Quotes about nursing (264 quotes, page 3)

“[Downs Syndrome Winnie the Pooh] The minute I saw this in a catalogue I just fell about. It's so brave of Disney to introduce stuffed toys that represent serious illnesses in order to educate the little kiddies. Me, I just want this so I can make my very own 'Victorian Sanitarium' playset. Downs Syndrome Pooh will be kept perpetually in a bleak little cardboard cell, bullied by Doctor Action Man and Nurse Princess Leia, occasionally brought out to be brutally hosed down with cold water every week. I'm thinking of sending it to Hasbro.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

Yahtzee's Christmas Wishlist http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/essays/wishlist.htm
Fully Ramblomatic, Essays

Education , Thinking , Water , Princess

“It is the mistake of a coxcomb, whose experience of affection is all to come—if it ever comes—to say that women are won by mere good looks. Though it does not owe its birth to them. Gratitude and Vanity are the nurses that rock the cradle of Love.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Love , Women , Birth , Gratitude

“Quoth he [ Alexander ] "…as a newborn babe cannot be nourished without the nurse's milk, nor conducted to the approaches that lead to growth in life, so a city cannot thrive without fields and the fruits thereof pouring into its walls."”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Introduction, Sec. 3
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II

Life

“Denmark nursed that anger and it kept him free.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 10.

Anger

“Love, nursed among pleasures, is faithless as they,
But the love born of Sorrow, like Sorrow, is true.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

In the morning of life, when its cares are unknown, st. 2
Irish Melodies http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/moore.html (1807–1834)

Love , Pleasure

“I sketched a young mother with her child at her breast, sitting in a smoky hut. If only I could someday paint what I felt then. A sweet woman, an image of charity. She was nursing her big, year-old bambino... And the woman gave her life and her youth and her power tot the child in utter simplicity, unaware that she was a heroine.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal, Worpswede 1897; as quoted in: Witzling (1991, p. 193) and Delia Gaze (2001) Concise Dictionary of Women Artists, p. 489
1897

Life , Youth , Painting

“Men have no right to profess themselves architects hastily, without having climbed from boyhood the steps of these studies and thus, nursed by the knowledge of many arts and sciences, having reached the heights of the holy ground of architecture.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter I, Sec. 11

Men , Art , Knowledge , Study

“One reason for the tremendous increase in health-care costs in the U. S. is managerial neglect of the "hotel services" by the people who dominate the hospital, such as doctors and nurses.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 2, p. 539

People , Health

“True friendship implies full confidence, which may only be completely given or completely withdrawn. If friendship has continually to be analyzed, nursed, and cured, it will cause more anguish than love itself, without having love's strength and its remedies. And if this confidence is ill-placed? Well - I would rather be betrayed by a false friend than deceive a true one.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

Love , Friendship , Confidence , Falseness

“By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems. But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs.
The current of his feeling failed: he became his admirers. Now he is scattered over a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections;
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Source: In Memory of W.B. Yeats (1939), Lines 10–23

Death , Feeling , Silence , Dead

“All the Democrats are for higher taxes. All of them are in favor of Hillary's socialist health-care plan. All of them are for higher pay for teachers and nurses — and no pay at all for anyone in the pharmaceutical or oil industries, especially Halliburton executives, who should be sent to Guantánamo. All the Democrats believe the way to strike fear in the hearts of the terrorists is for the federal government to invest heavily in windmills.
All the Democrats oppose the war. And all the Democrats who took a position on the war before it began were for it, but now believe that everything Bush did from that moment forward has been bad! bad! bad! … Finally, all the candidates are willing to sell out any of these other issues in service of the one burning desire of all Democrats: abortion on demand. If they could just figure out a way to abort babies using solar power, that's all we'd ever hear about.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"What happened to your queer party-friends?" (22 January 2004) http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2004/01/22/what_happened_to_your_queer_party-friends/page/full/ also in How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), p. 49.
2004

