Quotes about nurse

A collection of quotes on the topic of nurse, nursing, doing, herring.

Quotes about nurse

Josef Mengele photo

“Even the Russians are fighting us. They've brought in Jewish pilots, nurses, and doctors. Everybody's ganging up on us. We didn't think it would happen this way.”

Josef Mengele (1911–1979) Nazi officer and physician

As quoted in Defy the darkness: A Tale of Courage in the Shadow of Mengele (2000) by Joe Rosenblum and David Kohn, p. 192

William Shakespeare photo
George Carlin photo
Florence Nightingale photo

“I use the word nursing for want of a better.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Notes on Nursing (1860)
Context: I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet — all at the least expense of vital power to the patient.

John Green photo

“I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark almost blue color, and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.””

A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

George Orwell photo
Woodrow Wilson photo

“We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

As quoted by Thomas A. Bruno in Take your dreams and Run (South Plainfield: Bridge, 1984), p. 2-3. Source: Dr. Preston Williams (2002): By the Way - A Snapshot Diagnosis of the Inner-City Dilemma, p. 38-39. Xulun Press, Fairfax, Virginia http://books.google.de/books?id=Xn9jxqatFecC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=woodrow+wilson+We+Grow+Great+By+Dreams%27&source=bl&ots=TtioQ-yO0-&sig=qHWPj4-8g3hSjcV-qJTbzNg6nuI&hl=de&sa=X&ei=1QZ0U4DBOaf80QWSqYDQAw&ved=0CHYQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=woodrow%20wilson%20We%20Grow%20Great%20By%20Dreams'&f=false
1880s

Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo

“Jacinta never told Penelope that she loved her. The nurse knew that those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.”

Variant: The nurse knew that those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.
Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Isaac Asimov photo
Jordan Peterson photo
Friedrich Schiller photo

“Man is made of ordinary things, and habit is his nurse.”

Act I, sc. iv
Wallenstein (1798), Part II - Wallensteins Tod (The Death of Wallenstein)

Abraham Lincoln photo

“It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospital, and more prayers to Heaven than any. God bless the Methodist Church — bless all the churches — and blessed be to God, who, in this our great trial, giveth us the churches.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

To the 1864 general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as quoted in Abraham Lincoln : A History Vol. 6 (1890) by John George Nicolay and John Hay, Ch. 15, p. 324
1860s

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Barack Obama photo

“I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Circulated in "A Coil of Rage" http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/coilofrage.asp, a 2011 mass e-mail attributing several fabricated quotations to Obama.
Originally a statement about Obama by Steve Sailer from "Obama's Identity Crisis", The American Conservative (), recast into first-person as if said by Obama:
And yet, at least through age 33 when he wrote Dreams from My Father, he found solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against his mother's race.
Misattributed

Eliphas Levi photo
Lewis Carroll photo
Pope Francis photo

“Some sixty years ago, Pope Pius XII, in a memorable address to anaesthesiologists and intensive care specialists, stated that there is no obligation to have recourse in all circumstances to every possible remedy and that, in some specific cases, it is permissible to refrain from their use… The specific element of this criterion is that it considers “the result that can be expected, taking into account the state of the sick person and his or her physical and moral resources”. It thus makes possible a decision that is morally qualified as withdrawal of “overzealous treatment”.
Such a decision responsibly acknowledges the limitations of our mortality, once it becomes clear that opposition to it is futile. “Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2278). This difference of perspective restores humanity to the accompaniment of the dying, while not attempting to justify the suppression of the living. It is clear that not adopting, or else suspending, disproportionate measures, means avoiding overzealous treatment; from an ethical standpoint, it is completely different from euthanasia, which is always wrong, in that the intent of euthanasia is to end life and cause death.
The anguish associated with conditions that bring us to the threshold of human mortality, and the difficulty of the decision we have to make, may tempt us to step back from the patient. Yet this is where, more than anything else, we are called to show love and closeness, recognizing the limit that we all share and showing our solidarity.
Let each of us give love in his or her own way—as a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, a brother or sister, a doctor or a nurse. But give it!”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Message of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Participants in the European Regional Meeting of the World Medical Association, From the Vatican, 7 November 2017 https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2017/documents/papa-francesco_20171107_messaggio-monspaglia.html
2010s, 2017

Jonathan Swift photo
Helen Diner photo

“[Amazons] They were conquerors, horse tamers, and huntresses who gave birth to children but did not nurse or rear them. They were an extreme, feminist wing of a young human race, whose other extreme wing consisted of the stringent patriarchies.”

Helen Diner (1874–1948) Austrian writer and historian

Mothers and Amazons; the first feminine history of culture https://archive.org/details/mothersamazons00ecks, p. 123.

Alexander the Great photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Matka Tereza photo

“We are misunderstood, we are misrepresented, we are misreported. We are not nurses, we are not doctors, we are not teachers, we are not social workers. We are religious, we are religious, we are religious.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

As quoted in Angelo Devananda, Daily Prayers with Mother Teresa (Fount, 1987), p. 91
1980s

Ozzy Osbourne photo

“[To Kelly, after he's become suspicious] You haven't been playing doctors and nurses have you?”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

The Osbournes television show

Matka Tereza photo

“I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

Statement of 1977, as quoted in Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (2011) by Susan Ratcliffe, p. 373
1970s

W. H. Auden photo
Thomas Brooks photo

“Faith is the champion of grace, and love the nurse; but humility is the beauty of grace.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Source: Quotes from secondary sources, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, 1895, P. 221.

Christopher Morley photo
Andy Rooney photo
Rishi Sunak photo
Cleopatra VII photo

“Peace, peace! Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, That sucks the nurse asleep?”

Cleopatra VII (-69–-30 BC) last active pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt

As quoted, Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, Act V, scene ππ (1623)

Neal Shusterman photo
Marilynne Robinson photo

“The world that used to nurse us
now keeps shouting inane instructions.
That's why I ran to the woods.”

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist

Source: Songs of Unreason

Dorothy Parker photo
Neal Shusterman photo
Cassandra Clare photo

“Jace threw himself against the door. It didn't budge. He cursed. "My shoulder will never be the same. I expect you to nurse me back to health."
-Jace to Clary, pg.284-”

Variant: My shoulder will never be the same. I expect you to nurse me back to health.'-Jace
'Just break the door down, will you?'-Clary
Source: City of Bones

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Jim Butcher photo
Jean Genet photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Jon Stewart photo

“It's not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess. It's that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse's office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Source: America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

Groucho Marx photo
Julia Glass photo
Jeffrey Eugenides photo
James Patterson photo
William Blake photo

“Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: Proverbs of Hell

Megan Whalen Turner photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Michael Ondaatje photo
Jeffrey Eugenides photo
Robert Burns photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Tracey Ullman photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Charles Lamb photo
Sarah Bakewell photo
Christina Applegate photo

“I'm going to have cute boobs 'til I'm 90, so there's that. I'll have the best boobs in the nursing home. I'll be the envy of all the ladies around the bridge table.”

Christina Applegate (1971) American actress

During an interview on Good Morning America about her recent mastectomy. (August 19, 2008)

P.G. Wodehouse photo
Stéphane Mallarmé photo
David Foster Wallace photo
Berthe Morisot photo
Jack McDevitt photo
Ron Paul photo

“The American people have been offered two lousy choices. One, which is corporatism, a fascist type of approach, or, socialism. We deliver a lot of services in this country through the free market, and when you do it through the free market prices go down. But in medicine, prices go up. Technology doesn't help the cost, it goes up instead of down. But if you look at almost all of our industries that are much freer, technology lowers the prices. Just think of how the price of cell phones goes down. Poor people have cell phones, and televisions, and computers. Prices all go down. But in medicine, they go up, and there's a reason for that, that's because the government is involved with it… I do [think that prices will go down without government involvement], but probably a lot more than what you're thinking about, because you have to have competition in the delivery of care. For instance, if you have a sore throat and you have to come see me, you have to wait in the waiting room, and then get checked, and then get a prescription, and it ends up costing you $100. If you had true competition, you should be able to go to a nurse, who could for 1/10 the cost very rapidly do it, and let her give you a prescription for penicillin. See, the doctors and the medical profession have monopolized the system through licensing. And that's not an accident, because they like the idea that you have to go see the physician and pay this huge price. And patients can sort this out, they're not going to go to a nurse if they need brain surgery…”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Laura Knoy on NHPR, June 5, 2007 http://info.nhpr.org/node/13016
2000s, 2006-2009

Marlon Brando photo

“This picture will try to show the Nazism is a matter of mind, not geography, and that there are Nazis — and people of good will — in every country. The world can't spend its life looking over its shoulder and nursing hatreds. There would be no progress that way.”

Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American screen and stage actor

At a press conference for The Young Lions in Berlin; republished in Marlon Brando, Portraits and Film Stills 1946-1995 (1996)

John Calvin photo

“God promised by the mouth of Isaiah that queens should be the nursing mothers of the church.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Referring to (Isaiah 49:23) http://bible.crosswalk.com/OnlineStudyBible/bible.cgi?section=1&word=nursing%20AND%20QUEENS&version=kjv in a letter to William Cecil (May 1559), in Bonnet (1980), op. cit., p. 212; also in Hastings Robinson, ed., The Zurich letters: Comprising the Correspondence of several English Bishops and others with some of the Helvetian reformers, during the early part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC02160004&id=CP4QAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA2-PR17&lpg=RA2-PR17&dq=%22zurich+letters%22#PPP16,M1, (Second Series. A.D. 1558-1602), Cambridge (England): University Press, 1845, p. 35.

