"Painless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Gosse has done him a service. The man who extracts a truth is as much to be commended as the man who extracts a tooth. It is not the function of the biographer any more than it is that of a dentist to prettify his subject. Each is an enemy of decay, a furtherer of life. There is such a thing as painless biography, but it is the work of quacks. Mr. Gosse is one of those honest dentists who reassure you by allowing it to hurt you "just ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... destroyed by the gastric juice in the stomach as soon as inhaled. If the stomach is out of order the bacilli escape into the intestines, where the fluids are alkaline (in which they thrive) and cholera is the result. The symptoms are, first a slight diarrhcea, almost painless, then tremors, vertigo and nausea. Griping pains and repressed circulation follow, then copious purging of the intestines, followed by discharges of a thin watery fluid, lividity of the lips, cold ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... he had slain you too with his sword, many a time did he drag you round the sepulchre of his comrade—though this could not give him life—yet here you lie all fresh as dew, and comely as one whom Apollo has slain with his painless shafts." ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... lifted, sun-brown and young and adoring. She had not often seen men look at her thus. Certainly Jeff Saxton's painless worship did not turn him into the likeness of a knight among banners. Yet the good Geoffrey loved her, while to Milt Daggett she could be nothing more than a strange young woman in a car with a New York license. If her tiny gift could so please him, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... Oxford, and Owen belong to a very curious type of humanity, with many excellent and even great qualities and one fatal defect—utter untrustworthiness. Peace be with two of them, and may the political death of the third be speedy and painless! ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... do, there is a possibility of an accident. So it is in motherhood. A woman in normal health whose home life is congenial, who loves children and who desires to have one, never should have any serious trouble nor great pain. Painless childbirth is a possibility if women only understood ...
— Confidences - Talks With a Young Girl Concerning Herself • Edith B. Lowry
... "that distinguished Member of the Medical Profession can give instances of successful treatment under the prescribed circumstances. For instance, JULES CLOQUET, as early as 1845 was using Hypnotism in the cause of painless surgery. However, our pleasant little gathering ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... memory, and dearer because he was there. Nothing else was left her. Tirzah she counted of the dead; and as for herself, she simply waited the end, knowing every hour of life was an hour of dying—happily, of painless dying. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... for boyhood's painless play, Sleep that wakes in laughing day, Health that mocks the doctor's rules, Knowledge never learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild-flower's time and place, Flight of fowl, and habitude Of the tenants ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... my martial strength, so that I may be of avail to drive away bitter cowardice from my head, and to curb the deceitful rush of my soul, and to restrain the sharp stress of anger which spurs me on to take part in the dread din of battle. But give me heart, O blessed one, to abide in the painless measures of peace, avoiding the battle-cry of foes and the compelling ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... I occasionally refer to my past flames I find myself often growing more than pridefully loquacious over my early affairs of the heart, but when I thought of the serious study that I once made in my twentieth year of the dozen easiest, most painless methods of committing suicide because Miss Mehitabel Flanders, aetat thirty-eight, whom I had chosen for my life's companion, had announced her intention of marrying old Colonel Barrington—one of the wisest matches ever as I see ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... the professor of a medical institute in Vienna known as the Elizabethinum. A patient, a young woman, is dying in one of the wards, the victim of malpractice. But her passing away will be painless. She is happy because she believes that she is on the road to recovery, that she will live to marry her beloved young man. Euphoria, the doctor calls her condition. To tell her the truth would be in his eyes criminal. She would die in anguish. Why not let her go out of the world in ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... it is to be seriously regretted that Mr. Swinburne's peremptory, unscrupulous manner of dealing with religious forms and beliefs which the world, perhaps, would not unwillingly let die, though by painless extinction rather than by violence, has alienated reverent minds from him, and has tarnished the brilliancy of his strenuous verse. The sensuous frenzy of his juvenile poems is still remembered against him; it betrayed a lack of moral dignity, of what the Greek poets, whom he so ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... cereals demands that potatoes should be used as a substitute for wheat, I suggest that, instead of being subjected to the barbarous treatment described above, they should be granted a painless death by chloroform or some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... heels of flying years, And still my Ignis Fatuus flew before; On thorny paths my eager feet pursued, Till she whose fond heart doted on my dreams Passed painless to the pure eternal peace. Years trode upon the heels of flying years And touched my brown beard with their silver wands, And still my Ignis Fatuus flew before; Through thorns and mire my torn feet followed still, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... rather consistent, having a bilious appearance, so that the patient supposes it to be an ordinary bilious diarrhoea, which is not dangerous, his fears being thus quieted. But however the diarrhoea begins, it becomes sooner or later, copious, watery, and light colored, (rice water) painless ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... enigmatically. "You must wait and see, Count. Just now I pity him for his forlornity; to-morrow—next day—a week hence—I may hold it a better course to put an end to his hopeless lot by chloroforming him into a painless and peaceful death." ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Consider the misery which is piling itself up in the slums of our great cities—the degenerate, the defective, the insane, who are multiplying as never before in history. There exists a perfectly harmless and painless method of sterilizing the hopelessly unfit, so that they can not reproduce their hopeless unfitness; but religion objects to this operation, and so the law does not make use of this knowledge. There exists a simple, entirely harmless, and practically costless ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... murder,' replied the Doctor—'you are a thousand times worse than a poisonous reptile or a beast of prey, and to kill you would be but an act of justice. Yet do not flatter yourself with the prospect of an easy and comparatively painless death; I have sworn that you shall die a death of lingering torture, and you will see how well I'll keep my oath. My knowledge as a physician, and natural ingenuity, have furnished me with a glorious method of tormenting you; and although you are a master in the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... intellectual companionship ripened into love, and for his half-dozen final years he enjoyed her wifely aid and sympathy in what seems to have been an ideal union. The end, when it came, was quick and painless. Always of a frail constitution, stunted in body from childhood, he died in harness, October 19th, 1894, his head falling forward on his desk as he wrote. The tributes that followed make plain the enthusiastic admiration James Darmesteter awakened in those who knew him best. The leading ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... fixed oil on expression, which is laxative and relieves the pains of colic, probably by virtue of its narcotic properties. Physicians in India praise this oil highly; not only is it a sure and painless purgative, but it is free from the viscidity and disgusting taste of castor-oil; besides it has the advantage of operating in small doses, 2-4 grams. Its activity is proportionate to its freshness. Dr. W. O'Shaughnessy does not value this oil highly, but the experience ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... heart of the community, by a general recognition, already half realised, that whatever makes for the more equitable distribution of wealth is good; that whatever benefits the working class benefits the nation; that the rich exist only on sufferance, and deserve no more than painless extinction; that the capitalist is a servant of the public, and too often over-paid for ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... of the boasts of American medicine that the first man in the world to conceive the idea that the administration of a definite drug might render a surgical operation painless was an American—Crawford W. Long. Dr. Long graduated from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1839. When a student, he had once inhaled ether for its intoxicant effects, and while partially under the influence of ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... upon Charles Darwin, and in the course of conversation asked him what he considered the most important discovery of the nineteenth century. To which Mr. Darwin replied, after a slight hesitation: "Painless surgery." He thought this more beneficial in its effects on human affairs than either the steam-engine or the telegraph. Let it also be noted that he spoke of it as an invention, rather than as ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... study of the microbes that live in our mouth has made it possible to keep our teeth from decay. Must perchance a tooth be pulled, then we take a sniff of gas, and go our way rejoicing. When the newspapers of the year 1846 brought the story of the "painless operation" which had been performed in America with the help of ether, the good people of Europe shook their heads. To them it seemed against the will of God that man should escape the pain which was the share of all mortals, and it took a long ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... erected in Richmond to Robert E. Lee. The corner-stone was laid October, 1887, but the poet's voice had been stilled forever. He died September the 15th, as he had often wished to die, "in harness," and at home, and Death came swift and painless. ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... appeared an inadequate punishment—a paltry vengeance. Had he seen his enemy torn by wild horses, or broken on the wheel, his burning thirst for revenge would hardly have been slaked; and an easy, painless death by knife or bullet, he looked upon as a boon rather than a punishment. An end was put to his hesitation by the Carlist himself, who, either tormented by an evil conscience, or oppressed by one of those unaccountable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... and vultures for an outcast prey. So far I entreat thee, Lord of Heaven. And thou, Hermes, conductor of the shadowy dead, Speed me to rest, and when with this sharp steel I have cleft a sudden passage to my heart, At one swift bound waft me to painless slumber! But most be ye my helpers, awful Powers, Who know no blandishments, but still perceive All wicked deeds i' the world—strong, swift, and sure, Avenging Furies, understand my wrong, See how my life is ruined, ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... outer boat, and my left leg went down between the two boats scraping the skin from the upper part of the leg near the knee for some two or three inches. It pained me a little, but not much, still I knew from experience that, however slight and comparatively painless at the time, I should be laid up the next day and possibly for ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... year 1847 two surgeons in Poictiers, Drs. Ribaut and Kiaros, employed hypnotism with great success in order to make an operation painless. "This long and horrible work," says a journal of the day, "was much more like a demonstration in a dissecting room than an operation performed upon a living being." Although this operation produced such an excitement, yet it was twelve years later before decisive and positive ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... those who go in at the narrow gate of life are few. For destruction and life are but other terms for indifference to God on the one hand, and love to him on the other. All who are indifferent to him, die; a painless death of mere extinction, if, like the brute creation, they have never been made capable of loving him; or a living death of perpetual misery, if, like evil spirits and evil men, they might have loved him and would not. And so all who love him, live a life, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... hideous ways, and the scared spirit struggles to loose itself from the still strong frame that holds it tightly to the last, death is fearful indeed. It had come peacefully enough to some. They lay with half-opened eyes, and a quiet smile about the lips that showed their end to have been painless; others it had arrested in the heat of passion, and frozen on their pallid faces a glare of hatred and defiance that made your warm blood run cold. But little time had we to think of the dead, whose business it ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... By advocating painless removal of incurable idiots and lunatics, incorrigible criminals and irreclaimable drunkards from this vale of tears Dr. W. Duncan McKim provoked many a respectable but otherwise blameless person to throw a catfit of great complexity ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... to work upon the task, and soon had Professor Jameson's metal head removed from the machine which he had wrecked in his fall down the crater. All during the painless operation, the professor kept up a series of thought exchanges in conversation with the Zoromes, and it seemed but a short time before his head surmounted a new machine and he was ready for further exploration. In the course of ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... account of a sequel to an operation for ovarian disease. Following the operation, there was a regular, painless menstruation every month, at which time the lower part of the wound re-opened, and blood issued forth during the three days of the catamenia. McGraw illustrates vicarious menstruation by an example, the discharge issuing from an ovariotomy-scar, and Hooper ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the sudden death she once prayed for when Topanashka her father went over to Shipapu; but still she dies a painless death,—she dies ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... stole on; Leon Ramon lay very quiet; the ice for his chest and the song for his ear gave him that semi-oblivion, dreamy and comparatively painless, which was the only mercy which could come to him. All the chamber was unusually still; on three of the beds the sheet had been drawn over the face of the sleepers, who had sunk to a last sleep since the morning rose. The shadows lengthened, the hours followed one another; Cigarette ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the rising moon, Between the shadow of the mows, Looked on them through the great elm-boughs!— On sturdy boyhood, sun-embrowned, On girlhood with its solid curves Of healthful strength and painless nerves! And jests went round, and laughs that made The house-dog answer with his howl, And kept astir ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... but very few, I think, who have so early and so uncompromisingly taken that truth into their theory of Christian education. She quoted with approval the words of Madame Guyon, that "God rarely, if ever, makes the educating process a painless one when He wants remarkable results." Such must drink of Christ's cup and be baptized with His baptism. Along with this went another and a complementary thought, viz., that as God prepares His workmen for great work ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... from large wads of coin and all the comforts of home, they have brought over the staffs of their various hospitals, who know all their funny ways of operating, from how best to cut a man loose from his appendix to painless extraction of the bankroll. They have also brought along all their collections of patent knives and scissors, the only thing they left behind being the doctors' bills that would take a year's service as a doughboy ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... place where his companions were encamped. If he could only regain the timber there might be a slight chance of surviving the night; but even its location was lost to him, and a certain death stared him in the face. At any rate it would be a painless ending, for he had only to lie down to be quickly covered by a soft blanket of snow. Then he could go