I have watched patients stand and gaze longingly toward the city they in all likelihood will never enter again. It means liberty and life; it seems so near, and yet heaven is not further from hell
Nellie BlyRead
I always had a desire to know asylum life more thoroughly - a desire to be convinced that the most helpless of God's creatures, the insane, were cared for kindly and properly.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Nellie Bly emphasizes the importance of compassion and proper care for the mentally ill.
In this quote, Nellie Bly expresses her deep desire to truly understand the lives of those in asylums, particularly the mentally ill. She advocates for a compassionate approach that ensures even the most vulnerable individuals receive the care and kindness they deserve, highlighting the moral obligation society has to support and protect its most helpless members.
Themes
AsylumMental HealthCompassionCareVulnerability
In practice
Example use cases
During a conference on mental health, this quote can be used to emphasize the need for compassionate care.
More from Nellie Bly
All quotes →How can a doctor judge a woman's sanity by merely bidding her good morning and refusing to hear her pleas for release? Even the sick ones know it is useless to say anything, for the answer will be that it is their imagination.
Nellie BlyRead
'VERY WELL,' I SAID ANGRILY, 'START THE MAN, AND I'LL START THE SAME DAY FOR SOME OTHER NEWSPAPER AND BEAT HIM.'
Nellie BlyRead
People in the world can never imagine the length of days to those in asylums. They seemed never ending, and we welcomed any event that might give us something to think about as well as talk of.
Nellie BlyRead
COULD I PASS A WEEK IN THE INSANE WARD AT BLACKWELL'S ISLAND? I SAID I COULD AND I WOULD. AND I DID.
Nellie BlyRead
I shuddered to think how completely the insane were in the power of their keepers, and how one could weep and plead for release, and all of no avail, if the keepers were so minded.
Nellie BlyRead
Similar quotes
[W]here there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community.
Benjamin RushRead
American myths have never been colorless.
Ta-Nehisi CoatesRead
Euthanasia is a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person.
Pope John Paul IiRead
The sinister, the terrible never deceive: the state in which they leave us is always one of enlightenment. And only this condition of vicious insight allows us a full grasp of the world, all things considered, just as a frigid melancholy grants us full possession of ourselves. We may hide from horror only in the heart of horror. (“The Medusa”)
Thomas LigottiRead
It's been unsettling to discover that every form of narrative, even one that purports to tell the truth, is a kind of lying.
Damon GalgutRead
What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.
C. S. LewisRead