"Commit suicide" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... know that?" growled Gordon. "It's the best I can do, isn't it? It's not my fault that we are not all dead now. I can't massacre foreign residents if there are no foreign residents, but I can commit suicide though, and I'll do it if something ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Dutchman; then on again, the wind by now having become a hurricane, aggravated by the intensely hot rays of a scorching sun. I have never experienced such a miserable drive, and I almost began to understand the feelings of people who commit suicide. However, the long day wore to a close, and at length we reached Setlagoli store and hotel, kept by a nice old Scotch couple, Mr. and Mrs. Fraser. The latter was most kind, and showed us two nice clean rooms. Here, anyway, I trusted to find a haven ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... is ruined in health and in pocket, and has come to the woman he wronged to beg forgiveness; he knows she has learnt to love Captain Grey, but will not marry him, because she believes that once married always married. There is only one thing he can do to repair the wrong he has done—he will commit suicide, and so enable her to marry the man she loves. He tells her that he has bought the pistol to do it with, and the words, 'Not here! not here!' escape from her; and he answers, 'No, not here, but in a cab. I've got one at the door.' He goes out; Captain Grey ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... of Respiration. It is a matter of common experience that one's breath may be held for a short time, but the need of fresh air speedily gets the mastery, and a long, deep breath is drawn. Hence the efforts of criminals to commit suicide by persistent restraint of their breathing, are always a failure. At the very worst, unconsciousness ensues, and then respiration is automatically resumed. Thus a wise Providence defeats the purpose of crime. The movements of breathing go on without our attention. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... periods, so His counsels. He cannot precipitate them any more than a man in a state of happiness can commit suicide. Doubtless it is undeniable that a man may arm his hand with a sword: and that his flesh will be found penetrable to the sword, happy or not. But this apparent physical power has no existence, no value for a creature having a double nature: the moral ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... this man would slice you all up. You better jump off the bridge if you want to commit suicide. You wouldn't stand a ghost of a chance to ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... to oblige a friend. I shall be relieved, however, when you are able to work out the ABC of detection for yourself, although I shall never object to helping you with the words of more than three syllables. Having made up his mind to commit suicide, Kipson naturally intended to do it before he reached Brewster, because tickets are again examined at that point. When the train began to stop at the signal near Pegram, he came to the false conclusion that it was stopping at Brewster. The fact that the shot was not heard is accounted for by ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... Quadroon partner, either by letter entitling her to call the house and furniture her own, or by the newspaper which announces his marriage. The Quadroon ladies are rarely or never known to form a second connexion. Many commit suicide, more die heartbroken. Some men continue the connexion after marriage. Every Quadroon woman believes that her partner will prove an exception to the rule of desertion. Every white lady believes that her husband has been an exception to the rule of seduction." ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... to seek amusement and companions abroad, she added a mean detestable jealousy to all her other faults: I could not for some time pay the commonest attention to any other woman, but my Lady Lyndon must weep, and wring her hands, and threaten to commit suicide, and ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... act of suicide, and sane men do not commit suicide. The act itself is insanity. It will be done, if ever, in a fury and madness which cannot stop to reason. Dissolution means death, the suicide of Liberty, without a hope of resurrection—death without the glories of immortality; with no sister to mourn her ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... that Mr. Milburgh would not commit suicide, and the information was superfluous that Sam Stay had murdered Mrs. Rider. It was the knowledge that this vengeful lunatic knew where Odette Rider was ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... warriors, and judges are sufficient to do; these last would have absorbed it, but they cannot,—although they try to do so every day; but they can never do so, unless the Church abandons her own functions to usurp theirs. She would then, by forgetting her destination, commit suicide. But even then, another church would form in response to the spiritual hunger and thirst which never ceases. Thus the whole problem of the existence of an institution is to remain forever necessary, and therefore faithful to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... is not limitable (which is true) it cannot be surrendered (which is palpably untrue) involves the confusion of two distinct ideas. It is like arguing that because no man can while he lives give up, do what he will, his freedom of volition, so no man can commit suicide. A sovereign power can divest itself of authority in two ways. It may put an end to its own existence or abdicate. It may transfer sovereign authority to another person, or body of persons, of which body it may, or may not, ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... said a startled voice behind the three. It was Mary, original of the photograph, who had run unperceived into the drawing-room. "They say as Mrs. Critchlow has tried to commit suicide!" ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... his trial, to commit suicide by cutting his arm with a razor in two places, but when discovered, with proper remedies, his failing strength was restored. On the table was found a document giving his reasons for attempting to end his own life. On the morning of his execution he stated that he awoke about three o'clock, ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... I was ditched the shack gave me a lecture. He told me I was risking my life, that it was a fast freight and that she went some. I told him I was used to going some myself, but it was no go. He said he wouldn't permit me to commit suicide, and I hit the grit. But I nailed her a third time, getting in between on the bumpers. They were the most meagre bumpers I had ever seen—I do not refer to the real bumpers, the iron bumpers that ...
— The Road • Jack London
... is perfect. It makes me want to die. Last night I tried again to commit suicide. Why should I live now that I have known a perfect love? I placed a box of cartridges beside my bed. I awoke unharmed. They did not kill me. But I know what it means. It means that Otto and I are to die together. ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... argument is no other than this: May every man who chooses to destroy his life, innocently do so? Limit and distinguish the subject as you can, it will come at last to this question. For, shall we say that we are then at liberty to commit suicide, when we find our continuance in life becomes useless to mankind? Any one who pleases, may make himself useless; and melancholy minds are prone to think themselves useless when they really are not so.... In like manner, whatever other rule ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... make alliance with the other six countries, but the Emperor refused, and Chi Yuan thought that the country would be taken by others in the near future. He could not influence the Emperor, so he made up his mind to commit suicide and jumped into the river, taking a large piece of stone with him. This happened on the fifth day of the fifth moon, so the year afterwards, the Emperor got into a Dragon boat to worship his soul, and throw rice cakes, called Tzu Tsi, into the river. ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... and informer, who from small beginnings acquired great wealth and influence under Nero. Best known as the prosecutor of Thrasea (cp. iv. 6, &c.). He eventually conspired against Vespasian and was forced to commit suicide. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... deduced from the single Imperative; the question of the reality of duty, which is the same as the establishment of the possibility of the Imperative as a synthetic practical proposition a priori, at present altogether apart. Suppose a man tempted to commit suicide, with the view of bettering his evil condition; but it is contradictory that the very principle of self-conservation should lead to self-destruction, and such a maxim of conduct cannot therefore become a universal law of nature. Next, the case of ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... hitherto had been divided in something like equality between the two factions, yielded to the terror of a new insurrection, and on the 2d of June ordered the arrest of the Girondin leaders. A very few escaped the search made for them by the officers—Roland, to commit suicide; Barbaroux, to attempt it; Petion and Buzot reached the forests to be devoured by congenial wolves. Lanjuinais,[6] whom the decree of the Convention had identified with them, but who, even in the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... don't suppose this district will escape much longer the destruction of its graceful flowering trees and vivid gardens, its air of an opulent village; it will match with the rest of Kensingtonia in huge, handsome buildings and be much sought after by the people who devote their lives—till they commit suicide—to illicit love and the Victory Balls at the Albert Hall. But in 1909—would that we were all back in 1909!—it was as nice a part of London as a busy, energetic, sober-living spinster, in the movement, yet liking home retirement and lilac-scented privacy—could desire to inhabit, at ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... to-morrow, listen well to this: I have purposely led your galleys into the shallows, where in a few minutes they will be left high and dry on the sands. They will stay there grounded, for the tide is falling. To attempt to disembark is to commit suicide; you are surrounded on all sides by moving quicksands like the one in which your soldier and his axe have just been swallowed up. Remain on board of your ships. To-morrow they will be floated again by the rising tide. And to-morrow, battle—battle to the finish. ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... bestowed. The Emperor, bent on vengeance, refused the proffered gift, and Seneca knew that his doom was sealed. In the year 65, on the pretext of complicity in the conspiracy of Piso, he was commanded to commit suicide, and Tacitus (Ann. xv. 61-63) has shown his love for Seneca, in spite of all his faults, by the tribute he pays to ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... was all of a sudden torn from her I loved in the most cruel manner imaginable: I had then no more to do, but to think of death; and I had certainly proved my own executioner, did not our holy laws forbid us to commit suicide. But there is no need of such violent means; death will soon do its own work by a sure though gentle method; I find myself in a manner gone, and that I have not long to wait the welcome blow. Here he was silent, and vented the rest of his passion only in groans, sighs, and tears, which came ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... the yarns Mrs Spicer told us was about a squatter she knew who used to go wrong in his head every now and again, and try to commit suicide. Once, when the station-hand, who was watching him, had his eye off him for a minute, he hanged himself to a beam in the stable. The men ran in and found him hanging and kicking. 'They let him hang for a while,' said Mrs Spicer, 'till he went ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... hop-garden. It was common for people to shut their houses and do this at that season of the year, but their blind malice was too eager to remember this. Another person by continually dunning a poor debtor to pay him half a sovereign had driven him to commit suicide! So ran their bitter tongues. Backbiting is the curse of village life, and seems to keep people by its effects upon the mind far more effectually in the grip of poverty than the lowness of wages. They become so saturated ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... dishonored grave, and when he hoped, poor fellow, to fall in the approaching assault upon the Molina-del-Rey! I see it all now. They have decided upon the destruction of Traverse. He can do nothing, A soldier's whole duty is comprised in one word—obedience, even if, as in this instance, he is ordered to commit suicide. Let them hatch their diabolical plots. We will see if the Lord does not still reign, and the devil