110+ Florence Nightingale Quotes On Nursing, Compassion And Education

Florence Nightingale was an English activist and a pioneering figure in nursing. She is best known for her work during the Crimean War, where she organised care for wounded soldiers and drastically improved the unsanitary conditions of the military hospitals. She is considered the founder of modern nursing and is known as "The Lady with the Lamp" due to her habit of making rounds at night to check on patients. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Florence Nightingale on nursing, compassion, education.

Top 10 Florence Nightingale Quotes

1. Nursing is a progressive art such that to stand still is to go backwards.
2. The most important practical lesson than can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe.
3. Live life when you have it. Life is a splendid gift-there is nothing small about it.
4. The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.
5. I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.
6. How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.
10. Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.

Florence Nightingale Image Quotes

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

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

Florence Nightingale Short Quotes

• The first possibility of rural cleanliness lies in water supply.
• Christ, if he had been a woman, might have been nothing but a great complainer
• Never underestimate the healing effects of beauty.
• I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small...
• There is no part of my life, upon which I can look back without pain.
• Remember my name-- you'll be screaming it later.
• Bismarck was a large persian cat owned by Florence Nightingale.
• diseases, as all experience shows, are adjectives, not noun substantives.
• Starting a job and working hard is how to be successful.
• Never give nor take an excuse.

Florence Nightingale Quotes About Nursing

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. — Florence Nightingale

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. — Florence Nightingale

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

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

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

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

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. — Florence Nightingale

To understand God's thoughts, one must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose. — Florence Nightingale

Nursing is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts. — Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale Quotes About Statistics

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

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

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

Florence Nightingale Quotes About Sick

Unnecessary noise is the most cruel abuse of care which can be inflicted on either the sick or the well. — 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

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

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. — 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

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

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. — 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

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm. — 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

Florence Nightingale Quotes About World

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

I have learned to know God. I have recast my social belief... All my admirers are married; most of my friends are dead; and I stand with all the world before me, where to choose a path to make in it. — Florence Nightingale

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

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

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

Moral activity? There is scarcely such a thing possible! Everything is sketchy. The world does nothing but sketch. — Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale Quotes About Patient

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

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

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

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

Do not meet or overtake a patient who is moving about in order to speak to him or to give him any message or letter. You might just as well give him a box on the ear. I have seen a patient fall flat on the ground who was standing when his nurse came into the room. — Florence Nightingale

Variety of form and brilliancy of colour in the objects presented to patients are actual means of recovery. — Florence Nightingale

Nature alone cures. ... what nursing has to do ... is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him. — Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

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

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. — 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. — Florence Nightingale

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. — 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

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

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

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. — Florence Nightingale

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. — Florence Nightingale

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. — 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

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. — 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 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

A want of the habit of observing and an inveterate habit of taking averages are each of them often equally misleading. — 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

I was very limited as a women. Getting the men in the military to see that the medical facilities were unhealthy was very difficult, along with many other things such as getting a good education and also finding a good career. — Florence Nightingale

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. — Florence Nightingale

Never speak to an invalid from behind, nor from the door, nor from any distance from him, nor when he is doing anything. The official politeness of servants in these things is so grateful to invalids, that many prefer, without knowing why, having none but servants about them. — 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

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

[On Thomas Babington Macaulay:] He was a most disagreeable companion to my fancy ... His conversation was a procession of one. — Florence Nightingale

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

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

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

Heaven is neither a place nor a time. — Florence Nightingale

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

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. — Florence Nightingale

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

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

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

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. — Florence Nightingale

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. — Florence Nightingale

Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. Far the greatest things grow by God's law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it. — Florence Nightingale

Religion was important to me. My family and I were very religious. I acctualy believe the work I did was a calling from God himself. — 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. — Florence Nightingale

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

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

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

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. — 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

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

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

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

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

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. — 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. — Florence Nightingale

I use the word nursing for want of a better. — 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

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

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

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 — Florence Nightingale

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

Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization — 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

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

The night is given to us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power. — Florence Nightingale

Life Lessons by Florence Nightingale

1. Florence Nightingale taught the importance of service and self-sacrifice, showing that one person can make a difference in the world.
2. She also showed that hard work and dedication can lead to success, even in the face of adversity.
3. Finally, she demonstrated that compassion and empathy can be powerful tools for creating positive change.