to sleep never again to waken. He was very weary, and already so drowsy that the thought of sleep was pleasant to him. Such a death ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... took a chew of navy plug tobacco, "when death is necessary, we should make it as painless as possible, I have been studying this matter over a good deal, and trying to figure out how to make the death the least painful to these poor victims, and it has occurred to me that if we place them on the edge of the precipice, and you shoot them through the brain, while at the ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... the precipitous peaks of some cliff-defended coast that repels their every attack; when the sharp clash of steel met opposing steel and galloping thud of flying squadrons, urged on with savage oath and triumphant cheer, filled the air; when the gurgling groan of the death-agony and moan of painless pain, made the treble of the devil-music, to the thundering sustained bass of the cannon roar, and the growling arpeggio accompaniment ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... miserably cold day when he left Paddington, and he shivered under his rug as he sat in the train. He could hardly bear the cheerful talk of meeting or parting friends at the various stations at which the train stopped. He would have welcomed a collision which would deal him a swift and painless death, and free him from the misery he had brought upon himself. He would have been glad, like the lover in 'The Last Ride Together'—although for very different reasons—if the world could end that day, and his guilt be swallowed up ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... the trail of their enemy. For a space, it may be, she saw once more the golden moons and the blazing suns of those twenty years that were gone; it may be that the soft, sweet music of spring came to her again, filled with the old, old song of life, and that Something gracious and painless descended upon her as a final reward for ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... would say that I was so dreadfully cruel and heartless. People are always so irrational in their ethical judgments. Oswald's quite dead, that's certain; nobody could fall over such a precipice as that without being killed a dozen times over before he even reached the bottom. A very painless and easy death too; I couldn't myself wish for a better one. We can't do them the slightest good by picking up their lifeless bodies, and yet a foolishly sentimental public opinion positively compels one to do it. Poor ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... days passed, and Margaret read in the papers the horrible accounts of the poisonous gas which was blinding and suffocating our men at the front, and when hospital nurses told her of the pitiful "gas" cases which they had seen, Freddy's painless death became almost a thing to ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... My mental condition a quiet but not painless one. I had been much favored, though in pain and trouble, amidst which I had a kind note from J.T., who says, "When at Liskeard, and since, I have believed that it might be said unto thee, 'The Master is come, and ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... rise, but just lay still, heavy with a strange, painless inertia, over which I puzzled in a vague, ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... girl were evidently as great as her fear of ridicule seemed small. When the brute stopped, she began striking him in the flank with her bare heel, without looking around, and as he paid no attention to such painless goading, she turned with sudden impatience and lifted a switch above his shoulders. The stick was arrested in mid-air when she saw Clayton, and then dropped harmlessly. The quick fire in her eyes died suddenly away, and for a moment ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... in April, 1883, from a severe cold which he had not the strength to throw off. His end was as peaceful and painless as his life had been innocent ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... we had visions of a large establishment in Regent Street, with an enormous placard announcing "Painless Dentistry" over the door, and crowds of dukes and duchesses mounting and descending our stairs to have their teeth extracted by some mysterious process imported from China, and known to ourselves alone. ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... there was any question whatever. He didn't say it would be painless. But he did say ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... major operations. Older people can still remember their fear of the dentist, when killing a nerve or pulling a tooth caused excruciating pain. Now local anaesthetics even in minor troubles have made dentistry almost painless. We have not conquered these fears of pain—rather ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... still linger in a body with that hole in it. He is bleeding inwardly, and his pulse is steadily weakening. It must continue so until imperceptibly he passes away. You may count him dead already, Sir John." He paused. "A merciful, painless end," he added, and sighed perfunctorily, his pale shaven face decently grave, for all that such scenes as these were commonplaces in his life. "Of the other four," he continued, "Blair is dead; the other three ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... a transport of delight. comfortable &c (physical pleasure) 377; at ease; content &c 831; sans souci [Fr.]. overjoyed, entranced, enchanted; enraptures; enravished^; transported; fascinated, captivated. with a joyful face, with sparkling eyes. pleasing &c 829; ecstatic, beatic^; painless, unalloyed, without alloy, cloudless. Adv. happily &c adj.; with pleasure &c (willingfully) 602 [Obs.]; with glee &c n.. Phr. one's heart leaping with joy. a wilderness of sweets [Paradise Lost]; I wish you all the joy that you can wish [M. of Venice]; jour de ma vie; joy ruled the day and love ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... nerve; the third by frantic convulsions. Happy in comparison he who drains the fourth, for he sinks dead upon the ground immediately, smitten as it were with lightning. Nor do I overmuch commiserate him to whose lot the fifth may fall, for slumber descends upon him forthwith, and he passes away in painless oblivion. But wretched he who chooses the sixth, whose hair falls from his head, whose skin peels from his body, and who lingers long in excruciating agonies, a living death. The seventh phial contains the object of your desire. Stretch forth your hands, therefore, simultaneously ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... waked the rose In the scented briar boughs; When the earth, with painless throes, ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake, Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy, White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their fire-caps, The kneeling crowd fades with the light ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... the current from a battery—which, though of great power, is so small that it hangs from the lapel of the operator's coat—is used instead of a knife for excisions and certain amputations. It sears as it cuts, prevents the loss of blood, and is absolutely painless, which is the most astonishing thing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... painless childbirth could be a possibility by a little attention to diet, exercise and other hygienic measures during the last few months of pregnancy. Knowing this, it seems inconceivable that any woman ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... malaise—sleepless nights, days of pain, and more spitting of blood. "My only painless moments." he says, "were when lecturing." In this state of prostration and disease, the indefatigable man undertook to write the "Life of Edward Forbes;" and he did it, like every thing he undertook, with admirable ability. He proceeded with his lectures as usual. To an association ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... extracted, one by one, sharpened to a point, and hammered, like nails, through the top of his skull. It should be said in justice that the present Shah has done all he can to stop the torture system, and confine the death-sentence to one of two methods—painless and instantaneous—throat-cutting and blowing from a gun. Notwithstanding, executions such as the one I have mentioned are common enough in remote districts, and crucifixion, walling up, or burying and burning alive are, although less common than formerly, by no means out of ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... struck him down; and I feel sure that the stroke was dealt in pity rather than in anger. One has only to look upon the dead man's face and observe the perfect tranquillity of its expression to be convinced that death was absolutely painless; he must have passed the dread portal without knowing it. Meanwhile, how are we faring, captain? It seems to be blowing more furiously than ever; and are we not dangerously near ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... longer so foolproof as they may once have been when the world moved far more slowly than it now does. It should therefore be a good deed to remove or lighten any of the various restraints on thought. I believe that there is an easy and relatively painless way in which our respect for the past can be lessened so that we shall no longer feel compelled to take the wisdom of the ages as the basis of our reforms. My own confidence in what President Butler calls "the findings ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... fourth day the fever abated, after which improvement was rapid. Two days later my general condition was fair, although the lower part of the right leg, especially about the ankle, was red and swollen. I soon felt completely restored in spite of the fact that a painless swelling of ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... gathering—J. Forsythe Avery himself stood conspicuously at the very door: not merely stood, but labored behind a deal table for the cause, distributing Settlement pamphlets, brochures or treatises, to all comers. He irresistibly reminded Carlisle of one of those lordly men in gold-lace outside a painless dentist's parlors. Many others of the conquering order there were observed also, almost in the first glance; chiefly congregating in the new assembly room, where the "opening reception" was under way, but also deploying in numbers all over the lower ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... our more progressive Statesmen are of opinion that true mercy would dictate their entire suppression, by enacting that all who fail to pass the Final Examination of the University should be either imprisoned for life, or extinguished by a painless death. ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... that these visions of wishes fulfilled were the work of some evil spirit, conjured up in order to entice us away from that painless state which forms ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... apartment-house. It is composed of two old-fashioned, brownstone-front residences welded into one. The parlor floor of one side is gay with the wraps and head-gear of a modiste; the other is lugubrious with the sophistical promises and grisly display of a painless dentist. You may have a room there for two dollars a week or you may have one for twenty dollars. Among the Vallambrosa's roomers are stenographers, musicians, brokers, shop-girls, space-rate writers, art students, wire-tappers, and other people who lean ...
