Florence Nightingale quotes - page 4

Our business is, I think, to understand, not to judge. (Florence Nightingale)
Look at the poverty of our life! Can we expect anything else but poor creatures to come out of it? View quote
Florence Nightingale
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. View quote
Florence Nightingale
The progressive world is necessarily divided into two classes - those who take the best of what there is and enjoy it - those who wish for something better and try to create it. View quote
Florence Nightingale
The next Christ will perhaps be a female Christ. But do we see one woman who looks like a female Christ? or even like "the messenger before" her "face", to go before her and prepare the hearts and minds for her? View quote
Florence Nightingale
Where shall I find God? In myself. That is the true Mystical Doctrine. But then I myself must be in a state for Him to come and dwell in me. This is the whole aim of the Mystical Life; and all Mystical Rules in all times and countries have been laid down for putting the soul into such a state. View quote
Florence Nightingale
True it is that we can only create a heaven for ourselves and others "by the merits of Another," since it is only by working in accordance with God's Laws that we can do anything. But there is nothing at all in these prayers as if God's anger had to be bought off, as if He had to be bribed into giving us heaven by sufferings merely "to satisfy God's justice." View quote
Florence Nightingale
Christ Himself was the first true Mystic. "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish His work." View quote
Florence Nightingale
To have no food for our heads no food for our hearts, no food for our activity, is that nothing? View quote
Florence Nightingale
In looking round we are struck with the power of the organisations we see, not with their want of power. Now and then, it is true, we are conscious that there is an inferior organisation, but, in general, just the contrary. View quote
Florence Nightingale
Look round at the marriages which you know. The true marriage - that noble union, by which a man and woman become together the one perfect being - probably does not exist at present upon earth. It is not surprising that husbands and wives seem so little part of one another. It is surprising that there is so much love as there is. For there is no food for it. (Florence Nightingale)
I think God would not be the Almighty, the All-Wise, the All-Good, if he were the judge. View quote
Florence Nightingale
What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. View quote
Florence Nightingale
Give us back our suffering, we cry to Heaven in our hearts - suffering rather than indifferentism; for out of nothing comes nothing. But out of suffering may come the cure. Better have pain than paralysis! View quote
Florence Nightingale
In it and in the other prayers of the Mystics there is scarcely a petition. There is never a word of the theory that God's dealings with us are to show His "power"; still less of the theory that "of His own good pleasure" He has " predestined" any souls to eternal damnation. View quote
Florence Nightingale
Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness toward anyone. View quote
Florence Nightingale
It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm. View quote
Florence Nightingale
Sick children, if not too shy to speak, will always express this wish. They invariably prefer a story to be told to them, rather than read to them. View quote
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. View quote
Florence Nightingale
Badly constructed houses do for the healthy what badly constructed hospitals do for the sick. Once insure that the air in a house is stagnant, and sickness is certain to follow. View quote
Florence Nightingale
Every nurse ought to be careful to wash her hands very frequently during the day. If her face, too, so much the better. (Florence Nightingale)
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. View quote
Florence Nightingale
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 civilisation. View quote
Florence Nightingale
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. And, did we even see this, how can we make the difference? How obtain the interest which society declares she does not want, and we cannot want? View quote
Florence Nightingale
Society triumphs over many. They wish to regenerate the world with their institutions, with their moral philosophy, with their love. Then they sink to living from breakfast till dinner, from dinner till tea, with a little worsted work, and to looking forward to nothing but bed. 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? View quote
Florence Nightingale