"Painless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has been noticed by all the Fathers, and there can be no doubt about it. What prejudices and blindness must there be before we dare to compare the son of Sophronisca with the son of Mary. How far apart they are! Socrates dies a painless death, he is not put to open shame, and he plays his part easily to the last; and if this easy death had not done honour to his life, we might have doubted whether Socrates, with all his intellect, was more than ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... had a little, pointed, brown-and-gray beard, like that of a painless dentist. He looked solid, esteemed, irritable, and disgusted. He sat up in bed and raised his right hand ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... one who would be anywise affected by his death; and at least he would have the satisfaction of knowing that it was a kind action which had brought him to his end. He prayed earnestly, not that his life might be spared, but that his death might be a painless one; and that he might meet it as an English officer should, ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... he, as he 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, ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... was, it gave me pleasure; for it is always a pleasure to see life springing out of death, health returning after disease, though, as doctors know, the recovery from asphyxia or drowning is always as painful as the temporary death itself was painless. Faith is born of doubt. "It is not life, but death, where nothing stirs." Take all these doubts and struggles of yours as simply so many signs that your Father in heaven is treating you as a father, that He ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... up by a wild shriek for a decided negative, and had rushed down to see if he could do a little business. "Take you by the electric light," he said; "just as you are,"—I was in my night-dress and the old, old hat, the rim of which had been slightly sprained,—"perfectly painless process, and money returned if not satisfactory." I thanked him warmly, and apologised for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... 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 in the sum of iniquity. But no collision occurred, and (as ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... the likeness in some degree only. The daring expression of Lord Harry, in certain emergencies, never appeared. Nursing him carefully, on the severest principles of duty as distinguished from inclination, Fanny found herself in the presence of a male human being, who in the painless intervals of his malady, wrote little poems in her praise; asked for a few flowers from the garden, and made prettily arranged nosegays of them devoted to herself; cried, when she told him he was a fool, and kissed her hand five minutes afterwards, when she administered ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... in the lymph glands, subcutaneous tissue, or joints are often so insidious and painless in their development that they are only discovered accidentally. When the abscess is evacuated, healing often takes place with remarkable rapidity, and with little impairment ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... the reputed impossibilities which rest on no other grounds than our ignorance of any cause capable of producing the supposed effects; very few of them are certainly impossible, or permanently incredible. The facts of traveling seventy miles an hour, painless surgical operations, and conversing by instantaneous signals between London and New York, held a high place, not many years ago, among ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... muffling layers of bandage around his face. His hands were bandaged, too, and he had not been permitted to look in a mirror. But the transition had been surprisingly painless—or perhaps his sense of well-being had been due to Raynor ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... mother travelled slowly, put themselves under the yoke and drew the carriage with her in it to the temple of Here. She was congratulated by all the citizens, and was very proud of them; and they offered sacrifice, drank some wine, and then passed away by a painless death ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... 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 Oswald! ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... scenes are so hideous that one never quite forgets them. It had been ordained for Brenton that the passing of his baby son should be followed by such a scene, by a discovery so tragic as to make the painless baby death ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... to be eminently suited for a Christmas Annual. Families are advised to read it in detachments of four or five at a time. Married men who owe their wives' mothers a grudge should lock them into a bare room, with a guttering candle and this story. Death will be certain and not painless. I've got one or two rods in pickle for the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... have changed from himself to the young lover of three years ago, if he had been able. But he stood calm and sorrowful, as an angel from heaven gazing on the grief of the world—his thoughts full of sympathy for the pains of men, his soul still breathing the painless peace of the outer firmament whence he had come and ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... 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 ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... come to the two trees in the garden of Eden, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. Dr. Windischmann has shown that the Iranians, too, were acquainted with two trees, one called Gaokerena, bearing the white Haoma, the other called the Painless tree. We are told first that these two trees are the same as the one fig tree out of which the Indians believe the world to have been created. Now, first of all, the Indians believed no such thing, and secondly, there is the same difference ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... painless in its working? She does not desire that: she wants the other to feel death; more—she wants the proof of ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... said Hannibal to his army, 'is an emblem of the struggle between Carthage and Rome. The prize of the victors will be the city of Rome, and to those who fall will belong the crown of a painless death while fighting for their country. Let every man come to the battlefield resolved, if he can, to conquer, and if ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... 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
