100 Quotes by Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale, revered as the "Lady with the Lamp," was a pioneering nurse and social reformer whose impact on healthcare and nursing practices reverberates through time. Born into a privileged English family, Nightingale defied societal expectations by pursuing nursing, a profession associated with women of lower social classes. During the Crimean War, she led a team of nurses to improve the deplorable conditions of wounded soldiers, setting new standards for hygiene and patient care. Her data-driven approach to healthcare, advocating for sanitation and proper nutrition, laid the groundwork for modern nursing practices. Beyond her revolutionary contributions to healthcare, Nightingale's advocacy extended to promoting women's rights and challenging Victorian gender norms. Her legacy lives on in the Nightingale Pledge taken by nurses worldwide and her enduring influence on shaping healthcare systems that prioritize compassion, science, and patient well-being.
Florence Nightingale Quotes
Let us never consider ourselves finished nurses. We must be learning all of our lives.
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; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God's spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.
Nursing is a progressive art such that to stand still is to go backwards. (Quote Meaning)
The most important practical lesson than can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe.
I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took any excuse. (Meaning)
Live life when you have it. Life is a splendid gift-there is nothing small about it. (Quote Meaning)
Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. For the greatest things grow by God's Law out of the smallest. But to live your life you must discipline it. You must not fritter it away in "fair purpose, erring act, inconstant will" but make your thoughts, your acts, all work to the same end and that end, not self but God. That is what we call character.
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.
For us who Nurse, our Nursing is a thing, which, unless in it we are making progress every year, every month, every week, take my word for it we are going back. The more experience we gain, the more progress we can make.
The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm. (Meaning)
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.
I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.
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.
The world is put back by the death of everyone who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality. (Quote Meaning)
How very little can be done under the spirit of fear. (Meaning)
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.
Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better. (Quote Meaning)
Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.
Let whoever is in charge keep this simple question in her head (not, how can I always do this right thing myself, but) how can I provide for this right thing to be always done?
I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet-all at the least expense of vital power to the patient.
The only English patients I have ever known refuse tea, have been typhus cases; and the first sign of their getting better was their craving again for tea.
Rather, ten times, die in the surf, heralding the way to a new world, than stand idly on the shore. (Meaning)
Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion.
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.
The symptoms or the sufferings generally considered to be inevitable and incident to the disease are very often not symptoms of the disease at all, but of something quite different-of the want of fresh air, or of light, or of warmth, or of quiet, or of cleanliness, or of punctuality and care in the administration of diet, of each or of all of these.
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!
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.
The greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel. (Quote Meaning)
People talk about imitating Christ, and imitate Him in the little trifling formal things, such as washing the feet, saying His prayer, and so on; but if anyone attempts the real imitation of Him, there are no bounds to the outcry with which the presumption of that person is condemned.
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.
For the sick it is important to have the best. (Meaning)
The 'kingdom of heaven is within,' indeed, but we must also create one without, because we are intended to act upon our circumstances.
By mortifying vanity we do ourselves no good. It is the want of interest in our life which produces it; by filling up that want of interest in our life we can alone remedy it.
A woman cannot live in the light of intellect. Society forbids it. Those conventional frivolities, which are called her 'duties', forbid it. Her 'domestic duties', high-sounding words, which, for the most part, are but bad habits (which she has not the courage to enfranchise herself from, the strength to break through), forbid it.
Our first journey is to find that special place for us.
A human being does not cease to exist at death. It is change, not destruction, which takes place.
To understand God's thoughts, one must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.
The first possibility of rural cleanliness lies in water supply.
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.
Never give nor take an excuse.
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.
I am not yet worthy; and I will live to deserve to be called a Trained Nurse.
Unnecessary noise is the most cruel abuse of care which can be inflicted on either the sick or the well.
Remember my name-- you'll be screaming it later. (Quote Meaning)
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.
That Religion is not devotion, but work and suffering for the love of God; this is the true doctrine of Mystics.
We know nothing of the principle of health, the positive of which pathology is the negative, except from observation and experience. Nothing but observation and experience will teach us the ways to maintain or to bring back the state of health. It is often thought that medicine is the curative process. It is no such thing; medicine is the surgery of functions as surgery proper is that of limbs and organs.
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.
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.
The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.
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.
For what is Mysticism? It is not the attempt to draw near to God, not by rites or ceremonies, but by inward disposition? Is it not merely a hard word for 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within'? Heaven is neither a place nor a time.
