189 Quotes by Florence Nightingale

I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

It is the unqualified result of all my experience with the sick that, second only to their need of fresh air, is their need of light; that, after a close room, what hurts them most is a dark room and that it is not only light but direct sunlight they want.

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

Go into a room where the shutters are always shut (in a sick-room or a bed-room there should never be shutters shut), and though the room be uninhabited-though the air has never been polluted by the breathing of human beings, you will observe a close, musty smell of corrupt air-of air unpurified by the effect of the sun's rays.

She said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel.

Never give nor take an excuse.

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

Rather, ten times, die in the surf, heralding the way to a new world, than stand idly on the shore.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.