is not a fool. It shall go hard, but that they are 'hoist with their own petard!'" said ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... and did not, by so doing, improve his finances a whit, although he succeeded in materially injuring his health. He worried the life of poor meek Grinder to such an extent that that unfortunate man went home one night and told his wife he meant to commit suicide, begged her to go out and purchase a quart of laudanum for that purpose at the fishmonger's, and was not finally induced to give up, or at least to delay, his rash purpose, until he had swallowed a tumbler of mulled port wine and gone to ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... are: the next morning she was alive! One night was enough to tame the little rogue and to make Dalbreque as handsome as Prince Charming in her eyes! For see the difference. On the films or in novels, the Happy Princesses resist or commit suicide. But in real life ... ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... composed against him at this juncture and that "Atreus" was merely a pretence used on account of that monarch's bloodthirstiness. And adding quietly "I will have him play the part of Ajax," he brought pressure to bear to make him commit suicide. The above was not the accusation made against him; instead, he was charged with having kept up a liaison with Livilla. Many others had been punished on her account, some with good reason and some as ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... loss, shutting herself up in her room, and refusing to see any one, saying that she could not be comforted, and it was of no use trying! Lenora, however, managed to find an opportunity of whispering to her that it would hardly be advisable to commit suicide, since she had got the homestead left, and everything else for which ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... such a condition of things possible is not only a disgrace to any community, it is a monstrous evil against the womanhood of that community. Is it any wonder, then, that so many of the women of India, under these circumstances, should commit suicide? Is it strange that a wife, in such a land, should find it best to obey and submit to the indignities of the worst kind from her husband? And is it remarkable that the Hindu widow, rather than endure ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... within the working-class, numbers too moral to steal even when reduced to the utmost extremity, and these starve or commit suicide. For suicide, formerly the enviable privilege of the upper classes, has become fashionable among the English workers, and numbers of the poor kill themselves to avoid the misery from which they see no other ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... in the end called upon to advance a sum which transcended his honest means, with a dark hint, that, if the money was refused, there was but one thing for the casual acquaintance to do,—that is, to commit suicide. The person thus solicited, in a transient fit of moral enthusiasm, caught at the hint, and with great earnestness advised the casual acquaintance to do it, on the ground that it was the only reparation he could make to the numerous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... well done or ill done [Footnote ref 3]." Some of his arguments were that neither the vicious nor the virtuous return to tell us that they suffered or enjoyed happiness in the other world, that if the virtuous had a better life in store, and if they believed in it, they would certainly commit suicide in order to get it at the earliest opportunity, that in spite of taking the best precautions we do not find at the time of the death of any person that his soul goes out, or that his body weighs less on ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... I want to follow up Cleopatra's fashion, and commit suicide, I am goin' to hire a rattlesnake, and take my poison as she ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... a man—alive by no fault of his own, and poor, even to starvation, through absolute want of work: and yet you begrudge him the necessaries of life! If he tries to commit suicide, you pillory and chastise him, and if he tries to keep life in him out of the superfluities of others, you pass on him this monstrous sentence!" cried the man. "Surely here is some fault in ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... seen in such an instance as that of the migrating lemmings from the Scandinavian peninsula. Vast hordes of these little creatures are at times seized with an impulse to migrate or to commit suicide, for it amounts to that. They leave their habitat in Norway and, without being deflected by any obstacle, march straight toward the sea, swimming lakes and rivers that lie in their way. When the coast is reached, they enter the water and continue on their course. Ship captains report sailing for ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... against destruction! Even the ant, intent on pilfering sweets secreted for bees, it ruthlessly glues to death against its sticky stems and calices. According to Dr. Barton the Indians drink a decoction of kalmia leaves when they wish to commit suicide. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... can a Doctor, or any other man, ever presume to contribute his share to the shortening of a person's life by aiding him to commit suicide? We must emphatically say No, even though the patient should desire death: the Doctor cannot, in any case, lend his assistance to violate the right and the law of the Creator: "Thou shalt ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... in a somewhat pompous tone, 'I am in a very strange condition of health. I find I can no longer endure to live in London; I must get away from the war. The doctor says so. If I'm to keep sane, if I'm not to commit suicide, I must give up this domestic life.' She stared at him. 'Yes, I'm sorry, I've tried to endure it,' he went on. 'I can't stand the responsibility, the anxiety of the children and everything. ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... death, but afraid of the unknown. Men like him commit suicide rather than face reality. He wants security. He's afraid of uncertainty. He lives in an unreal, imaginary world and when uncertainty, which is reality, intrudes, he ...
