Words are very powerful. They can either cheer you up or tear you down and make you feel like crap. This is why it’s best to choose the words you let into your heart and mind with care, and trash everything else. After all, we are all given a choice every day: to wallow in self-pity or to choose happiness.
Nurses are no exception. One’s success in the nursing profession is not determined by how much theoretical knowledge a nurse possesses, but how resilient we are in the face of adversity.
We are trained to care for strangers. However, there are times when our character is tested and we feel as though every pinch of inspiration to do our job well has left us. This is when inspirational quotes come into the picture.
Inspiring quotes have the power to boost you up even if they were uttered by someone long dead or forgotten into obscurity so long as they find a resonance within you. These quotes are extremely helpful especially during trying times at work, like when we’re dealing with deaths or feeling burnt out.
These inspiring quotes are just waiting to get found by you.
Not all angels have wings … some have scrubs.
Be the nurse you would want as a patient.
Do small things with great love.
When someone is going through a storm, your silent presence is more powerful than a million empty words.
When you are a nurse, you know that everyday you will touch a life or a life will touch yours.
A nurse dispense comfort, compassion, and caring without even a prescription. – Val Saintsbury
A nurse is compassion in scrubs. – Lexie Saige
I’ve never really cared for what an unsung hero is until a nurse took care of me.
Being a nurse means to hold all your own tears and start drawing smiles on people’s faces. – Dana Basem
Remember: nurses are like icebergs. At any one time, you are only seeing what they are actually doing. – Ian Miller
Nurses: one of the few blessings of being ill. – Sara Moss-Wolfe
You treat a disease: you win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee you win – no matter the outcome. – Robin Williams in Patch Adams
To be a nurse means to be strong but tender, brave but kind. That’s a real grit in character we don’t come across every day.
Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. – Mother Teresa
When you feel like quitting, remember why you started.
It’s a beautiful thing when a career and a passion come together.
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. – Mahatma Gandhi
The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. – William Shakespeare
May your scrubs be comfy, your coffee be strong, and your Monday be short.
It is not how much you do, but how much love you put in the doing. – Mother Teresa
Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do. – Benjamin Spock
Being a nurse is weird: I can keep a poker face through trauma, but have a mental breakdown over losing my favorite pen.
Nursing is not for the empty of heart…nor the faint of heart.
A caress, a smile, is full of meaning for one who is sick. It is a simple gesture, but encouraging, he or she feels accompanied, feels closer to being healed, feels like a person, not a number. – Pope Francis
Many things aren’t equal but everyone gets the same 24 hours, 7 days a week. We make time for what we truly want.
Save one life, you’re a hero. Save 100 lives, you’re a nurse.
A nurse is not what you do. It is what you are… I am a nurse. It’s not what I do, it’s what I AM.
Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon. – Dag Hammarskjold
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest accomplishment or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. – Leo Buscaglia
CARING is the essence of NURSING. – Jean Watson
Bound by paperwork, short on hands, sleep, and energy… nurses are rarely short on caring. – Sharon Hudacek
Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts. – Charles Dickens
Be strong when you are weak. Be brave when you are scared. Be humble when you are victorious. Be badass everyday.
A nurse is one who opens the eyes of a newborn & gently closes the eyes of a dying man. It is indeed a high blessing to be the first and last to witness the beginning and end of life.
Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen everyday. – H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless. – Mother Teresa
Treat the patient as a whole, not just the hole in the patient.
Value what you do and add value by what you do.
Nurses are a unique kind. They have this insatiable need to care for others, which is both their greatest strength and fatal flaw. – Dr. Jean Watson, RN, Doctor, Author and Professor
Forgive yourself, you are not perfect. Show yourself grace; you are still learning. Show yourself patience; you are on a journey.
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you were put on Earth to do with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling. – Vincent Van Gogh
They may FORGET your name, but they will NEVER FORGET how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou
The character of the nurses is as important as the knowledge she possesses. – Carolyn Javis
Sometimes I inspire my patients; more often they inspire me.
Nurses are the heart of healthcare. – Donna Wilk Cardill
Nurses are the hospitality of the hospital.
