"Suicide" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down the line traced in the air by the ball, he saw that Tug had misjudged it. But for once science meant suicide; for though Tug struck wildly, the ball condescendingly curved down and fell full and fair upon the bat, and danced off again over the first baseman's head and toward the feet of the right-fielder. This worthy player ran swiftly for it and bent forward, but ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... bride To silent laughter goaded, Until he talked of suicide, And then the girl exploded! "You make me laugh, and so," she said, "I'll marry you next season." (Not half the people who are wed Have half ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... of the Vampire is hidden in obscurity. In modern times it has generally been a wizard, or a witch, or a suicide,[421] or a person who has come to a violent end, or who has been cursed by the Church or by his parents, who takes such an unpleasant means of recalling himself to the memory of his surviving relatives and acquaintances. But even the most honorable dead may become vampires ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... have bred that anachronic spectre. The sight, however, is one to make our squatting imps in circle grow restless on their haunches, as they bend eyes instantly, ears at full cock, for the commencement of the comic drama of the suicide. If this line of verse be not yet ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... interrogatory replies might have proved dampening to some narrators. Not so with Mr. Hagan. He nodded his head, then he asserted briefly. "But as a matter of fact the Ray woman committed suicide." ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... 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
... was one inconvenience about our villa (besides its flavour of suicide) which it is necessary to mention here. By common consent all the cats of the neighbourhood had selected our garden for their evening reunions. I fancy that a tortoise-shell kitchen cat of ours must have been a sort of leader of local feline society—I know she was ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... subjects his mind to the domination of what he hates; he loses his independence and volition and becomes the prey of the hated idea. At last he cannot free his mind from the obsession; and the deliberate cultivation of hate in the conscientious German manner is a kind of mental suicide." ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... and sobbed. "It has killed me," he groaned. "I don't mean I'll commit suicide or die. ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... future." Though he speaks regretfully of lax or incorrect discipline, he does not complain of the corruption of the faith by Tantrism and magical practices. He does however deprecate in an exceedingly curious passage the prevalence of religious suicide.[259] ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... done so would have been simply committing suicide. To jump from an express going sixty miles an hour is to risk your life, but to jump from a machine going one hundred and twenty miles an hour would ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... magnanimously sends Sylla's wife and daughter to him unharmed. Moreover, wooden as they sometimes are, these great antagonists and their fellow-senators show the right Roman nature at need. Marius sleeping quietly under the menace of death; his heroic son, with his little band of soldiers, committing suicide rather than surrender at Praeneste; Octavius scorning to imitate the vacillation and cowardice of his colleagues; Sylla plunging back alone into battle, that his example may reanimate the courage of his fleeing army: these are scenes that recall the best traditions of Rome. ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... authenticity of the poems attributed to a fifteenth-century priest was, after twelve years, entering its most crucial phase.[1] These curious poems had come to the attention of the reading public in 1769, when Thomas Chatterton sent several fragments to the Town and Country Magazine. The suicide of the young poet in 1770 made his story of discovering ancient manuscripts all the more intriguing. When Thomas Tyrwhitt published the first collected edition in March of 1777,[2] speculation about whether the poems were the work of Rowley or Chatterton ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... come to see him, and also why Denham should have committed suicide after receiving a telegram. Trim could not tell him what the telegram was about, so Giles had to wait until the girl chose to call and enlighten him. Perhaps she had a message for him from the dead man concerning ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... cried, shaking his hands with outspread fingers in front of him. "They have no manners, no decency, no self-respect. It's a regular trade. They go and get knocked down by automobiles on purpose, so that they can claim indemnity. They breed dogs especially and train them to commit suicide under the wheels so that they can get compensation. There's one now—ah, sacree bete!" He leaned over the side of the car and exchanged violent objurgation with the dog. "But never mind. So long as I am here you can run over anything you ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... foreigners, and the leaders of America, men like Webster and Clay, with their air of assured power, the men he had failed to impress. This was his valedictory at Washington. He went home and told Herndon that he had committed political suicide.(8) He had met the world and the world was ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... that he meant to destroy himself. Clayfield called on Barrett to communicate his uneasiness about the young lad. 'Stay,' said Barrett, 'and hear what he will say to me.' Chatterton was sent for. Barrett talked to him on the guilt and folly of suicide. Chatterton denied any intention of the kind, or any conversation to that import. Clayfield came from the closet with the letter in his hand, and asked, 'Is not this your hand-writing?' Chatterton then, in a state of confusion, fell upon ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... wouldn't discount his bills, even when he had the money; and when they came due he would give notes so as to keep from paying out his cash a little longer. Running a business on those lines is, of course, equivalent to making a will in favor of the sheriff and committing suicide so that he can inherit. The last I heard of Dick he was ninety-three years old and just about to die. That was ten years ago, and I'll bet he's living yet. I simply mention Dick in passing as an instance of how habits rule a ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... He thought of suicide; and in this mood he spent that Thursday night. He arose Friday morning with the firm determination to put an end to ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... in prostitution constitutes the life of the average harlot. Many, before the time allotted to them in a life of ill-fame expires, die; many commit suicide, yet some live on, their diseased bodies constituting that class of girls known as street walkers and degenerates. These women, who are really only young girls, hang around the back rooms and cellars of the barrel houses, consorting with the drunken, crippled, ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann
... "'Tis a strange way to put it to a fellow, but that does not alter the circumstances. No, I won't be moved by mere sentiment. I'll try the Turk's plan, and submit to fate. I fancy this is something of the state of mind that men get into when they commit suicide. And yet I don't feel as if I would kill myself if I were free. Bah! what's the use of speculating about it? Anyhow my doom is fixed, and poor Flinders with his friends will lose their money. My only regret is that that unmitigated ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... but sufficient to provide him with the necessaries of life for some little time. When his brother, Jonathan, who had been promoted lieutenant at Cologne by Marlborough, under whom he served at Hochstadt and elsewhere, and captain by Queen Anne, committed suicide in 1709, after a quarrel with his colonel, John may have inherited some further share ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... Gouvion is shiftless in this extremity;—a man shiftless, perturbed; who will one day commit suicide. How happy for him that Usher Maillard, the shifty, was there, at the moment, though making representations! Fly back, thou shifty Maillard; seek the Bastille Company; and O return fast with it; above all, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... children—all girls. Second, you must prove that the greater part of the provision which you make for them depends upon you life, and you must be under bond for four thousand pounds not to be hanged, commit suicide, nor be killed in a duel, which are the conditions upon which I have insured my life for the benefit of my wife and daughters. Third, you must convert me to infidelity. We can then meet on equal terms, and your challenge will ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... watched him closely. They had the idea that he still contemplated suicide, that he sought to divert their attention from himself by interesting them in what he wrote. They remembered the boast he had made in the cell ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... say. "This world is the real hell, ending in the eternal naught. The dreams of a life beyond and of re-union there are but a demon's mocking breathed into the mortal heart, lest by its universal suicide mankind should rob him of his torture-pit. There is no truth in all your father taught you" (he was a clergyman and rather eminent in his profession), "there is no hope for man, there is nothing he can win except the deep happiness ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... case of Judas is the case of all suicides. If we were now holding an inquest on Judas, I suppose our verdict would be that he committed suicide in a fit of temporary insanity. And perhaps he did. At all events it is the most charitable verdict at which we can arrive. Many suicides in all fairness deserve this mantle of charity. And there is more than charity in reserve for all such. We believe there is an opportunity of development which ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... showed her a paragraph headed 'Defalcations and suicide.' It described how Mr. James Morrison, the chief cashier of the Bartonbury Bank, had committed suicide immediately after the discovery by the bank authorities of large falsifications in the bank accounts. Mr. Morrison had shot himself, leaving a statement acknowledging a long course ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... problem had to be faced at the outset: What effect had secession had upon the States guilty of it; was it or was it not an act of state suicide? This question was warmly debated in Congress and out. Although ridiculed in some quarters as a mere metaphysical quibble, it lay at the bottom of men's political thinking on reconstruction, and their views of the proper answer to it powerfully influenced ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... moralist, and very often his blood-lust leads him into lamentable excesses. The various vice crusades afford innumerable cases in point. In one city, if the press dispatches are to be believed, the proscribed women of the Tenderloin were pursued with such ferocity that seven of them were driven to suicide. And in another city, after a campaign of repression so unfortunate in its effects that there were actually protests against it by clergymen elsewhere, a distinguished (and very friendly) connoisseur of such affairs ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... which happened about the same time, raised the excitement to its highest pitch. Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, a London magistrate, before whom Oates had made his depositions, was found murdered, and under such circumstances as precluded the idea of suicide. Suspicion now deepened into certainty. No one longer dared to doubt the reality of the plot. To doubt, was to confess one's self an accomplice. Nothing was talked of but the Plot. The wildest rumors were caught ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to take a house and fill it with guests who will be consistently unpleasant, as the Benefactress did. And I'm not going to build a sort of fairy palace and commit suicide from the roof like the millionaire in that book Midas something or other. And I hope I'm not going to lose my imagination and forget what it feels like to be poor, and send a girl with a small dress allowance half a dozen ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... kinds of things. He committed suicide in the end. And now—she is going to marry a ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... returned John 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, and, ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... an appearance of maturity that belied his years. English audiences everywhere received him with admiration, but he seemed to have lost all zest for the intoxicating wine of public favor. A profound gloom stole over him, and we even hear of hints at an attempt to commit suicide. Adam Liszt attributed it to the sad English climate, which Hein-rich Heine cursed with such unlimited bitterness, and took his boy back again to sunnier France. But the dejection darkened and deepened, threatening ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... study Cole; to ponder the thin, mirthless smile. The Coroner said, "Mr. Cole, this inquest has been called to look into the death of one Sanford Smith, who was found near your home with a gun in his hand and a bullet in his brain. The theory of suicide has been—" ...