— The Whispering Spheres • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... him Etienne Rambert was a sport of fate, deserving pity rather than severity, and the court would be very lenient. Another man declared that Etienne Rambert had been in an impasse: however fondly he loved his son he could not but hope that he might commit suicide: if a friend committed an offence against the laws of honour, the only thing to do was to put a pistol into his hand. And so on: the only point on which all were unanimous was their ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... Western State picked up Stanton's book, "Songs of the Soil," and after reading "Hanging Bill Jones," and "A Tragedy," therein, commuted the sentence of a man who was to have been executed next day. One hopes the man deserved to escape. In another case an individual who was about to commit suicide chanced to see in an old newspaper Stanton's encouraging verses called "Keep a-Goin'," and was stimulated by them to have a fresh try at life on earth ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... M., p. 152:—"Buddha made a law forbidding the monks to commit suicide. He prohibited any one from discoursing on the miseries of life in such a manner as to cause desperation." See also M. B., ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... water. Some of the passengers lingered to watch him, at first because they thought he was going to be seasick with so little provocation that it amounted to genius, and afterwards because they were sure he must want to commit suicide. When they found that time passed and he did neither, he became unpopular, and they went away and left ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... was, for it was already night, set off to look for Sullens. I had not far to go: about two hundred yards up the island the moon showed him to me. He was hanging in a coco-palm—I'm not botanist enough to tell you how—but it's the way, in nine cases out of ten, these natives commit suicide. His tongue was out, poor devil, and the birds had got at him. I spare you details: he was an ugly sight! I gave the business six good hours of thinking in this verandah. My justice had been made a fool of; I don't suppose that I was ever ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hopelessness 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
... Virgin Mary, by every sacred object he could think of, that not another word of love should pass his lips during the journey, that he would live the life of a dead man, etc. Overcome by his pleadings, and by the remonstrances of Aunt Maria, who did not want to have her favorite driven to commit suicide, Clara agreed to ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... longer worked: previously it was but a private road-way. In Cooke's Topography we find it stated, (though it is not mentioned upon what authority,) that the architect built a former arch which fell, and that the apprehension of the second experiencing the same fate induced him to commit suicide. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... "Doctor, I shall be glad to see you at Eton." "I shall be glad to wait on you," said Goldsmith. "No," replied Graham, "'tis not you I mean, Doctor Minor; 'tis Doctor Major there." Poor Goldsmith said afterwards, "Graham is a fellow to make one commit suicide." ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... each might be wanted. Nevertheless a slight bodily blemish, such as the loss of a tooth, was considered a sufficient cause for putting one of these god-men to death, as we learn from the following passage of an old Portuguese historian: "It was formerly the custom of the kings of this land to commit suicide by taking poison when any disaster or natural physical defect fell upon them, such as impotence, infectious disease, the loss of their front teeth, by which they were disfigured, or any other deformity or affliction. To ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... should a young man who had invented a new method of polymerising isoprene, who was going to become wealthy, and was engaged to a beautiful young girl, commit suicide?" ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... agreeable method of suicide, since he could commit it unconsciously," Miss Warren remarked mischievously. "I read in Emily Warren's newspaper this afternoon," said Silas Jones, with awkward malice, "of a young fellow who got a girl to marry him by pretending to commit suicide. He didn't hurt himself ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... and Nicko hung upon this indecision. Nicko said, "I hope that stupid codger doesn't commit suicide. If he does, we go ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... on the wheel (1673), but the marquise escaped, taking refuge first probably in England, then in Germany, and finally in a convent at Liege, whence she was decoyed by a police emissary disguised as a priest. A full account of her life and crimes was found among her papers. Her attempt to commit suicide was frustrated, and she was taken to Paris, where she was beheaded and her body burned on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... importance," 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 opened the window, you ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... you—so long as I stop there I'm assured of a pound a week! If I come any nearer to England the money stops. They probably hope I'll commit suicide and save them the expense of the pound a week. It'll even save them the expense of a funeral and buying mourning, won't it? I'll do ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... have we that this man did not commit suicide? We have the evidence of the disorder in the room, a disorder that could have been made just as well by the man himself before he ended his own life. We have the evidence of a letter to some unknown, making plans for pleasure during the next days, ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... What, then, was he to do? Return to the Princess? The road to her lay blocked—blocked a hundred thousand times, by his own pride! Break with Amanda and speed further afield, perhaps to the Spanish civil war? This would be the life of an adventurer, mere folly; he might almost as well commit suicide quietly at home. Should he retrace his steps and let things be as they were before? The Princess lost to him, the envy and admiration of his comrades foregone, his confidence in himself destroyed? There was no means of retreat open to him, except ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... free not towards the limitations of our self, not where it is maya and negation, but towards the unlimited, where is truth and love. Our freedom cannot go against its own principle of freedom and yet be free; it cannot commit suicide and yet live. We cannot say that we should have infinite freedom to fetter ourselves, for the ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... responsibility 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
... You have begun the comedy, my lady, and I will play it to the end. Yes, I fell honestly in love with you when I thought you were nobody in particular. So I am going to marry this Margaret Hugonin if she will have me; and if she won't, I am going to commit suicide on her door-step, with a pathetic little note in my vest-pocket forgiving her in the most noble and wholesale manner for irrevocably blighting a future so rich in promise. Yes, that is exactly what ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... Philippi, but remained in Rome. She is said to have killed herself by swallowing the live coals from a brazier, when her friends kept from her all the means of self-destruction. This story is scarcely credible; possibly it means that she suffocated herself with the fumes of charcoal. That she should commit suicide suited all ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... defence—no shadow of an alibi, yet he knows the chemist's assistant must necessarily come forward with the facts. Bah! do not ask me to believe that any man could be so idiotic! Only a lunatic, who wished to commit suicide by causing himself to be hanged, would ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... Wheels seem to think there'll be a shooting war in a couple of months. There's only three or four destroyers left in the whole damn Asteroid Belt. And without the big stick behind me I'm not hankering to commit suicide ...
