Snapshot: This is a collection of some well known quotes about nurses and nursing, by both historical and contemporary figures.
“Nursing encompasses an art, a humanistic orientation, a feeling for the value of the individual, and an intuitive sense of ethics, and of the appropriateness of action taken.”
– Myrtle Aydelotte
“They may forget your name but they will never forget how you made them feel.”
– Maya Angelou
“The most important practical lesson than can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe.”
– Florence Nightengale
“To do what nobody else will do, a way that nobody else can do, in spite of all we go through; is to be a nurse.”
– Rawsi Williams
“I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.”
– Florence Nightengale
“Nurses serve their patients in the most important capacities. We know that they serve as our first lines of communication when something goes wrong or when we are concerned about health.”
– Lois Capps
“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; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God’s spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.”
– Florence Nightengale
Caring is the essence of nursing.
– Jean Watson
“Our job as nurses is to cushion the sorrow and celebrate the joy, everyday, while we are ‘just doing our jobs.’”
– Christine Belle
“The definition of a nurse: To go above and beyond the call of duty. The first to work and the last to leave. The heart and soul of caring. A unique soul who will pass thru your life for a minute and impact it for an eternity. A empowered individual whom you may meet for only a 12 hour period, but who will put you and yours above theirs.”
– Anonymous