Florence Nightingale Quotes

Let us never consider ourselves finished nurses....we must be learning all of our lives.

Nursing is a progressive art such that to stand still is to go backwards.

The most important practical lesson than can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe.

Nature alone cures. ... what nursing has to do ... is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.

Live life when you have it. Life is a splendid gift-there is nothing small about it.

I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took any excuse.

The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.

I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.

I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.

Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation as any painter's or sculptor's work.

Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.

Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.

Let whoever is in charge keep this simple question in her head (not, how can I always do this right thing myself, but) how can I provide for this right thing to be always done?

The only English patients I have ever known refuse tea, have been typhus cases; and the first sign of their getting better was their craving again for tea.

Rather, ten times, die in the surf, heralding the way to a new world, than stand idly on the shore.

Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion.

If a patient is cold, if a patient is feverish, if a patient is faint, if he is sick after taking food, if he has a bed-sore, it is generally the fault not of the disease, but of the nursing.

I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm. It is quite necessary nevertheless to lay down such a principle.

For the sick it is important to have the best.

The 'kingdom of heaven is within,' indeed, but we must also create one without, because we are intended to act upon our circumstances.

By mortifying vanity we do ourselves no good. It is the want of interest in our life which produces it; by filling up that want of interest in our life we can alone remedy it.

Our first journey is to find that special place for us.

A human being does not cease to exist at death. It is change, not destruction, which takes place.

Never give nor take an excuse.

Jesus Christ raised women above the condition of mere slaves, mere ministers to the passions of the man, raised them by His sympathy, to be Ministers of God.

To understand God's thoughts, one must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.

Volumes are now written and spoken upon the effect of the mind upon the body. Much of it is true. But I wish a little more was thought of the effect of the body on the mind.

The first possibility of rural cleanliness lies in water supply.

Unnecessary noise is the most cruel abuse of care which can be inflicted on either the sick or the well.

I am not yet worthy; and I will live to deserve to be called a Trained Nurse.

Remember my name-- you'll be screaming it later.

Nursing is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.

That Religion is not devotion, but work and suffering for the love of God; this is the true doctrine of Mystics.

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

The amount of relief and comfort experienced by the sick after the skin has been carefully washed and dried, is one of the commonest observations made at a sick bed.

You must go to Mahometanism, to Buddhism, to the East, to the Sufis Fakirs, to Pantheism, for the right growth of mysticism.

Moral activity? There is scarcely such a thing possible! Everything is sketchy. The world does nothing but sketch.

I stand at the altar of murdered men, and, while I live, I fight their cause.

Mysticism: to dwell on the unseen, to withdraw ourselves from the things of sense into communion with God - to endeavour to partake of the Divine nature; that is, of Holiness.

No woman has excited "passions" among women more than I have. Yet I leave no school behind me.

I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women... no woman has excited passions among women more than I have.

She said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel.

Religion was important to me. My family and I were very religious. I acctualy believe the work I did was a calling from God himself.

Christ, if he had been a woman, might have been nothing but a great complainer

Religious men are and must be heretics now- for we must not pray, except in a "form" of words, made beforehand- or think of God but with a prearranged idea.

I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small...

Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity these, three and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised?