"Suicide" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... earth. He might be unfaithful to his own high lineage; he might misuse his gifts by selfishness and self-will; he might, like Ajax, rage with mere jealousy and wounded pride till his rage ended in shameful madness and suicide. He might rebel against the very gods, and all laws of right and wrong, till he perished in ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... London in the evening and stopped at the house of Madame Cornelis, as Therese called herself. She was originally married to an actor named Imer, then to the dancer Pompeati, who committed suicide at Venice by ripping up his stomach ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to be a rapid transition from cases of this kind to suicide, but, amongst the many reasons, moral and religious, which may be urged against suicide, there is one which connects itself closely with the considerations which have just been under our notice. As pointed out long ago by Aristotle, the suicide ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... are paid princely sums to study for him the penal code, and legislatures have even revised it for his benefit. Eviction, destruction, suicide and insanity have even trod in his train. A picture of him makes you think of that dark and gloomy canvas where Caesar, Alexander and Napoleon ride slowly side by side through a sea of stiffened corpses. Bribery, coercion, violence and even murder have ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... it is termed,—although we knew in a general way that it averaged somewhere about ten days. But, about a year ago, fortune was kind to us. A nurse in one of the Parisian hospitals, in a fit of despondency, decided to commit suicide. Like a true Parisienne, she would be nothing if not up to date, and chose, as the most recherche and original method of departing this life, to swallow a pure culture of typhoid germs, which she abstracted ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... that kept him from suicide was the hope of recovering the child and saving her from the life which her mother's example would have forced upon ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... enjoyed only by the birds and beasts? Man is surely entitled to his share; and if he neglects to take it, he does so to his own injury. You don't look well. In fact, I never saw you look worse; and I noticed, when I took your hand, that it was hot. Now, my good fellow! this is little better than suicide on your part; and if I do not mistake, you are too good a Christian to be guilty of self-murder. Why don't you ride out and take the air? You ought to ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... safety—some Lincoln or Washington—and if every voter in our country knew that this man were the only one who could do it, that man, if he were black, could not be elected President. Were such an emergency to arise to-morrow, we should perish. We should perish by suicide, and richly deserve all that we got. There is no safety for our land until this prejudice of caste is gone. It never came by argument; it can never be argued away. It can not be smothered under legislation nor uprooted by resolutions nor effaced by tears. While ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... the sophistry of another, and that the dispute was no longer confined to his own thoughts. The Author of Evil was present in the room with him in bodily shape, and, potent with spirits of a melancholy cast, was impressing upon him the desperation of his state, and urging suicide as the readiest mode to put an end to his sinful career. Amid his errors, the pleasure he had taken in prolonging his journey unnecessarily, and the attention which he had bestowed on the beauty of the fair female when his thoughts ought to ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... supply from the city. He therefore decided to do his part toward husbanding the present supply of food by refusing to eat; an act which necessitated feeding him through a rubber tube for many weeks. He also attempted suicide by drowning, throwing himself face downward in a shallow swamp, whence he was rescued. This young man was an expert chess player even ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... over to the north table. This was, according to report, the table which had no suicide's chair; and Merrihew had his private superstitions like the rest of us. At eleven o'clock the banks closed, so he had but two hours in which to win a fortune. It was not possible for him to lose one; in this the ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... emergency, the commanding officer, who until now had remained at his post, once more appealed to Margaret to try to escape,—urging that the ship would inevitably break up soon; that it was mere suicide to remain longer; that he did not feel free to sacrifice the lives of the crew, or to throw away his own; finally, that he would himself take Angelo, and that sailors should go with Celeste, Ossoli, and herself. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... it disdains healthy nourishment, indulges in the strong drink of denunciation, and creates an artificial dejection which thirsts for a stronger draught. If existence were an evil, it would wait for no philosopher to prove it. It is like convicting a man of suicide, while all the time he stands before you in the flesh. Existence itself is here to prove that it cannot ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... are a remnant of the ages which have passed and which have left their mark, in the idea of a half-sexed God, the "He," the spouseless Father who brought forth the visible universe apparently without co-operation with the Female Principle. This type of person prates much about the dangers of race-suicide, meaning thereby the increasing tendency to childlessness and not as should be taken into account the death rate among children who are born of diseased and unfit parents and brought into existence without the necessary conditions ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... to think when B. F. commits suicide. We shall hear that some of the others have bolted. It'll be as clean a sweep ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... It was suicide to go farther. Into another shell-hole we fell, and thought things over. We decided to send a message, giving roughly the news that the Hindenburg Line and N—— had been taken. An orderly was given a message. He crawled out of the shell-hole, ran a few steps, dropped flat, wriggled along ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... the mystery, but he maintained a rigid silence. In his heart, the old schemer nurtured a fear that sooner or later Eddie would commit suicide or run away, either of which would signify the return of Martha to the mansion she had deserted for a cottage. And he knew that if she ever came back it would ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... to avoid a marriage which my father was forcing on me with Sir Robert Whitecraft, I chose the less evil, and committed myself to the honor of Mr. Reilly. If I had not done so I should have committed suicide, I think, rather than marry Whitecraft—a man so utterly devoid of principle and delicacy that he sent an abandoned female into my father's house in the capacity of my maid and also as a spy ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... world refused to resign itself to collective suicide merely because of the technicality ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... is it murder—that's our first question, gentlemen, is it not? If it were suicide, then we have to believe that this man began by taking off his wedding ring and concealing it; that he then came down here in his dressing gown, trampled mud into a corner behind the curtain in order to give the idea someone had waited for him, opened the window, ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... glass cover, and respectfully kissing the silken purse, "this has touched the hand of a man who saved my father from suicide, us from ruin, and our name from shame and disgrace,—a man by whose matchless benevolence we poor children, doomed to want and wretchedness, can at present hear every one envying our happy lot. This letter" (as he spoke, Maximilian drew a letter from the purse and gave it to the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... surgeon, a sober, pious Scotchman, from disappointed affection, took so dreadfully to drinking as to threaten spontaneous combustion; and old Colonel Lilywhite, carrying his wife and seven daughters to Bengal, swore that he would have a divorce from Mrs. L., and made an attempt at suicide; the captain himself told me, with tears in his eyes, that he hated his hitherto-adored Mrs. Duffy, although he had had nineteen children ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... conversing together, and complimenting each other on their respective abilities. On one of these occasions, Parr promised that he would write Erskine's epitaph; to which the other replied, that "such an intention on the doctor's part was almost a temptation to commit suicide." ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... troop of his kinsmen and subjects to the Joar factory where Moore was in charge, got drunk, seized the keys and rifled the stores.[15] But the company's chief trouble was with its own factors. The climate and conditions were so trying that illness was frequent and insanity and suicide occasional; and the isolation encouraged fraudulent practices. It was usually impossible to tell the false from the true in the reports of the loss of goods by fire and flood, theft and rapine, mildew and white ants, or the loss of slaves by death or mutiny. The ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... watched her disappear with strangely mingled feelings. For he had fallen into that stage when men have the vertigo of misfortune, court the strokes of destiny, and rush towards anything decisive, that it may free them from suspense though at the cost of ruin. It is one of the many minor forms of suicide. ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in Marseilles committed suicide—they were followers, disciples, whatever you choose to call them. At any rate, they believed that where it was so simple a matter to die, it was foolish to stay on in a world that had treated them badly. One had lost a son, the other a lover. One shot herself; the other ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the landlord's hand a small sum of money, so that the case might be sent across stream to Brefort, thence to be taken in a lorry to the Pyramids. There was no sign, said the barmaid and the landlord, that Bolton contemplated suicide, or that he feared sudden death. His whole demeanor was cheerful, and he expressed himself exceedingly glad to be ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... packet on the understanding that I should have a fortnight to fork out. They were bound to go up again. Hadn't been so low for eleven years. How could I have foreseen that old Sampler would go and commit suicide and ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... answered Niels. "You were just about to commit suicide by means of charcoal gas. Those are mighty bad ventilators on your old stove there. The wind must have blown them shut, unless you were fool