War , Health , Fear , Way

“It is under such cultural circumstances that our contemporaries, systematically cretinised by the mechanicism and the architecture of auto-punition, by psychological bureaucratic congratulations, by ideological disorder and imaginative fasting, by affective paternal hungers of all kinds, seek in vain - to bite into the doting and triumphal sweetness of the plump, atavistic, tender, militarist and territorial hack of some hitlerian nurse, in order at last to be able, no matter how, to communicate with the totemic consecrated host that has just been elevated in front of their own noses and which, as is known and understood, was nothing else than the spiritual and symbolic nourishment that catholicism offered during the centuries to appease the cannibal frenzy of moral and irrational hungers.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quote from from: Dalí's essay, 1935: Conquest of the Irrational https://ia601209.us.archive.org/4/items/DaliConquestIrrational/412994-Dali_ReducedPDF.pdf - Chapter: 'The Waters in which we Swim; Julien Levi Publisher, New York, 1935. p. 8
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1931 - 1940

Hunger , Imagination , Communication

“You plunge into that underworld space, and that's also where you begin to nurse feelings of resentment and aggrievement and murder and homicide, and even worse. If people are betrayed enough, they become obsessed with the futility of being itself, and they go to places where perhaps no one would ever want to go if they were in their right mind. And they begin to nurse fantasies of the ultimate revenge, and that's a horrible place to be. And that's hell. That's why hell has always been a suburb of the underworld, because if you get plunged into a situation that you don't understand, and things are not good for you anymore, it's only one step from being completely confused, to being completely outraged and resentful, and then it's only one step from there to really looking for revenge. And that can take you places – well, that merely to imagine properly can be traumatic. And I've seen that with people many times. And I think that anybody who uses their imagination on themselves can see how that happens, because I can't imagine that there isn't a single person in the room who hasn't nursed fairly intense fantasies of revenge, at least at one point in their life – and usually for what appear to be good reasons. It can shake your faith in being to be betrayed, but if it shakes it so badly that you turn against being itself, that's certainly no solution. All it does is make everything that's bad, even worse.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Life , People , Faith , Feeling

“For Nature is a cunning nurse. She gives us lollipops all the way, and when the lollipop of hope and the lollipop of achievement are done, she gently inserts in our toothless gums the lollipop of remembrance. And with that pleasant vanity we are soothed to sleep.”

Alfred George Gardiner (1865–1946) British journalist and writer

From "The Vanity of Old Age", Windfalls (1920)

Hope , Way , Nature , Sleep

“Now what in hell am I going to tell this boy Schaefer's parents? That a substitute nurse assassinated him because she couldn't tell the doctors from the patients on the floor?”

Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981) American playwright, screenwriter and novelist

Dr. Bock.
The Hospital (1971)

Boy , Hell , Parent

“In Ceylon I had a black nurse who wet - nursed me.
Years later I was told by my father that she said of me:"This boy plenty belly, big stick."”

Christopher Vokes (1904–1985) Canadian general

Kingston, p. 4
Vokes - My Story (1985)

Boy

“My mother saw herself as a victim. Once upon a time she had shaped her future and made decisions -- she had left Somalia for Aden, divorced her first husband and chosen my father--but at some point, it seemed, she lost hope. Many Somali women in her position would have worked, would have taken control of their lives, but my mother, having absorbed the Arab attitude that pious women should not work outside the home, felt that this would not be proper. It never occurred to her to go out and create a new life for herself, although she can't have been older than thirty-five or forty when my father left. Instead, she remained completely dependent. She nursed grievances; she was resentful; she was often violent; and she was always depressed.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 5

Life , Women , Hope , Home

“A cure for old age is a very common wish,” Kurtz observed. “Dashed slug-a-beds want to be shot by a jealous husband, not a nurse bored with emptying the bedpan.”

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 15, “Delivery Service” (p. 317)

Age

“Now the leaves are falling fast,
Nurse's flowers will not last;
Nurses to their graves are gone,
And the prams go rolling on.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Source: Autumn Song (1936), Lines 1–4

Flowers

“The statute is like a tyrant; where he comes he makes all void; but the common law is like a nursing father, makes only void that part where the fault is, and preserves the rest.”

Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet (1554–1625) English politician

Quoted by Sir Thomas Twisden, 1st Baronet, C.J., in Maleverer v. Redshaw (1670), 1 Mod. Rep. 36 ; and by Wilmot, L.C.J., in Collins v. Blantern (1767), 2 Wils. 351.

