Top 90 Florence Nightingale Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.”

— Florence Nightingale

Featured in: Success Quotes, Discipline Quotes, Inspirational Quotes for Women, Life Lessons Quotes, Effort Quotes

2. “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

Featured in: Care Quotes, Dedication Quotes, Caring Quotes, Art Quotes

3. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.”

— Florence Nightingale

Featured in: Smart Quotes

4. “Unless we are making progress in our nursing every year, every month, every week, take my word for it we are going back.”

— Florence Nightingale

Featured in: Lifelong Learning Quotes

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

— Florence Nightingale

6. “The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.”

— Florence Nightingale

Featured in: Health Quotes

7. “Nursing is a progressive art such that to stand still is to go backwards.”

— Florence Nightingale

8. “Live life when you have it. Life is a splendid gift-there is nothing small about it.”

— Florence Nightingale

9. “Unnecessary noise is the most cruel abuse of care which can be inflicted on either the sick or the well.”

— Florence Nightingale

10. “So 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.”

— Florence Nightingale

11. “Never give nor take an excuse.”

— Florence Nightingale

12. “Remember my name – you’ll be screaming it later.”

— Florence Nightingale

13. “To understand God’s thoughts, one must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.”

— Florence Nightingale

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

— Florence Nightingale

15. “If a patient is cold, if a patient is feverish, if a patient is faint, if he is sick after taking food, if he has a bed-sore, it is generally the fault not of the disease, but of the nursing.”

— Florence Nightingale

16. “I am not yet worthy; and I will live to deserve to be called a Trained Nurse.”

— Florence Nightingale

17. “The most important practical lesson than can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe.”

— Florence Nightingale

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

— Florence Nightingale

19. “I use the word nursing for want of a better.”

— Florence Nightingale

20. “Nursing is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.”

— Florence Nightingale

21. “Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion.”

— Florence Nightingale

22. “The amount of relief and comfort experienced by the sick after the skin has been carefully washed and dried, is one of the commonest observations made at a sick bed.”

— Florence Nightingale

23. “For the sick it is important to have the best.”

— Florence Nightingale

24. “I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.”

— Florence Nightingale

25. “Our first journey is to find that special place for us.”

— Florence Nightingale

26. “May we hope that, when we are all dead and gone, leaders will arise who have been personally experienced in the hard, practical work, the difficulties, and the joys of organizing nursing reforms, and who will lead far beyond anything we have done!”

— Florence Nightingale

27. “A nurse is to maintain the air within the room as fresh as the air without, without lowering the temperature.”

— Florence Nightingale

28. “Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity these, three and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised?”

— Florence Nightingale

29. “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.”

— Florence Nightingale

30. “Never underestimate the healing effects of beauty.”

— Florence Nightingale

31. “Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.”

— Florence Nightingale

32. “The specific disease doctrine is the grand refuge of weak, uncultured, unstable minds, such as now rule in the medical profession. There are no specific diseases; there are specific disease conditions.”

— Florence Nightingale

33. “There is no part of my life, upon which I can look back without pain.”

— Florence Nightingale

34. “Patriotism is not enough, there must be no hatred or bitterness for anyone.”

— Florence Nightingale

35. “There are no specific diseases only specific disease conditions.”

— Florence Nightingale

36. “A human being does not cease to exist at death. It is change, not destruction, which takes place.”

— Florence Nightingale

37. “All disease, at some period or other of its course, is more or less a reparative process, not necessarily accompanied with suffering: an effort of nature to remedy a process of poisoning or of decay, which has taken place weeks, months, sometimes years beforehand, unnoticed.”

— Florence Nightingale

38. “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.”

— Florence Nightingale

39. “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.”

— Florence Nightingale

40. “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

41. “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.”

— Florence Nightingale

42. “For it may safely be said, not that the habit of ready and correct observation will by itself make us useful nurses, but that without it we shall be useless with all our devotion.”

— Florence Nightingale

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

— Florence Nightingale

44. “In a sick-room or a bed-room there should never be shutters shut.”

— Florence Nightingale

45. “Variety of form and brilliancy of color in the object presented to patients are an actual means of recovery.”

— Florence Nightingale

46. “Mysticism: to dwell on the unseen, to withdraw ourselves from the things of sense into communion with God – to endeavour to partake of the Divine nature; that is, of Holiness.”

— Florence Nightingale

47. “The next Christ will perhaps be a female Christ.”

— Florence Nightingale

48. “The night is given to us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power.”

— Florence Nightingale

49. “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.”

— Florence Nightingale

50. “I can expect no sympathy or help from my family.”

— Florence Nightingale