If you’re looking for the best Florence Nightingale quotes on life, nursing and success then look no further.
Florence Nightingale was an English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. After serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War she gave nursing a favourable reputation and became an icon of Victorian culture.
Nightingale laid the foundation for professional nursing by establishing the first nursing school in the world at St Thomas’ Hospital in London in 1860, and it’s now part of King’s College London.
In recognition for her pioneering work in nursing, all new nurses take the Nightingale Pledge. The Florence Nightingale Medal is the highest honour a nurse can receive and even International Nurses Day is celebrated on her birthday.
During her lifetime, Florence Nightingale was also an impressive and versatile writer covering topics of medical knowledge, religion and mysticism.
Below I’ve put together the best Florence Nightingale quotes that will give you a fascinating insight into her thoughts on success, life, health, nursing and religion.
37 Inspirational Florence Nightingale Quotes
1. “Starting a job and working hard is how to be successful.” – Florence Nightingale
2. “I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.” – Florence Nightingale
3. “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
4. “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
5. “How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.” – Florence Nightingale
6. “Never give nor take an excuse.” – Florence Nightingale
7. “Rather, ten times, die in the surf, heralding the way to a new world, than stand idly on the shore.” – Florence Nightingale
8. “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
9. “To be ‘in charge’ is certainly not only to carry out the proper measures yourself but to see that everyone else does so too.” – Florence Nightingale
10. “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
11. “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
12. “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
13. “Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.” – Florence Nightingale
14. “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
15. “Our first journey is to find that special place for us.” – Florence Nightingale
16. “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?” – Florence Nightingale
17. “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
18. “Averages… seduce us away from minute observation.” – Florence Nightingale
19. “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
20. “The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.” – Florence Nightingale
21. “If a nurse declines to do these kinds of things for her patient, ‘because it is not her business’, I should say that nursing was not her calling.” – Florence Nightingale
22. “What cruel mistakes are sometimes made by benevolent men and women in matters of business about which they know nothing and think they know a great deal.” – Florence Nightingale
23. “Wise and humane management of the patient is the best safeguard against infection.” – Florence Nightingale
24. “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
25. “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
26. “The object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel.” – Florence Nightingale
27. “Never underestimate the healing effects of beauty.” – Florence Nightingale
28. “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
29. “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
30. “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
31. “There are no specific diseases only specific disease conditions.” – Florence Nightingale
32. “Do not engage in any paper wars. You will convince nobody and arrive at no satisfaction yourself.” – Florence Nightingale
33. “To understand God’s thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of his purpose.” – Florence Nightingale
34. “Mankind must make heaven before we can “go to heaven” (as the phrase is), in this world as in any other.” – Florence Nightingale
35. “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
36. “A human being does not cease to exist at death. It is change, not destruction, which takes place.” – Florence Nightingale
37. “Heaven is neither a place nor a time.” – Florence Nightingale
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