— The Smiler • Albert Hernhunter
... the trousers. Can't you imagine the wretched man, after some splendid evening of debauchery, contemplating these garments—hanging them over the end of the bed, arranging them now in full light, now in shade, and wondering whether they will survive him, or he will survive them? Thoughts of suicide cross his mind. He has a friend, too, a man who somehow subsists upon selling small birds, for which he sets traps in the fields near Uxbridge. They're scholars, both of them. I know one or two wretched starving creatures like that who ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... philosophy. Anxiety is suicide, peace is life; worry destroys, serenity upbuilds. As you want to live, to grow, possess your souls in peace and serenity. Work, aye, work mightily, powerfully, daily, but work for the joy of it, not because worry drives you to it. Work ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... perfectly free from that pest. How does it begin, and how does it multiply itself? I will tell you. A person, more or less wicked, puts an end to himself. A suicide, under certain circumstances, becomes a vampire. That specter visits living people in their slumbers; they die, and almost invariably, in the grave, develop into vampires. This happened in the case of the beautiful Mircalla, ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... his hand over his forehead. He could not fully grasp the meaning of a passion that led a man to such lengths as this. Why, the man had proposed murder—murder and suicide; and all because of this strange love of a woman. He had been driven stark raving mad because of it. He sat there now before him, an odd combination of craven weakness and giant strength because of it. In the face of such a revelation, Covington felt petty; ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... sleep. He had but one full meal a day, he never warmed himself at a fire, he never married, he was never ill, and was found dead on his bed one morning, at the ripe age of eighty-seven. Starved to death, you are told; the hint is almost of suicide. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... brother, the second Lord Hardwicke, and dated nearly a year later, December 30, 1770; the other, dated October 20, 1772, by his widow Agneta Yorke; and the effect of them, to my mind, is not only to discredit the widely believed story of Charles Yorke's suicide, which is not even alluded to, but also to place his action from a public and political point of view in a more favourable light than that in which it ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... induce Miss Wilbur to consent to an early wedding, and after much persuasion Mr. Royce returned to England alone. Later it was rumored that the engagement had been broken off; then we heard that Mr. Royce had committed suicide; again that he had married; another time that he was returning to America to press ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... Sumner, one of the most philosophic and accomplished living American statesmen, that "State secession is State suicide," but modify the opinion I too hastily expressed that the political death of a State dissolves civil society within its territory and abrogates all rights held under it, and accept the doctrine that the laws in force at the time of secession remain in force till superseded or abrogated ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... by choking. But there is this to be taken into consideration. When she hangs herself near the village, she can manage affairs so that she can be cut down if she concludes to live a little longer; for this frequently occurs, and the suicide lives forty and sometimes sixty years after. But when Wenona took the resolution of ending her earthly sorrows, no doubt there were other passions ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... 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
... leads me to make a point in favor of dogs, at least so far as their claim to being "so human" is concerned. There has been supposed to be nothing more distinctive of human nature than its propensity to suicide, arising from its capacity, as it rises in civilization and enlightenment, of finding out that life is not worth living. But a number of well-authenticated cases have come to my observation which show that the dog is rapidly learning this supreme accomplishment. A dog at Warwick, New York, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... to an optical illusion, and the voluntary concession has an air of liberty. Once imprisoned in existence, we must submit to its laws with a good grace; to rebel against it only ends in impotent rage, when once we have denied ourselves the solution of suicide. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by him, would mean suicide, nothing less; for from that country in which Sanderson had gained his reputation had come stories of the man's remarkable ability with the weapon he had described, and Dale had no longing to ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the last word in music. His symphonies, his symphonic poems, are a superb condensation of all that Beethoven knew and Wagner felt. He has ten times more technic for the orchestra than Berlioz or Wagner, and it is a pity he was a suicide—" "How," I cried, "Tchaikovsky a suicide?" ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... British public, and little for the Reformers, who, whatever their part in the affair, had to suffer most. They endured mental torture, and bodily discomfort of all kinds—discomfort so acute that it brought on some active illness, and caused one to commit suicide. A Judge from the Orange Free State—Judge Gregorowski—who took an unctious joy in the proceedings, was imported to try them, and he revived or unearthed an old Roman Dutch law of treason for the purpose of sentencing them to death. This ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... "Suicide is the vulgar cry of the animal who suffers; it is the rebellion of the atom against the laws of the universe. One must allow the candle of one's life to burn out slowly and calmly to the ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... "It was deliberate—deliberate suicide. And attempted murder. It was a trap. I was the victim. He had me, and he threw himself over with me. Yet he did not hate me. He loved me... as much as it is possible for a horse to love. I am confounded. I cannot understand it any more than you ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... he thought of the affair in Munich—a Wagnerian concert which had terminated in an insane orgy of mass suicide. "Just a week after we started our free-sample campaign in South ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... the poorer