Top 69 Jennifer Worth Quotes
#1. Something was nagging at me that I was trying to resist. Was it then or was it later that the thought came to me: if God really does exist, and is not just a myth, it must have a consequence for the whole of life. It was not a comfortable thought.
Jennifer Worth
#2. No one can give you faith. It is a gift from God alone. Seek and ye shall find. Read the Gospels. There is no other way.
Jennifer Worth
#3. We must all commit Sister Monica Joan to our prayers. We must seek God's help. But I will also engage a good lawyer." I
Jennifer Worth
#4. Inevitably, if you see a person daily in his own home over several months, you will cease to regard him as a patient and come to know him as a person.
Jennifer Worth
#5. Inanimate objects have a life of their own, especially when they are the daily companions of a living soul. Without that life, they take on a bleak, desolate appearance, like furniture piled up in a warehouse.
Jennifer Worth
#6. In large groups of enclosed people who were not allowed out, infectious diseases spread like wildfire. For example, in the 1880s in a workhouse in Kent, it was found that in a child population of one hundred and fifty-four, only three children did not have tuberculosis.
Jennifer Worth
#7. Tread softly as you draw near to the bedside of a dying man, for the space around him is holy ground. Speak in hushed tones, with awe and reverence, as you would in a cathedral. Let not the mind engage in trivial thoughts. The awesome majesty of Death can only be met in silence.
Jennifer Worth
#8. Why aren't midwives the heroines of society that they should be? Why do they have such a low profile? They ought to be lauded to the skies, by everyone.
Jennifer Worth
#9. Love doesn't adhere to time and boundaries does it? It just is.
Jennifer Worth
#11. You cannot understand what you have not experienced.
Jennifer Worth
#12. Handling a dead body is not a repugnant or frightening experience and, somehow, it helps to accept the fact that the soul of that person has gone if you treat the body with reverence and respect before it is finally disposed of by cremation or burial.
Jennifer Worth
#13. God isn't in the event;
God is in the results after the event. He is in the love and concern and caring.
Jennifer Worth
#14. Faith is a private matter, usually held deep within a person, quiet, impossible to recognise or understand, if you have no faith yourself
Jennifer Worth
#15. It did not occur to me at the time that her radiance had a spiritual dimension, owing nothing to the values of the temporal world.
Jennifer Worth
#16. Circumstances bring people together, and take them apart. One cannot keep up with everyone in a lifetime.
Jennifer Worth
#17. Sister Monica Joan murmured, as though to herself, but loud enough to be heard by all, How perfectly charming. Old enough to know it all, and young enough to blush. Perfectly charming.
Jennifer Worth
#18. That's the trouble, I can't forget him. He was everything to me, except mine.
Jennifer Worth
#19. When you are young, you go where you wish, but when you are old, others will take you where you do not wish to go.
Jennifer Worth
#20. Their devotion showed me there were no versions of love there was only ... Love. That it had no equal and that it was worth searching for, even if that search took a lifetime.
Jennifer Worth
#21. The Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.
Jennifer Worth
#22. So, like Jane Austen, who in all her writing never recorded a conversation between two men alone, because as a woman she could not know what exclusively male conversation would be like, I cannot record much about the men of Poplar, beyond superficial observation.
Jennifer Worth
#23. To have entered a strange house, and to have consumed the best part of a cake without the knowledge or consent of the lawful owners, was a solecism worthy of severe retribution.
Jennifer Worth
#24. Her constant phrase, "Go with God", had puzzled me a good deal. Suddenly it became clear. It was a revelation - acceptance. It filled me with joy. Accept life, the world, Spirit, God, call it what you will, and all else will follow.
Jennifer Worth
#25. Sister Evangelina had plenty of homespun advice to offer her patients: "Where-ere you be, let your wind go free", to which the reply was always chanted: "In Church and Chapel let it rattle".
Jennifer Worth
#26. The young can be very lovely, but the faces of the old can be truly beautiful. Every line and fold, every contour and wrinkle of Sister Monica Joan's fine white skin revealed her character, strength, courage, humanity and irrepressible humour.
Jennifer Worth
#27. Poverty is such a relative thing; but no man is really poor till life becomes a desert island that gives him neither food nor shelter nor hope.
Jennifer Worth
#28. I would not have described myself as a committed atheist for whom all spirituality was nonsense, but as an agnostic in whom large areas of doubt and uncertainty resided.
Jennifer Worth
#29. Bah! Suffragettes. I've no time for suffragettes. They made the biggest mistake in history. They went for equality. They should have gone for power!
Jennifer Worth
#30. Now and then in life, love catches you unawares, illuminating the dark corners of your mind, and filling them with radiance. Once in awhile you are faced with a beauty and a joy that takes your soul, all unprepared, by assault.
Jennifer Worth
#31. What woman worthy of the name Mother would stand on a high moral platform about selling her body if her child were dying of hunger and exposure? Not I.
Jennifer Worth
#32. I remember the days of my youth when everything was new and bright; when the mind was always questing, searching, absorbing; when the pain of love was so acute it could suffocate. And the days when joy was delirious.
Jennifer Worth
#33. Wiv difficulty 'an injinuity. Jest bein' smart, like.
