Florence Nightingale

Never dispute with anybody who wishes to contradict you, says a most reasonable saint.

To be a fellow worker with God is the highest aspiration of which we can conceive man capable.

The first possibility of rural cleanliness lies in water supply.

For the sick it is important to have the best.

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

That Religion is not devotion, but work and suffering for the love of God; this is the true doctrine of Mystics.

It is very well to say “be prudent, be careful, try to know each other.” But how are you to know each other?

And what nursing has to do in either case, is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.

Everything is sketchy. The world does nothing but sketch.

If a nurse declines to do these kinds of things for her patient, ‘because it is not her business’, I should say that nursing was not her calling.

God spoke to me and called me to His Service. What form this service was to take the voice did not say.

Wise and humane management of the patient is the best safeguard against infection.

There is no part of my life, upon which I can look back without pain.

Live life when you have it. Life is a splendid gift-there is nothing small about it.

So 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.

I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.

Rather, ten times, die in the surf, heralding the way to a new world, than stand idly on the shore.

How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.