classes among the peasantry throughout France had disappeared from the electoral body. The Assembly had at one blow converted into enemies the entire mass of the population that lived by the wages of bodily labour. It had committed an act of political suicide, and had given to a man so little troubled with scruples of honour as Louis Napoleon the fatal opportunity of appealing to France as the champion of national sovereignty and the vindicator of universal suffrage ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the amateur desirous of committing suicide under the transparent pretence of studying taxidermy. This, which I have culled from the pages of "Maunders' Treasury of Natural History," is, by a fine irony, entitled ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... bronchi is apt to extend into their smaller ramifications and prove a cause of death, by acting as a local irritation, and setting up intra-lobular suppurative pneumonia. The author has found this to be the case both after tracheotomy and still more frequently in suicide by cut throat. ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... did him honor? He would have writhed in his grave, as Miss Mayberry said. Like it? When the cheap jack or the social climber dies, he may like it, but not the gentleman or lady. Leading society girl? Why, every shop-girl who commits suicide is immortalized in the daily press as 'a leading society girl,' and every deceased Tom, Dick, or Harry has become a 'well-known club man.' It has added a new terror to death. Thank God, my ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... there's a hill much higher still, Aye, higher than them both, Sir! 'Twas from the top of this high hill Saint Patrick preached the sarmint, That drove the frogs out of the bogs An' bothered all the varmint. The toads went hop, the frogs went flop, Slap-dash into the water, An' the snakes committed suicide to save themselves from slaughter." Pity there is no modern successor of Saint Patrick to extirpate the reptilia of the present day, the moonlighters and their ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... and the carvings are the work of the prisoners who were confined here. From one of the doors we went out to the platform or terrace called Beauregard, from the beauty of its prospect, or sometimes Sault Gautier, from a prisoner of that name, who three times threw himself off the platform to commit suicide. The view from hence is most extensive, the whole circuit of the bay extending to the west as far as Cancale. In 1203 St. Michel became a royal demesne, and the buildings were entirely reconstructed by the Abbot Jourdan, assisted by Philip Augustus; ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... balsam for her shame. With wilful, dishonest blindness, she would not see—not even in her secret heart would she acknowledge, that Manasseh had been strange, and moody, and violent long before the English girl had reached Salem. She even found some specious reason for his attempt at suicide long ago. He was recovering from a fever—and though tolerably well in health, the delirium had not finally left him. But since Lois came, how headstrong he had been at times! how unreasonable! how moody! What a ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Laurence and his intercepted letter. Suppose the friar's narcotic to have been less enduring in its action, or his message to have reached in safety, why then Juliet would have been awake instead of asleep, or Romeo would not have supposed her to be dead, and instead of the suicide of the two lovers, we should have had the successful carying off of Juliet by Romeo. Not so with Gottfried. The philter is there, and a great deal is talked about it; but it is merely one of the old, threadbare trappings of the original story, which ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... reign has been saddened much in the same way through the suicide of his young cousin, Prince Alfred of Coburg; the self-destruction of the young prince, who had been placed under the immediate care and guardianship of his majesty, having been due, as I have intimated, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... the advocates of the "last ditch" theory, who have sworn never to live in the United States, will, doubtless, depart to foreign lands, or follow the example of the Virginia gentleman who committed suicide on ascertaining the hopelessness of the Rebellion. Failing to do either of these things, they must finally acquiesce in the ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... any show of resistance would be nothing short of suicide, for he was well aware of the deadliness of the strange weapon with which he and Steinholt were being menaced by ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... squeaking, and hissing, and roaring, and then, with a succession of curious jumps and pantings, backing itself half a mile or so down the course, and then spluttering and dashing out of sight as if madly intent upon suicide, and in search of a stone wall to run its head upon. As to feeling surprise at the number of accidents, the only wonder a sensible man can entertain on the subject is, that there is any thing but accidents from morning to night. And yet, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... happy—cure my ills, meet my needs, and supply a few of the luxuries as well. And if there is a God, and we can meet Him only by dying, then why in the name of common sense all this hullabaloo about death? Why, in that case, death is the grandest thing in life! And I'm for committing suicide right away! But you preacher fellows fight death tooth and nail. You're scared stiff when you contemplate it. You make Christianity just a grand preparation for death. Yet it isn't the gateway to life to you, and you know it! ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... was happening to Bernardine last night—that she was attempting to commit suicide, or something of that kind. A girl in her highly nervous state ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... new debts with certain providers who, recalling other financial crises, trusted to a re-establishment of his fortune. "His fate was settled," according to the count's own words. When he could do no more, he would resort to a final course. Kill himself?... never. Men like him committed suicide only because of gambling debts or debts of honor. Ancestors of his, noble and glorious, had owed huge sums to persons who were not their equals, without for a moment considering suicide on this account. When the creditors should shut their doors to ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... black, of better aspect, and with straight hair. Each family had a cave in which they deposited their dead. They cultivated a few palms, and kept flocks; had no money, no writing, and kept tale of their flocks by bags of stones. They often committed suicide in age, sickness, or defeat. When rain failed they selected a victim by lot, and placing him within a circle, addressed prayers to the moon. If without success they cut off the poor wretch's hands. They had many who ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... 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
