The craving for 'the return of the day', which the sick so constantly evince, is generally nothing but the desire for light.
Florence NightingaleThe time is come when women must do something more than the "domestic hearth," which means nursing the infants, keeping a pretty house, having a good dinner and an entertaining party.
Florence NightingaleA woman cannot live in the light of intellect. Society forbids it. Those conventional frivolities, which are called her 'duties', forbid it. Her 'domestic duties', high-sounding words, which, for the most part, are but bad habits (which she has not the courage to enfranchise herself from, the strength to break through), forbid it.
Florence NightingaleShe said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel.
Florence NightingaleWe know nothing of the principle of health, the positive of which pathology is the negative, except from observation and experience. Nothing but observation and experience will teach us the ways to maintain or to bring back the state of health. It is often thought that medicine is the curative process. It is no such thing; medicine is the surgery of functions as surgery proper is that of limbs and organs.
Florence Nightingale