I cannot remember the time when I have not longed for death. For years and years I used to watch for death as no sick man ever watched for the morning.
Mysticism: to dwell on the unseen, to withdraw ourselves from the things of sense into communion with God – to endeavour to partake of the Divine nature; that is, of Holiness.
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.
Religious men are and must be heretics now- for we must not pray, except in a “form” of words, made beforehand- or think of God but with a prearranged idea.
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.
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.