... is dying! Not the sudden death she once prayed for when Topanashka her father went over to Shipapu; but still she dies a painless death,—she ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... Mo. —th. 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 calleth for thee;' and I wish, if thou hast ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... cornerstone of the monument 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
... would sell him beyond the seas, to Samos Imbrus or rugged Lemnos; and when 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
... has been freed from stain. Then, if I am condemned to see my cousin die, as I have no one in the world to love but her, I will blow my brains out. Why, then, should I be downcast? I set little store by my life. May God make the last hours of her whom I shall certainly not survive painless and peaceful—that is all ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... brough in Harry Glen, who had fallen in the last charge with a flesh wound in the leg. Until he woke the next morning to find her sitting by his bedside, Harry thought he had been dreaming all the time that Rachel Bond had come to him, dressed in quaint country garb, and loosed with gentle, painless fingers the stiff, blood-encrusted bandage about his head, and replaced it with something that soothed and ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... that the very greatest trouble, if only it can find vent in tears and words, softens down into a gentle melancholy, mild and painless, and that often a faint glimmer of hope appears then in the soul, so it was with Frederick; when he had sung this song he felt wonderfully strengthened and comforted The evening breezes and the darksome trees that he had called upon in his song rustled and whispered words ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... 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 ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... enough. Desperately we got up to look round for some shelter, and George, our champion "scrounger," discovered a chicken-house. It is true there were nineteen fowls in it. They died a silent and, I hope, a painless death. ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... dreaming of the future, thinking sometimes of her husband, not unkindly, but with pity, as one thinks of poor, blundering people who have gone through life unloving and unloved. Of his death she thought not at all. It was what he would have chosen, painless and quick, a fall from his horse within sight of his own house. So her mother found her, calm and very beautiful, placidly nursing ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... 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 to this table; ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... body could fly apart in that way. And 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
... 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
... O 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 ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... the firing point. He was not afraid of death—none of the Akor-Neb people were; their language contained no word to express the concept of total and final extinction—and discarnation by gunshot was almost entirely painless. But he was beginning to suspect that he had made a fool of himself by getting into this affair, he had work in his present reincarnation which he wanted to finish, and his political party would suffer loss, both of his ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... face 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 ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... 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 of faith, that torpor of the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... to pure aims and charitable deeds had been rewarded with a death as painless as the slumber of a tired child on its mother's bosom, and, without struggle or premonition, the soul had slipped from the bondage of flesh into the Everlasting Peace that remaineth for ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... saw that letter in her mother's hands she would have answered most truly that she did not know. When a long-dreaded trouble that one knows to be inevitable at last reaches one, the mind seems to collapse and become utterly blank; there is a painless void, into which the mental vision refuses to look. Presently—there is plenty of time; life is overlong for suffering—we will sit down for a little while by the side of the abyss which has just swallowed ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... got to the gate who do you suppose comes down the walk to greet us? Old Smoke-'em-out Smithers, who used to be the best open air painless dentist and electric liver pad faker ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... imagination must diminish rapidly with the establishment of the very conditions he labored to bring about. The wit of much that he said must grow dim with the fading remembrance of what provoked it; the sting lie pointless and painless in the dust of those who writhed under it,—so much of the poet's virtue perishing in their death. We can only judge of all this vaguely and for a great part from the outside, for we cannot pretend to taste the finest flavor of the poetry which, is sealed to a foreigner in the local ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... the accompaniments of the death of President Lincoln. So suddenly, and in murder and horror unsurpassed, he was taken from us. But his death was painless. ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... whose desponding ranks new victims of self-destruction fall daily will accept the relief thus provided." He paused, and turned to the white Lethal Chamber. The silence in the street was absolute. "There a painless death awaits him who can no longer bear the sorrows of this life. If death is welcome let him seek it there." Then quickly turning to the military aid of the President's household, he said, "I declare the Lethal Chamber open," and again facing the vast crowd ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... life of dreams, without knowing it, 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 the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... self-conscious virtue, with ironic scorn for the frigid Puritanism of mechanical morality, Mark Twain enraptures that innumerable company of the sophisticated who have chafed under the omnipresent influence of a "good example" and stilled the painless pangs of an unruly conscience. With splendid satire for the base, with shrill condemnation for tyranny and oppression, with the scorpion-lash for the equivocal, the fraudulent, and the insincere, Mark Twain inspires the ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... rise, but just lay still, heavy with a strange, painless inertia, over which I puzzled in ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... rods, he having doubts of their legality. While they were talking, M. Joseph Ignace Guillotin, another physician, arrived. He was looking for advice regarding a proposed new method of capital punishment, and wished to know if, in the Doctor's opinion, a painless death could be produced by quickly severing the head from the body. Next morning, M. Jourdan, with hair and beard as red as the flank of my bay mare and a loud voice, came soon after breakfast, to sell us mules by ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... 