“Nursing is a progressive art such that to stand still is to go backwards.”

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.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

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

Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.

Unnecessary noise is the most cruel abuse of care which can be inflicted on either the sick or the well.

Let us never consider ourselves finished nurses, we must be learning all of our lives.

The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.

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.

The night is given to us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power.

I can expect no sympathy or help from my family.

Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.

The next Christ will perhaps be a female Christ.

It 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.

The ‘kingdom of heaven is within,’ indeed, but we must also create one without, because we are intended to act upon our circumstances.

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.

I can stand out the war with any man.

Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.

If people really liked to work, we’d still be plowing the land with sticks and transporting goods on our backs.

Perfect love will never want the preeminence in everything, it will never want to take the place of another, it will always be willing to take the back seat.

I came home every Friday afternoon, riding the six miles on the back of a big mule. I spent Saturday and Sunday washing and ironing and cooking for the children and went back to my country school on Sunday afternoon.

What you need is someone to take hold of you–gently, with love, and hand your life back to you, like something gold you let go of–and I can! I’m determined to do it–and nothing’s more determined than a cat on a tin roof–is there?

People won’t want powers being handed back from bureaucrats in Brussels to be given to bureaucrats in Britain.

He knew them only ‘in Braille’ – the curtains were never drawn back in the rooms in Oxford where he met those boys. It was the most sordid life you can imagine. And he was bleating about love and dragging the fair name of Mr. Plato into the trial – after a life like that?

Back of ninety-nine out of one-hundred assertions that a thing cannot be done is nothing, but the unwillingness to do it.