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.
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.
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. I have worked hard, very hard, that is all; and I have never refused God anything.
What cruel mistakes are sometimes made by benevolent men and women in matters of business about which they can know nothing and think they know a great deal.
The most important pratical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe-how to observe-what symptoms indicate improvement-what the reverse-which are of importance-which are of none-which are the evidence of neglect-and of what kind of neglect.
I must strive to see only God in my friends, and God in my cats.
Women dream until they have no longer the strength to dream; those dreams against which they so struggle, so honestly, vigorously, and conscientiously, and so in vain, yet which are their life, without which they could not have lived; those dreams go at last. All their plans and visions seem vanished, and they know not where; gone and they cannot recall them. And they are left without the food either of reality or of hope.
Every woman, or at least almost every woman, in England has, at one time or another of her life, charge of the personal health of somebody, whether child or invalid, – in other words, every woman is a nurse.