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.
I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.
Never give nor take an excuse.
Law is no explanation of anything; law is simply a generalization, a category of facts. Law is neither a cause, nor a reason, nor a power, nor a coercive force. It is nothing but a general formula, a statistical table.
Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization.
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.
In a sick-room or a bed-room there should never be shutters shut.
The specific disease doctrine is the grand refuge of weak, uncultured, unstable minds, such as now rule in the medical profession. There are no specific diseases; there are specific disease conditions.
There are no specific diseases only specific disease conditions.
I am not yet worthy; and I will live to deserve to be called a Trained Nurse.
Our first journey is to find that special place for us.
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.
Poetry and imagination begin life. A child will fall on its knees on the gravel walk at the sight of a pink hawthorn in full flower, when it is by itself, to praise God for it.
Heaven is neither a place nor a time.
To understand God’s thoughts, one must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.
Variety of form and brilliancy of color in the object presented to patients are an actual means of recovery.
The ‘kingdom of heaven is within,’ indeed, but we must also create one without, because we are intended to act upon our circumstances.
There is no part of my life, upon which I can look back without pain.
Nursing is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.
Passion, intellect, moral activity – these three have never been satisfied in a woman. In this cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere, they cannot be satisfied. To say more on this subject would be to enter into the whole history of society, of the present state of civilisation.
Moral activity? There is scarcely such a thing possible! Everything is sketchy. The world does nothing but sketch.