enough to close them yourself before you went to bed. If you had not ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... Vodinowski executed on charge of aiding Russians; Field Marshal Foreich commits suicide after being cashiered ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... but it could do no good. There was the fate, it was impossible to escape it. What then? Drag through a miserable life till death came happily to relieve it? She was too young. Fifty, sixty years of travel over a dreary, barren waste, with no joy upon it? No, no, she could not do it—suicide first. But suicide was wrong, and could never be resorted to. There must be some relief elsewhere. Where was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and despair in which these girls live continually, makes them reckless of consequences, and large numbers commit suicide who are never heard of. A West End policeman assured us that the number of prostitute-suicides was terribly in advance of anything guessed at by ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Caius Porcius Cato (95-46 B.C.), commonly called Cato of Utica, was a stalwart defender of Roman republicanism against Caesar and his party. His suicide after the defeat of the republican cause at Thapsus was regarded as an act ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... Women's Christian Association has entered the open door for work among the women. In one place where a young girl from the country had been led astray by the temptations of this new and monotonous life and had committed suicide, the Young Women's Christian Association has erected a large hut to provide for the moral welfare of thousands of other girls faced by the same temptations. Oh, the dreary drudgery that faces ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... should not the same consideration apply to my mental outfit? It is the same desperate fear of originality and initiative, coupled with a certain unwillingness to take individual responsibility: it is the "ditto" idea again, and yet a writer has said "imitation is suicide." Let music be studied historically and in its development, by all means, this indeed is necessary: but to spend hours and hours learning to play or sing something just because "everybody does it" is the sheerest ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... "listen. Everything you say springs from mistaken and blind selfishness. Yours is the spirit of the suicide and coward; surely, this is unworthy of you. And, besides, what you say is not true. Your life is not wrecked, only as you determine to wreck it. You say you have nothing to live for. I know of no young man that has more to live for. You ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... use of agents which diminish brain activity, such as alcohol, tobacco, and various narcotics. Occasionally also, some person, who can find no respite from his own relentless energies, seeks relief in oblivion by suicide. ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... relations. The race to-morrow are the babies of to-day. The wealth of a nation therefore is the type of baby that will constitute its civilization from generation to generation, and absolutely nothing else counts. We hear much about race suicide, but is it not monstrous to cry for more babies when we do not know how to keep alive those we have? It is a fact that everywhere the birth rate of the Caucasian people is on the decline. Our birth rate as a whole, however, is ample;[17] it is the death rate that is ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... falsify government reports; it violated the rebate laws, and when an investigation was threatened it burned its books and sent its criminal agents out of the country. In the commercial world it was a Juggernaut car; it wiped out thousands of businesses every year, it drove men to madness and suicide. It had forced the price of cattle so low as to destroy the stock-raising industry, an occupation upon which whole states existed; it had ruined thousands of butchers who had refused to handle its ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... are built the towns of Nirgua, San Felipe el Fuerte, Barquesimeto, and Tocuyo. The first three are in a very hot climate; but Tocuyo enjoys great coolness, and we heard with surprise, that, beneath so fine a sky, the inhabitants have a strong propensity to suicide. The ground rises towards the south; for Truxillo, the lake of Urao, from which carbonate of soda is extracted, and La Grita, all to the east of the Cordillera, though no farther distant, are four or five hundred ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the assassins of the Revolution had added another victim to their list. Seven days after this event, M. Roland committed suicide by stabbing ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... of religion in Italy,—joined against the tyranny of religion. Strangely, this Etrurian league is not now to restore Tarquin to Rome, but to drive the Roman Tarquin into exile. The story of Lucretia had been repeated in Perugia; but the Umbrian Lucretia had died, not by suicide, but by falling on the pavement from the window through which she tried to escape. And the Umbrian Sextus was the ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... went to see is dead—murdered, just after he mailed that report. So I have no information. These police called it suicide because a knife lay in his hand. Bah! I could place a knife in the hand of any man ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... am here to throw myself on your mercy. At eight o'clock I have decided to commit suicide, for I am ruined. The only hope left me is to win ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... threaten. This supports my argument as to the great soliloquy—that it was death as the result of his slaying the king, or attempting to do so, not death by suicide, he was thinking of: he expected to die himself in the punishing of ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... (Spring, Kansas, 60) and whose appointment as an Indian agent, early in 1861, had been successfully opposed by Lane (Robinson, Kansas Conflict, 458). There will be other occasions to refer to him in this narrative. He is believed to have held the secret that induced Lane to commit suicide in 1866 ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... When all our locks were like the raven's wing, As we went forth to take our prey around The isles wrung from the false Mahometan; 470 And can I see them dabbled o'er with blood? Each stab to them will seem my suicide. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... nor his mother had any fears that he had run away or committed suicide; so that his absence produced more ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... quite certainly committed the crime of speaking lightly of Mr. Pope, as "a little envious animal," some seven years ago; and it was for this grave indiscretion that Pope was dexterously goading the man into insanity, and eventually drove him to suicide. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the marriage with his widow, the appropriation of his throne, all towered into colossal crimes, illimitable, and opening no avenues to atonement. oedipus, in the agonies of his horror, inflicts blindness upon himself; Jocasta commits suicide; the two sons fall into fiery feuds for the assertion of their separate claims on the throne, but previously unite for the expulsion of oedipus, as one who had become a curse to Thebes. And thus the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... and other lovers of, the marvellous, who still hold that the Enemy of Mankind brought these two wretches together upon that night, by supernatural interference, that they might fill up the cup of their guilt and receive its meed, by murder and suicide. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... your friend's litter on the Salarian Highway. Thanks to your general strength and healthiness, and thanks, to some extent, to my care and that of my colleagues, you are alive and on the way to complete, permanent recovery and to long life with good health. But you very nearly committed suicide when you went out and about contrary to my orders. I say all this solemnly, for I want you to remember it. If you disobey again, you will, most likely, be soon buried. If you obey you have every ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... "Not suicide," she reassured him smilingly. She flung herself back in her chair again, holding her white hand, with its ring, between her face and the fire. "No," she said thoughtfully, "I ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... infants, at once stamps the tale as fabulous. He may have seen one sold, an extremely rare and exceptional case; but the inferences drawn are just like that of the Frenchman who thought the English so partial to suicide in November, that they might be seen suspended from trees in the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... went out. You know the usual results of influenza, don't you? Heart failure, or nervous depression liable to lead to suicide.' ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... Nanchang was captured he was taken to Kiukiang, where, in chagrin at his imprisonment, he attempted suicide. Deserted by his servants and soldiers, he would have died alone and uncared for had it not been for Dr. Stone, for no one else dared to go near him. Dr. Stone and two of her nurses cared for him until the death which they could not prevent, ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... of that day's march was the suicide of Major Worth's pet dog "Pete." Having exhausted his ability to endure, this beautiful red setter fixed his eye upon a distant range of mountains, and ran without turning, or heeding any call, straight as the crow flies, towards them and death. We never saw him again; a ranchman told us he had ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... recently met to inquire into a case of suicide. After sitting through the evidence, the twelve men retired, and, after deliberating, returned with ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... his multifarious activities affected both his health and his mind, and he committed suicide ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... stronger of the two," he remarked; "yet there is no evidence that he made any attempt at suicide." ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... Silence significantly, "and if all the people nowadays who claim to be clairvoyant were really so, the statistics of suicide and lunacy would be considerably higher than they are. It is little wonder," he added, "that your sense of humour was clouded, with the mind-forces of that dead monster trying to use your brain for their dissemination. You have had an interesting adventure, Mr. Felix Pender, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... generous spirit, but an attempt had been made to impose upon him which had in part succeeded, and he can hardly be blamed for showing his resentment by neglecting to return the forgeries. One may notice in passing that when Chatterton, more than a year later, committed suicide there were not wanting a great many persons absurd enough to accuse Walpole of having driven him to his death—a contemptible suggestion. Yet the connoisseur's credit certainly suffers from the fact that he gave currency to a false account of the ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... for the universe, I do not know. But in my case the most extreme instance occurred during a business depression, when the family resources were endangered. I began to fear that my father (than whom a more hopeful man never lived) might commit suicide. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... dogged her and followed her and made her life a misery to her in order to induce her to abandon the husband whom she loved and respected in order to fly with you, whom she feared and hated. You have ended by bringing about the death of a noble man and driving his wife to suicide. That is your record in this business, Mr. Abe Slaney, and you will answer ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rate is much higher in the cities than in other districts. In general the suicide rate in the United States seems to be two or three times as high in our large cities as in the rest of ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... societies greatly prevent the increase of the superior classes of people of which they are composed." Malthus reports a similar association in the Marianne Islands, distinguished by a similar name, devoted to race suicide.[1014] Everywhere in Oceanica marriage is unstable, and with few exceptions unchastity prevails. Stevenson thinks it chiefly accountable for the decline of population in the islands.[1015] However, in the detailed taboos laid upon women in Fiji, Marquesas, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... that it was a special Suicide Court, and that the object of The Magister, as the Presiding Judge was named in the programme, was to inquire into the record of the delinquent and, if his answers were satisfactory, to allow him to revisit the scenes of his earthly life in order to repair any little omissions that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... his abilities, and this was probably just, for he would not otherwise have been invited to travel with, and pay long visits to, men so distinguished in different ways as Boulton the engineer, and Day the moralist and novelist." His death by suicide, in 1799, seems to have taken place in ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... from the public service for publishing a letter to Mr. Gladstone, entitled Our Officials at the Home Office, and who died in the Bethlehem Hospital in 1886. His elder brother, Frank, committed suicide in 1887. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Wanton suicide before I was brought to the last extremity filled me with aversion and disgust. But the perils of my sailing expeditions had again acquired for me their former attraction, as in the days when I sailed the North Sea with my father. To die the death of Shelley, my ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... and lit the candle on the table. Lifting Hazlet on the sofa, he carefully looked at him to see if he was correct in his first surmise, that the unhappy man had swallowed poison, or committed suicide in some other way. But there was no trace of anything of the kind, and Hazlet merely appeared to have fainted ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... again as Judith returning home across the hill country when the great deed is over, and the moment of revulsion come, and the olive branch in her hand is becoming a burthen; as Justice, sitting on a throne, but with a fixed look of self-hatred which makes the sword in her hand seem that of a suicide; and again as Veritas in the allegorical picture of Calumnia, where one may note in passing the suggestiveness of an accident which identifies the image of Truth with the person of Venus. We might trace the same sentiment through his engravings; but his share in ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... thing," continued the suspected man, "that the record will not tell you; that, disgusted with this abject life, I was tempted to suicide. It will not tell you anything of my desperate attempts, my repentance, my relapses. At last, I was able in part to reform. I got work; and after being in four situations, engaged myself here. I found myself well off. I always spent my month's wages in advance, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... attention to public opinion and act in harmony with it. For the American statesman, whose highest ambition consists either in being re-elected, or at least in seeing his party returned to power, any other course would amount to political suicide; for any attempt at swimming against the tide will certainly be avenged ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... reckon, I reckon," he mumbled. "A girl like Alice is some comfort: she don't come around acting as if she'd commit suicide if she didn't get three hundred and fifty dollars in the next five minutes. I expect I can spare five or six dollars for your show-off if I ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... matter in troubadour lyrics, and commonplaces were revivified by intricate rime-schemes and stanza construction accompanied by new melodies. The conventional nature of the whole business may be partly attested by the fact that no undoubted instance of death or suicide for love has ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... circumstances of Godfrey's quandary an account is to follow. But, meanwhile, the theory of Godfrey's suicide (though Danby is said to have accepted it) was rejected, probably with good reason (despite the doubts of L'Estrange, Hume, Sir George Sitwell, and others), by the ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... life. From that hour his life was changed. He went to a Western city and became a missionary to drunkards and harlots. He told me of a youth of nineteen he had recently visited in prison. The youth was a murderer, and the woman he had loved had committed suicide. He was utterly impervious to reproof, did not want to live, and said that if his mistress had gone to hell he wanted to go there too, for she was the only human creature who had ever loved him. "God loves you," said my friend; "yes, and I love you too. I know how you feel. You want ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... younger of two sisters, breaks one girl's engagement, drives one man to suicide, causes the murder of another, leads another to lose his fortune, and in the end marries a stupid and unpromising suitor, leaving the really worthy ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... he was goin' deranged, poor fellow, and at last he suddenly disappeared, no one could tell why; but it's clear enough now, for he was made to put the accounts all wrong, and I suppose the struggle in his mind drove him to suicide, for he was a long, thin, weakly sort of man, without much brains except ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... career was abruptly closed. He died suddenly, at the age of fifty-five. Grotius affirms that he killed himself; but, in his eagerness to point the moral of his story, he seems to have overstepped the bounds of historic truth. The Spanish bigot was rarely a suicide; for the rites of Christian burial and repose in consecrated ground were denied to the remains of the self-murderer. There is positive evidence, too, in a codicil to the will of Menendez, dated at Santander on the fifteenth of September, 1574, that he was on that day seriously ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... funds—(a crime sadly on the increase since the example of Fauntleroy, and the suggestion of its great feasibility first made by him)—these enormities, followed too often, and countersigned for their final result to the future happiness of families, by the appalling catastrophe of suicide, must naturally, in every wealthy nation, or wherever property and the modes of property are much developed, constitute the vast majority of all that come under the review of public justice. Any of these is sufficient to make shipwreck of all peace and comfort for a family; and often, indeed, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... in Montgomery. Toombs was pacing the floor during the discussion over Sumter, his hands behind him, and his face wearing that heavy, dreamy look when in repose. Facing about, he turned upon the President and opposed the attack. "Mr. President," he said, "at this time, it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions, now quiet, will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... Nero's intimate companions. No luxury was charming or refined till Petronius had given it his approval, and the jealousy of Tigellinus was roused against a rival and master in the science of pleasure.' Petronius anticipated his inevitable fate by committing suicide. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... ship that slunk out of that mass suicide of man's last remnant. Within its long hulk three motionless forms lay in a welter of blood that smeared their officers' badges, and a dozen gibbering men labored at the controls of their craft. The long black shadows came at last to veil an empty sky, and a sea whereon ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... their attitude towards the Bolsheviks. Both work in Soviet institutions. Sukhanov (Nikitsky agreeing) believed that if the Bolsheviks came further to meet the other parties, Mensheviks, etc., "Kolchak and Denikin would commit suicide and your Lloyd George would give up all thought of intervention." I asked, What if they should be told to hold a Constituent Assembly or submit to a continuance of the blockade? Sukhanov said, "Such a Constituent Assembly ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... was the actual culprit, and that he experimented with certain poisons that produced quite new results. Some said that the Rajah committed suicide. Perhaps the poison administered to him took that form. Anyway, Bentwood disappeared, and it was generally understood that he met his death by falling out of a boat when shooting sea fowl. That was the story that one of his servants brought back, but we could never ascertain how far ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... thou gained, and for us the loss is great." And Cliges, of a truth, mourns so much that he wounds and maltreats himself more than all the others do, and it is a marvel that he does not kill himself; but still he postpones suicide till the hour and the time come for him to disinter her and hold her in his arms, and know whether she is alive or not. About the grave are the lords, who lay the body there; but they do not meddle with John in the setting up of the tomb, and indeed they could see nought of it, but have ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... close he was to death in the next five minutes, while Hank was saddling up to go. For Hank's fingers went several times to his rifle and hovered there, itching to do murder, while Hank's mind revolved the consequences. Murder would be madness—suicide, practically. The boy would be missed when he did not answer the telephone. Some one would be sent up from the Forest Service and the murder would be discovered, unless—unless Hank could hide the body. There was the lake—but the lake was so clear! Besides, there was always the ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... obstinate and remained as motionless as statues. The tramping of myriad feet came nearer and nearer, until the sound partook of one general, thunderous undertone of the most trying character to the lad. It seemed to him so much like suicide—this waiting for a terrible danger as it steadily approached—that he was strongly tempted to start his horse away on his ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... have to be halved, since neither could have borne it entire away. But the Jewess's loveliness exalted the beholder; this one's was of the strange, irritating sort, resisted with difficulty and alluring a man into those byways which end in the gaming hell, the saturnalian halls, and the suicide's grave. Love had never chosen a more appetizing form to be the pivot on which human folly—perhaps human genius—was to spin idly and uselessly, like a beetle on a pin in ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... certain bridge, but the river was in flood, and the bridge had been washed away. As he is looking at this, a drowning shepherd boy is washed by, and Dick dives in to try and rescue him, unsuccessfully. But Dick's servant had followed him, and seen him dive in, assuming that Dick had committed suicide. Furthermore the shepherd's body is later recovered, and presumed to be Dick's, so that it is buried at Dick's home church-yard. Mark recovers, his sickly father inherits Dick's estate and baronetcy, but dies, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... "You say it's up to us to use our drive for both ships." He growled approvingly: "You consider there's a truce. You must, because we're both in the same fix, and not a nice one, either. True enough! We can't fight each other without committing suicide, now. But we haven't any drive left! We're a derelict! How am I going to say ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... to drink! I thought and pondered, trying to think of some possible way to get down! At one time I thought seriously of jumping to the ledge below, but I knew that it would be impossible for me to stay on it even if my legs were not broken by the fall, and that to jump meant practically to commit suicide! ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... had conquered in the early part of the war had been solemnly annexed by them. At the same time, those Englishmen who knew the history of this State, which had once been the model of all that a State should be, were saddened by the thought that it should have deliberately committed suicide for the sake of one of the most corrupt governments which have ever been known. Had the Transvaal been governed as the Orange Free State was, such an event as the second Boer war could never ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Was it suicide, we wanted to know about? said Waterloo. Ha! Well, he had seen a good deal of that work, he did assure us. He had prevented some. Why, one day a woman, poorish looking, came in between the hatch, slapped down a penny, and wanted to go on without the change! Waterloo suspected this, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... our departure from the English strand, should be marked by a tragical event, akin to the sudden end of the suicide, which had so strongly impressed me on quitting the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... eagerly and attentively. All ideas of suicide had left his mind. He longed to know more of this ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... that the maiden should be the admiration of the city, and should die a Sati- widow[FN110] before becoming a wife. From that hour Shobhani was kept as a pearl in its casket by her father, who had vowed never to survive her, and had even fixed upon the place and style of his suicide. ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... political economy, does not consist in saying that a man who has nothing to eat must die; or in maintaining that, under the system of individual appropriation, there is no course for him who has neither labor nor income but to withdraw from life by suicide, unless he prefers to be driven from it by starvation: such is, on the one hand, the law of our existence; such is, on the other, the consequence of property; and M. Rossi has taken altogether too much trouble ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... Doctor. "But you're taking the most desperate risks against health and life." He leaned forward in his chair, jerked in his legs, and threw out his long white hands. "You're committing slow suicide." ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... in beseeching tones, "Sire, death shuns you; you will but be made a prisoner." Napoleon shook his head, and for a moment resisted; but his better judgment told him that thus to throw away his life would be but an act of suicide. With tearful eyes, he bowed to those heroes who proved faithful even to death; with a melancholy cry, they shouted, "Vive l'Empereur!" These were their last words—their dying farewell. Silent and sorrowful, Napoleon put spurs to his horse, and disappeared from the field. This one square, of ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... a "don't count," vanished mysteriously soon after Mary's arrival. He did not even say goodbye; and Dodo, who vowed that she had often heard him groaning behind the thin partition which divided her room from his, went whispering about the house that he had committed suicide in ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 1876 the birth-rate had declined, and gradually the fear of over-population, which had saddened the lives of such men as John Stuart Mill, began to give way to the much less terrifying but still substantial fear of under-population, caused either by race degeneracy or race suicide. At that period the former of the two was the accepted explanation, and only by vague hints did scientific statisticians indicate that there might be or perhaps must be something else than "natural" causes for the decline. To the Society it seemed an all-important question. Was our race to perish ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... and perished. Phebe's parents investigated the matter, as far as the boatman's evidence was concerned, and were satisfied from his description of her person, that their dear Phebe, who, for some time past, had appeared troubled and even dispirited, had adopted suicide as a refuge from all her earthly cares. Phebe and the Honourable Mr. L—— met frequently in secret, and a daughter was the fruit of their interviews. This daughter the young nobleman proposed to put out to nurse; but, in reality, to put beyond the reach of being ever recognised as his. A confidential ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... the reason fail, under causes that seem to us quite insufficient; that the griefs of childhood may be, in proportion to the child's powers of bearing them, as overwhelming as those which break the strong man down. Every now and then we are shocked by the tale that some young child has committed suicide, and for reasons which to our judgment seem most trivial—from fear of punishment, or even from mere dread of reproof. These facts deserve special attention, they show how much more the susceptibility and sensitiveness ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... their tongues—she looked a lecture, Each eye a sermon, and her brow a homily, An all-in-all sufficient self-director, Like the lamented late Sir Samuel Romilly,[27] The Law's expounder, and the State's corrector, Whose suicide was almost an anomaly— One sad example more, that "All is vanity,"— (The jury brought their verdict ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Besides changing the name of the king to Dara, in order to make the poem more romantic, we find that Bodenstedt has made some decided alterations and has considerably amplified the legend. Thus in his version the motive of the lady's attempt at suicide is despised love, while in the original it is only a prosaic nervous headache. In both cases, however, the sequel is ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... description. I thought so too when he told me what she was like, and at once concluded she had tumbled in by accident and been drowned—for, you see, my Edie was good and pure and true. She could not have committed suicide unless her mind had become deranged, and there was nothing that I knew of to bring about that. They got me with much trouble into a cab, and drove me to the place. Ah! the poor thing—she was fair and sweet to look upon, with her ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... little trouble in that direction," said Holmes, glancing at the haggard figure huddled up by the window. "Human nature is a strange mixture, Watson. You see that even a villain and a murderer can inspire such affection that his brother turns to suicide when he learns that his neck is forfeited. However, we have no choice as to our action. The doctor and I will remain on guard, Mr. Pycroft, if you will have the kindness to step ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... income (or salary) can be made very easy for the woman, as I have just pointed out; but I have noticed that in small towns or on the farm, even now, when these scattered families are no longer isolated as in the days when farmers' wives committed suicide or intoxicated themselves on tea leaves, the woman always looks far older than the man if "she has done her own work" during all the years of her youth and maturity. If she renounces housekeeping in disgust occasionally ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... whether from suicide or murder, his death happened within a year after he landed at ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... quarters on the plank, thus becoming so conspicuously accessory before the fact to his own murder as to make it a grave question in our minds as it once was in the mind of Blackstone, whether he is not really and deliberately, committing suicide in the second degree. [But you enter into a contemplation of these legal ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the 'Essay on the Characteristics,' and of an 'Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times.' See Cowper's 'Table-talk.' The 'Estimate' was extremely popular for a time. He was inordinately vain, and died at last insane and a suicide. ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... upon this indecision. Nicko said, "I hope that stupid codger doesn't commit suicide. If he does, ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, people had left off taking boat at Break-Neck-Stairs, and watermen had ceased to ply there. The slimy little causeway had dropped into the river by a slow process of suicide, and two or three stumps of piles and a rusty iron mooring-ring were all that remained of the departed Break-Neck glories. Sometimes, indeed, a laden coal barge would bump itself into the place, and certain laborious ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... parents who so recklessly admit into their family circle newspapers which insert the obscene advertisements of the quacks. As I have said before, these advertisements are traps for their sons and an offense to the modesty of their daughters. Well assured am I that many cases of unaccountable suicide in youths and young men, which cause so much surprise and misery in families, are due to these unfortunates having ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe |