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 of mankind" is gone, and the process by which it was lost will become ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... damp tomb and no mourner's gloom, No tolling bell in the steeple, But in one swift breath a painless death For a million billion people. What greater bliss could we ask than this, To sweep with a bird's free motion Through leagues of space to a resting place, In a vast and vapory ocean— To pass away from this life for aye With never a dear tie sundered, And a world on fire for ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to God that I might fade away gently, and die a painless death. He has granted my petition. All things seem very calm and beautiful—earth ne'er looked so like heaven before; yet how insignificant in comparison with the glories which await me. Frank, if aught ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... changed. The Star's entertainment remained as delightfully outrageous as ever, the cuisine as excellent; the accommodations and service were still above reproach. The fleecing, in general, became no less expertly painless. But one had been there. By its eighth year, the Star was dated. Now, in its twelfth, it lived soberly off the liner and freighter trade, four fifths of the guest suites shut down, the remainder irregularly ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... of syphilis may easily pass unnoticed owing to their partly latent and completely painless character. Small eruptions may be mistaken for other affections, and mercurial treatment generally disperses the symptoms of primary and secondary syphilis. But syphilitics who are apparently cured are never safe from ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... squire, whose huge frame lay stretched across the room. His disordered dress showed that he had been hastily aroused from sleep. The bullet had been fired at him from the front, and had remained in his body after penetrating the heart. His death had certainly been instantaneous and painless. There was no powder-marking either upon his dressing-gown or on his hands. According to the country surgeon the lady had stains upon her face, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... thence arising that an increasing minority of 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
... awoke and found myself in a strange-looking room, filled with strange objects, not the least strange of which was the thing that seemed myself. At first I looked with vague and motionless curiosity out of the Lethe from which my mind slowly emerged; painless, and at peace; listlessly questioning whether I was alive or dead,—whether the limp weight lying in bed there was my body,—the meaning of the silence and the closed curtains. Then, with a succession of painful flashes, as if the pole of an electrical battery had been applied ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and feebleness and sticks and spectacles and rheumatism and forgetfulness! It is so silly! Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that. The right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear eyes and strong painless limbs. I am older than you are ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... the—under the circumstances, you understand. But Emmy stayed and did her duty as usual. She was bowed down by no especial grief, and rather solemn than sorrowful. She prayed that her own end might be as calm and painless, and thought with trust and reverence of the words which she had heard from her father during his illness, indicative of his faith, his resignation, and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... should not be encouraged. A normal mental life is in itself the best of conditions for the welfare of both mother and child. For her own sake however the mother might well suggest that the delivery will be painless and easy. ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... work we undertake, in everything we 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 the ...
— Confidences - Talks With a Young Girl Concerning Herself • Edith B. Lowry
... 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 confusion ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... she cried. "What woman worth her salt doesn't regret it, doesn't want to live, even if she has to suffer for it? And those people—the revolutionaries, I mean, the rebels—they live, they're the only ones who do live. The rest of us degenerate in a painless paralysis we think of as pleasure. Look at me! I'm incapable of committing a single original act, even though I might conceive one. Well, there was a time when I should have been equal to anything and wouldn't have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... God, forsooth! and therefore SCORN Grinn'd at his patients, making them repeat Their solemn farce, with keenest raillery Tormenting; but if earnest in their prayer, They pour'd the silent sorrows of the soul To Heaven, then did they not regard his mocks Which then came painless, and HUMILITY Soon rescued them, and led to PENITENCE, That She might lead ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... I have often thought what a happy death it was—painless, instantaneous, without any wasting sickness beforehand—his sudden passing from life present to life eternal. Phineas, your father's was the happiest death I ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... 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
