Nightingale Florence Quotes & Sayings

In these days before antiseptics, doctors themselves also suffered high mortality rates. Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War (1853-1856), watched one particularly inept surgeon cut both himself and, somehow, a bystander while blundering about during an amputation. Both men contracted an infection and died, as did the patient. Nightingale commented that it was the only surgery she'd ever seen with 300 percent mortality. — Sam Kean

What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior ... jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior. — Florence Nightingale

The account he gives of nurses beats everything that even I know of. This young prophet says that they are all drunkards, without exception, Sisters and all, and that there are but two whom the surgeon can trust to give the patients their medicines. — Florence Nightingale

IN MEMORIAM: FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
She whom we love, our Lady of Compassion,
Can never die, for Love forbids her death.
Love has bent down in his old kindly fashion,
And breathed upon her his immortal breath.
On wounded soldiers, in their anguish lying,
Her gentle spirit shall descend like rain.
Where the white flag with the red cross is flying,
There shall she dwell, the vanquisher of pain. — Joyce Kilmer

Perhaps, if prematurely we dismiss ourselves from this world, all may even have to be suffered through again - the premature birth may not contribute to the production of another being, which must be begun again from the beginning. — Florence Nightingale

Poetry and imagination begin life. A child will fall on its knees on the gravel walk at the sight of a pink hawthorn in full flower, when it is by itself, to praise God for it. — Florence Nightingale

A dark house is always an unhealthy house, always an ill-aired house, always a dirty house. Want of light stops growth and promotes scrofula, rickets, etc., among the children. People lose their health in a dark house, and if they get ill, they cannot get well again in it. — Florence Nightingale

Nursing is a progressive art such that to stand still is to go backwards. — Florence Nightingale

When you see the natural and almost universal craving in English sick for their 'tea,' you cannot but feel that nature knows what she is about ... A little tea or coffee restores them ... There is nothing yet discovered which is a substitute to the English patient for his cup of tea. — Florence Nightingale

I must strive to see only God in my friends, and God in my cats. — Florence Nightingale

The great reformers of the world turn into the great misanthropists, if circumstances or organization do not permit them to act. — Florence Nightingale

By the time Florence Nightingale got her neurotic hands on Cleopatra, she had been mangled beyond recognition by both history and literature. — Stacy Schiff

I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women ... no woman has excited passions among women more than I have. — Florence Nightingale

Christ, if he had been a woman, might have been nothing but a great complainer — Florence Nightingale

You have the most revolting Florence Nightingale complex,' said Mrs. Smiling.
It is not that at all, and well you know it. On the whole, I dislike my fellow beings; I find them so difficult to understand. But I have a tidy mind and untidy lives irritate me. Also, they are uncivilized. — Stella Gibbons

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

No woman has excited "passions" among women more than I have. Yet I leave no school behind me. — Florence Nightingale

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

A nurse is to maintain the air within the room as fresh as the air without, without lowering the temperature. — 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

The first possibility of rural cleanliness lies in water supply. — Florence Nightingale

Why do people sit up so late, or, more rarely, get up so early? Not because the day is not long enough, but because they have no time in the day to themselves. — Florence Nightingale

Law is no explanation of anything; law is simply a generalization, a category of facts. Law is neither a cause, nor a reason, nor a power, nor a coercive force. It is nothing but a general formula, a statistical table. — Florence Nightingale

The family uses people, not for what they are, nor for what they are intended to be, but for what it wants them for- its own uses. It thinks of them not as what God has made them, but as the something which it has arranged that they shall be. — Florence Nightingale

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

People say the effect is only on the mind. It is no such thing. The effect is on the body, too. 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. Variety of form and brilliancy of color in the objects presented to patients, are actual means of recovery. — Florence Nightingale

I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results. — Florence Nightingale

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

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

Newton's law is nothing but the statistics of gravitation, it has no power whatever.
Let us get rid of the idea of power from law altogether. Call law tabulation of facts, expression of facts, or what you will; anything rather than suppose that it either explains or compels. — Florence Nightingale