... Baron, "the only human being who ever thought it worth while to look up the grave of the poor suicide, Leonora Rossi, the mother of David Leone, was David Rossi! Who was David Leone?—David Rossi! Who was David Rossi?—David Leone! The circle had closed ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... supremely, in, while making brains its darling, forgetting or helplessly surrendering to the egoisms of alimentation. So it has spawned a conflict between its organs, and a consequent impasse in which the lower centres drive the higher pitilessly into devising means and instruments for the suicide ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... is barbarous, does he? So it is!' cried the soldier. 'Now hearken, my friends.' Then he proceeded to inquire if they would increase his indebtedness to them by undertaking the removal, privately, of the body of the suicide to the churchyard, not of Sidlinch, a parish he now hated, but of Chalk-Newton. He would give them all ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... results, a most unsatisfactory study. But nothing puzzles us so much to comprehend as the fact just alluded to. The tenderest female constitution will sustain a burden of grief which would crush a robust and iron-nerved man, and drive him to despair and suicide. A woman rarely succumbs to a calamity; however sudden and overwhelming the initial shock may be, she revives and grows cheerful and happy under it in a way and to a degree marvellous to behold. What singular secret is there among the psychological ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... closed Reynolds sighed, then his eyes brightened as they fell upon the sandwiches. Even a desperate young man on the verge of suicide if he is hungry must needs cheer up temporarily at the sight of food. Reynolds had taken an early breakfast after being up all night, and had eaten nothing since. After devouring the sandwiches and tea with relish, he ordered a ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... friend and servant, committed suicide in the Tower, on March 2nd, from fear of further torture. Mr Abington, who had "voluntarily offered to die at his own gate, if any such were to be found in his house or in that sheire," was condemned to death, but afterwards pardoned on condition of never again ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... of it because you are not a timid old woman, but a reckless young man who seems bent on committing suicide. Yonder is a grassy spot which I ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... had a healthy effect in reviving old Bleistein's youth. I shall never forget the intense interest in life he always used to gain when we encountered an Italian with a barrel organ and a bear—a combination that made Renown seek instant refuge in attempted suicide. ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... "live" has also rare qualification for being dead when occasion suits, and it generally did suit Justin's stock. It proved prone not only to all the general diseases that cattle-flesh is heir to, but was capable even of suicide. At least, it is true that two valuable Jersey calves, tied to stakes on the hillside, had flung themselves violently down the bank and strangled themselves with their own ropes in a manner which seemed to show that they ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in which the unhappy man had come by his death admitted of no dispute. There were several wounds in the body, and a knife, of the sort then much used by travellers of an ordinary class, was left sticking in his back in a position to render it impossible to attribute the end of the sufferer to suicide. The clothes, too, exhibited proofs of a struggle, for they were torn and soiled, but nothing had been taken away. A little gold was found in the pockets, and though in no great plenty still enough to weaken the first impression that there ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... upon every man as a suicide from the moment he takes the dice-box desperately in his hand; and all that follows in his fatal career from that time is only sharpening the dagger before he ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... lost her reason and in her frenzy stabbed her unfortunate bridegroom. On coming once more to her senses, she puts an end to her own life; while Edgar, on hearing of the tragedy, betakes himself to the tombs of his ancestors and there commits suicide. Much of the music suffers from the conventionality to which Donizetti was a slave, notably the ridiculous mad scene, a delightfully suave melody ending with an elaborate cadenza divided between the voice and flute; but there are passages of real power, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... different crowds. Crowds of different nationalities would differ both in degree of suggestibility and in the kinds of suggestive stimuli to which they would respond. Imitation is due to suggestibility. Even suicide is rendered epidemic by suggestion and imitation.[37] In a crisis, like a shipwreck, when no one knows what to do, one, by acting, may lead them all through imitative suggestibility. People who are very suggestible can be led into states of mind which preclude ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Suicide may be moral cowardice; but it requires physical bravery. And Marie was not brave. The balcony had attracted her: it opened possibilities of escape, of unceasing regret and repentance for Stewart, of publicity that would mean an end to the situation. But every inch of her soul was ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... It's suicide! We couldn't swim, and just a bit farther on, I tell you, the place must be full to the roof. Why, there must be eight or ten foot o' water ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... name of the Dakota mother who committed suicide, as related in this legend, by plunging over the Falls of St. Anthony. Schoolcraft calls her "Ampata Sapa." Ampata is not Dakota. There are several versions of this legend, all agreeing in ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... with him to Australia. Years afterwards she is so affected by the sudden reappearance of Rutherford, and by subsequent ill-treatment received from her jealous husband, that an exhausting illness