70+ Best Nurses Day Quotes to Honour Our Nurses (2023)

Nurses are among the most amazing, compassionate people you’ll ever meet, and they deserve praise now more than ever for their dedication. During National Nurses Week, which runs from May 6 to May 12, nurses are honored. Last year it was Nurses Day was celebrated on 12th May 2022.

One way to express your gratitude for all the men and women who have been out there working long shifts with way too few resources to care for patients during such tough times is to share one of these nurse day quotes. They are frontline workers so in order to To honor their humanitarian service to our society we presented the top nursing day quotes.

70+ Nurses Day Quotes, Wishes (2023)

If you want to cheer up a nurse you know through a challenging week at work, send them one of these inspiring nursing day quotes. And if you don’t directly know a nurse. Share nurses day quotes in their honor to express your admiration and support.

20 Quotes for Nurses Day

1. “Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.” —Dag Hammarskjold

2. “America’s nurses are the beating heart of our medical system.” — Barack Obama

3. “The doctors may be mapping out the war games, but it is the nurses who make the conflict bearable. — Jodi Picoult

4. “When a person decides to become a nurse, they make the most important decision of their lives. They choose to dedicate themselves to the care of others.” — Margaret Harvey

5. “Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen every day.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr.

6. “As a nurse, we have the opportunity to heal the heart, mind, soul, and body of our patients, their families, and ourselves. They may forget your name, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou

7. “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

8. “Where there is love there is life.” — Mahatma Gandhi

9. “And what nursing has to do in either case is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.” — Florence Nightingale

10. “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.” — Grey’s Anatomy

11. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” — Steve Jobs

12. “Caring about others, running the risk of feeling, and leaving an impact on people, brings happiness.” ― Harold Kushner

13. “Nurses dispense comfort, compassion, and caring without even a prescription.” — Val Saintsbury

14. “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” — Winston Churchill

15. “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” – Mahatma Gandhi

16. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead

17. “From caring comes courage.” — Lao Tzu

18. “A nurse is compassion in scrubs.” – Lexie Saige

19. “Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation” — Aristotle

20. “Kindness can transform someone’s dark moment with a blaze of light. You’ll never know how much your caring matters. Make a difference for another today.” ― Amy Leigh Mercree

20 Nursing Day Quotes

21. “The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest.” — William Osler

22. “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

23. “For the sick, it is important to have the best.” — Florence Nightingale

24. “No matter how difficult the days may get, don’t forget the reason you became a nurse.”

25. “Nurses are the heart of healthcare.” — Donna Wilk Cardillo

26. “There are only four kinds of people in the world. Those who have been caregivers. Those who are currently caregivers. Those who will be caregivers, and those who will need a caregiver.” — Rosalyn Carter

27. “Some days there won’t be a song in your heart. Sing anyway.” — Emory Austin

28. “No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.” — Aesop

29. “Our fingerprints don’t fade from the lives we touch.” – Judy Blume

30. “A smile is the light in your window that tells others that there is a caring, sharing person inside.” ― Denis Waitley

31. “Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts.” — Charles Dickens

32. “It is not enough to be compassionate— you must act.” — The Dalai Lama

33. “Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless.” — Mother Teresa

34. “We won’t always know whose lives we touched and made better for our having cared because actions can sometimes have unforeseen ramifications. What’s important is that you do care and you act.” — Charlotte Lunsford

35. Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” — Theodore Roosevelt

36. “Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its troubles; it empties today of its strengths.” — Corrie Ten Boom

37. “Save one life and you’re a hero, save one hundred lives and you’re a nurse.”

38. “Remember: Nurses are like icebergs. At any one time, you are only seeing what they are actually doing.” — Ian Miller

39. “As nurses we know suffering. We are fully aware of how precious each moment of life is.” – Patricia Bratianu

40. “Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.” — Mother Teresa

30 Nurses Day Quotes

41. “The character of a nurse is just as important as the knowledge she possesses.” — Carolyn Jarvis

42. “A nurse will always give us hope—an angel with a stethoscope.” — Terri Guillemets

43. “What you do makes a difference. And you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” – Jane Goodall

44. “Caring is the essence of nursing.” — Jean Watson

45. “Being a nurse means to hold all your own tears and start drawing smiles on people’s faces.” — Dana Basem

46. “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” — William James

47. “Our job as nurses is to cushion the sorrow and celebrate the joy, every day, while we are ‘just doing our jobs.’” — Christine Belle

48. “Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness.” ― Rollo May

49.“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” — Leo Buscaglia

50. “Whether a person is male or female, a nurse is a nurse.” — Gary Veale

51. “Caregiving often calls us to lean into love we didn’t know possible.” ― Tia Walker

52. “Nursing is great for so many reasons, but there is one reason that means more than any poll results, amount of money, or job security: Nurses make a difference.” — Brittany Wilson

53. “It is not how much you do, but how much love you put in the doing.” — Mother Teresa

54. “Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” — St. Francis of Assisi

55. “Nurses are a unique kind. They have this insatiable need to care for others, which is both their greatest strength and fatal flaw.” — Jean Watson

56. “One person caring about another represents life’s greatest value.” — Jim Rohn

57. “Rejoice in your work; never lose sight of the nursing leader you are now and the nursing leader you will become.” — Sue Fitzsimons

58. “Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” — Mark Twain

59. “Nothing is impossible. The word itself says ‘I’m possible!” — Audrey Hepburn

60. “Be determined to handle any challenge in a way that will make you grow.” — Les Brown

61. “Diagnosis is not the end, but the beginning of practice.” — Martin H. Fischer

62. “Bound by paperwork, short on hands, sleep, and energy…nurses are rarely short on caring.” — Sharon Hudacek

63. “Nurses are the hospitality of the hospital.” – Carrie Latet

64. “You really can change the world if you care enough.” — Marian Wright Edelman

65. “Nurses: one of the few blessings of being ill.” — Sara Moss-Wolfe

66. “The simple act of caring is heroic.” — Edward Albert

67. “Every nurse was drawn to nursing because of a desire to care, to serve, or to help.” — Christina Feist-Heilmeier

68. “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” — Shakespeare

69. “I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.” — Pablo Casals

70. “Always thank your nurse! Sometimes they’re the only one between you and a hearse.” — Warren Beaty

71. “Nursing is not for the faint of heart nor the empty of heart.”

72. “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” — Dale Carnegie

73. “I attribute my success to this—I never gave or took any excuse.” — Florence Nightingale

Admirable Nurses of Brilliance

Along with our nurses day quotes. Here are 5 of the best nurses of all time:

1. Florence Nightingale – credited with founding the field of nursing.

2. Clara Barton – founder of the American Red Cross.

3. Mary Eliza Mahoney – first African American nurse in the U.S.

4. Margaret Sanger – opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S.

5. Dorothea Dix – a crusader for improved mental health care for the mentally ill.