Willa Cather photo
Ivan Kostov Nikolov photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Ogden Nash photo
Isaac Barrow photo
Šantidéva photo

“As long as diseases afflict living beings
May I be the doctor, the medicine
And also the nurse
Who restores them to health.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

Bodhicaryavatara

Walter Scott photo
Phil Brooks photo

“I really hope that the symbolism isn't lost on you four Superstars in the chamber right now, because it's killing me. Here's four extremely weak individuals that, every day, are locked inside a prison of addiction, like most of these people here today; and now, the four of you are locked inside the Elimination Chamber with me. And be sure, it's not me locked in here with you — it's you locked in here with me. And tomorrow morning, when you're nursing the pain and the wounds that this chamber and myself have caused you, I want you to remember that when your pod door opens and you came out and I defeated you, don't think of it as failure. Think of it as me saving you. [Standing over Rey Mysterio's pod] Think of it as me setting you free.
Punk: [To Undertaker, after elimination R-Truth] You'd better pray that your pod door opens last, 'cause when you come out, I'm gonna make you tap out, just like I did before. [To John Morrison] And I'm gonna prove to you that your decadent rock life will get you nowhere. I'm gonna prove to the world that straight-edge means I'm better than you! For those of you at home, feel free, place your hand on the screen and feel CM Punk flow through you!
Lawler: Matt, did you just put your hand on the screen?
Striker: Yes.
Lawler: Do you feel CM Punk flow through you?
Punk: Nobody can stop me!
Cole: Guys, the sermon's over in [checking the timer] three seconds.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Elimination Chamber - February 21, 2010
Friday Night SmackDown

Oliver Goldsmith photo

“The land of scholars and the nurse of arms.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Source: The Traveller (1764), Line 356.

Charlotte Brontë photo
Edmund Burke photo
Bel Kaufmanová photo
Ba Jin photo
Alexander McCall Smith photo
Sanjay Gupta photo
Robert Kuttner photo
Bobby Sands photo
Charles Boarman photo

“My dear Father, Charley wrote you in his letter to his Aunt Laura thanking you for your kindness in sending us a nice Christmas present. You must not think because I have not written you myself before this that I appreciated your kindness less. I have been so troubled with pains and weakness in my arm and hand as to be almost useless at times. I think it was nursing so much when the children were sick. I was so relieved when Anna's note to Charly arrived yesterday telling Frankie was better. It would have been dreadful for Mother to have gone out west at this miserable season of the year. I was wretchedly uneasy. I do hope poor Franky will get along nicely now. It will make him much more careful about exposing himself having had this severe attack. Charley received the enclosed letters Anna sent from Sister Eliza and Toad[? ]. I was very glad to get them. It is quite refreshing to read Sister Eliza's letters. They are so cheerful and happy. I had a letter from her on Friday. This Custom House investigating committee is attracting a great deal of attention and time here. It holds its sessions at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Mr. Broome was up on Tuesday evening until ten o'clock but was not called upon. It is very slow. He has been for three weeks passed preparing the statement for those summoned from the Public Stores. Mr. Broome sends Laura a paper to look at—The Fisk tragedy. What is Nora doing with herself this winter. She might write to me sometimes. Give much love to Mother. Ask her for her receipt for getting fat. I would like to gain some myself. It is so much nicer to grow fleshy as you advance in life than to shrivel and dry up. The children are all well and growing very fast. Lloyd has to study very hard this year. His studies are quite difficult. I suppose Charley Harris is working hard too. Mr. Broome sent you a paper with the Navy Register in this week. I received your papers and often Richard calls and gets them. I must close. Mr. Broome and children join me in love to you, Mother, Laura, Anna, Nora, Charly & all.
With much love,
Your devoted child, Mary Jane
I enclose Nancy letter which was written some time ago.”

Charles Boarman (1795–1879) US Navy Rear Admiral

Mary Jane Boarman in a Sunday letter to her father (January 21, 1872)
The people mentioned in Mary Jane's letter were her children Lloyd, Charley, and Nancy; her husband, William Henry Broome; her sisters Eliza, Anna, Laura, and Nora; her brother Frankie; and her nephew frontier physician Dr. Charles "Charley" Harris, son of her sister Susan.
John Broome and Rebecca Lloyd: Their Descendants and Related Families, 18th to 21st Centuries (2009)

Allen C. Guelzo photo
William Lisle Bowles photo
John Trumbull (poet) photo
Robert Burns photo
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti photo
Anne Brontë photo
Jean Ingelow photo

“To bear, to nurse, to rear,
To watch and then to lose,
To see my bright ones disappear,
Drawn up like morning dews.”

Jean Ingelow (1820–1897) British writer

"Songs of Seven. Seven times Six", reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Joe Haldeman photo
Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton photo

“A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers;
There was lack of woman’s nursing, there was dearth of woman’s tears.”

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton (1808–1877) English feminist, social reformer, and author

Bingen on the Rhine.

Hilaire Belloc photo

“[A]lways keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse”

"Jim, Who Ran Away From His Nurse, and Was Eaten by a Lion"
Cautionary Tales for Children (1907)