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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.

Florence Nightingale

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Florence Nightingale
Age: 90 †
Born: 1820
Born: May 12
Died: 1910
Died: August 13
Nurse
Politician
Statistician
Teacher
Writer
Florence
Tuscany
Nightingale Florence
Lady with the Lamp
Angel of Crimea
Miss Smith
First
Overcoming
Asceticism
Great
Absence
Trifling
Object
Employ
Objects
Sufficiently
Lasts
Nursing
Last
Selfishness
Power
Overcome
Puerile
Firsts
Vanity
Enthusiast

More quotes by Florence Nightingale

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Moral activity? There is scarcely such a thing possible! Everything is sketchy. The world does nothing but sketch.
Florence Nightingale
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The 'kingdom of heaven is within,' indeed, but we must also create one without, because we are intended to act upon our circumstances.
Florence Nightingale
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... people have founded vast schemes upon a very few words.
Florence Nightingale
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do not engage in any paper wars. You will convince nobody and arrive at no satisfaction yourself.
Florence Nightingale
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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.
Florence Nightingale
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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.
Florence Nightingale
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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.
Florence Nightingale
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The time is come when women must do something more than the domestic hearth, which means nursing the infants, keeping a pretty house, having a good dinner and an entertaining party.
Florence Nightingale
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Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.
Florence Nightingale
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Macaulay somewhere says, that it is extraordinary that, whereas the laws of the motions of the heavenly bodies, far removed as they are from us, are perfectly well understood, the laws of the human mind, which are under our observation all day and every day, are no better understood than they were two thousand years ago.
Florence Nightingale
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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.
Florence Nightingale
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The account he gives of nurses beats everything that even I know of. This young prophet says that they are all drunkards, without exception, Sisters and all, and that there are but two whom the surgeon can trust to give the patients their medicines.
Florence Nightingale
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Let whoever is in charge keep this simple question in her head (not, how can I always do this right thing myself, but) how can I provide for this right thing to be always done?
Florence Nightingale
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Life is a hard fight, a struggle, a wrestling with the principle of evil, hand to hand, foot to foot. Every inch of the way is disputed. The night is given us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power. The day, to use the strength which has been given us, to go forth to work with it till the evening.
Florence Nightingale
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The craving for 'the return of the day', which the sick so constantly evince, is generally nothing but the desire for light.
Florence Nightingale
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I stand at the altar of murdered men, and, while I live, I fight their cause.
Florence Nightingale
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A human being does not cease to exist at death. It is change, not destruction, which takes place.
Florence Nightingale
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Heaven is neither a place nor a time.
Florence Nightingale
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Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.
Florence Nightingale
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Nature alone cures. ... what nursing has to do ... is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.
Florence Nightingale