Quote #45

It is very well to say 'be prudent, be careful, try to know each other.' But how are you to know each other? Unless a woman had lost all pride, how is it possible for her, under the eyes of all her family, to indulge in long exclusive conversations with a man? 'Such a thing' must not take place till after her 'engagement.' And how is she to make an engagement, if 'such a thing' has not taken place?

More from Florence Nightingale

  1. Men and women meet now to be idle. Is it extraordinary that they do not know each other, and that, in their mutual ignorance, they form no …
  2. A girl, if she has any pride, is so ashamed of having anything she wishes to say out of the hearing of her own family, she thinks it must b…
  3. Religious men are and must be heretics now - for we must not pray, except in a 'form' of words, made beforehand - or think of God but with …
  4. It is thought pretty to say that 'Women have no passion.' If passion is excitement in the daily social intercourse with men, women think ab…
  5. Look round at the marriages which you know. The true marriage - that noble union, by which a man and woman become together the one perfect …
  6. Women dream till they have no longer the strength to dream; those dreams against which they so struggle, so honestly, vigorously, and consc…
  7. Moral activity? There is scarcely such a thing possible! Everything is sketchy. The world does nothing but sketch.
  8. It seems as if the female spirit of the world were mourning everlastingly over blessings, not lost, but which she has never had, and which,…

All Florence Nightingale quotes