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.

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.

Sublime in the highest style of intellectual beauty, intellect without effort, without suffering... not a feature is correct – but the whole effect is more expressive of spiritual grandeur than anything I could have imagined. It makes the impression upon one that thousands of voices do, uniting in one unanimous simultaneous feeling of enthusiasm or emotion, which is said to overcome the strongest man.

I can expect no sympathy or help from my family.

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

The craving for 'the return of the day', which the sick so constantly evince, is generally nothing but the desire for light.

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.