Florence Nightingale Quotes
Poetry and imagination begin life.
Florence Nightingale (Cassandra, 1860)
Then comes intellect. It wishes to satisfy the wants which intellect creates for it.
Florence Nightingale (Cassandra, 1860)
I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took any excuse.
Florence Nightingale
Look at the poor lives which we lead. It is a wonder that we are so good as we are.
Florence Nightingale (Cassandra, 1860)
Let each person tell the truth from his own experience.
Florence Nightingale
How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.
Florence Nightingale
The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.
Florence Nightingale (Notes on Hospitals, 1863)
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.
Florence Nightingale (Cassandra, 1860)
Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.
Florence Nightingale (Cassandra, 1860)
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.
Florence Nightingale (Letter to a friend)
Out of activity may come thought, out of mere aspiration can come nothing.
Florence Nightingale (Cassandra, 1860)
Look at the poverty of our life! Can we expect anything else but poor creatures to come out of it?
Florence Nightingale (Cassandra, 1860)
Everything is sketchy. The world does nothing but sketch.
Florence Nightingale (Cassandra, 1860)
What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine…
Florence Nightingale (Letter, 1855)
I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.
Florence Nightingale
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.
Florence Nightingale
You ask me why I do not write something....I think one's feelings waste themselves in words, they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.
Florence Nightingale (Letter to her friend)
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.
Florence Nightingale (Cassandra, 1860)
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
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.
Florence Nightingale (Quoted in Suggestions for Thought, 1994)
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 (Cassandra, 1860)
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! A hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world. But rather, ten times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new world, than stand idly on the shore!
Florence Nightingale (Cassandra, 1860)
