We make our own conditions, it is true, and these react and have a deadening effect on us in the long run, but we are never wholly deadened by them-if we be not indeed dead, if the life we live can be called life.
"Afoot in England"
W.H. Hudson
The illimitable regret, the boundless, hopeless remorse for the irrevocable that has been shaped by our own heedless hands, the unspeakable yearning for that, once more, which has been freely ours and we have flung away, rose like a swelling tide within me, and rolled through me in thundering, deadening waves standing at her grave.
"To-morrow?"
Victoria Cross
The reason for this is that no one medicine can possibly be a cure for all sorts of diseases; and the only kind of medicine that will make almost every one who takes it feel a little bit better for the time being is a narcotic, because it has the power of deadening the nerves to pain or discomfort.
"A Handbook of Health"
Woods Hutchinson