Law , Parting

“My brief stay at the hospital had already convinced me that the medical profession was an open door to anyone nursing a grudge against the human race.”

J. G. Ballard book Crash

Crash (1973)

“One purpose of the USA Freedom Corps will be homeland security. America needs retired doctors and nurses who can be mobilized in major emergencies; volunteers to help police and fire departments; transportation and utility workers well-trained in spotting danger.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Freedom , Help , Training

“The same parents can raise a dreamy, reflective girl and a driven, competitive one—the job is not to nurse her nature but to help elicit the essential opposite: to help the dreamy one to be a little more driven, the competitive one to be a little more reflective. The one artisanal, teachable thing is outer conduct.”

Adam Gopnik (1956) American journalist

How to Raise a Prodigy, The New Yorker (2018)

Girl , Nature , Parent , Help

“Sleep, Nurse of our life, Care’s best reposer,
Nature's high'st rapture, and the vision giver.”

Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury (1583–1648) Anglo-Welsh soldier, diplomat, historian, poet and religious philosopher

"To his Mistress for her True Picture", line 11

Life , Nature , Sleep

“Australians, like other peoples, tend to think they are highly distinctive, but the characteristics they value may be an extension or an exaggeration of what they brought from the mother country. In some respects they may be more like the peoples of other new lands settled by the British than they are willing to acknowledge. Australian soldiers and Australian nurses of World War I felt themselves to be very different from their English counterparts but the English were inclined to see all the colonials - New Zealanders, Canadians and Australians - as similar and different from themselves.”

John Hirst (1942–2016) Australian historian

The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770 (2007)

War , People , World , Thinking

“The chief business of a government is like that of a nurse, to hinder those who are under its care from doing mischief to themselves.”

Soame Jenyns (1704–1787) British writer

"Reflections on Several Subjects", in Miscellaneous Pieces, Vol. II (1761), p. 250

Business

“The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Columbus (1844)

Soul , Solitude

“At least I've never sold my story. That's one point for me at least. And I am never going to, there are too many risks to take, so that's a no for me. I've had countless and endless offers but I'd rather be in a nursing home with bad carers than splashed all over the tabloids. So, please don't stir up nonsense to get more people to buy your magazines, or make up something to peddle your own brand of propaganda.”

Lisa Moorish (1972) British singer

Quoted from the Singer's National News, 25 June 2007

People , Home

“In one sense, it tells absorbing stories, filled with detail, told with precision and not a little humor. On another sense, it is a parable. The message of the parable, as with all good parables, is expressed not in words but in emotions. After we have felt the pain of these people, and felt the love of the policeman and the nurse, we have been taught something intangible, but necessary to know.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review of Magnolia (1999), in review for Great Movies (27 November 2008) http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-magnolia-1999
Reviews, Four star reviews
Context: Magnolia is a film of sadness and loss, of lifelong bitterness, of children harmed and adults destroying themselves. As the narrator tells us near the end, "We may be through with the past, but the past is never through with us." In this wreckage of lifetimes, there are two figures, a policeman and a nurse, who do what they can to offer help, hope and love. … The central theme is cruelty to children, and its lasting effect. This is closely linked to a loathing or fear of behaving as we are told, or think, that we should. … As an act of filmmaking, it draws us in and doesn't let go. It begins deceptively, with a little documentary about amazing coincidences (including the scuba diver scooped by a fire-fighting plane and dumped on a forest fire) … coincidences and strange events do happen, and they are as real as everything else. If you could stand back far enough, in fact, everything would be revealed as a coincidence. What we call "coincidences" are limited to the ones we happen to notice. … In one beautiful sequence, Anderson cuts between most of the major characters all simultaneously singing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNmKghTvj0E Aimee Mann's "It's Not Going to Stop." A directorial flourish? You know what? I think it's a coincidence. Unlike many other "hypertext movies" with interlinking plots, Magnolia seems to be using the device in a deeper, more philosophical way. Anderson sees these people joined at a level below any possible knowledge, down where fate and destiny lie. They have been joined by their actions and their choices.
And all leads to the remarkable, famous, sequence near the film's end when it rains frogs. Yes. Countless frogs, still alive, all over Los Angeles, falling from the sky. That this device has sometimes been joked about puzzles me. I find it a way to elevate the whole story into a larger realm of inexplicable but real behavior. We need something beyond the human to add another dimension. Frogs have rained from the sky eight times this century, but never mind the facts. Attend instead to Exodus 8:2, which is cited on a placard in the film: "And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite your whole territory with frogs." Let who go? In this case, I believe, it refers not to people, but to fears, shames, sins.
Magnolia is one of those rare films that works in two entirely different ways. In one sense, it tells absorbing stories, filled with detail, told with precision and not a little humor. On another sense, it is a parable. The message of the parable, as with all good parables, is expressed not in words but in emotions. After we have felt the pain of these people, and felt the love of the policeman and the nurse, we have been taught something intangible, but necessary to know.

Love , Pain , People , Sense

“War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war a physical force is to be created, and it is the executive will which is to direct it. In war the public treasures are to be unlocked, and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions, and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

Chapter: Helvidius Number IV http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1910&chapter=112553&layout=html&Itemid=27 in: The Pacificus-Helvidius Debates of 1793-1794: Toward the Completion of the American Founding, edited with and Introduction by Morton J. Frisch (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007)
Context: In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture of heterogeneous powers: the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man: not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war a physical force is to be created, and it is the executive will which is to direct it. In war the public treasures are to be unlocked, and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions, and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.

Love , War , Peace , Passion

“The business of the world absorbs, corrupts, and degrades one mind, while in another it feeds and nurses the noblest independency integrity, and generosity. Pleasure is a poison to some, and a healthful refreshment to others.”

Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XXII : Grand Master Architect, p. 194
Context: To the impure, the dishonest, the false-hearted, the corrupt and the sensual, occasions come every day, and in every scene, and through every avenue of thought and imagination. He is prepared to capitulate before the first approach is commenced; and sends out the white flag when the enemy's advance comes in sight of his walls. He makes occasions; or, if opportunities come not, evil thoughts come, and he throws wide open the gates of his heart and welcomes those bad visitors, and entertains them with a lavish hospitality.
The business of the world absorbs, corrupts, and degrades one mind, while in another it feeds and nurses the noblest independency integrity, and generosity. Pleasure is a poison to some, and a healthful refreshment to others. To one. the world is a great harmony, like a noble strain of music with infinite modulations; to another, it is a huge factory, the clash and clang of whose machinery jars upon his ears and frets him to madness.

Health , Pleasure , World , Business

“Lois Learned, Big Nurse, and I thought, Oh my God.”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

The Paris Review interview (1994)
Context: I was performing The Sea Lion in the Newport Performing Arts Center. Afterwards a white-haired old woman approached me and said, Hey, you remember me? I looked her over, and I knew I remembered her, but had no idea who she was. She said, Lois. It still didn’t click. She said, Lois Learned, Big Nurse, and I thought, Oh my God. She was a volunteer at Newport, long since retired from the nursing business. This was the nurse on the ward I worked on at the Menlo Park hospital. I didn’t know what to think and she didn’t either, but I was glad she came up to me. I felt there was a lesson in it, the same one I had tried to teach Hollywood. She’s not the villain. She might be the minion of the villain, but she’s really just a big old tough ex-army nurse who is trying to do the best she can according to the rules that she has been given. She worked for the villain and believed in the villain, but she ain’t the villain.

God , Learning

“This is the song of the men who have no place, played by a man who has never had a place, and can therefore play it. Listen to it. You know this song, remember? This is the song you close your ears to every night, so you can sleep. This is the song you drink five martinis every evening not to hear. This is the song of the Great Loneliness, that creeps in the desert wind and dehydrates the soul. This is the song you'll listen to on the day you die. When you lay there in bed and sweat it out, you know that all the doctors and nurses and weeping friends don't mean a thing and can't help you any, can't save you one small bitter taste of it, because you are the one that's dying and not them; when you wait for it to come and know the sleep will not evade it and martinis will not put it off and conversation will not circumvent it and hobbies will not help you to escape it; then you will hear this song and remembering, recognize it. This song is Reality. Remember? Surely you remember?
"Day is done…
Gone the sun…
From-the-lake
From-the-hill
From-the-sky
Rest in peace
Sol jer brave
God is nigh…"”

James Jones book From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity (1951)

Men , God , Peace , Soul

“Every such wet-nurse of letters has sought fatuously to make me write in a way differing from that in which the Lord God Almighty, in His infinite wisdom, impels me to write — that is, to make me write stuff which, coming from me, would be as false as an appearance of decency in a Congressman.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Source: 1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922), Ch. 3 "Footnote on Criticism", pp. 85-104
Context: Upon the low value of "constructive" criticism I can offer testimony out of my own experience. My books have been commonly reviewed at length, and many critics have devoted themselves to pointing out what they conceive to be my errors, both of fact and of taste. Well, I cannot recall a case in which any suggestion offered by a "constructive" critic has helped me in the slightest, or even actively interested me. Every such wet-nurse of letters has sought fatuously to make me write in a way differing from that in which the Lord God Almighty, in His infinite wisdom, impels me to write — that is, to make me write stuff which, coming from me, would be as false as an appearance of decency in a Congressman. All the benefits I have ever got from the critics of my work have come from the destructive variety. A hearty slating always does me good, particularly if it be well written. It begins by enlisting my professional respect; it ends by making me examine my ideas coldly in the privacy of my chamber. Not, of course, that I usually revise them, but I at least examine them. If I decide to hold fast to them, they are all the dearer to me thereafter, and I expound them with a new passion and plausibility. If, on the contrary, I discern holes in them, I shelve them in a pianissimo manner, and set about hatching new ones to take their place. But "constructive" criticism irritates me. I do not object to being denounced, but I can't abide being schoolmastered, especially by men I regard as imbeciles.

Wisdom , God , Way , Appearance

“Believe me, nurse, the difficulty of beginning will be nothing to the difficulty of knowing how to stop.”

Agatha Christie book Murder in Mesopotamia

Dr Reilly
Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)
Context: Believe me, nurse, the difficulty of beginning will be nothing to the difficulty of knowing how to stop. At least that's the way it is with me when I have to make a speech. Someone's got to catch hold of my coat-tails and pull me down by main force.

“In those days I, Virgil, was nursed of sweet Parthenope, and rejoiced in the arts of inglorious ease.”
Illo Vergilium me tempore dulcis alebat Parthenope studiis florentem ignobilis oti.

Virgil Georgics

Book IV, lines 563–564 (tr. Fairclough)
Georgics (29 BC)

Art

“In what awe you stood of her! How miserable you were when you had offended her! And yet, how pleasant to be bullied by her and to sue for pardon without having the slightest notion of what your fault was! How dark the world was when she snubbed you, as she often did, the little rogue, just to see you look wretched; how sunny when she smiled! How jealous you were of every one about her! How you hated every man she shook hands with, every woman she kissed—the maid that did her hair, the boy that cleaned her shoes, the dog she nursed—though you had to be respectful to the last-named! How you looked forward to seeing her, how stupid you were when you did see her, staring at her without saying a word! How impossible it was for you to go out at any time of the day or night without finding yourself eventually opposite her windows!”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)
Context: And who would not risk its terrors to gain its raptures? Ah, what raptures they were! The mere recollection thrills you. How delicious it was to tell her that you loved her, that you lived for her, that you would die for her! How you did rave, to be sure, what floods of extravagant nonsense you poured forth, and oh, how cruel it was of her to pretend not to believe you! In what awe you stood of her! How miserable you were when you had offended her! And yet, how pleasant to be bullied by her and to sue for pardon without having the slightest notion of what your fault was! How dark the world was when she snubbed you, as she often did, the little rogue, just to see you look wretched; how sunny when she smiled! How jealous you were of every one about her! How you hated every man she shook hands with, every woman she kissed—the maid that did her hair, the boy that cleaned her shoes, the dog she nursed—though you had to be respectful to the last-named! How you looked forward to seeing her, how stupid you were when you did see her, staring at her without saying a word! How impossible it was for you to go out at any time of the day or night without finding yourself eventually opposite her windows!

Hate , Stupidity , World , Smile

“I was a lonely child though there were children in plenty on our land. But my nurse forbade me to play with them. She guarded my dignity; more than my mother, indeed, who being so great a lady took dignity for granted.”

