Quotes from Florence Nightingale

God spoke to me and called me to His Service. What form this service was to take the voice did not say.

Every nurse ought to be careful to wash her hands very frequently during the day. If her face, too, so much the better.

I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse.

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.

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.

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

For the sick it is important to have the best.

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

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.

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.

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. I have worked hard, very hard, that is all; and I have never refused God anything.

The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.