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For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?
Virginia Woolf
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Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote critiques the limitations of professionals who are driven by financial constraints, suggesting they cannot fully appreciate the complexities of human health and mind.

Virginia Woolf's quote highlights the conflict between the demands of financial success and the pursuit of understanding human nature. It suggests that professionals, like a specialist in Harley Street, may prioritize income over the holistic understanding of their patients, thereby neglecting the deeper connections between the mind and body, which are essential for true healing and comprehension.

Themes

HealthMindBodyMoneyUnderstandingProfessionalsSuccess

In practice

Example use cases

In a debate about medical ethics, this quote can illustrate the potential conflicts between profit and patient care.

More from Virginia Woolf

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.
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Death is woven in with the violets,” said Louis. β€œDeath and again death.”)
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He began to search among the infinite series of impressions which time had laid down, leaf upon leaf, fold upon fold softly, incessantly upon his brain; among scents, sounds; voices, harsh, hollow, sweet; and lights passing, and brooms tapping; and the wash and hush of the sea.
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I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.
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I do think all good and evil comes from words. I have to tune myself into a good temper with something musical, and I run to a book as a child to its mother.
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London perpetually attracts, stimulates, gives me a play and a story and a poem, without any trouble, save that of moving my legs through the streets... To walk alone through London is the greatest rest.
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