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

Our first journey is to find that special place for us. — Florence Nightingale

Macaulay somewhere says, that it is extraordinary that, whereas the laws of the motions of the heavenly bodies, far removed as they are from us, are perfectly well understood, the laws of the human mind, which are under our observation all day and every day, are no better understood than they were two thousand years ago. — Florence Nightingale

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

The craving for 'the return of the day', which the sick so constantly evince, is generally nothing but the desire for light. — Florence Nightingale

Variety of form and brilliancy of color in the object presented to patients are an actual means of recovery. — Florence Nightingale

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

If I could give you information of my life it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do in His service what He has done in her. And if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done all, and I nothing. I have worked hard, very hard, that is all; and I have never refused God anything. — Florence Nightingale

Remember my name
you'll be screaming it later. — Florence Nightingale

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

Never give nor take an excuse. — Florence Nightingale

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. — Florence Nightingale

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

I've been diagnosed as being bi-polar but so have Florence Nightingale and King David ... which kinda leaves me in pretty dam good company ... if I must say so. — Timothy Pina

Patriotism is not enough, there must be no hatred or bitterness for anyone. — Florence Nightingale

Starting a job and working hard is how to be successful. — Florence Nightingale

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. — Florence Nightingale

Diseases, as all experience shows, are adjectives, not noun substantives. — Florence Nightingale

To her [Florence Nightingale] chiefly I owed the awakening to the fact that sanitation is the supreme goal of medicine its foundation and its crown. — Elizabeth Blackwell

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

May we hope that, when we are all dead and gone, leaders will arise who have been personally experienced in the hard, practical work, the difficulties, and the joys of organizing nursing reforms, and who will lead far beyond anything we have done! — Florence Nightingale

Go into a room where the shutters are always shut (in a sick-room or a bed-room there should never be shutters shut), and though the room be uninhabited-though the air has never been polluted by the breathing of human beings, you will observe a close, musty smell of corrupt air-of air unpurified by the effect of the sun's rays. — Florence Nightingale

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

Inside the magic globe that Florence Nightingale carries, there are wishes and hopes and love. And all of these things are very tiny and also very bright. And there are thousands of wishes and hopes and love things, and they move around in the magic globe, and that's what Florence uses to see by. That is how she sees soldiers who have fallen on the battlefield of life. — Kate DiCamillo

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

Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion. — Florence Nightingale

A human being does not cease to exist at death. It is change, not destruction, which takes place. — Florence Nightingale

Can the "word" be pinned down to either one period or one church? All churches are, of course, only more or less unsuccessful attempts to represent the unseen to the mind. — Florence Nightingale

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

It seems a commonly received idea among men and even among women themselves that it requires nothing but a disappointment in love, the want of an object, a general disgust, or incapacity for other things, to turn a woman into a good nurse.

This reminds one of the parish where a stupid old man was set to be schoolmaster because he was "past keeping the pigs. — Florence Nightingale

Averages ... seduce us away from minute observation. — Florence Nightingale

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

There are no specific diseases only specific disease conditions — Florence Nightingale

Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity these, three and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised? — Florence Nightingale

People have founded vast schemes upon a very few words. — Florence Nightingale

Volumes are now written and spoken upon the effect of the mind upon the body. Much of it is true. But I wish a little more was thought of the effect of the body on the mind. — Florence Nightingale

Life is a hard fight, a struggle, a wrestling with the principle of evil, hand to hand, foot to foot. Every inch of the way is disputed. The night is given us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power. The day, to use the strength which has been given us, to go forth to work with it till the evening. — Florence Nightingale

Fanny was upset when Crittenden criticized Florence Nightingale, the celebrated British nurse of the Crimean War, saying, he thought it a very unwomanly thing for a gentle lady to go into a hospital of wounded men. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

The true foundation of theology is to ascertain the character of God. It is by the aid of Statistics that law in the social sphere can be ascertained and codified, and certain aspects of the character of God thereby revealed. The study of statistics is thus a religious service. — Florence Nightingale

I can expect no sympathy or help from my family. — Florence Nightingale

It is the unqualified result of all my experience with the sick that, second only to their need of fresh air, is their need of light; that, after a close room, what hurts them most is a dark room and that it is not only light but direct sunlight they want. — Florence Nightingale

You look extremely young," said Miss Nightingale....
"Age isn't really a matter of years, I find," returned Phemie. "I know people twice my age who will never be as old as I am now. — Frances Murray

You must go to Mahometanism, to Buddhism, to the East, to the Sufis Fakirs, to Pantheism, for the right growth of mysticism. — Florence Nightingale

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

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

The very elements of what constitutes good nursing are as little understood for the well as for the sick. The same laws of health or of nursing, for they are in reality the same, obtain among the well as among the sick. — Florence Nightingale

Unless we are making progress in our nursing every year, every month, every week, take my word for it we are going back. — Florence Nightingale

(Florence) Nightingale's passion for statistics enabled her to persuade the government of the importance of a whole series of health reforms. for example, many people had argued that training nurses was a waste of time, because patients cared for by trained nurses actually had a higher mortality rate than those treated by untrained staff. Nightingale, however, pointed out that this was only because more serious cases were being sent to those wards with trained nurses. If the intention is to compare the results from two groups, then it is essential to assign patients randomly to the two groups. Sure enough, when Nightingale set up trials in which patients were randomly assigned to trained and untrained nurses, it became clear that the cohort of patients treated by trained nurses fared much better than their counterparts in wards with untrained nurses. — Simon Singh

Everything you do in a patient's room, after he is 'put up' for the night, increases tenfold the risk of his having a bad night. But, if you rouse him up after he has fallen asleep, you do not risk - you secure him a bad night. — Florence Nightingale

I can tell you're admiring my febrility. I know it's appealing, I practice at it; every woman loves an invalid. But be careful. You might do something destructive: hunger is more basic than love. Florence Nightingale was a cannibal you know. — Margaret Atwood

Never to allow a patient to be waked, intentionally or accidentally, is a sine qua non of all good nursing. — Florence Nightingale

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

The amount of relief and comfort experienced by the sick after the skin has been carefully washed and dried, is one of the commonest observations made at a sick bed. — Florence Nightingale

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

Never underestimate the healing effects of beauty. — Florence Nightingale

I stand at the altar of murdered men, and, while I live, I fight their cause. — Florence Nightingale

Jesus Christ raised women above the condition of mere slaves, mere ministers to the passions of the man, raised them by His sympathy, to be Ministers of God. — Florence Nightingale

Statistics is the most important science in the whole world: for upon it depends the practical application of every other science and of every art: the one science essential to all political and social administration, all education, all organization based on experience, for it only gives results of our experience. — Florence Nightingale

For the sick it is important to have the best. — Florence Nightingale

The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe - how to observe - what symptoms indicate improvement - what the reverse - which are of importance - which are of none - which are the evidence of neglect - and of what kind of neglect. — Florence Nightingale

The next Christ will perhaps be a female Christ. — Florence Nightingale

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

Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization, never intended ... to take in the whole sick population. May we hope that the day will come ... when every poor sick person will have the opportunity of a share in a district sick-nurse at home. — Florence Nightingale

Woman has nothing but her affections,
and this makes her at once more loving and less loved. — Florence Nightingale

In a sick-room or a bed-room there should never be shutters shut. — Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale was never called "the Lady with the Lamp," but "the Lady with the Hammer," an image deftly readjusted by the war reporter of the Times since it was far too coarse for the folks back home. Far from gliding about the hospital with her lamp aloft, Nightingale earned her nickname through a ferocious attack on a locked storeroom when a military commander refused to give her the medical supplies she needed. — Rosalind Miles

Bismarck was a large persian cat owned by Florence Nightingale. — Florence Nightingale

She said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel. — Florence Nightingale

I attribute my success to this: - I never gave or took an excuse. — Florence Nightingale

At present we live to impede each other's satisfactions; competition, domestic life, society, what is it all but this? — Florence Nightingale