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 must strive to see only God in my friends, and God in my cats.
Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.
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.
A human being does not cease to exist at death. It is change not destruction which takes place.
One's feelings waste themselves in words they ought all to be distilled into action ... which bring results.
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.
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.
Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.
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.
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.
How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.
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.
I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took any excuse.
