... people have founded vast schemes upon a very few words.

Let people who have to observe sickness and death look back and try to register in their observation the appearances which have preceded relapse, attack or death, and not assert that there were none, or that there were not the right ones. A want of the habit of observing conditions and an inveterate habit of taking averages are each of them often equally misleading.

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

Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.

By mortifying vanity we do ourselves no good. It is the want of interest in our life which produces it; by filling up that want of interest in our life we can alone remedy it.

Women never have a half-hour in all their lives (excepting before or after anybody is up in the house) that they can call their own, without fear of offending or of hurting someone. Why do people sit up so late, or, more rarely, get up so early? Not because the day is not long enough, but because they have 'no time in the day to themselves.' 1852

The only English patients I have ever known refuse tea, have been typhus cases; and the first sign of their getting better was their craving again for tea.