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.

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm. It is quite necessary nevertheless to lay down such a principle.

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.

Christ, if he had been a woman, might have been nothing but a great complainer

diseases, as all experience shows, are adjectives, not noun substantives.

Nature alone cures. ... what nursing has to do ... is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.

I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took any excuse.