Jennifer Worth
#34. Well, it certainly is for men, because large numbers of men living together can easily become like wild animals. Men are brutes at heart, and without the civilising influence of women they quickly revert to savagery.
Jennifer Worth
#35. There is not a single dying human being who does not yearn for love, touch, understanding, and whose heart does not break from the withdrawal of those who should be drawing near.
Jennifer Worth
#36. There is a greater gift than the trust of others. That is to trust in oneself. Some might call it confidence, others name it faith. But if it makes us brave, the label doesn't matter ... for it's the thing that frees us, to embrace life itself.
Jennifer Worth
#37. I am forced to the conclusion that modern medicine does not know it all.
Jennifer Worth
#38. Every child is conceived either in love or lust, is born in pain, followed by joy or sometimes remorse.
Jennifer Worth
#39. Life turns on little things. The momentous events in history can leave us untouched, while small events may shape our destinies.
Jennifer Worth
#40. Today, antibiotics are as common as a cup of coffee. In the 1950s they were relatively new. Today, over-use has reduced their efficacy but in the 1950s they really were a miracle drug. Sister Monica Joan had never had penicillin before, and responded immediately.
Jennifer Worth
#41. If God really does exist, and is not just a myth, it must have consequence for the whole of life.
Jennifer Worth
#42. I was not the only young nurse to be acutely conscious of a heightened sex appeal when in uniform. Ironically, the draconian old sisters and matrons who rigidly enforced the uniform seemed to be unaware of the effect it had on the male sex.
Jennifer Worth
#43. Perhaps, in a few people, I have seen what can be described as a struggle with death, and it can be distressing to behold. But for the vast majority of people death is gentle, tender.
Jennifer Worth
#44. She knew the risk. We both did. I'm glad that she was taken first, and not left on her own. Death is kinder than life. There is no more suffering beyond the grave. We will meet again soon, I hope.
Jennifer Worth
#45. The guinea earned by doctors for a delivery was a significant part of their income. The threat of being undercut by trained midwives had to be resisted.
Jennifer Worth
#46. Years professed nun, nurse and midwife in the East
Jennifer Worth
#47. God loves greatly those whom he requires to suffer greatly.
Jennifer Worth
#48. But life is made of happiness and tragedy in equal proportions, and we will never change that.
Jennifer Worth
#50. ...Our Lord's words to Peter, as recorded in St. John's gospel: 'When you are young, you go where you wish, but when you are old, others will take you where you do not wish to go.'...I have always thought that it is a general reflection about us all.
Jennifer Worth
#51. Health is the greatest of God's gifts, but we take it for granted; yet it hangs on a thread as fine as a spider's web and the tiniest thing can make it snap, leaving the strongest of us helpless in an instant.
Jennifer Worth
#52. Whoever heard of a midwife as a literary heroine? Yet midwifery is the very stuff of drama. Every child is conceived either in love or lust, is born in pain, followed by joy or sometimes remorse. A midwife is in the thick of it, she sees it all.
Jennifer Worth
#53. The knowledge of rejection, of being unwanted, is more terrible to live with than anything else, and a rejected child will usually never get over it.
Jennifer Worth
#54. They [soldiers WWII] were so young, so very young. A whole generation of young men died, leaving a whole generation of young women to weep.
Jennifer Worth
#55. All nuns, by the very fact of their monastic profession, are exceptional people. No ordinary woman could live such a life. There must inevitably be something, or many things, that are outstanding about a nun.
Jennifer Worth
#56. He who loves knows it. He who loves not, knows it not.
I pity him and make him no answer.
Jennifer Worth
#57. You know the secret of life, my dear, because you know how to love.
Jennifer Worth
#58. I did not regard it as a moral issue, but as a medical issue. A minority of women will always want an abortion. Therefore it must be done properly.
Jennifer Worth
#59. Quite suddenly, with blinding insight, the secret of their blissful marriage was revealed to me. She couldn't speak a word of English and he couldn't speak a word of Spanish.
Jennifer Worth
#60. I've loved someone since I was seventeen but I can't have him and I can't give him up. So until I can do that no one else will stand a chance.
Jennifer Worth
#61. Quite honestly, a baby covered in blood, still slightly blue, eyes screwed up, in the first few minutes after birth, is not an object of beauty.
Jennifer Worth
#62. He continued his tragic story. During the next five years I saw Shirley occasionally. She was flourishing. War has that effect sometimes. The unusual circumstances bring out the best in some people.
Jennifer Worth
#64. In the natural course of events, the period when death is taking over a body is fairly brief. My grandfather (who had no medication) had about a fortnight of this period in his life. Today it can drag on for months or years.
Jennifer Worth
#66. Oh - I shall remember the hours that we spent, In age I'll remember, and not to repent.' Sister Monica Joan is quoting someone else here, I don't know who.
Jennifer Worth
#67. The dying need only a hand to hold and a quiet in which to make their departure.
Jennifer Worth
#68. Love permeated every nook and cranny, every corner and crevice of that little house. You could feel it as soon as you entered the front door, like a presence so tangible you could almost reach out and touch it.
Jennifer Worth
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