Hilda Lewis book The Gentle Falcon

The Gentle Falcon (1957)
Context: I was a lonely child though there were children in plenty on our land. But my nurse forbade me to play with them. She guarded my dignity; more than my mother, indeed, who being so great a lady took dignity for granted.
But in any case there was little time for them to play. There was work for even the smallest upon our land; some of our peasants had run away, tempted by ever-rising wages. Wages fixed by law were certainly low; but, like many another ruined in the French wars, we had no money to pay a penny more than the law laid down. All over the country men were running away from their masters and the land lost as many laborers as by the Black Death itself. <!-- p. 14

Children

“People who are regimented all their lives, handed off to work from school and bracketed by the family in the beginning and the nursing home at the end, are habituated to heirarchy and psychologically enslaved. Their aptitude for autonomy is so atrophied that their fear of freedom is among their few rationally grounded phobias.”

Bob Black book The Abolition of Work

The Abolition of Work (1985)
Context: The demeaning system of domination I've described rules over half the waking hours of a majority of women and the vast majority of men for decades, for most of their lifespans. For certain purposes it's not too misleading to call our system democracy or capitalism or — better still — industrialism, but its real names are factory fascism and office oligarchy. Anybody who says these people are "free" is lying or stupid. You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid monotonous work, chances are you'll end up boring, stupid and monotonous. Work is a much better explanation for the creeping cretinization all around us than even such significant moronizing mechanisms as television and education. People who are regimented all their lives, handed off to work from school and bracketed by the family in the beginning and the nursing home at the end, are habituated to heirarchy and psychologically enslaved. Their aptitude for autonomy is so atrophied that their fear of freedom is among their few rationally grounded phobias. Their obedience training at work carries over into the families they start, thus reproducing the system in more ways than one, and into politics, culture and everything else. Once you drain the vitality from people at work, they'll likely submit to heirarchy and expertise in everything. They're used to it.

People , Fear , School , Family

“"If I'm a beggar born," she said
"I will speak out, for I dare not lie,
Pull off, pull off the brooch of gold,
And fling the diamond necklace by.""Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse,
"But keep the secret all you can."
She said, "Not so; but I will know
If there be any faith in man".”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Lady Clare

Lady Clare (1842)

Lie , Secret , Faith

“Troubles, like babies, grow larger by nursing.”

Кэролайн Холланд (1723–1774)

Baby

“A man should marry four wives: A Persian to have some one to talk to; a Khurasani woman for his housework; a Hindu for nursing his children; a woman from Mawaraun nahr, or Transoxiana, to have some one to whip as a warning to the other three.”

Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602) vizier

Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl, trans. by H. Blochmann. I, 327. Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7. Also cited in Herklot, Islam in India, 85-86.

Children

“I think I was utterly blessed to realise that there were a lot of sleeping giants out there all I did is to find them, nurse them and bring them to the attention of the world.”

Nasser Khalili (1945) British-Iranian scholar, collector and philanthropist

Interview on The Art Of Collecting by Sky Arts - Professor Nasser David Khalili episode (February 21, 2018) https://vimeo.com/256957904

World , Sleep , Thinking

“Dexter Padula, a member of that ubiquitous academic breed, the professional graduate student, forever revising his dissertation while eyeing external reality with the anxious demeanor of a nursing infant struggling to imagine life beyond the tit.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 8 (p. 169)

Imagination , Life , Reality

“A youth nursed up in wintry whirlwinds, in desolate darkness and difficulty, that he may step forth at last from his stormy Scandinavia, strong as a true man, as a god: a Christian Odin,—a right Thor once more, with his thunder-hammer, to smite asunder ugly enough Jotuns and Giant-monsters!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Priest

Strong , God , Youth

“Wisdom, if it were young, would cherish love, nursing it with devotion, deepening it with sacrifice, vitalizing with parentage, making all things subordinate to it till the end. Even though it consumes us in its service and overwhelms us with tragedy, even though it breaks us down with separations, let it be first. How can it matter what price we pay for love?”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 2 : On Youth

Love , Making love , Wisdom

“The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: "For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages," what just reason could he give for refusing? But nobody says this. The self-appointed unqualified nurse says: "You are to sing the patient a song which will make him believe that I, and I alone, can cure him. If you can't or won't, I shall confiscate your passport and send you to the mines."”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

And the poor patient in his delirium cries: "Please sing me a song which will give me sweet dreams instead of nightmares. If you succeed, I will give you a penthouse in New York or a ranch in Arizona."
"Writing", p. 27
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Singing , Self-confidence , God , Making love

“It's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.... Hell is a collection of individuals who spend their time working on a task they don't like and are not especially good at.... Give them a few drinks, and they will launch into tirades about how pointless and stupid their job really is.... Nurses, garbage collectors, mechanics, it's obvious were they to vanish, results would be catastrophic.... A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble.... It's not clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish.... Real productive workers are squeezed and exploited. The remainder are unemployed and a larger stratum paid to do nothing.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Dr. David Graeber, "Bullshit Jobs," Aug 2013

Hell , Drink , Time , Suffering

“Looking back, it seems to me extraordinary that we should have contemplated having both a nurse and a servant, but they were considered essentials of life in those days, and were the last things we would have thought of dispensing with. To have committed the extravagance of a car, for instance, would never have entered our minds. Only the rich had cars.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Part V: War, §IV
An Autobiography (1977)

Life , Cars

“I simply couldn't believe what I was seeing...All the doctors and nurses who saw yesterday's news were furious...Zhang Wenkang is ... abandoning even his most basic standards of integrity as a doctor.”

Jiang Yanyong (1931–2023) Chinese physician

On April 3, 2003, Respond for China Health Minister Zhang Wenkang report on national television a mere 12 cases of SARS. Outraged Surgeon Forces China To Swallow a Dose of the Truth https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB105097464285708600

“Let me be absolutely clear: in terms of potential deaths and the impact on our economy, the crisis we face from coronavirus is on the scale of a major war, and we must act accordingly. Nobody knows how many fatalities we may see, but they could equal or surpass the U.S. casualties we saw in World War II. It is an absolute moral imperative that our response -- as a government, as a society, as business communities, and as individuals -- meets the enormity of this crisis... If our neighbor or co-worker gets sick, we have the potential to get sick. If our neighbors lose their jobs, then our local economies suffer, and we may lose our jobs. If doctors and nurses do not have the equipment and staffing capacity they need now, people we know and love may die. The American people deserve transparency... We need daily information -- clear, science-based information -- from credible scientific voices, not politicians.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

2020

Science , Death , Business , War

“That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 3
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Loss , Soul , Time , Sun

“What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose? And a lot of people are saying that when … and are taking it, if you’re a doctor, a nurse, a first responder, a medical person going into hospitals, they say taking it before the fact is good, but what do you have to lose? They say, take it, I’m not looking at it one way or the other, but we want to get out of this. If it does work, it would be a shame if we didn’t do it early. But we have some very good signs. So that’s hydroxy chloroquine and as azithromycin, and again, you have to go through your medical people get the approval. But I’ve seen things that I sort of like, so what do I know? I’m not a doctor, I’m not a doctor, but I have common sense.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Coronavirus Task Force Briefing, April 5. Transcript https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronavirus-task-force-briefing-transcript-april-5 at Rev.
2020s, 2020, April

Sense , Personality , Way , People

“The nurse is the night
To wake to, to die in: and the day I live,
The world and its life are her dreams.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Variations," lines 31-33
Blood for a Stranger (1942)

World , Life , Dreams , Night

“We live in a country afflicted by a senile and selfish capitalist system...where families are homeless, sick people unattended, children untaught whilst building workers, nurses and teachers are unemployed”

Neil Kinnock (1942) British politician

Source: ‘Introduction’, in Why Vote Labour? (1979), p. 2, quoted in Tudor Jones, ‘Neil Kinnock's socialist journey’, Contemporary Record, Volume 8, Issue 3 (1994), p. pp. 568–569

Selfishness , Family , Country , Affliction

“Crime and madness have some similarity. Seeing the prisoners of the Conciergerie in the courtyard, or seeing the mad in the garden of a nursing home, it's the same thing. Both walk around, avoiding each other, glancing at each other at least singularly, atrociously, according to their thoughts of the moment, never cheerful or serious; because they know each other or they fear each other. The expectation of a condemnation, remorse, anxieties give walkers in the courtyard a worried and a haggard look of madmen. Consummate criminals alone have an assurance which resembles the tranquility of an honest life, the sincerity of a pure conscience.”

