"It seems a commonly received idea among men and even among women themselves that it requires nothing but a disappointment in love, the want of an ob… - Florence Nightingale

1.
It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.

2.
Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.

3.
The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

4.
Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.

People do not go into the company of their fellow-creatures for what would seem a very sufficient reason, namely, that they have something to say to them, or something that they want to hear from them; but in the vague hope that they may find something to say.

Suffering, sad "female humanity!" What are these feelings which they are taught to consider as disgraceful, to deny to themselves? What form do the Chinese feet assume when denied their proper development? If the young girls of the "higher classes," who never commit a false step, whose justly earned reputations were never sullied even by the stain which the fruit of mere "knowledge of good and evil" leaves behind, were to speak, and say what are their thoughts employed upon, their thoughts, which alone are free, what would they say?