Florence Nightingale Quotes:

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

source: - "The Gigantic Book of Teachers' Wisdom" by Frank McCourt and Erin Gruwell, (p. 410), 2007.

Topics: Inspirational, Inspiring, Success, Inspirational Nurse, Inspirational Nursing

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; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God's spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.

source: - Florence Nightingale, Lynn McDonald (2004). “Florence Nightingale on Public Health Care: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale”, p.291, Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Topics: Art, Hard Work, Nursing, Fine Arts, Inspirational Nurse

Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. For the greatest things grow by God's Law out of the smallest. But to live your life you must discipline it. You must not fritter it away in "fair purpose, erring act, inconstant will" but make your thoughts, your acts, all work to the same end and that end, not self but God. That is what we call character.

Topics: Character, Self, Law, Erring

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

source: - Florence Nightingale, Lynn McDonald (2004). “Florence Nightingale on Public Health Care: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale”, p.122, Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Topics: Nurse, Important, Lessons, Inspirational Nurse, Inspirational Nursing

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

Topics: Art, Nursing, Progressive

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

source: - "The Book of Positive Quotations" by John Cook, (p. 479), 2007.

Topics: Fear, Done, Littles, Inspirational Nurse, Inspirational Nursing

So 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.

Topics: Women, Nursing, Opportunity

Unless we are making progress in our nursing every year, every month, every week, take my word for it we are going back.

Topics: Nursing, Years, Nurse

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

source: - Ray Strachey, Florence Nightingale (1930). “Struggle: the stirring story of woman's advance in England”

Topics: Science, Nursing, Thinking, Inspirational Nurse, Inspirational Nursing

Little as we know about the way in which we are affected by form, by color, and light, we do know this, that they have an actual physical effect.

Topics: Light, Color, Littles

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

Topics: Religion, Doe, Destruction

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.

Topics: Sacrifice, Nursing, World, Conventionality

People talk about imitating Christ, and imitate Him in the little trifling formal things, such as washing the feet, saying His prayer, and so on; but if anyone attempts the real imitation of Him, there are no bounds to the outcry with which the presumption of that person is condemned.

Topics: Jesus, Prayer, Real, Who Jesus Is, Washing

The account he gives of nurses beats everything that even I know of. This young prophet says that they are all drunkards, without exception, Sisters and all, and that there are but two whom the surgeon can trust to give the patients their medicines.

Topics: Two, Medicine, Nurse, Drunkards

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

source: - Florence Nightingale (1992). “Notes on Nursing: What it Is, and what it is Not”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

Topics: Expectations, Waiting, Care, Medical Care, Inspirational Nurse

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.

Topics: Hero, Nurse, World, Daily Grind, Great Nursing

Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization, never intended ... to take in the whole sick population. May we hope that the day will come ... when every poor sick person will have the opportunity of a share in a district sick-nurse at home.

Topics: Home, Opportunity, Civilization, Hospitals, Sick Person

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

source: - Notes on Hospitals Preface

Topics: Nursing, Sick, Requirements, Inspirational Nurse, Inspirational Nursing

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.

Topics: Selfish, Sacrifice, Nursing, Martyred, Martyrdom

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.

Topics: Religious, Men, Thinking

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.

Topics: Sexy, Passion, Nursing

A woman cannot live in the light of intellect. Society forbids it. Those conventional frivolities, which are called her 'duties', forbid it. Her 'domestic duties', high-sounding words, which, for the most part, are but bad habits (which she has not the courage to enfranchise herself from, the strength to break through), forbid it.

Topics: Light, Habit, Break, Frivolity, Conventional

Let people who have to observe sickness and death look back and try to register in their observation the appearances which have preceded relapse, attack or death, and not assert that there were none, or that there were not the right ones. A want of the habit of observing conditions and an inveterate habit of taking averages are each of them often equally misleading.

Topics: Average, People, Trying, Relapse, Sickness And Death

What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior... jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.

Topics: Selfish, War, Blood, Intoxication, Famine

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

Topics: Happiness, Inspirational Life, Progress

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.

Topics: Nursing, Sick, Skins, Inspirational Nurse, Inspirational Nursing

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.

Topics: Mind, Wish, Body

No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this-'devoted and obedient.' This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.

Topics: Horse, Men, Doctors, Inspirational Nurse, Inspirational Nursing

... people have founded vast schemes upon a very few words.

Topics: People, Few Words, Schemes

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

Topics: Nurse

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

Topics: Sick, Abuse, Care

May we hope that, when we are all dead and gone, leaders will arise who have been personally experienced in the hard, practical work, the difficulties, and the joys of organizing nursing reforms, and who will lead far beyond anything we have done!

source: - Florence Nightingale, Lynn McDonald (2004). “Florence Nightingale on Public Health Care: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale”, p.218, Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Topics: Nursing, Joy, Leader

I can expect no sympathy or help from my family.

Topics: Helping, My Family, No Sympathy

We know nothing of the principle of health, the positive of which pathology is the negative, except from observation and experience. And nothing but observation and experience will teach us the ways to maintain or to bring back the state of health. It is often thought that medicine is the curative process. It is no such thing; ... nature alone cures. ... And what [true] nursing has to do ... is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.

Topics: Nursing, Medicine, Principles

For it may safely be said, not that the habit of ready and correct observation will by itself make us useful nurses, but that without it we shall be useless with all our devotion.

Topics: Nurse, Useless, May

The specific disease doctrine is the grand refuge of weak, uncultured, unstable minds, such as now rule in the medical profession. There are no specific diseases; there are specific disease conditions.

Topics: Mind, Doctrine, Disease, Medical Profession

The first possibility of rural cleanliness lies in water supply.

Topics: Lying, Water, Firsts

There are no specific diseases only specific disease conditions

Topics: Disease

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

Topics: Nurse, Worthy, Deserve

Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last.

Topics: Vanity, Selfishness, Overcoming

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

Topics: Doe, World, Moral, Sketchy

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 ...

Topics: Sick, Principles, May

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

source: - Florence Nightingale, Michael D. Calabria, Janet A. Macrae (1994). “Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale: Selections and Commentaries”, p.17, University of Pennsylvania Press

Topics: Nursing, Nurse, Patient

diseases, as all experience shows, are adjectives, not noun substantives.

Topics: Adjectives, Nouns, Disease

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

source: - Florence Nightingale, Michael D. Calabria, Janet A. Macrae (1994). “Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale: Selections and Commentaries”, p.18, University of Pennsylvania Press

Topics: Heaven, Kingdoms, Circumstances, Kingdom Of Heaven

I cannot remember the time when I have not longed for death. ... for years and years I used to watch for death as no sick man ever watched for the morning.

Topics: Death, Morning, Men, Sick Man

Averages ... seduce us away from minute observation.

Topics: Science, Average, Data

[On Thomas Babington Macaulay:] He was a most disagreeable companion to my fancy ... His conversation was a procession of one.

Topics: Fancy, Conversation, Companion, Procession

Never to allow a patient to be waked, intentionally or accidentally, is a sine qua non of all good nursing.

Topics: Nursing, Nurse, Patient

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.

Topics: Art, Nursing, Preparation

Passion, intellect, moral activity - these three have never been satisfied in a woman. In this cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere, they cannot be satisfied. To say more on this subject would be to enter into the whole history of society, of the present state of civilisation.

Topics: Passion, Atmosphere, Would Be

Poetry and imagination begin life. A child will fall on its knees on the gravel walk at the sight of a pink hawthorn in full flower, when it is by itself, to praise God for it.

Topics: Children, Flower, Fall, Gravel, Praise God

Perhaps, if prematurely we dismiss ourselves from this world, all may even have to be suffered through again - the premature birth may not contribute to the production of another being, which must be begun again from the beginning.

Topics: World, May, Birth

Newton's law is nothing but the statistics of gravitation, it has no power whatever. Let us get rid of the idea of power from law altogether. Call law tabulation of facts, expression of facts, or what you will; anything rather than suppose that it either explains or compels.

Topics: Expression, Law, Ideas, Newton's Laws

We set the treatment of bodies so high above the treatment of souls, that the physician occupies a higher place in society than the school-master.

Topics: School, Soul, Physicians

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

Topics: Buddhism, Growth, East, Pantheism

I use the word nursing for want of a better.

Topics: Nursing, Use, Want

The great reformers of the world turn into the great misanthropists, if circumstances or organization do not permit them to act.

Topics: Organization, World, Permit, Reformers

Sublime in the highest style of intellectual beauty, intellect without effort, without suffering... not a feature is correct – but the whole effect is more expressive of spiritual grandeur than anything I could have imagined. It makes the impression upon one that thousands of voices do, uniting in one unanimous simultaneous feeling of enthusiasm or emotion, which is said to overcome the strongest man.

Topics: Spiritual, Men, Voice

I can stand out the war with any man.

Topics: War, Men, Standing Out

I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet-all at the least expense of vital power to the patient.

Topics: Nursing, Air, Medicine

For the sick it is important to have the best.

Topics: Sick, Important, Importance

The very elements of what constitutes good nursing are as little understood for the well as for the sick. The same laws of health, or of nursing, for they are in reality the same, obtain among the well as among the sick.

Topics: Health, Nursing, Reality

People say the effect is only on the mind. It is no such thing. The effect is on the body, too. Little as we know about the way in which we are affected by form, by color, and light, we do know this, that they have an actual physical effect. Variety of form and brilliancy of color in the objects presented to patients, are actual means of recovery.

Topics: Health, Recovery, Mean

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

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Women, Inspirational Nursing

Never underestimate the healing effects of beauty.

Topics: Beauty, Healing, Underestimate

For us who Nurse, our Nursing is a thing, which, unless in it we are making progress every year, every month, every week, take my word for it we are going back. The more experience we gain, the more progress we can make.

source: - "Florence Nightingale to her Nurses".

Topics: Nursing, Years, Nurse, Inspirational Nurse, Inspirational Nursing

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?

source: - Florence Nightingale (1861). “Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes”, p.32

Topics: Nursing, Simple, Done

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

Topics: Journey, Destiny, Vision, Special Places

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. Aristotle How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.

Topics: Smart, Excellence, Littles

Life is a hard fight, a struggle, a wrestling with the principle of evil, hand to hand, foot to foot. Every inch of the way is disputed. The night is given us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power. The day, to use the strength which has been given us, to go forth to work with it till the evening.

Topics: Struggle, Wrestling, Fighting

If I could give you information of my life it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do in His service what He has done in her. And if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done all, and I nothing. I have worked hard, very hard, that is all; and I have never refused God anything.

Topics: Giving, Ordinary, Would Be

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

Topics: Art, Nursing, Nurse, Fine Arts, Inspirational Nurse

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.

source: - Florence Nightingale (1860). “Notes on Nursing: What it Is, and what it is Not”, p.2

Topics: Nursing, Sick, Bed

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.

source: - "The Life of Florence Nightingale" Vol. II, by Edward Tyas Cook, (p. 406), 1914.

Topics: Women, Nursing, Opportunity, Mustard, Oppurtunity

The symptoms or the sufferings generally considered to be inevitable and incident to the disease are very often not symptoms of the disease at all, but of something quite different-of the want of fresh air, or of light, or of warmth, or of quiet, or of cleanliness, or of punctuality and care in the administration of diet, of each or of all of these.

source: - Florence Nightingale (1860). “Notes on Nursing: What it Is, and what it is Not”, p.2

Topics: Nursing, Light, Air, Fresh Air

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

Topics: Nursing, World, Way

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

Topics: Names, Remember

Statistics is the most important science in the whole world: for upon it depends the practical application of every other science and of every art: the one science essential to all political and social administration, all education, all organization based on experience, for it only gives results of our experience.

Topics: Art, Organization, Giving

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.

source: - Florence Nightingale, Lynn McDonald (2002). “Florence Nightingale's spiritual journey: biblical annotations, sermons and journal notes”, Wilfrid Laurier Univ Pr

Topics: Jesus, Passion, Men

Starting a job and working hard is how to be successful.

Topics: Jobs, Successful, Starting

Never give nor take an excuse.

Topics: Motivational, Giving, Excuse

All disease, at some period or other of its course, is more or less a reparative process, not necessarily accompanied with suffering: an effort of nature to remedy a process of poisoning or of decay, which has taken place weeks, months, sometimes years beforehand, unnoticed.

source: - Florence Nightingale (1860). “Notes on Nursing: What it Is, and what it is Not”, p.1

Topics: Taken, Nursing, Years

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

Topics: God, Nursing, Science, Statistician

The next Christ will perhaps be a female Christ.

source: - 1852 'Cassandra' pt.4, part of an unpublished work Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth (revised and privately printed1859). Published as an appendix in Ray Strachey The Cause: A Short History of theWomen'sMovement in Great Britain (1928).

Topics: Female, Next, Christ

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

source: - Florence Nightingale, Martha Vicinus, Bea Nergaard (1990). “Ever Yours, Florence Nightingale: Selected Letters”, p.230, Harvard University Press

Topics: Sympathy, Europe, No Sympathy

It is the unqualified result of all my experience with the sick that, second only to their need of fresh air, is their need of light; that, after a close room, what hurts them most is a dark room and that it is not only light but direct sunlight they want.

source: - Florence Nightingale, Lynn McDonald (2004). “Florence Nightingale on Public Health Care: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale”, p.103, Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Topics: Hurt, Health, Dark

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.

source: - Source: imperialismeraflorencenightingale.blogspot.com

Topics: Religious, Believe, Important

There is no part of my life, upon which I can look back without pain.

source: - Florence Nightingale, Lynn McDonald (2001). “Florence Nightingale: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale”, p.91, Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Topics: Pain, Nursing, Looks, Inspirational Nurse, Without Pain

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

source: - 1852 'Cassandra' pt.1, part of an unpublished work Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth (revised and privately printed1859). Published as an appendix in Ray Strachey The Cause: A Short History of theWomen'sMovement in Great Britain (1928).

Topics: Passion, Three, Moral

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

source: - Florence Nightingale (2008). “The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale”

Topics: Might, Christ, Complainers

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

source: - Florence Nightingale, G?rard Vall?e, Lynn McDonald (2003). “Florence Nightingale on Mysticism and Eastern Religions: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale”, p.20, Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Topics: Suffering, Doctrine, God Love

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.

source: - Florence Nightingale (1991). “Cassandra: And Other Selections from Suggestions for Thought”, Pickering & Chatto Publishers

Topics: Vanity, Filling Up, Want

Woman has nothing but her affections,--and this makes her at once more loving and less loved.

source: - Ray Strachey, Florence Nightingale, National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (Library of Congress) (1928). “"The cause": a short history of the women's movement in Great Britain”

Topics: Affection

For what is Mysticism? It is not the attempt to draw near to God, not by rites or ceremonies, but by inward disposition? Is it not merely a hard word for 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within'? Heaven is neither a place nor a time.

source: - Florence Nightingale, Michael D. Calabria, Janet A. Macrae (1994). “Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale: Selections and Commentaries”, p.13, University of Pennsylvania Press

Topics: Diversity, Heaven, Inward, Hard Words

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

source: - Florence Nightingale, Sue M. Goldie (1997). “Florence Nightingale: Letters from the Crimea”, p.296, Manchester University Press

Topics: Peace, Military, Fighting

The true foundation of theology is to ascertain the character of God. It is by the aid of Statistics that law in the social sphere can be ascertained and codified, and certain aspects of the character of God thereby revealed. The study of statistics is thus a religious service.

Topics: God, Religious, Character, Character Of God

The night is given to us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power.

Topics: Night, Praying, Drink

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.

source: - Florence Nightingale, Lynn McDonald (2002). “Florence Nightingale's Theology: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale”, p.578, Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Topics: Unseen, Holiness, Divine, Divine Nature

The family uses people, not for what they are, nor for what they are intended to be, but for what it wants them for- its own uses. It thinks of them not as what God has made them, but as the something which it has arranged that they shall be.

source: - Florence Nightingale, Michael D. Calabria, Janet A. Macrae (1994). “Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale: Selections and Commentaries”, p.99, University of Pennsylvania Press

Topics: Family, Thinking, People

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.

source: - Florence Nightingale (1861). “Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes”, p.53

Topics: Nursing, Tea, Get Better, Typhus

In a sick-room or a bed-room there should never be shutters shut.

source: - Florence Nightingale (1861). “Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes”, p.58

Topics: Inspirational, Sick, Bed, Shutters

When you see the natural and almost universal craving in English sick for their 'tea,' you cannot but feel that nature knows what she is about. ... A little tea or coffee restores them. ... There is nothing yet discovered which is a substitute to the English patient for his cup of tea.

source: - Florence Nightingale (1860). “Notes on Nursing: What it Is, and What it is Not”, p.76

Topics: Coffee, Science, Sick

When shall we see a life full of steady enthusiasm, walking straight to its aim, flying home, as that bird is now, against the wind - with the calmness and the confidence of one who knows the laws of God and can apply them?

source: - Florence Nightingale, Michael D. Calabria, Janet A. Macrae (1994). “Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale: Selections and Commentaries”, p.97, University of Pennsylvania Press

Topics: Home, Wind, Law

Can the "word" be pinned down to either one period or one church? All churches are, of course, only more or less unsuccessful attempts to represent the unseen to the mind.

source: - Florence Nightingale, Michael D. Calabria, Janet A. Macrae (1994). “Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale: Selections and Commentaries”, p.14, University of Pennsylvania Press

Topics: Mind, Church, Unseen

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

source: - Florence Nightingale, Martha Vicinus, Bea Nergaard (1990). “Ever Yours, Florence Nightingale: Selected Letters”, p.230, Harvard University Press

Topics: Passion, School, Excited

At present we live to impede each other's satisfactions; competition, domestic life, society, what is it all but this?

source: - Florence Nightingale (2008). “The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale”

Topics: Competition, Satisfaction, Domestic Life

A girl, if she has any pride, is so ashamed of having anything she wishes to say out of the hearing of her own family, she thinks it must be something so very wrong, that it is ten to one, if she have the opportunity of saying it, that she will not.

source: - Ray Strachey, Florence Nightingale (1930). “Struggle: the stirring story of woman's advance in England”

Topics: Girl, Pride, Opportunity

It is very well to say "be prudent, be careful, try to know each other." But how are you to know each other?

source: - Florence Nightingale (2008). “The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale”

Topics: Trying, Prudent, Be Careful

Bismarck was a large persian cat owned by Florence Nightingale.

Topics: Cat, Florence Nightingale, Bismarck

Go into a room where the shutters are always shut (in a sick-room or a bed-room there should never be shutters shut), and though the room be uninhabited-though the air has never been polluted by the breathing of human beings, you will observe a close, musty smell of corrupt air-of air unpurified by the effect of the sun's rays.

source: - Florence Nightingale (1876). “Notes on Nursing for the labouring classes. With a chapter on Children”, p.68

Topics: Health, Science, Breathing

Women never have a half-hour in all their lives (excepting before or after anybody is up in the house) that they can call their own, without fear of offending or of hurting someone. Why do people sit up so late, or, more rarely, get up so early? Not because the day is not long enough, but because they have 'no time in the day to themselves.' 1852

Topics: Hurt, Offending, Long, Hurting Someone

Marriage is the only chance (and it is but a chance) offered to women for escape from this death and how eagerly and how ignorantly it is embraced.

source: - 1852 'Cassandra' pt.3, part of an unpublished work Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth (revised and privately printed1859). Published as an appendix in Ray Strachey The Cause: A Short History of theWomen'sMovement in Great Britain (1928).

Topics: Chance

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

Topics: Nursing, Color, Said

A nurse is to maintain the air within the room as fresh as the air without, without lowering the temperature.

source: - Florence Nightingale, Ramona Salotti (2003). “Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not”, p.9, Barnes & Noble Publishing

Topics: Nursing, Air, Nurse

The time is come when women must do something more than the "domestic hearth," which means nursing the infants, keeping a pretty house, having a good dinner and an entertaining party.

source: - Florence Nightingale (2017). “Cassandra and Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale”, p.200, Routledge

Topics: Party, Mean, Nursing

Instead of wishing to see more doctors made by women joining what there are, I wish to see as few doctors, either male or female, as possible. For, mark you, the women have made no improvement they have only tried to be "men" and they have only succeeded in being third-rate men.

source: - Florence Nightingale, Martha Vicinus, Bea Nergaard (1990). “Ever Yours, Florence Nightingale: Selected Letters”, p.210, Harvard University Press

Topics: Nursing, Men, Doctors

do not engage in any paper wars. You will convince nobody and arrive at no satisfaction yourself.

source: - Florence Nightingale, Lynn McDonald (2001). “Florence Nightingale: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale”, p.464, Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Topics: War, Paper, Satisfaction

There is a physical, not moral, impossibility of supplying the wants of the intellect in the state of civilisation at which we have arrived.

source: - Florence Nightingale (2008). “The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale”

Topics: Want, Moral, States

I was very limited as a women. Getting the men in the military to see that the medical facilities were unhealthy was very difficult, along with many other things such as getting a good education and also finding a good career.

source: - Source: imperialismeraflorencenightingale.blogspot.com

Topics: Military, Men, Careers

Women should have the true nurse calling, the good of the sick first the second only the consideration of what is their 'place' to do - and that women who want for a housemaid to do this or the charwomen to do that, when the patient is suffering, have not the making of a nurse in them.

Topics: Nursing, Should Have, Nurse, Housemaids

My family tried to educate me in the way they thought a young woman should be. But I wanted to learn about mathmatics. I must have gotten that from my father, he was a master of math and science, and I always liked that sort of thing, too. Of course my mother and father did not agree with me on becoming more educated in mathmatics, but I was persistent and eventualy they gave in and I was taught by a wonderful teacher.

source: - Source: imperialismeraflorencenightingale.blogspot.com

Topics: Mother, Teacher, Father, Wonderful Teacher

The craving for 'the return of the day', which the sick so constantly evince, is generally nothing but the desire for light.

source: - Florence Nightingale, Ramona Salotti (2003). “Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not”, p.48, Barnes & Noble Publishing

Topics: Nursing, Light, Sick, Inspirational Nurse

Women dream till they have no longer the strength to dream; those dreams against which they so struggle, so honestly, vigorously, and conscientiously, and so in vain, yet which are their life, without which they could not have lived; those dreams go at last.

source: - Florence Nightingale, Michael D. Calabria (1997). “Florence Nightingale in Egypt and Greece: Her Diary and "Visions"”, p.19, SUNY Press

Topics: Dream, Struggle, Lasts

Law is no explanation of anything; law is simply a generalization, a category of facts. Law is neither a cause, nor a reason, nor a power, nor a coercive force. It is nothing but a general formula, a statistical table.

source: - Florence Nightingale, Michael D. Calabria, Janet A. Macrae (1994). “Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale: Selections and Commentaries”, p.41, University of Pennsylvania Press

Topics: Law, Tables, Causes

Macaulay somewhere says, that it is extraordinary that, whereas the laws of the motions of the heavenly bodies, far removed as they are from us, are perfectly well understood, the laws of the human mind, which are under our observation all day and every day, are no better understood than they were two thousand years ago.

source: - Florence Nightingale (1860). “Notes on Nursing: What it Is, and what it is Not”, p.6

Topics: Nursing, Years, Law, Heavenly Bodies