— This One Problem • M. C. Pease
... happy. He told her also that not all the women in the world were as bad as her stepmother. Still Hannah was unwilling. Then Peter attacked her with a new weapon. He made believe he was ill, and let her know that if he should die, it would be her fault; and if he did not die, he would commit suicide, and his last thought would be that the Jews are cruel, and rejoice in the misfortune of a Christian. Then Hanna gave in, did as she was urged, and was ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... something to live for still. I'll tell you a secret. I've insured my life very high in favour of my little sister whom I ruined, and who is out as a governess. If I don't pay up to the last, you see, or if I commit suicide, she'll lose the money. I pay very high, I assure you. On one occasion not a year ago, I played for the money to pay the premium only two nights before it would have been too late. There was touch and go for you. But my hand was as steady as a rock, and after the last game was ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... extraordinary have occurred. Or a partisan of Dudley's, finding poison difficult or impossible, may have, in his zeal, murdered Amy, under the disguise of an accident. The theory of suicide would be plausible, if it were conceivable that a person would commit suicide by throwing herself downstairs. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... my business here is of a very serious character. Five hundred dollars is no trifle; a man may squander them in a few days, but they may cause him also to commit suicide. Pay me, sir, pay ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... to think. I never was on a case like this before. When I first heard about his taking the picture away I thought maybe he had gone off somewhere to commit suicide, and ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... all the periodicals with which you are connected. Last time I wrote a novel, my nephew reviewed it, very perfunctorily, in the Pandrosium; this time I want only to be reviewed by my friends." He was kicking on the sofa, and apparently trying to commit suicide with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... to personate her and admit him by night to her chamber by means of a rope ladder. With fiendish cunning he has advised Ariolant to watch Ginevra, so this true lover, witnessing what he considers irrefutable proof of his lady-love's unchastity, departs in despair to commit suicide. His brother, deeming him already dead, denounces Ginevra, who, brought before the judges, is sentenced to die unless some champion will vindicate her honor. Having meantime discovered the truth, Rinaldo clears the lady by winning a brilliant victory, and leaves ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... smilingly and continued. "One night—it was dark and stormy—Lady Rachel had a row royal with her father. Then she ran out of the Hall saying her father would never see her alive again. She may have intended to commit suicide certainly, or she may have intended to join her lover in London. But whatever she intended to do, the rain cooled her. She staggered into Christchurch and fell down insensible at the door of 'The Red Pig.' Mrs. Krill ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... season beat her breast against the wires of her cage, until it is bare and bloody. It causes young salmon to leap out of the fresh water, in which they could continue to exist, and thus unintentionally to commit suicide. Every one knows how strong the maternal instinct is, leading even timid birds to face great danger, though with hesitation, and in opposition to the instinct of self-preservation. Nevertheless, the migratory instinct is so powerful, that ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the other cried. "If you fight in your boots, we must all do the same, and for myself—well, I have not come here to commit suicide." ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... sutured, and general treatment for encouraging union should be employed. If the wound fails to heal immediately, a treatment calculated to encourage granulations should be undertaken. This same method of treatment will be of service whenever we happen to have a patient who, in order to commit suicide, has cut his throat. Paul's exact term is, perhaps, best translated by the expression, slashed ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... sight. Some were praying, some crying, and they all had a look of extreme wretchedness. It is an awful thing to a Virginia slave to be sold for the Alabama and Mississippi country. I have known some of them to die of grief, and others to commit suicide, on ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... with a touch of his old airy manner; 'you come to commit suicide and are not afraid; I wish to save you the trouble, and you are, my dear—you ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... The next moment the kneeling grandam crouched and the glittering metal swept around just high enough to miss her head. A tinkle of mirth came from its wielder as she moved on with it, sighing, "Ah! ho! what a pity—that so seldom the aged commit suicide." ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... the service of France, under pain of death; because it excited such a fond remembrance of the scenes they had witnessed in their own native country, and such a strong desire of seeing them again, that it caused them to shed tears, to desert, or, if they despaired of this, to commit suicide." ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... design, Eldredge may commit suicide, and be found dead in the wood; at any rate, some suitable end shall be contrived, adapted to his wants. This character must not be so represented as to shut him out completely from the reader's sympathies; he shall ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... coach; and, as it was discovered that the story concerning Miss Coddlins was a shameful calumny, why, of course, the widow married Captain Blackbeard. Dr. Sly married them, and has always declared that he knew nothing of his nephew's doings, and wondered that he has not tried to commit suicide ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... no idea how easy it was to commit suicide. There seems nothing left of me; I died a while ago; I do not know who ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 3dly, of putting the knife into the mouth. At least 120 years ago, the Duchess of Queensberry, (Gay's duchess,) that leonine woman, used to shriek out, on seeing a hyperborean squire conveying peas to his abominable mouth on the point of a knife. "O, stop him, stop him! that man's going to commit suicide." This anecdote argues silver forks as existing much more than a century back, else the squire had a good defence. Since then, in fact, about the time of the French revolution, silver forks have been ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... fallen in love. But the nobleman would not permit it; he said Christian should wait some ten years until there was a house vacant in the village, and some of the old peasants had died. This drove him to despair; he wanted to commit suicide, and said he would die rather than be a day laborer on an estate in Mecklenburg, which is no better than being ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... of Benjamin Franklin and the little white fringe on Horace Greeley's chin, this goddamned thing's been wrote by hand! Arent there any typewriters anymore? Did Mister Remington commit suicide unbeknownst to me?" ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... fall, and disappoint myself. I do not thereupon immediately feel free to commit suicide. I face my failure, resolve to do better, and take up my life again, as bravely as may be, on ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... trifling thing, one wonders at remembering it at all.... I happened, one night, to be where I had no right to be. That was rather a habit of mine, I'm afraid. And so I discovered, in another man's apartment, a young woman, hardly more than a child, trying to commit suicide. You may believe I put a stop to that.... Later, for in those days I had some little influence in certain quarters, I got her place in the chorus at the Varietes. She made up a name for the stage: Liane Delorme. And that is all. You ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... in a military school until I was ten years old. The desire came upon me to commit suicide, and I was punished for insubordination. There was no fascination for me in being prepared for a great carnage. So my father, though it meant that he had to give up his pet idea, took me away from the school, and I went through the much-discussed ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... transition required of an old opium-eater who must give up his drug in toto and at once, especially after such an acute attack as that just described. He would be very likely to die of exhaustion, to endure an amount of agony which would permanently enfeeble his mind, or to commit suicide as his only way of escape from it, if we cut him short from the equivalent of 15 or 20 grains of sulphate of morphia after having used the drug for five years. The most terrible case of opium-eating which I ever saw instantly cu short was one ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... not as a rule commit suicide simply because he is eccentric or because he has made a mess of his estates, or because being a practical joker he suddenly finds his twin image to defraud. Rochester had evidently done nothing to bar him from society. Though perhaps coldly ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... hurts me most is the practical certainty that the Count of Surigny is now with that band of international cut-throats. I had hope for a nobler future for the Count, and also I am disappointed to find him working for my enemies. He must hate me fearfully because I thwarted his one-time purpose to commit suicide!" ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... he will repay his debt. He has not noticed that Tatyana is in love with him; and the young girl has not strength enough to live through the sorrow of seeing herself abandoned forever. She tries to commit suicide, but does not succeed. While Tatyana is bemoaning her fate, Peter has fallen in love with a young woman quite different from any of the members of his family. Helen understands how sad Peter's position is among these ignorant people, and she decides to marry him, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... "Suicide! HE commit suicide!" sniffed Hephzy when she read me the letter. "He thinks too much of his miserable self ever to hurt it. But, oh dear! I wish Pa had told me of this letter instead of hidin' it away. I might have sent somethin', not to him, but to poor, ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Smyth's "Christian Ethics," he will find there a careful though condensed discussion of the right and wrong of suicide. It is cool, deliberate, philosophical. But it gives no slightest hint of the real state of the man who is deliberating within himself whether he will commit suicide or no; no hint of the real arguments that pass in shadow through his mind:—the weariness of life which summons him to end all; the nameless, indefinable dread of the mystery and darkness and night into which death carries us, which makes him hesitate. If we would really ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... ladies were reduced to hysterics and despair, and forgot their jealousies in a common appeal to the Regent for clemency. Mademoiselle de Valois was driven to distraction; and when tears and pleadings failed to soften her father's heart, she declared in the hearing of the Court that she would commit suicide unless her lover was restored to liberty. In company with her rival, Mademoiselle de Charolais, she visited the dungeon in the dark night hours, taking flint and steel, candles and bonbons, ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... in this country—and so few countries, if it comes to that—are without a lover's leap that the very name has come to be a by-word. In most of these places the disappointed ones seem to have gone to elaborate and unusual pains to commit suicide, neglecting many easy and equally appropriate methods. But while in some cases the legend has been made to fit the place, there is no doubt that in many instances the story antedated the arrival of the white men. The best known lovers' leaps are those on the upper Mississippi, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... a Presbyterian for sixteen years, had refused even under the torture to confess, and had tried to escape by suicide. "I thought that I had better commit suicide than be killed by their cruel tortures," he said. "They asked me if I had joined the conspiracy at the suggestion of Mr. McCune. I would not consent to this, so they tortured me harder. I was nearly naked, and so cold water was poured upon me. I was also ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... transfer to the Reformatory hospital and underlined the remark of the Inspector in the Visitors' Book to the effect that one Moussa Isa would commit suicide or murder, if kept at Duri, and would certainly not be "reformed" in any way. In hospital, Major Jackson of the Royal Army Medical Corps, a Visitor of the Duri Jail, paying his periodical visits, grew interested ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... me that when I'm going to commit suicide for his sake, and, and— I don't want to be French and rave about my mother, but have I ever told you that I have a mother, and a brother who was my pet before I married? He's married now. Can't you imagine ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the Vermonter. "If I'd been born in your State I'd commit suicide if anybody found it out. Ain't your State the place where all they need is more water and better society, ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Unless she married again, she remained in mourning all her life; but it should not be understood that the veil concealed her coquetry or prevented her from enjoying her liberty and planning her future. Then, as to-day, there were many examples of fanaticism and folly; one widow would endeavor to commit suicide; another lived with the figure of her husband in wax; another conversed, for several hours of the day, with the shade of her husband; others ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... water makes a milky-looking poison. It does not make the fish unwholesome to eat, only intoxicates them for the time, so that they rise floundering about on the surface of the water, but it destroys human life, and is the poison chosen by Dyaks who commit suicide, though I do not believe that this ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... of incredulity on Henshaw's face manifestly deepened. "By his own hand?" he echoed. "Suicide? Clement commit suicide? Impossible! Inconceivable!" ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... will commit suicide," he declared. "If they aren't allowed to spout, they'll either wither or die. Old man Lethbridge's monthly attacks of high-minded patriotism are the only things that ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... course," said The Master benignly, "if you prefer to commit suicide, if you prefer to leave her here—well, my nephew knows little expedients to reduce her will to compliance. You ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... one of the chaps got so drunk that he went orf his onion and jumped into the water, and when they got him out the village policeman locked him up, and the next day he was took before the beak and fined two pounds or a month's hard labour for trying to commit suicide. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... most frequently resorted to by those wishing to commit suicide, and, being used as a common medicine, is easily obtained. From this cause, also, mistakes are very liable to be made, and accidents result from it. Two of its preparations, laudanum and paregoric, are frequently mistaken for each other; ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... The fear of hell. Many theatric preachers among the Methodists successfully inspire this terror, and live comfortably upon the folly of their hearers. In this kind of madness the poor patients frequently commit suicide; although they believe they run headlong into the hell, which they dread! Such is the power of oratory, and such the debility ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... last year Mr. Stang, who was 81 years old, and a retired real-estate man, living with an invalid wife at 4855 North Paulina Street, made three ineffectual attempts to commit suicide. His first effort was discovered before he had succeeded in injuring himself. On Oct. 30 he sent a bullet into his brain in his bedroom. Persons in the household ran to him and found him lying on the floor, the revolver beside him. He was placed on the bed, and during ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... told this downtown the next morning, and he was beginning to look right puzzled indeed. He said the wayward child of Nature had got up after about half an hour and shut all the windows and the door. Lon thought first he was intending to commit suicide, but he didn't like to interfere. He was telling Jeff Tuttle and me about it when we happened to ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... of him, and gave a dark tinge to all his views of human nature and of human destiny. Such wretchedness as he endured has driven many men to shoot themselves or drown themselves. But he was under no temptation to commit suicide. He was sick of life; but he was afraid of death; and he shuddered at every sight or sound which reminded him of the inevitable hour. In religion he found but little comfort during his long and frequent fits of dejection; for his religion partook of his own character. The light ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... instance, this revolver of the Lefaucher pattern costs only eighteen roubles, but . . ." (the shopman pursed up his face contemptuously) ". . . but, M'sieu, it's an old-fashioned make. They are only bought by hysterical ladies or the mentally deficient. To commit suicide or shoot one's wife with a Lefaucher revolver is considered bad form nowadays. Smith-Wesson is the only ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... mental agony as any man ever felt who has killed himself, she thrust one horn into the ground, broke it off flush with her head, and threw herself down with her neck doubled under her shoulder, as if trying to commit suicide, as I verily believe she was. And yet dogs and cats get credit for being creatures of finer feelings than cows, merely because cows have no tricks of ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... their loves,[70] and all the wanton pranks in which they two had shared as young men. Finally he surrendered to him Publius Turullius, a senator, who had been an assassin of Caesar, but was then living with him as a friend. He actually offered to commit suicide, if in that way Cleopatra might be saved. Caesar put Turullius to death; it happened that this man had cut wood for the fleet from the forest of Asclepius in Cos, and by his punishment in the same place he was thought to have paid the penalty to the ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... friend is still in trouble. Although not a religious woman, she has taken to saying a 'Hail Mary' every night on going to bed, and if it wasn't for that I'm afraid she would commit suicide, so frightful are the visions that enter her head sometimes. I've told her how wrong it would be to do away with herself, if only for the sake of her husband, who is away. Didn't I tell you he was away at present? It would hurt you dreadfully if I were to die before you return, wouldn't it? But ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... far from damaging any one, should even benefit my heir by my accelerated death. However, I am no advocate for suicide under any circumstances; there is something undignified in it, unheroic, un-Germanic. But if you must commit suicide—and there is no knowing to what people may be brought—always contrive to do it as decorously as possible; the decencies, whether of life or of death, should never be lost sight of. I remember a female Quaker who committed suicide by cutting her throat, but she did it decorously ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... times that of Portugal, and the rate of American whites eight or ten times that of full-blooded American blacks? Why do the Slavs of Bohemia kill themselves at the rate of 158 per million, while the Slavs of Russia commit suicide at the rate of only 31 per million? Why do emigrants, going to a new country, carry their national suicide rates with them, and maintain such rates, with little or no alteration, long after their environment has completely changed? These questions may not have ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... to some precipices, whereon it at once occurred to the two comedians that they would commit suicide. The pathetic way in which they shared the contents of their pockets among us, and came back more than once to give little additional parting messages which occurred to them just as they were about to take the fatal plunge, was irresistibly comic, ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... the reason why he did not commit suicide was because he was so curious to know what was going to happen next. For any one to do pioneer work in almost any department of human activity there are two essentials: First, he must be more or less stupid and not read the handwriting on the wall; and in the second place he must be ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... example a little more elaborate. Suppose that one single person owned all the food supply of a community isolated from the outside world. The price which he could exact would be the full measure of all the possessions of his neighbors up to the point at least where they would commit suicide rather than pay. True, in such a case as this, "economic strength" would probably be broken down by the intrusion of physical violence. But in so far as it held good the price of food would ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... his widow, filed a claim for pension in 1885, claiming that the insanity which caused him to commit suicide resulted from the hardships of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... Count Valonne said. "You must look at her, Madame Loraine; she was one of the best dancers at the ballet, and last year she tried to commit suicide in a charmingly dramatic way at one of Gritzko's parties. She was at the time perhaps his chre amie— one never knows, but in all cases violently in love with him—and is still, for the matter of that—or so it is said—and in ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... determined to commit suicide that night, it mattered little to him at what hour it was done, and opening the first book on the table, he tried to kill time until it grew later and darker. The book happened to be a Bible, and conscious how much it jarred with ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... to Holland, and at the Hague fell violently in love with the wife of a rich gentleman whom he knew. When the lady was obliged to go into Switzerland, he was thrown into such a state of frenzy that he attempted to commit suicide, by tearing off the bandages from the place where he had had himself bled, under pretence of illness. His servant, however, suspected his intentions, and prevented him from carrying his resolution into effect. He gradually recovered his spirits, and determined to return ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... relief in the man's voice when he, Jimmie Dale, had agreed to the other's request. And what had been the meaning of that "financial help"? Had, for instance—for it was pitifully obvious that if the bank had been looted an innocent man would not commit suicide on that account—a greater measure of the depredation been uncovered than had been counted on, so much indeed that, say, the financial assistance Forrester had intended to ask for had now increased to such ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... mutual envy, for luxury and ostentation. To have dinners, visits, carriages, rank and slaves to wait on one is looked upon as a necessity, for which life, honor and human feeling are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to satisfy it. We see the same thing among those who are not rich, while the poor drown their unsatisfied need and their envy in drunkenness. But soon they will drink blood instead of wine, they ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... be clever, wouldn't it?" said the ungracious Mr. Heard. "Starting to commit suicide, and then thinking better of it. Why, I should be ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... "I don't know what this will cost you, Larry, but whatever it is, you get your money's worth of excitement, anyway. Taking a ride in one of those things is like going out to commit suicide." ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... the utmost caution in using lunar caustic; the sticks and holder should always be carefully examined before use. An apprentice[1] to an apothecary attempted to commit suicide by taking nearly one ounce of a solution of nitrate of silver without fatal result. It must be remarked, however, that the strength of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... to hear you tell it, a fellow 'd think that all the denizens, as you impolitely call 'em, are so confoundedly unhappy that it's a wonder they don't all up and commit suicide. But they seem ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... that she was not strong enough to stand this physical and mental torture, and so she decided to commit suicide. As the means she selected gas. Fortunately, the smell became perceptible before the injury was irreparable. She was saved. But she felt that she could not stand the torture very long—and more than anything was she afraid that her mind would give way. She had a special ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... is not to be supposed that Congress will yield, for to yield would be to commit suicide. There is not an interest in the nation which is not concerned in its adherence to the principle, that in it the whole legislative power of the United States government is vested, and that it has the right to exact irreversible guaranties of the Rebel States as the conditions of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... another door of escape for the worst and most wretched, and it is opened to the penitent by the hand that was nailed to the rugged cross. These crises do come, when the next step must be death or life-penitence or perdition. Do sane men and women ever commit suicide? Yes—and, No. Yes, in the sense that they sometimes do it with even pulse and steady nerves. No, in the sense that there cannot be perfect soundness in the brain and heart of one who violates a primal instinct of human ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald |
