When I started out as a nurse I did so with the highest ideals.... But I found that steady work in my profession--like every woman...'s work in the world--depended upon the giving of myself.... Two-thirds of the physicians I met made a nurse's virtue the price of their influence in getting her steady work. Is it any wonder that I determined to become a member of this privileged sex, if possible?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Cruelty, very far from being a vice, is the first sentiment Nature injects in us all. The infant breaks his toy, bites his nurse's... breast, strangles his canary long before he is able to reason; cruelty is stamped in animals, in whom, as I think I have said, Nature's laws are more emphatically to be read than in ourselves; cruelty exists amongst savages, so much nearer to Nature than civilized men are; absurd then to maintain cruelty is a consequence of depravity.... Cruelty is simply the energy in a man civilization has not yet altogether corrupted: therefore it is a virtue, not a vice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We were equals once when we lay new-born babes on our nurse's knees. We will be equal again when they tie up our jaws for the last... sleep.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players.... They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then, a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, and his big, manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange, eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And oh! if my young babe were born, And set upon the nurse's knee,... And I my self were dead and gone For a maid again I'll never be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When the voices of children are heard on the green And laughing is heard on the hill,... My heart is at rest within my breast And everything else is still.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We try to go back. You know I'll probably die just a few miles from where I drew my first breath. That would have seemed like a ho...rrible prospect to me, back when I was young and ambitious and gonna set the world on fire. But there's comfort in knowing you're gonna go full circle, end up where you started out. I've said before that I want to live my last days where folks know when you're sick and care when you die.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »