Florence Nightingale Nursing Quotations

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.

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

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

How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.

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

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.

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

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 ...

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.

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

Never to allow a patient to be waked, intentionally or accidentally, is a sine qua non of all good nursing.

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

Instead of wishing to see more doctors made by women joining what there are, I wish to see as few doctors, either male or female, as possible. For, mark you, the women have made no improvement they have only tried to be "men" and they have only succeeded in being third-rate men.

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.

Nursing is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.

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.

To understand God's thoughts, one must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.

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

The time is come when women must do something more than the "domestic hearth," which means nursing the infants, keeping a pretty house, having a good dinner and an entertaining party.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I use the word nursing for want of a better.

Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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?

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

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!

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

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

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.

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

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.