To do what nobody else will do, a way that nobody else can do in spite of all we go through; that is to be a NURSE. – Rawsi Williams
A nurse will always give us hope, an Angel with a stethoscope. – Terri Guillemets
The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. – Japanese Proverb
To care and give comfort to others when you know you’re beaten yourself makes you a force to be reckoned with. Don’t give up just yet.
Every nurse was drawn to nursing because of a desire to care, to serve, or to help. – Christina Feist-Heilmeier, RN
Nurses are there when the last breath is taken, and nurses are there when the first breath is taken. Although it is more enjoyable to celebrate the birth, it is just as important to comfort in death. – Christine Belle
America’s nurses are the beating heart of our medical system. – Barack Obama
Hardships often prepare people for an extraordinary destiny. – C.S. Lewis
While that’s correct… it’s not the most correct. This is nursing school.
Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow. – Anthony J. D’Angelo
Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion. – Florence Nightingale
Panic plays no part in the training of a nurse. – Elizabeth Kenny
Let us never consider ourselves finished, nurses. We must be learning all of our lives. – Florence Nightingale
Nurse: just another word to describe a person strong enough to tolerate anything and soft enough to understand anyone.
Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and, above all, confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this something, at whatever cost, must be attained. – Marie Curie
Happiness … consists of giving, and in serving others. – Henry Drummond
Just so you know, doctors are here to diagnose, not heal. We heal. – Edie Falco in Nurse Jackie
The more you care, the stronger you can be.
Little people are indifferent. Superior people are caring. – Maxime Lagacé
Doctors are sort of scary. Nurses, on the other hand, with their reassuring smile, are always on our side.
When I think about all the patients and their loved ones I have worked with over the years, I know most of them don’t remember me, nor I them. But I do know that I gave a little piece of myself to each of them, and they to me, and those threads make up the tapestry that is my career in nursing. – Donna Wilk Cardillo
There no longer has to be a difference between who you are and what you do. – Gary Vaynerchuk
The nurse is temporarily the consciousness of the unconscious, the love of life of the suicidal, the leg of the amputee, the eyes of the newly blind, a means of locomotion for the newborn , knowledge and confidence for the young mother, a voice for those too weak to speak, and so on. – Virginia Henderson
Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion. – Muhammad Ali
Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation. – Aristotle
Knowing is not enough, we must APPLY. Willing is not enough, we must DO. – Bruce Lee
Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. – Winston Churchill
There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is. – Albert Einstein
A problem is a chance for you to do your best. – Duke Ellington
God appoints our graces to be NURSES to other men’s weaknesses. – Henry Ward Beecher
Knowing is better than wondering, waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worse, beats the hell out of never trying. – Meredith Grey, Grey’s Anatomy
Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned or worn. It is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and attitude. – Denis Waitley
Nothing is impossible. The word itself says “I’m possible”! – Audrey Hepburn
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is great work. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. – Steve Jobs
Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestation of strength and resolution. – Kahlil Gibran
Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway. – Earl Nightingale
The difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you do.
Nurses 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
To accomplish great things, you must not only act but also dream, not only plan but also believe. – Anatole France
If you can’t figure out your purpose, figure out your passion. For passion will lead you right into your purpose. – Bishop T.D Jakes
BE KIND for everyone you meet is fighting a BATTLE. – Plato
Every nurse is an angel with a key for healthy community! All in caring for patients is part of nursing soul! – Alexsandar Radunovic
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. – Dr. Seuss
Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for fewer problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenges, wish for more wisdom. – Earl Shoaf
Fill your mind with truth. Fill your heart with love. Fill your life with service.
Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. – Mark Twain
Work for a cause, not for applause. Live life to express, not to impress. Don’t strive to make your presence noticed, just make your presence felt.
The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest. – William Osler
Nursing is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said he finest of Fine Arts. – Florence Nightingale
Nurses don’t wait until October to celebrate “Make a Difference Day”. They make a difference everyday!
I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy, I am telling you it’s going to be worth it. – Art Williams
Our job as nurses is to cushion the sorrow and celebrate the job, everyday, while we are “just doing our jobs”. – Christine Belle
