19th-century Nurse Quotes

Florence Nightingale

Clara Barton

Edith Cavell

Mary Seacole

Dorothea Dix

Sarah Emma Edmonds

Elizabeth Kenny

The most important practical 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.

Florence Nightingale

Someday, somehow, I am going to do something useful, something for people. They are, most of them, so helpless, so hurt and so unhappy.

A man with money to pay for a meal can talk about hunger without demeaning himself.... But for a man with no money hunger is a disgrace.

True love is not selfish. In time it accustoms itself to anything which secures happiness for its object.

Sarah Chauncey Woolsey

It is wise statesmanship which suggests that in time of peace we must prepare for war, and it is no less a wise benevolence that makes preparation in the hour of peace for assuaging the ills that are sure to accompany war.

Man is not made better by being degraded; he is seldom restrained from crime by harsh measures, except the principle of fear predominates in his character; and then he is never made radically better for its influence.

The record of one's life must needs prove more interesting to him who writes it than to him who reads what has been written.

Elizabeth Kenny

I am naturally fond of adventure, a little ambitious, and a good deal romantic - but patriotism was the true secret of my success.

Sarah Emma Edmonds

Death is always terrible—no one need be ashamed to fear it.

Justice we ask,—to be citizens of these United States, where so many of our people have shed their blood with their white comrades, that the stars and stripes should never be polluted.

Nursing is not alone caring for the sick, the prevention of infection often constitutes as important a duty as the actual care of the patient. A woman who is without knowledge of the principles which should guide the performance of her work holds in her hands a capacity for doing infinite harm; she cannot avoid dangers which she does not recognize.

Modern professional nursing was born in War.