Florence Nightingale

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

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

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The first possibility of rural cleanliness lies in water supply.

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For the sick it is important to have the best.

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

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

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

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

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Everything is sketchy. The world does nothing but sketch.

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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.

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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