— Options • O. Henry
... is asserted by couleur-students[1] who have occasion to have a considerable number of duels behind them, that "sitting thrusts,'' even when they are made with the sharpest swords, are sensed only as painless, or almost painless, blows or pushes. Curiously enough all say that the sensation is felt as if caused by some very broad dull tool: a falling shingle, perhaps. But not one has felt the cold ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... that may well ax that. It's a beautiful night's rest I had, yer honor, and I couldn't rest without coming and telling yer honor of it. It's painless is my hand, and it's all owing to the doctoring, I know, glory to God; and it's a few friends of mine I've brought wid me, whom I hope yer honors will look at for my sake, and long life to ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... into one where dreaming is not. Sebastian noted the facts with a quiet gleam of satisfaction in his watchful eye, and explained afterwards, with curt glibness to the angry matron, that her favourites had been "canonised in the roll of science, as painless martyrs to ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... leaps, as the shadow of a bird passes, madame's hand flew out and grasped the projecting end of the paper. The short struggle was nothing; the red marks on her wrists were painless. Swiftly she rose and stepped, back, breathing quickly but with triumph. He made as though to leap, but in that moment she had smoothed out the crumpled paper. A glance, and it fluttered to the table. Her laughter was very close ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... conducted?" A mediaeval scholastic regarded the possibility of a man being burned to death just as a modern business man regards the possibility of a man being starved to death: "It is a shocking torture; but can you organize a painless world?" It is possible that a future society may find a way of doing without the question by hunger as we have done without the question by fire. It is equally possible, for the matter of that, that a future society may reestablish ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... became sleepy after that; or else in a painless state of insensibility. When I woke I was numb all over, and had to rub my dazzled eyes as the bright daylight broke in ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... of it was ignored—his ill-treatment and sale of her; all these in terror he denied. Once he had looked upon banishment from Edo as the limit of his punishment. Now decapitation would be a merciful end. He strove to secure the favour of a quick and painless death. Again he was beaten almost to a jelly. He clung to his denial, so important was the issue. At the next appearance he was seized and dragged to a post fixed in the ground not far from the judge's seat. His knees were pressed ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... defeat in action. As in such slipshod housekeeping men are their own largest creditors, they find it easy to stave off utter bankruptcy of conscience by taking up one unpaid promise with another larger, and at heavier interest, till such self-swindling becomes habitual and by degrees almost painless. How did Coleridge discount his own notes of this kind with less and less specie as the figures lengthened on the paper! As with Hamlet, so it is with Ophelia and Laertes. The father's feebleness comes up again in the wasting heartbreak and gentle lunacy of the daughter, while ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... bazaar, and after idolizing it for a week had forgotten all about it. Her husband had rescued it half starved; his assistant had fed it up in the laboratory, and they had tried a few experiments on it with painless drugs ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... after this utterance he continued the peaceful and happy life which it describes. When the end came, it was quiet and painless. Surrounded by his children and grandchildren, and whispering with almost his last breath the desire for an increase of his bequest to that other well-beloved child, the Cooper Union, he "fell on sleep," April ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... last to suspect his danger, for the disease is painless in its early stages. A leading lawyer and public official in the Sandwich Islands once overturned a lighted lamp on his hand, and was surprised to find that it caused no pain. At last it dawned upon his mind that he was a leper. He resigned his offices and went to the leper's island, where ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... the state of innocence child-bearing would have been painless: for Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiv, 26): "Just as, in giving birth, the mother would then be relieved not by groans of pain, but by the instigations of maturity, so in bearing and conceiving the union of both sexes would be one not of lustful desire but of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... though still unconscious, became less rigid They then poured a little wine down his throat, and he fell into a passive but painless condition, more inanimate than sleep, but less positive than a state ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... the men had a toothache. His last tooth in the lower jaw was so badly decayed that merely the outside shell remained. No doubt it gave him great pain. I offered to remove it for him—without a guarantee of painless extraction. The fear of greater pain than he endured—even for a few minutes—was too much for him. He would not hear of parting with what remained of the tooth. Result: for twelve consecutive days and nights that fellow cried and moaned incessantly—holding his jaw with both hands while riding ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... have ever gathered lessons of mortality there, and invested death with an alien softness by likening it to falling leaves and withered blooms. But the contrast is greater than the resemblance, and painless dropping of petals is not a parallel to the rending ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... the physician, "of course you wouldn't want the separation to be painless; and it promises a reward, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... with the pencil in his hand and resting against the paper in the middle of an unfinished word—an indication that his release from the captivity of a long and troubled and pathetic and unprofitable life was mercifully swift and painless. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... conduct of our modern ecclesiastical services is the disappearance and painless extinction of the old parish clerk who figured so prominently in the old-fashioned ritual dear to the hearts of our forefathers. The Oxford Movement has much to answer for! People who have scarcely passed the rubicon of middle life can recall the curious scene ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... he must have chafed, I fancy, during recent years under a growing sense of uselessness—almost an impatience at being laid aside from work, which had been to him so long the very breath of life; yet none ever said with more simple, childlike resignation, 'Thy way, not mine!' For such a painless passing out of life, no vote of sorrow need be struck. There is no sting in a death like his: the grave is not his conqueror. Rather has death been swallowed up in victory—the victory of a full and complete life, marked by earnest endeavour, untiring industry, continuous devotion and ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... underwent in his own person the operation of tooth-extraction while rendered insensible by nitrous oxide. Satisfied, from further experience, that teeth could be extracted in this way without pain, Dr Wells proposed to establish the practice of painless dentistry under the influence of the gas; but in consequence of an unfortunate failure in an experiment at Boston he abandoned the project. On the 30th of September 1846 Dr W. T. G. Morton, a dentist of Boston, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to the teacher and student. As I dropped the paper, it occurred to me that the chances of success would have been far greater if less had been asked. That certain vivisections were atrocious was undoubtedly true; but, on the other hand, there were some experiments that were absolutely painless. Would it not be wiser to make ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... Tippy, not understanding the cause of her terror, never thought to explain that they were false and had been made by a man in some out-of-the-way corner of Yorkshire, instead of by the Almighty, and that their removal was painless. ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... you can come without hesitation," he said. "It is the first crime that costs a pang, having passed that the downward course is easy and painless." ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... hemmed in with your direst grief by a drifting sleet in such a voiceless, viewless place as that corpse-like track,—the endless, painless track, stretching away in the white mystery, at peace, ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... nevertheless believe you know what precautions to take; and published statistics of climatic temperature may have persuaded you that the heat is not difficult to bear. By that enervation to which all white dwellers in the tropics are subject you may have understood a pleasant languor,—a painless disinclination to effort in a country where physical effort is less needed than elsewhere,—a soft temptation to idle away the hours in a hammock, under the shade of giant trees. Perhaps you have read, with eyes ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... babies in wartime! Certainly not something to attempt lightly. But if you must travel with your baby, you'll be doing a real war service if you make it as painless as you can to the transportation system, ...
— If Your Baby Must Travel in Wartime • United States Department of Labor, Children's Bureau
... the use of any anaesthetic, and what with the sight and the nauseating smell of burned flesh I felt faint and ill. Yet, to my astonishment, the patient never flinched nor moved a muscle of his face, and on my inquiring afterwards, he assured me that the proceeding was absolutely painless, a remark which was corroborated by the surgeon. "The nerves are so completely and instantaneously destroyed," he explained, "that they have no time to convey a painful impression." But then if this be so, what becomes of all the martyrs at the stake, and the victims of Red Indians, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... coiling and uncoiling calculations of the professor, the spectre-like symbols of force and velocity fascinated and jaded Stephen's mind. He had heard some say that the old professor was an atheist freemason. O the grey dull day! It seemed a limbo of painless patient consciousness through which souls of mathematicians might wander, projecting long slender fabrics from plane to plane of ever rarer and paler twilight, radiating swift eddies to the last verges of a universe ever vaster, farther ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... recovered. Kind friends eased his invalid years; and so general was the grief at his illness that the children of the United States collected a sum of money for his supposed necessities, which at his request took the form of books for his library. A few months later, after a brief and painless illness, he died, August 1st, 1875. His admirers had already erected a statue in his honor, and the State gave him a magnificent funeral; but his most enduring monument is that which his 'Wonder Tales' are still building ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... determined to confess to you my possession of frailties entirely incompatible with the conception of Richard Smith in the eyes of his ordinary acquaintances, I received your letter. It was with the delight of the reprieved client of a painless dentist that I read your admission that when such vital things as trousseaux and weddings are in question, you are very much like other girls—and perhaps even ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... I said, what do you say to this? Are not all actions the tendency of which is to make life painless and pleasant honorable and useful? The honorable work ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... that slowly I shall find, perhaps, In other things a little of that bliss For which I held out eager fingers, thinking There was a land quite full of it, both air And earth, and one might enter into it. I know by now that I was not to enter ... I shall be almost happy in that day, All longing, painless, shared 'twixt past and present, Like shining sunlight on the fresh green trees, And like an unburdened sky behind the garden The future: empty, yet quite full of light ... But we must give it time to grow: As yet ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... mongrel, to whom a painless death would be a blessing, is left to get a precarious living as best he may from the garbage boxes, and spread pestilence from house to house, but the setter, the collie, and the St. Bernard are choked into insensibility ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... said, and though he was facing Nelson, I felt he was really talking to Stonehenge, "before I'd go up against this guy, I'd shoot myself. That way, I could be sure I'd get a nice painless job." ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire |
