Famous Quotes & Sayings

Florence Nightingale

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

Florence Nightingale

I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small.

Florence Nightingale

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.

Florence Nightingale

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.

Florence Nightingale

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

Florence Nightingale

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.

Florence Nightingale

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.

Florence Nightingale

I use the word nursing for want of a better.

Florence Nightingale

Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization

Florence Nightingale

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.

Florence Nightingale

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.

Florence Nightingale

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.

Florence Nightingale

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

Florence Nightingale

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.

Florence Nightingale

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?

Florence Nightingale

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

Florence Nightingale

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!

Florence Nightingale

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

Florence Nightingale

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

Florence Nightingale

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

Florence Nightingale

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 ...

Florence Nightingale

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.

Florence Nightingale

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

Florence Nightingale

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

Matthew Arnold

Still nursing the unconquerable hope, / Still clutching the inviolable shade.

Caroline Norton

A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, There was a lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears; But a comrade stood beside him, while his lifeblood ebbed away.

Nathan Deal

For the last 3 years, we have celebrated National Nurses Week. Beginning on May 6, we will once again have the opportunity to truly commend the nursing community for their contributions to our national health delivery system.

Kenneth Clarke

Of course I'd have loved to be Prime Minister. But I'm not nursing a grievance.

Jo Brand

A good culture in a hospital can absorb and manage a few bad nurses, but once the culture becomes bad in itself, bad nursing practice is much harder to hide.

Henry Ward Beecher

God appoints our graces to be nurses to other men's weaknesses.

Malcolm Mclaren

The thing about Paris, it's a great city for wandering around and buying shoes and nursing a cafe au lait for hours on end and pretending you're Baudelaire. But it's not a city where you can work.

Kate Hudson

When you're nursing and you're working 18-hour days, that's pretty hard

Marvin J. Ashton

Leave people better than you found them.