My family tried to educate me in the way they thought a young woman should be. But I wanted to learn about mathmatics. I must have gotten that from my father, he was a master of math and science, and I always liked that sort of thing, too. Of course my mother and father did not agree with me on becoming more educated in mathmatics, but I was persistent and eventualy they gave in and I was taught by a wonderful teacher.

I can expect no sympathy or help from my family.

I cannot remember the time when I have not longed for death. ... for years and years I used to watch for death as no sick man ever watched for the morning.

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.

Little as we know about the way in which we are affected by form, by color, and light, we do know this, that they have an actual physical effect.

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

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.