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.
—Florence Nightingale
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.
—Florence Nightingale
Topics: Doctors
Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.
—Florence Nightingale
Topics: Sympathy
What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior… jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.
—Florence Nightingale
Topics: War, Disorder
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.
—Florence Nightingale
Topics: Beginnings
I see so many of my kind who have gone mad for want of something to do.
—Florence Nightingale
Topics: Purpose
How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.
—Florence Nightingale
Topics: Fear, Spirit
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
The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.
—Florence Nightingale
Topics: Medicine
I attribute my success to this:I never gave or took an excuse.
—Florence Nightingale
Topics: Excuses
One’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into action … which bring results.
—Florence Nightingale
Topics: Inaction, Action, Getting Going, Conversation, Procrastination
She said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel.
—Florence Nightingale
The thing needed … to raise women (and to raise men too) is these friendships without love between men and women. And if between married men and married women, all the better.
—Florence Nightingale
Topics: Woman
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- John Bunyan English Writer, Preacher
- Isaac Watts English Hymn writer
- Marie Stopes British Author, Social Activist
- Ouida (Maria Louise Rame) English Novelist
- Daniel Defoe English Writer
- Hartley Coleridge British Poet
- Mary Webb British Novelist
- A. A. Milne British Humorist, Children’s Writer
- Benjamin Haydon English Painter
- Thomas de Quincey English Essayist, Critic
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