FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

… a man remarkable even among civil servants for adroitness in baffling inconvenient inquiries, resource in raising false issues, and, in, short, a consummate command of all the arts of officially sticking in the mud

The War Office is a very slow office, an enormously expensive office, and one in which the Minister's intentions can be entirely negated by all his sub-departments, and those of each of the sub-departments by every other.

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

To understand God’s thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of his purpose.

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.

Badly constructed houses do for the healthy what badly constructed hospitals do for the sick. Once insure that the air in a house is stagnant, and sickness is certain to follow.

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.

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

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.

The greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.

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.

Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. Far the greatest things grow by God's law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it.

Every nurse ought to be careful to wash her hands very frequently during the day. If her face, too, so much the better.

Never speak to an invalid from behind, nor from the door, nor from any distance from him, nor when he is doing anything. The official politeness of servants in these things is so grateful to invalids, that many prefer, without knowing why, having none but servants about them.