follows, and to save herself from insanity she commits suicide. Meanwhile the long separation of Rutherford and Betty Ochiltree, which began on the day of their marriage, is coming to an end, and Hilda's death removes the final impediment. Together they pay a last visit to the ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... proper 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 late in the autumn swallows, house-martins, and swifts frequently ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... with him, but in real life very few young men and women of two-and-twenty are 'noble' all the time. A good many never are at all; and Margaret had at least the excuse that the victim of her charms was no simple sensitive soul with morbid instincts of suicide, like the poor youth who cut his throat for Lady Clara Vere de Vere, but a healthy millionaire of five-and-thirty who enjoyed the reputation of having seen everything and done most things in ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... one do if one happens to be a sea serpent?" Anko inquired. "There is nothing in the sea that can hurt me, and I cannot commit suicide because we have no carbolic acid or firearms or gas to turn on. So it isn't a matter of choice, and I'd about as soon be alive as dead. It does not seem quite so monotonous, you know. But I guess I've stayed about long enough, so I'll go home ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... the prospects and promises of overwork, it is a species of suicide to continue it at the expense of health. Good men in every department and calling, stimulated by zeal and an ambition commendable in itself, have worked till the vital forces were exhausted, and so were compelled to stop all effort in the prime ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... of course, I had a real hard fight with Satan, and he had tried to get the better of my better self, and Miss Sisson came and told of your being at a house to see the landlady and then of your going back in a few days to preach the funeral services over the dead body of one of the girls [suicide]. Oh, how it helped me to see what I had been spared from and how much I had to praise God for! and it also showed me how many prayers you needed to help you in your work, and so I have held you up more than ever before His throne, ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... drove Mithridates out of Pontus into Armenia. Tigranes laid his crown at the feet of the Roman general, and was permitted to retain Armenia. Mithridates fled beyond the Caucasus, and, in 63 B.C., committed suicide. Pompeius overthrew the Syrian kingdom of the Seleucidae. He entered Judaea, captured Jerusalem from Aristobulus the reigning prince, and placed his brother Hyrcanus on the throne, who became tributary to Rome. Pompeius ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... shocking thing has happened, which I suppose I may mention, as you will necessarily hear of it soon. Miss Hood's father has committed suicide, poisoned himself; he was found dead on a common just outside the town. Nobody seems to know any reason, unless it was trouble of a pecuniary kind. Miss Hood is seriously ill. The Baxendales send ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... moment; and now, all means of living as well, unless some happy thought of yours—some inspiration of your genius—shows us a way of re-establishing her claims to the policy voided by this cry of suicide." ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... upon the suicide of Nero, dismissed the Batavian life-guards to whom he owed his elevation. He is murdered, Otho and Vitellius contend for the succession, while all eyes are turned upon the eight Batavian regiments. In their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... though the desire is proof of a weakened nature, which is about to lose the essence of human intercourse, it did not take an ignoble form. He did not suppose that confession would bring him happiness. It was rather that he yearned to get clear of the tangle. So does the suicide yearn. The impulses are akin, and the crime of suicide lies rather in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave behind. Confession need harm no one—it can satisfy that test—and though it was un-English, and ignored by our Anglican cathedral, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... it," he croaked, "why sail for Naples instead of for Bordeaux? The Mediterranean is full of those pirate fellows. You read the papers—the headlines anyway; you know it as well as I. It's suicide, no less! Those Huns sank the San Pietro last week. I say, young man, are you listening? Do you hear ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... were in one carriage, were engaged in a malicious conversation. They tore their acquaintances to shreds. She began with Poterin's gloves. Then she related about the suicide of another inspector's mistress; she drowned herself because she was about to have a child. Then she told about a third inspector who got drunk in a bath-house and got into a tussle there with the mayor of ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... through the markets like a hurricane; for it came at a luckless time. Prices tottered and crashed like towers in an earthquake. For two days Wall Street was a clamorous inferno of pale despair. All over the United States, wherever speculation had its devotees, went a waft of ruin, a plague of suicide. In Europe also not a few took with their own hands lives that had become pitiably linked to the destiny of a financier whom most of them had never seen. In Paris a well-known banker walked quietly out of the Bourse and fell dead upon ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... no need for any difference among us. Mr Blew's against the spilling of blood, and so would I, if it could be avoided. But it can't, with safety to ourselves; at least not in the way he has suggested. To act as he advises would be madness on our part—nay more, it might be suicide. Still, there don't seem any necessity for a cold cutting of throats, which has an ugly sound about it. The same with knocking on the head; they're both too brutal. I think I know a way that will save us from resorting to either, and, at ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... witches! I see clearly you do not believe in Jacques's innocence. Why else should his family be so very anxious to see him? No doubt they want to enable him to escape by suicide the punishment of his crime. But, by the great God, that shall not be, ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... dismasted and clean-swept, and dragging toward the rocks. They could not help her themselves—too rough—a hurricane outside—to launch a boat was out of the question. They didn't mind taking a chance, they said, but to attempt her rescue would be suicide. ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... after lying awake for several hours in the night, under the most distressing forebodings, arisen, smoked his pipe to procure a temporary alleviation of his sufferings, in fitful and half delirious slumbers. He even thought of suicide, but was deterred by the dread of an hereafter. In a few weeks after relinquishing the indulgence, all these feelings were gone; and when I last saw him, about two years, I believe, after quitting his tobacco, he was in fine health ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey
... mortal woe commingle with the sounds of a serenade in the distance, and the disclosure of a supposed murder is made at the climax of a ball; in the fourth the calls of passing gondoliers break in upon Gioconda's soliloquies, which have for their subject suicide, murder, and self-sacrifice. The device is of a coarse tissue, but it is of the opera operatic, and it is now more familiar than it was when first disclosed to the patrons of the Metropolitan ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide;[154] that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... "In Siberia," he began in an earnest and serious tone—"in Siberia, in the house of correction, in the mines, live and die people who are less guilty, who are less criminal, than you. Are you a suicide, or only a thief, or a perfect fool? Just tell me ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... he says, in which the hero falls in love with a pair of Siamese twins and commits suicide because he can't make ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... extinguish, but Parliament you cannot extinguish,—it is enthroned in the hearts of the people,—it is enshrined in the sanctuary of the Constitution,—it is immortal as the island which it protects. As well might the frantic suicide hope that the act which destroys his miserable body should extinguish his eternal soul. Again I therefore warn you, do not dare to lay your hands on the Constitution; it is above your power. Sir, I do not say that the Parliament and the people, by mutual consent and cooperation, may not change ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... words,—words that under other conditions I should make you answer for with the sword; but what is the good of it all? You know I am no coward; I can fight if there be need; yet to my mind no help can reach Toinette through us, while to remain here longer is no less than suicide." ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... now rather oddly that I weighed these probabilities quite impersonally, as though I were a mere spectator. And such was virtually the case. The fact is that, although I had long since abandoned the idea of suicide, I remained alive as a matter of principle and not by personal desire. My objection to being killed was merely the abstract objection to the killing of any worthy member of society by these human vermin. But if any such person must needs be killed, I was quite indifferent as to whether the subject ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... all kinds of dashes and flourishes, which prove that the maestro was in his happiest mood when he wrote it. His nephew was at that time in the hospital, probably owing to his attempt at suicide.] ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... at the very least his career as a lawyer would be ruined. Who would trust him after this? He would have to go away; but where could he go? He had counted on his little legacy to help him get a start, to—to help him to all sorts of things. Now—— Oh, what should he do? Suicide seemed to be the sole solution. He had a good mind to kill himself. He should—yes, he was almost sure that he should ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... tribunal of Troyes and flattered by Malin, representative from the department of the Aube, was the object of a certain sort of respect. But when the Mountain was overthrown and after his father-in-law committed suicide, he found himself a scape-goat; everybody hastened to accuse him, in common with his father-in-law, of acts to which, so far as he was concerned, he was a total stranger. The bailiff resented the injustice of the community; he stiffened his back and took an attitude ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... Sydney Barnes? No one has ever doubted that he committed suicide. Everything seemed to point to it. There is only one man who knew about Morris Barnes and probably guesses the rest. His name was Heneage, and he was your father's friend. He did not speak when he was alive, so he is not likely to now. There is the young woman, of course, Mrs. Morris Barnes. ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... beast. And they fought, and fell, and rolled down the steps together into the road, where they still fought till they were white like millers with dust. Then at last the Padre got the strong man under him and took the revolver away and threw it into the ditch. Then he fell to belabouring the would-be suicide with his fists, until the big man cried for mercy and ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... single desire that burned his entrails, gnawed more cruelly still by the ever-increasing agony of the duel he was fighting with himself since his passion for gold had turned to his own injury,—a species of uncompleted suicide which kept him at once in the miseries of life and in those ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... roach poison or in parlor matches, is sometimes eaten by children and has been willfully taken for the purpose of suicide. It is a powerful irritant. The first thing to be done is to give freely of magnesia and water; then to give mucilaginous drinks as flaxseed tea, gum water or sassafras pith and water; and lastly to administer finely powdered bone-charcoal, ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... a very natural aversion from being murdered obscurely by ferocious Moors with all the circumstances of barbarity. It was a very naked death to come upon one suddenly. It was robbed of all helpful illusions, such as the free will of a suicide, the heroism of a warrior, or the exaltation of a martyr. "Hadn't I better make some sort of fight of it?" he debated with himself. He saw himself rushing at the naked spears without any enthusiasm. Or wouldn't it be better ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... attend the Mission school, and yesterday Topsy was sent home in dire disgrace for lying and cheating. She is not to be permitted to return until she is willing to confess and apologize. She thereupon tried to commit suicide by swallowing paper pellets, and in the night the doctor