Top 148 Quotes & Sayings by Florence Nightingale
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English activist Florence Nightingale.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
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.
The greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.
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.
I have learned to know God. I have recast my social belief... All my admirers are married; most of my friends are dead; and I stand with all the world before me, where to choose a path to make in it.
Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.
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.
Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.
God spoke to me and called me to His Service. What form this service was to take the voice did not say.
Everything you do in a patient's room, after he is 'put up' for the night, increases tenfold the risk of his having a bad night. But, if you rouse him up after he has fallen asleep, you do not risk - you secure him a bad night.
I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.
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.
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.
It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.
She said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel.
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 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.
How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.
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.
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.
A dark house is always an unhealthy house, always an ill-aired house, always a dirty house. Want of light stops growth and promotes scrofula, rickets, etc., among the children. People lose their health in a dark house, and if they get ill, they cannot get well again in it.
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.
Do not meet or overtake a patient who is moving about in order to speak to him or to give him any message or letter. You might just as well give him a box on the ear. I have seen a patient fall flat on the ground who was standing when his nurse came into the room.
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 attribute my success to this - I never gave or took any excuse.
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.
Wise and humane management of the patient is the best safeguard against infection.
Every nurse ought to be careful to wash her hands very frequently during the day. If her face, too, so much the better.
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.
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.
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.
The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.
Unnecessary noise is the most cruel abuse of care which can be inflicted on either the sick or the well.
Never give nor take an excuse.
Live life when you have it. Life is a splendid gift-there is nothing small about it.
Our first journey is to find that special place for us.
Never underestimate the healing effects of beauty.
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.
For the sick it is important to have the best.
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?
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.
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.
The most important practical lesson than can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe.
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.
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.
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!
A human being does not cease to exist at death. It is change, not destruction, which takes place.
The 'kingdom of heaven is within,' indeed, but we must also create one without, because we are intended to act upon our circumstances.
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 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.
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.
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.
Nature alone cures. ... what nursing has to do ... is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.
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.
Starting a job and working hard is how to be successful.
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.
Rather, ten times, die in the surf, heralding the way to a new world, than stand idly on the shore.
Let us never consider ourselves finished nurses....we must be learning all of our lives.
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.
Nursing is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.
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