... together in a marriage of two of its members. Alas! how much of wrong and suffering appertained to that long period during which they were thus held apart! How many scars from heart-wounds were left; and these not always painless! ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... earth pour'd darkness; on the sea, The wakesome sailor to Orion's star And Helice turn'd heedful. Sunk to rest, The traveller forgot his toil; his charge, The centinel; her death-devoted babe, The mother's painless breast. The village dog Had ceas'd his troublous bay: each busy tumult Was hush'd at this dread hour; and darkness slept, Lock'd in ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... correspondent of the London Times, "it is farthings for pennies throughout.... The story of the Japanese invasion of Lancashire is older than that of the invasion of Korea and China. It has been a conquest of peace,—a painless process of depletion which is virtually achieved.... The Kyoto display is proof of a further immense development of industrial enterprise.... A country where laborers' hire is three shillings a week, with all other domestic charges in proportion, must—other things being equal—kill competitors ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... thank God who led me to make your acquaintance, for you have entirely transformed my life. Formerly I suffered terribly at each monthly period and was obliged to lie in bed. Now all is quite regular and painless. It is the same with my digestion, and I am no longer obliged to live on milk as I used, and I have no more pain, which is a joy. My husband is astonished to find that when I travel I have no more headaches, whereas before I was always taking tablets. Now, thanks to you, I need no remedies ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... 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 ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Lord," he read. "The drug is painless, but before it wipes memory from the minds of you and your crew, I want you to understand why we felt it necessary to do this ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... flesh slowly eaten? To see the nerves throbbing with pain? Is this a festival for "God"? Why should the poor wretch stay and suffer? A little morphine would give him sleep—the agony would be forgotten and he would pass unconsciously from happy dreams to painless death. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... in this respect. This terrier, who was a rare one to tackle a fox, has on several occasions spent the best part of a week down a rabbit burrow. When dug out he seemed very little the worse for his escapade, though decidedly emaciated in appearance. Poor little fellow! he died a painless death not long ago from sheer old age. I was with him at the time, and did not even know he was ill until five minutes before he expired. The most obedient and faithful, as well as the bravest, little dog in the world, ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... I say that you have not yet got your sense of proportion. Any grief and misery there is in the world you have left is of such an ephemeral, transient nature, that when we think for a moment of the free, untrammelled, and painless life there is beyond, those petty troubles sink into insignificance. My dear fellow, be sensible, take my advice. I have really a strong interest in you, and I advise you, entirely for your own ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... The highest definition of happiness would probably designate the consciousness of healthy powers harmoniously employed as among its prime elements; but there can be no happiness that deserves its name without the consciousness of powers that are able to subside from harmonious action into painless repose. I know a little girl who plays out of doors at night as long as she can see, and who, when called into the house, takes up a book with restless greed for mental excitement, and then begs to be read to sleep ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... always heard that the death of people made drowsy by snow and fatigue is as painless as sleep," said ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... that she dare not venture this again—that if she did so she could never remount. She felt now that she should never live to reach Medicine Bend. She rode on and on and on—would it never end? She begged God to send a painless death to those she rode to save, and when the prayer passed her failing senses a new terror awakened her, for she found herself falling out of the saddle. With excruciating torment she recovered her poise. Reeling from side to side, she ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... to the spot under the rounded sky where the old house stood, dear in 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
... alarmed; it's slow but sure and painless, dear boy. It works infallibly within half an hour. There'll be no agony—merely the drawing of the curtain. Best of all, it leaves no traces; a diagnostician would call it heart-failure.... And thus I escape that." He nodded coolly ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... time ever comes when I wish to commit suicide, I have always at hand an easy, painless mode of death. I shall become only a little more of a fool." I laughingly said, "I will do my utmost to absorb a little wisdom now ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... that real labour of love, in ministering to her comfort and soothing the ills of declining years. You have the consolation, and it is one to be grateful for, my dear Reeve, that your last impressions are of a calm and painless passage from this life, such as you would have most desired for her whom you have so loved and can never forget. Lady Clarendon and my daughters desire me to send you their kind regards and the expression of ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... What authority could protect the traitor from the fate he imprecated and accepted when he first knelt before the Throne?" "The hope was distant and the light was dim," the offender answered. "I was threatened and I was tempted. I knew that death, speedy and painless, was the penalty of treason to the Order, that a death of prolonged torture might be the vengeance of the power that menaced me. I hoped little in the far and dim future of the Serpent's promise, and I hoped and feared much in the life ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... destruction are many, and 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 ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... are such things as sick books. I do not, of course, speak of devotional works. I am picturing the poor man when he is getting well after a long bout of illness; his mind clear, but inert; his limbs painless, but so languid that they hardly seem to belong to him; and when he regards their attenuated proportions with the same sort of feeble interest that is evoked by eggshell china—they are not useful, still it would be ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... pincers, and his teeth then 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 ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... apparently a painless one, judging from the extreme comfort of Mrs. Webster's surroundings: her easy-chair drawn close to the fire but sheltered from it by a screen, the lamp on the table adjusted to a nicety behind, the illustrated papers ready cut for use, and the last new novel lying open on her lap. May seated ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... 