Florence Nightingale Quotes Page 2

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

“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.”

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

“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 colour, and light, we do know this, that they have an actual physical effect. Variety of form and brilliancy of colour in the objects presented to patients, are actual means of recovery.”

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

“Remember my name. You'll be screaming it later.”

“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.”

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

“The first possibility of rural cleanliness lies in water supply.”

“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 most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe - how to observe - what symptoms indicate improvement - what the reverse - which are of importance - which are of none - which are the evidence of neglect - and of what kind of neglect.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“To be 'in charge' is certainly not only to carry out the proper measures yourself but to see that everyone else does so too.”

“To understand God’s thoughts one must study statistics, the measure of his purpose.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“What cruel mistakes are sometimes made by benevolent men and women in matters of business about which they can know nothing and think they know a great deal.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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