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Florence Nightingale: 162 quotes20 likes

“What are novels? What is the secret of the charm of every romance that ever was written? The first thing in a good novel is to place the persons together in circumstances which naturally call out the high feelings and thoughts of the character, which afford food for sympathy between them on these points — romantic events they are called. The second is that the heroine has generally no family ties (almost invariably no mother), or, if she has, these do not interfere with her entire independence.
These two things constitute the main charm of reading novels.”

Florence Nightingale

Cassandra (1860)

“God has taken away the greatest man of his generation, for Dr. Livingstone stood alone.”

Florence Nightingale

Quoted in Modern Heroes of the Mission Field (1882) by William Pakenham Walsh p. 281

“How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.”

Florence Nightingale

As quoted in The Book of Positive Quotations (2007) by John Cook, p. 479

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

Florence Nightingale

As quoted in Chance Rules : An Informal Guide to Probability, Risk, and Statistics (1999) by Brian Everitt, p. 137

“You must go to Mahometanism, to Buddhism, to the East, to the Sufis & Fakirs, to Pantheism, for the right growth of mysticism.”

Florence Nightingale

Letter (2 March 1853), quoted in Suggestions for Thought : Selections and Commentaries (1994), edited by Michael D. Calabria and Janet A. MacRae, p. xiii

“In one sense, I do believe I am "like a man," as Parthe [the writer's sister] says. But how? In having sympathy. … Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream out at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving any in return, for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so. … They cannot state a fact accurately to another, nor can that other attend to it accurately enough for it to become information. Now is not all this the result of want of sympathy?”

Florence Nightingale

Letter to Madame Mohl (13 December 1861)
The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913)

“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

Cassandra (1860)

“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

Cassandra (1860)

“It seems as if the female spirit of the world were mourning everlastingly over blessings, not lost, but which she has never had, and which, in her discouragement she feels that she never will have, they are so far off.”

Florence Nightingale

Cassandra (1860)

“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

Notes on Nursing (1860)

“Suffering, sad "female humanity!" What are these feelings which they are taught to consider as disgraceful, to deny to themselves? What form do the Chinese feet assume when denied their proper development? If the young girls of the "higher classes," who never commit a false step, whose justly earned reputations were never sullied even by the stain which the fruit of mere "knowledge of good and evil" leaves behind, were to speak, and say what are their thoughts employed upon, their thoughts, which alone are free, what would they say?”

Florence Nightingale

Cassandra (1860)

“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

As quoted in Parted Lips : Lesbian Love Quotes Through the Ages (2002) by Simone Rich

“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

Letter quoted in Florence Nightingale in Rome : Letters Written by Florence Nightingale in Rome in the Winter of 1847-1848 (1981), edited by Mary Keele, and Suggestions for Thought : Selections and Commentaries (1994), edited by Michael D. Calabria and Janet A. MacRae, p. xiv

“Nothing can well be imagined more painful than the present position of woman, unless, on the one hand, she renounces all outward activity and keeps herself within the magic sphere, the bubble of her dreams; or, on the other, surrendering all aspiration, she gives herself to her real life, soul and body. For those to whom it is possible, the latter is best; for out of activity may come thought, out of mere aspiration can come nothing.”

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, quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale Vol. II (1914) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 406

“A girl, if she has any pride, is so ashamed of having anything she wishes to say out of the hearing of her own family, she thinks it must be something so very wrong, that it is ten to one, if she have the opportunity of saying it, that she will not.
And yet she is spending her life, perhaps, in dreaming of accidental means of unrestrained communion.”

Florence Nightingale

Cassandra (1860)

“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

Letter to John Stuart Mill (12 September 1860), published in Florence Nightingale on Society and Politics, Philosophy, Science, Education (2003) edited by Lynn McDonald

“Men and women meet now to be idle. Is it extraordinary that they do not know each other, and that, in their mutual ignorance, they form no surer friendships? Did they meet to do something together, then indeed they might form some real tie.
But, as it is, they are not there, it is only a mask which is there — a mouth-piece of ready-made sentences about the "topics of the day"; and then people rail against men for choosing a woman "for her face"”

Florence Nightingale

why, what else do they see?
Cassandra (1860)

“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

Letter (5 September 1857), quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 369

“I have had a larger responsibility of human lives than ever man or woman had before. And I attribute my success to this — I never gave or took an excuse. Yes, I do see the difference now between me and other men. When a disaster happens, I act and they make excuses.”

Florence Nightingale

Letter to Miss H. Bonham Carter, 1861. As quoted in The Gigantic Book of Teachers' Wisdom (2007) by Frank McCourt and Erin Gruwell, p. 410