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 NIGHTINGALEBy 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 NIGHTINGALEThe very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALEThe 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.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALEI can expect no sympathy or help from my family.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALEWoman has nothing but her affections,–and this makes her at once more loving and less loved.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALEFor what is Mysticism? It is not the attempt to draw near to God, not by rites or ceremonies, but by inward disposition? Is it not merely a hard word for ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within’? Heaven is neither a place nor a time.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALEWe are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. Aristotle How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALEThe next Christ will perhaps be a female Christ.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALEThere is no part of my life, upon which I can look back without pain.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALEDo not engage in any paper wars. You will convince nobody and arrive at no satisfaction yourself.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALEThere is a physical, not moral, impossibility of supplying the wants of the intellect in the state of civilisation at which we have arrived.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALEPeople have founded vast schemes upon a very few words.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALEDiseases, as all experience shows, are adjectives, not noun substantives.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALEApprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALEIt 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 NIGHTINGALEI 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