Honoré de Balzac book Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes

et Misères des courtisanes (The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans) (1837-1847), part IV. La dernière Incarnation de Vautrin (The Last Incarnation of Vautrin) https://books.google.ca/books?id=ajtOAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA1&dq=Splendeurs+et+Mis%C3%A8res+des+Coutisanes+Sc%C3%A8nes+de+la+Vie+parisienne&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiq69XJuJTvAhXrMlkFHcxvDVgQ6AEwCHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&f=falseSplendeurs, "Le Préau de la Conciergerie" ("The Courtyard of the Conciergerie") (chapter title).
Original: (fr) Le crime et la folie ont quelque similitude. Voir les prisonniers de la Conciergerie au préau, ou voir des fous dans le jardin d'une maison de santé, c'est une même chose. Les uns et les autres se promènent en s'évitant, se jettent des regards au moins siguliers, atroces, selon leurs pensées du moment, jamais gais ni sérieux ; car ils se connaissent ou ils se craignent. L'attente d'une condamnation, les remords, les anxiétés donnent aux promeneurs du préau l'air inquiet et hagard des fous. Les criminels consommés ont seuls une assurance qui ressemble à la tranquillité d'une vie honnête, à la sincérité d'une conscience pure.

Home , Fear , Sincerity , Life

“I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone... Whitehall envelops me.”

Richard Crossman (1907–1974) British Member of Parliament

Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, Volume 1

“O'er the rugged mountain's brow
Clara threw the twins she nursed,
And remarked, "I wonder now
Which will reach the bottom first?"”

Harry Graham (1874–1936) British writer

Calculating Clara
Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes (1899)

Mountain

“Patients are not consumers, but sick, scared, vulnerable. Doctors and nurses are practicing a calling, a vocation, a craft and an art.”

Victoria Sweet Physician

San Francisco Catholic https://catholic-sf.org/news/slow-medicine

Art

“Doctors and nurses will never understand your romantic feelings. Because for them the heart is only there to pump blood throughout the body, they cannot see anything beyond their nose. They also cannot point to the source of love in the body.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Understanding , Feeling , Heart , Love

“We now all accept that Covid-19 is a destroyer. Covid-19 is not good at all, that is why you now see us with masks which were previously for doctors and nurses.”

Joice Mujuru (1955) Zimbabwean politician

Source: "Zimbabwe: 'I Have Quit Politics' - Joice Mujuru" https://allafrica.com/stories/202103090190.html, All Africa (March 9, 2021)

“There is a flower, a purple flower
Sown by the wind, nursed by the shower,
O'er which Love has breathed a power and spell
The truth of whispering hope to tell.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

According to the Lady's Book of Flowers, 1842 , this is the centaury
Source: The London Literary Gazette, 1824

Flowers , Truth , Hope , Love

“The evils and dangers of which I speak are of slow growth, and their cure can only be gradual. Unless Great Britain is able by a united and well-instructed effort to grapple with her economic problems, and unless she is worthy to be the heart of her world-wide establishment, you here in this hall today will live long enough to lose not only your inheritance, but your livelihood. The continuance of our present confusion and disintegration will reduce us within a generation, and perhaps sooner, to the degree of States like Holland and Portugal, which nursed valiant races and held great possessions, but were stripped of them in the crush and competition of the world. That would be a melancholy end to all the old glories and recent triumphs.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: Rectorial address ("The present decline of Parliamentary government in Great Britain") to Edinburgh University (5 March 1931), quoted in The Times (6 March 1931), p. 19

Problem , Effort , World , Evil

“Conscientious objection is a universally established right; I think that sometimes the problem is how it is understood or put into practice. Doctors and nurses have the right to have their moral, spiritual, and personal convictions respected, but never in detriment to or contempt of anyone.”

Rogelio Cabrera López (1951) Roman Catholic archbishop

Church supports conscientious objection for medical professionals in Nuevo Leon https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/42683/church-supports-conscientious-objection-for-medical-professionals-in-nuevo-leon (27 October 2019)

Personality , Universe , Problem , Thinking

Quotes about nursing page 3

Quotes about nursing
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