Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC, DStJ was a British social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, in which she organized to care for wounded soldiers. These Florence Nightingale quotes on health, nursing, education will motivate you.
Best Florence Nightingale Quotes
- “Let us never consider ourselves finished nurses….we must be learning all of our lives.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “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.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.” ~ Florence Nightingale
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“Nursing is a progressive art such that to stand still is to go backwards.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “Live life when you have it. Life is a splendid gift-there is nothing small about it.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “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.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “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.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “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.” ~ Florence Nightingale
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“The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.” ~ 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.” ~ 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
- “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 a 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.” ~ Florence Nightingale
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“How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “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.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “A human being does not cease to exist at death. It is change, not destruction, which takes place.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “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.” ~ Florence Nightingale, Florence Nightingale quotes on education
- “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 color, and light, we do know this, that they have an actual physical effect. A variety of form and brilliancy of color in the objects presented to patients, are actual means of recovery.” ~ Florence Nightingale Quotes
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“Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.” ~ 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
- “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
- “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.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “Unnecessary noise is the most cruel abuse of care which can be inflicted on either the sick or the well.” ~ Florence Nightingale
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“To understand God’s thoughts, one must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “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 have worked hard, very hard, that is all; and I have never refused God anything.” ~ 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
- “People talk about imitating Christ, and imitate Him in the little trifling formal things, such as washing the feet, saying His prayer, and so on; but if anyone attempts the real imitation of Him, there are no bounds to the outcry with which the presumption of that person is condemned.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “The ‘kingdom of heaven is within,’ indeed, but we must also create one without because we are intended to act upon our circumstances.” ~ Florence Nightingale
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“For the sick, it is important to have the best.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “Rather, ten times, die in the surf, heralding the way to a new world, than stand idly on the shore.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “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.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “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.” ~ Florence Nightingale
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“Never give nor take an excuse.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “Our first journey is to find that special place for us.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “I am not yet worthy; and I will live to deserve to be called a Trained Nurse.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “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.” ~ 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, Florence Nightingale quotes on nursing
- “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
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“That Religion is not devotion, but work and suffering for the love of God; this is the true doctrine of Mystics.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this-‘devoted and obedient.’ This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “Remember my name– you’ll be screaming it later.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “A woman cannot live in the light of intellect. Society forbids it. Those conventional frivolities, which are called her ‘duties’, forbid it. Her ‘domestic duties’, high-sounding words, which, for the most part, are but bad habits (which she has not the courage to enfranchise herself from, the strength to break through), forbid it.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “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.” ~ Florence Nightingale
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“Woman has nothing but her affections,–and this makes her at once more loving and less loved.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “All disease, at some period or other of its course, is more or less a reparative process, not necessarily accompanied with suffering: an effort of nature to remedy a process of poisoning or of decay, which has taken place weeks, months, sometimes years beforehand, unnoticed.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “I stand at the altar of murdered men, and, while I live, I fight their cause.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “Mysticism: to dwell on the unseen, to withdraw ourselves from the things of sense into communion with God – to endeavor to partake of the Divine nature; that is, of Holiness.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “It is the unqualified result of all my experience with the sick that, second only to their need of fresh air, is their need of light; that, after a close room, what hurts them most is a dark room and that it is not only light but direct sunlight they want.” ~ Florence Nightingale
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“I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small…” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “We know nothing of the principle of health, the positive of which pathology is the negative, except from observation and experience. 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; medicine is the surgery of functions as surgery proper is that of limbs and organs.” ~ Florence Nightingale
- “Passion, intellect, moral activity – these three have never been satisfied in a woman. In this cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere, they cannot be satisfied. To say more on this subject would be to enter into the whole history of society, of the present state of civilization.” ~ Florence Nightingale Quotes
- “Passion, intellect, moral activity – these three have never been satisfied in a woman. In this cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere, they cannot be satisfied. To say more on this subject would be to enter into the whole history of society, of the present state of civilization.” ~ Florence Nightingale