had to be called in to prescribe. She is white and wan to-day, but when I went in to bid her good-night I found her thrilling over a new prayer which she had learned, and which she repeated to ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... you do so," exclaimed the queen in great excitement. "Never shall my noble and brave king declare that his spirit is crushed and vanquished. Majesty would thereby render itself guilty of suicide. For majesty, like life, is a boon sent by Providence, and you are no more allowed to divest yourself of it arbitrarily than to put a voluntary end to your life. And, least of all, are you permitted to do so in times of adversity and danger, for such a course ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... hair, right bang off. When I got up yesterday morning with so much work ahead of me, with so much to do and so little time to do it in, I started doing my hair. I also started thinking about that Frenchman who committed suicide after counting up the number of buttons he had to button and unbutton every morning and evening of every day of every year of his life. I tried to figure up the time I was wasting on that mop of mine. Then the Great Idea occurred ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... real murderer of President McKinley in order to get the presidency of the United States, because the way things were that time he was not supposed to be a president; all the leaders did not want him, that's the reason they give him the vice-presidency, which is political suicide; and that's what I am sore about, to think Mr. McKinley appeared to me in a dream and said, "this is my murderer and ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... for granted that a man whose works show everywhere the results of judgment sometimes acted with forethought. I find the springs of the profoundest sorrow and pity in this hardened indifference of the grave-diggers, in their careless discussion as to whether Ophelia's death was by suicide or no, in their singing and jesting at ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... have done for me, uncle. I know my failings, too. But that is not what decides in this case. Billy's love for me is undeserved good fortune. Such happiness is always undeserved. But not to stretch out my hands toward it would be suicide for ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... said, "whilst I have the honor to administer the government, bring a man into any office of consequence knowingly, whose political tenets are adverse to the measures which the general government are pursuing; for this, in my opinion, would be a sort of political suicide. That it would embarrass its movements is most certain." A terser statement of the doctrine of party government it would be difficult to find, and in the conduct of Monroe and the course of the opposition journals Washington had ample proofs of the ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... and only last week he took both sets after I had gone to bed, propped them apart, baited them with cheese, and caught two horrid mice before morning. I was so hurt by his behavior that I drank some laudanum for the purpose of committing suicide, and then Mr. Fogg borrowed a pump in at Knott's drug store and pumped me out twice in such a rude manner that I have felt hollow ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... doubt, that through him suicide has become the normal way out of our troubles when these are beyond remedy. I will not express any opinion as to the ethical significance of this admitted result of his teaching, which many of us still find it so hard ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... window again. She shuddered. A moment more and she would have been lying below there, broken, mangled, unsightly—perhaps not dead, only crippled for life and arrested as a suicide that failed; perhaps as a murderess, since the fall would surely have killed her child—her precious child. She held him close, her great man-baby, her son; he laughed, beat the air with his hands, chuckled, and smote her cheek ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the check and demand that her story be sent back to her or destroyed; but, reflecting that Punch's advice is applicable to other things than matrimony and suicide, she didn't. She resolutely put her literary Frankenstein behind her. She reasoned that in all probability the story would not be published during the lifetime of any of the originals of the characters; that even if the worst came to the worst, Mossdale was likely to remain in ignorance that ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... confinement had at first deeply affected his spirits, and his melancholy increasing at the prospect of a long detention, terminated in deranging his mind, and occasioned this last act of despair.—I never hear of suicide without a compassion mingled with terror, for, perhaps, simple pity is too light an emotion to be excited by an event which reminds us, that we are susceptible of a degree of misery too great to be borne—too strong for the efforts of instinct, reflection, and religion. —I could moralize ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... idea that she should be carried away from the home of her childhood, as she had been by the rough Mr. Jackson,—that she should become the slave of that bad man, and never, never see Alfred again. "But I can die," she often said to herself; and she revolved in her mind various means of suicide, in case the worst ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... development of national needs in response to the growth of world-wide ideals. It is conceivably possible for a monarch of genius to put himself at the head of a revolution without ceasing to be the king of his people. For the autocracy of Holy Russia the only conceivable self-reform is—suicide. ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... of 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 ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... thousands of persons who are ruining their minds by a kind of literary debauch. They endeavour to follow on the footsteps of the specialists; they struggle to learn a little of everything, and they end by knowing nothing. They commit mental suicide: and, although no disgrace attaches to this species of self-murder, yet disgrace is not the only thing we have to fear in the course of our brief pilgrimage. We emerge from eternity, we plunge into eternity; we have but a brief space to poise ourselves ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... sir: he ruined himself and half-ruined his family, and is supposed to have committed suicide. The news so shocked his mother that it brought ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte |
