Quotes from Florence Nightingale

The martyr sacrifices herself entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for she makes the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

Women dream until 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. All their plans and visions seem vanished, and they know not where; gone and they cannot recall them. And they are left without the food either of reality or of hope.

Every woman, or at least almost every woman, in England has, at one time or another of her life, charge of the personal health of somebody, whether child or invalid,—in other words, every woman is a nurse.

1. It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm. 2. Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better. 3. 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. 4. Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.

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

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

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.

Wise and humane management of the patient is the best safeguard against infection.

Sick children, if not too shy to speak, will always express this wish. They invariably prefer a story to be told to them, rather than read to them.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

A hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world. But rather, ten times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new world, than stand idly on the shore.

Heaven is neither a place nor a time.

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

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm.

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

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

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.

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.

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

To be a fellow worker with God is the highest aspiration of which we can conceive man capable.