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 with a wire noose, hurled into ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... of Art and Athletic Perfection is in the southwestern part of the Munchkin country, is the biggest bug in Oz, or in anyplace else, for that matter. He has made education painless by substituting school pills for books. His students take Latin, history and spelling pills; they swallow knowledge of every kind with ease and pleasure and spend the rest of their time in sport. No ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... upon the 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, Till ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... were bound to follow the revolutionary technical transformations that took place during the world-wide revolution of 1750-1970. Changes may be made in various ways. Some are slow and relatively painless, particularly when they extend over generations; other changes are so rapid that they are agonizingly painful. Involuntary changes, made under outside pressure are almost always painful. World-wide revolution, ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... an accidental chill laid the foundations of an exhausting, though happily quite painless, malady, Yule's strength had gradually failed, although for several years longer his general health and energies still appeared unimpaired to a casual observer. The condition of public affairs also, in some degree, affected his health injuriously. The ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... It is theirs not merely to eschew all greed of riches, not merely to make a just and lawful distribution of wealth, but to supply what is lacking to the needs of one another. Theirs it is to compose strife and discord not in painless oblivion simply, but to the general advantage. Theirs also to hinder such extravagance of anger as shall entail remorse hereafter. And as to envy they will make a clean sweep and clearance of it: the good things which a man possesses shall be also the property of ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... was this abundance of good music a solace and a comfort to Causidiena, for, like Dossonia, her predecessor, like so many former Chief Vestals, Causidiena was going blind from some disorder slow, painless and obscure, altogether baffling to the best ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... sources of fear. Now ether and other anaesthetics have eliminated the chief pains of 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 their cause ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... 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 be ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... putting up the machinery - uninterfered with, thank goodness, by any one. I own I like responsibility; it flatters one and then, your father might say, I have more to gain than to lose. Moreover I do like this bloodless, painless combat with wood and iron, forcing the stubborn rascals to do my will, licking the clumsy cubs into an active shape, seeing the child of to-day's thought working to-morrow in full vigour at his ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the near-approaching separation of the two young friends, had filled their hearts with a pleasant, though at the same time not painless excitement. They had been conversing about the magnificent old ruin, and the ages in which it had been built, and the vicissitudesof time and war, that had battered down its walls, and left it "tenantless, save to the ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the gifted English woman, A. Mary F. Robinson. Attracted by her lovely verse, the 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 ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... had so many children. Suppose he was consumptive. Time someone thought about it instead of gassing about the what was it the pensive bosom of the silver effulgence. Flapdoodle to feed fools on. They could easily have big establishments whole thing quite painless out of all the taxes give every child born five quid at compound interest up to twentyone five per cent is a hundred shillings and five tiresome pounds multiply by twenty decimal system encourage people to put by money save hundred and ten and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... joys of earth, as he had crushed all human sorrows beneath his potent will. The man at the brink of death shivered at the thought of the life led by this spirit, so solitary and remote from our world; joyless, since he had no one illusion left; painless, because pleasure had ceased to exist for him. There he stood, motionless and serene as a star in a bright mist. His lamp lit up the obscure closet, just as his green eyes, with their quiet malevolence, seemed to shed a light on the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... have risen further than they should have done—but incomes, by and large, have risen even more, so that real living standards are now considerably higher than seven years ago. Aided by sound government policies, our expanding economy has shown the strength and flexibility for swift and almost painless reconversion from war to peace, in 1945 and 1946; for quick reaction and recovery—well before Korea—from the beginnings of recession in 1949. Above all, this live and vital economy of ours has now shown the remarkable capacity to sustain a great mobilization program for defense, a ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of experience, I had wondered whether our friendship was to survive the battery of time and distance, or whether it was destined to slip into a decline and so, presently, out of our lives, fainting and painless. Touch, however, had been maintained by a fitful correspondence, and constant references to Miss Feste's promised visit to White Ladies—a consummation which we one and all desired—were made for what they were worth. Finally my sister sat down and issued a ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... come away!' said he. 