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For it may safely be said, not that the habit of ready and correct observation will by itself make us useful nurses, but that without it we shall be useless with all our devotion.

Florence Nightingale

There is a physical, not moral, impossibility of supplying the wants of the intellect in the state of civilisation at which we have arrived.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Civilization Impossible Intellectual Moral State
Nursing is a progressive art such that to stand still is to go backwards.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Back Nurse Progression Stand
Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Expectation Fear Harm Patience Surprise
We set the treatment of bodies so high above the treatment of souls, that the physician occupies a higher place in society than the school-master.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Body Master Society Soul Treatment
Nature alone cures. What nursing has to do is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Act Alone Condition Cure Himself Nature Patient
Nursing is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Art Fine Nurse Oneself
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.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Domestic Entertainment Nursing Party Time Woman Work
A nurse is to maintain the air within the room as fresh as the air without, without lowering the temperature.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Lower Maintain Nurse Room Temperature
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

Definition Doctor Horse Man Nurse Obedience
Do not engage in any paper wars. You will convince nobody and arrive at no satisfaction yourself.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Convince Paper Satisfaction War Yourself
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.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Death Man Morning Myself Remember Sick Time
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.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Absence Employment Enthusiasm Greatness Object Trifle
Never give nor take an excuse.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Excuse Reason
In a sick-room or a bed-room there should never be shutters shut.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Bed Room Shut Sick
Our first journey is to find that special place for us.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Journey Ourselves Place Special
Moral activity? There is scarcely such a thing possible! Everything is sketchy. The world does nothing but sketch.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Activity Moral Possible Sketch World
A human being does not cease to exist at death. It is change, not destruction, which takes place.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Change Death Destruction Existence Human Place
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 NIGHTINGALE

Alone Goodness Interest Life Product Remedy
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.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Better Patient Refusal Tea
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.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Arrangement God Ideas Man Prayer Religious Thinking
Diseases, as all experience shows, are adjectives, not noun substantives.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

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

Color Effect Feeling Material Object Physical
Little as we know about the way in which we are affected by form, by color, and light, we do know this, that they have an actual physical effect.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Affect Color Effect Physical Way
Starting a job and working hard is how to be successful.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Hard Work Job Start Success
I can expect no sympathy or help from my family.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Expectation Family Help Myself Sympathy
Let us never consider ourselves finished nurses, we must be learning all of our lives.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Finish Learning Live Nurse Ourselves
A want of the habit of observing and an inveterate habit of taking averages are each of them often equally misleading.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Average Equality Habit Leadership

For it may safely be said, not that the habit of ready and correct observation will by itself make us useful nurses, but that without it we shall be useless with all our devotion.

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For it may safely be said, not that the habit of ready and correct observation will by itself make us useful nurses, but that without it we shall be useless with all our devotion.

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Popular Authors

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