was baffled at first, then distraught; she’d hit him twice across the face; she’d run from the house in a thunderstorm and slept at a motel; she’d wrestled Ted to the bedroom floor in a pair of black crotchless underpants. But eventually a sort of amnesia had overtaken Susan; her rebellion and hurt had melted away, deliquesced into a sweet, eternal sunniness that was terrible in the way that life would be terrible, Ted supposed, without death to give it gravitas and shape. He’d presumed at first that her relentless cheer was mocking, another phase in her rebellion, until it came to him that Susan had forgotten how things were between them before Ted began to fold up his desire; she’d forgotten and was happy — had never not been happy — and while all of this bolstered his awe at the gymnastic adaptability of the human mind, it also made him feel that his wife had been brainwashed. By him.”
― Jennifer Egan, quote from A Visit from the Goon Squad

“A cloak of invisibility? This is a highly sensitive piece of field equipment. What does he think? Some warlock pulled it out of his armpit?”
― Eoin Colfer, quote from The Lost Colony

“I circled the site before I came in. If there's anyone within five kilometers, I'll eat my quiver."
Halt regarded him, eyebrow arched once more. "Anyone?"
"Anyone other than Crowley," Will amended, making a dismissive gesture. "I saw him watching me from that hide he always uses about two kilometers out. I assumed he'd be back in here by now."
Halt cleared his throat loudly. "Oh, you saw him, did you?" he said. "I imagine he'll be overjoyed to hear that." Secretly, he was pleased with his former pupil. In spite of his curiosity and obvious excitement, he hadn't forgotten to take the precautions that had been drilled into him. THat augured well for what lay ahead, Halt thought, a sudden grimness settling onto his manner.
Will didn't notice the momentary change of mood. He was loosening Tug
saddle girth. As he spoke, his voice was muffled against the horses's flank. "he's becoming too much a creature of habit," he said. "he's used that hide for the last three Gatherings. It's time he tried something new. Everyone must be onto it by now."
Rangers constantly competed with each other to see before being seen and each year's Gathering was a time of heightened competition. Halt nodded thoughtfully. Crowley had constructed teh virtually invisible observation post some four years previously. Alone among the younger Rangers, Will had tumbled to it after one year. Halt had never mentioned to him that he was the only one who knew of Crowley's hide. The concealed post was the Ranger Commandant's pride and joy.
"Well, perhaps not everyone," he said. Will emerged from behind his horse, grinning at the thought of the head of the Ranger Corps thinking he had remained hidden from sight as he watched Will's approach.
"All the same, perhaps he's getting a bit long in the tooth to be skulking around hiding in the bushes, don't you think?" he said cheerfully. Halt considered the question for a moment.

"Long in the tooth? Well, that's one opinion. Mind you, his silent movement skills are still as good as ever," he said meaningfully.
The grin on Will's face slowly faded. He resisted the temptation to look over his shoulder.
"He's standing behind me, isn't he?" he asked Halt. THe older Ranger nodded.
"He's standing behind me, isn't he?" Will continued and Halt nodded once more.
"Is he...close enough to have heard what I said?" Will finally managed to ask, fearin teh worst. This time, Halt didn't have to answer.
"Oh, good grief no," came a familiar voice from behind him. "he's so old and decrepit these days he's as deaf as a post."
Will's shoulders sagged and he turned to see the sandy-haired Commandant standing a few meters away.
The younger man's eyes dropped.
"Hullo, Crowley," he said, then mumbled, "Ahhh...I'm sorry about that."
Crowley glared at teh young Ranger for a few more seconds, then he couldn't help teh grin breaking out on his face.
"No harm done," he said, adding with a small note of triumph, "It's not often these days I amange to get the better of one of you young ones."
Secretly, he was impressed at teh news that Will had spotted his hiding place. Only the sarpest eyes could have picked it. Crowley had been in the business of seeing without being seen for thirty years or more, and despite what Will believed, he was still an absolute master of camouflage and unseen movement.”
― John Flanagan, quote from The Sorcerer in the North

“Buried feelings of anger and vengeance washed over him as he thought back to the time he discovered who his real father was and what he had done to his mother...”
― Angel Sefer, quote from Spellbound in His Arms

“It’s natural that you feel as you do, Reynie. There is much more to the world than most children—indeed, most adults—ever see or know. And where most people see mirrors, you, my friend, see windows. By which I mean there is always something beyond the glass.”
― Trenton Lee Stewart, quote from The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.