The quotations of

Florence Nightingale

English social reformer, statistician, and founder of modern nursing

1820–1910

11 quotes, most often on Women, Motivation & Goals and Change.

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.
Letter (5 September 1857), quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 369
- Pride
You ask me why I do not write something… I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.
Letter to a friend, quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 94
- Writing
I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.
Letter to a friend, quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale Vol. II (1914) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 406
- Motivation & Goals
What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine.
Letter (5 May 1855), published in Florence Nightingale: An Introduction to Her Life and Family (2001), edited by Lynn McDonald, p. 141
- War & Peace
Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.
Cassandra (1860)
- Change
What is Mysticism? Is it not the attempt to draw near to God, not by rites or ceremonies, but by inward disposition?
Notes from Devotional Authors of the Middle Ages (1873-1874)
- God
- Religion
It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm.
Notes on Hospitals 3rd Edition (1863), Preface
- Health
Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity — these three — and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised?
Cassandra (1860)
- Women
Jesus Christ raised women above the condition of mere slaves, mere ministers to the passions of the man, raised them by His sympathy, to be Ministers of God.
Cassandra (1860)
- Christianity
- Women
The progressive world is necessarily divided into two classes — those who take the best of what there is and enjoy it — those who wish for something better and try to create it.
Cassandra (1860)
- Change
- Motivation & Goals
It seems as if the female spirit of the world were mourning everlastingly over blessings, not lost, but which she has never had, and which, in her discouragement she feels that she never will have, they are so far off.
Cassandra (1860)
- Women

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