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

Florence Nightingale

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

Action Feeling Result Wasted Time
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.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Communion Divine God Holy Mystic Nature
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.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Art Devotion Fear Nurse Paint Preparation Sculptor
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

Affair Convince Domestic Greatness Hero
When shall we see a life full of steady enthusiasm, walking straight to its aim, flying home, as that bird is now, against the wind – with the calmness and the confidence of one who knows the laws of God and can apply them?
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Enthusiasm God Home Law Life Oneself Wind
I stand at the altar of murdered men, and, while I live, I fight their cause.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Fight Live Man Murder Myself Stand
Woman has nothing but her affections,–and this makes her at once more loving and less loved.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Affection Herself Love Woman
A girl, if she has any pride, is so ashamed of having anything she wishes to say out of the hearing of her own family, she thinks it must be something so very wrong, that it is ten to one, if she have the opportunity of saying it, that she will not.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Family Girl Herself Opportunity Pride Shame Thinking Willing Wrong
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
That Religion is not devotion, but work and suffering for the love of God; this is the true doctrine of Mystics.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Devotion God Love Mystic Religion Suffering Work
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
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
I 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

Beginning Lose Opportunity Practice Root Small
To understand God’s thoughts, one must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

God Measurement Purpose Understand
Nursing is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Art Fine Nurse Oneself
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
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
Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Civilization Hospital Stage
At present we live to impede each other’s satisfactions; competition, domestic life, society, what is it all but this?
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Domestic Each Other Live Present Society
Never to allow a patient to be waked, intentionally or accidentally, is a sine qua non of all good nursing.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Goodness Nurse Patient Wake
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.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Cold Food Medicine Mistake Patient Sick
The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Harm Hospital Requirement Sick
In a sick-room or a bed-room there should never be shutters shut.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Bed Room Shut Sick
The specific disease doctrine is the grand refuge of weak, uncultured, unstable minds, such as now rule in the medical profession. There are no specific diseases; there are specific disease conditions.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Condition Culture Mindset Sick Specific Stability Weakness
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

Devotion Habit Nurse Ourselves Safety
The craving for ‘the return of the day’, which the sick so constantly evince, is generally nothing but the desire for light.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Crave Day Desire Light Return Sick
I can expect no sympathy or help from my family.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Expectation Family Help Myself Sympathy

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

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

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