Quotes from Florence Nightingale

To be a fellow worker with God is the highest aspiration of which we can conceive man capable.

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.

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.

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

Jesus Christ raised women above the condition of mere slaves, mere ministers to the passions of the man, raised them by His sympathy, to be Ministers of God.

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.

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.

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.

That Religion is not devotion, but work and suffering for the love of God; this is the true doctrine of Mystics.

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.

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.

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