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.
No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this-'devoted and obedient.' This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.
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.
All disease, at some period or other of its course, is more or less a reparative process, not necessarily accompanied with suffering: an effort of nature to remedy a process of poisoning or of decay, which has taken place weeks, months, sometimes years beforehand, unnoticed.
Passion, intellect, moral activity - these three have never been satisfied in a woman. In this cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere, they cannot be satisfied. To say more on this subject would be to enter into the whole history of society, of the present state of civilization.
Moral activity? There is scarcely such a thing possible! Everything is sketchy. The world does nothing but sketch.
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.
Never underestimate the healing effects of beauty.
Christ, if he had been a woman, might have been nothing but a great complainer
I stand at the altar of murdered men, and, while I live, I fight their cause.
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.
No woman has excited "passions" among women more than I have. Yet I leave no school behind me.
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.
Sublime in the highest style of intellectual beauty, intellect without effort, without suffering... not a feature is correct – but the whole effect is more expressive of spiritual grandeur than anything I could have imagined. It makes the impression upon one that thousands of voices do, uniting in one unanimous simultaneous feeling of enthusiasm or emotion, which is said to overcome the strongest man.
Instead of wishing to see more doctors made by women joining what there are, I wish to see as few doctors, either male or female, as possible. For, mark you, the women have made no improvement they have only tried to be "men" and they have only succeeded in being third-rate men.
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.
Religion was important to me. My family and I were very religious. I actually believe the work I did was a calling from God himself.
Let people who have to observe sickness and death look back and try to register in their observation the appearances which have preceded relapse, attack or death, and not assert that there were none, or that there were not the right ones. A want of the habit of observing conditions and an inveterate habit of taking averages are each of them often equally misleading.
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.
She said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel.
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.
Women should have the true nurse calling, the good of the sick first the second only the consideration of what is their 'place' to do - and that women who want for a housemaid to do this or the charwomen to do that, when the patient is suffering, have not the making of a nurse in them.
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.
Starting a job and working hard is how to be successful.
Woman has nothing but her affections,--and this makes her at once more loving and less loved.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. Aristotle How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.
There is no part of my life, upon which I can look back without pain.
I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small...
Diseases, as all experience shows, are adjectives, not noun substantives.
Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization
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.
Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity these, three and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised?
There are no specific diseases only specific disease conditions
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.
A want of the habit of observing and an inveterate habit of taking averages are each of them often equally misleading.
The craving for 'the return of the day', which the sick so constantly evince, is generally nothing but the desire for light.
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.
The next Christ will perhaps be a female Christ.
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.
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.
"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?"
Never to allow a patient to be waked, intentionally or accidentally, is a sine qua non of all good nursing.
"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."
Women never have a half-hour in all their lives (excepting before or after anybody is up in the house) that they can call their own, without fear of offending or of hurting someone. 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.' 1852
Averages seduce us away from minute observation.
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.
The night is given to us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power.
At present we live to impede each other's satisfactions; competition, domestic life, society, what is it all but this?
People have founded vast schemes upon a very few words.
Bismarck was a large persian cat owned by Florence Nightingale.
It is very well to say "be prudent, be careful, try to know each other." But how are you to know each other?
I can expect no sympathy or help from my family.
The time is come when women must do something more than the "domestic hearth," which means nursing the infants, keeping a pretty house, having a good dinner and an entertaining party.
Heaven is neither a place nor a time.
Do not engage in any paper wars. You will convince nobody and arrive at no satisfaction yourself.
The great reformers of the world turn into the great misanthropists, if circumstances or organization do not permit them to act.
I use the word nursing for want of a better. (Meaning)
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.
I can stand out the war with any man.
In a sick-room or a bed-room there should never be shutters shut.
Marriage is the only chance (and it is but a chance) offered to women for escape from this death and how eagerly and how ignorantly it is embraced.
Variety of form and brilliancy of colour in the objects presented to patients are actual means of recovery.
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.
Women dream till they have no longer the strength to dream; those dreams against which they so struggle, so honestly, vigorously, and conscientiously, and so in vain, yet which are their life, without which they could not have lived; those dreams go at last.
There is a physical, not moral, impossibility of supplying the wants of the intellect in the state of civilization at which we have arrived.
― Florence Nightingale Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