'Here is the dentist ready for you, and I think I can promise you that the operation will be practically painless.' ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... 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. Next day we proceeded to rummage through our Chinese medical ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 but rapidly prostrating. ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... surface, we may have the typical hard chancre, easily recognized by the experienced physician, and perhaps even by the layman as well. On the other hand, no such typical lesion may develop. The chancre may be small and hidden in some out-of-the-way fold or cleft, and because it is apt to be painless, escape recognition entirely. In women the opportunity for concealment of a primary sore itself is especially good, since it may occur inside the vagina or on the neck of the womb. In men it may even occur inside ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... then make the patient stand back till there is a nice tension on the line, when suddenly you make a feint as if to strike him in the eye. Forgetful of the line, he leaps back to avoid the blow. Result, painless extraction of the tooth, which should be found hanging ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... stick you with the pin, you do not even flinch. In fact, you do not even feel the pain. Does this sound incredible? Isn't this exactly the same procedure that the dentist uses with his patient when he has hypnotized him for the purpose of painless dentistry? ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... 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 breath and ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... the shape of your nose first," he said. "It's practically a painless operation—just one injection of hot paraffin wax under the skin. After that you have only to keep quiet for a couple of hours so that the wax can ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... notice, to bridge the gap between young Marvell's allowance and Undine's requirements; and her father's immediate conclusion was that the engagement had better be broken off. Such scissions were almost painless in Apex, and he had fancied it would be easy, by an appeal to the girl's pride, to make her see that she owed it to herself to ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... called 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 ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... at least," said Wade. "Did you notice those green crystals? A quick, painless poison gas to relieve them of ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... were among the words that now came into use in medical literature. Withington quotes a good example in a description by Pitcairne, the Scot who was professor of medicine at Leyden at the end of the seventeenth century. "Life is the circulation of the blood. Health is its free and painless circulation. Disease is an abnormal motion of the blood, either general or local. Like the English school generally, he is far more exclusively mechanical than are the Italians, and will hear nothing of ferments ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... direction. But for the artist woman self-surrender is no natural instinct: it is a talent to be consciously acquired, if she ever acquire it at all: and although Quita had, in some sort, been through the fire, she was still a novice in those 'profound and painless lessons of love,' that can only be taught in ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... dead of night." An old man said, "I read my books all day, But death has taken all my books away." And one, "The popes and prophets did not well To cheat poor dead men with false hopes of hell. Better the whips of fire that hiss and rend Than painless void proceeding to no end." I smiled to hear them restless, I who sought Peace. For I had not loved, I had not fought, And books are vanities, and manly strength A gathered flower. God grant us peace at length! ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... healing, wounds often give a great deal of pain, even when all is going well. It is this pain we here show how to relieve. After an operation under chloroform, itself painless, the process of healing is often very painful. We are sure this pain need not be endured, but to prevent or cure it we need to see what is its cause. Two causes are specially notable—pressure and cold. By skilful handling and bandaging, undue pressure may be avoided by ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... 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 the drug, had ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... footprints of the past disappear from the dissolving paths of the present, we shall better understand 224:6 the Science which governs these changes, and shall plant our feet on firmer ground. Every sensuous pleasure or pain is self-destroyed through suffering. There should 224:9 be painless progress, attended by life and peace instead of discord ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... in the least hopeless," Lyad said. "And please feel no concern about the Doctor, Trigger. His methods are quite painless and involve none of the indignities of a chemical investigation. If you are at all reasonable, we'll just sit here and talk for twenty minutes or so. Then you will tell me what sum you wish to have deposited for you in what bank, and you will ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... death, a faultless sheet, Cool, white and smooth. So may I reach the hall With poppies strewn where sleep that is so dear With magic sponge can wipe away an hour Or twelve and make them naught. Why not a year, Why could a man not loiter in that bower Until a thousand painless cycles wore, And then-what if it held ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... the window, she went to the bed of each sleeper, to look and listen. Alice looked perfectly quiet and happy in her slumber, and her face seemed to have become much more youthful during the painless ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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 ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... by the administration of a general anaesthetic, and in all but the simplest cases this should be given to ensure accurate and painless reduction. Failing this, however, the muscles may be wearied out by the surgeon making steady and prolonged traction on the limb, while an assistant makes counter-extension on the proximal segment of the joint. Advantage may also be ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles |
