"Suicidal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and other criminals, there is still a large number of recorded cases where the subjects have dropped out of sight without apparent cause or reason and have left behind them untarnished reputations. Of these a small percentage are found to have met with violence; others have been victims of a suicidal mania ; and sooner or later a clue has come to light, for the dead are often easier to find than the living, Of the remaining small proportion there are on record a number of carefully authenticated cases where the subjects have been the ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... "taste" with its duality of beauty and hideousness, of conscience with its duality of good and evil, and the attribute of "reason" with its duality of the true and the false. Every one of these basic attributes would be reduced to a suicidal confusion of absolute sceptical subjectivity if it could not have faith in some objective reality to which ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... unmarried, the more scrupulously should they strive to repress in themselves everything annoying, and to cherish both in themselves and each other everything pleasing. While each should draw on his love to neutralize the faults of his friend, it is suicidal to draw on his friend's love to neutralize his own faults. Love should be cumulative, since it can not be stationary. If it does not increase, it decreases. Love, like confidence, is a plant of slow growth, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... you must have thought me of a suicidal tendency. Why, he would pound me up in a mortar if I disagreed with him. You have ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... there was little or no order of procedure, ensuring to any accused person any reasonable hearing. There could have been no such Revolution, if all laws, forms, and ceremonies, had not first been so monstrously abused, that the suicidal vengeance of the Revolution was to scatter them all to ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... their meaning. It had, indeed, now become a battle for life between him and Bud and their two accusers. Their testimony, once they were free, would turn suspicion directly upon Quinley and Ugger. It would be suicidal for the two men now to attempt to do anything to free them. Thure raised his eyes and looked wildly around, at the face of the alcalde, the faces of the jury, and the faces of the surrounding crowd. On all was a look of ominous sadness ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... society is to be improved by turning class interests into the functions by which Humanity is to be developed. The spiritual treasures of the past are only to be preserved by order and good government; hence all revolutionary methods are suicidal. Life is to be advanced by giving social influence into the hands of the wisest. True principles must regulate society, and these George Eliot would have ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Wounds of the throat inflicted by suicides are commonly situated at the upper part, involving the hyoid bone and the thyroid and cricoid cartilages. The larynx is opened, but the large vessels often escape. In most suicidal wounds of the throat the direction is from left to right, the incision being slightly inclined from above downwards. At the termination of a suicidal cut-throat the skin is the last structure divided, the wound being shallower as it reaches its ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... their sentiments, the evangelical theologian should take no partial or prejudicial views of science, or of its necessity for the defense of Scriptural truth. The course adopted by the Roman Catholic Church in reference to the discoveries of some of the noblest of her sons was suicidal. When Galileo was forced to recant his theory of the earth's revolution, the advance of papacy was arrested. To all outward appearance there is an incompatibility between the claims of geology and ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... ardor with which Tom longed to tempt fate at the brink of the river, and over the tops of the parapets which have been built along the edge of the precipice, and they equally entered into the terror with which Bella screamed at his suicidal zeal. They joined her in restraining him; they reduced him to a beggarly account of half a dozen stones, flung into the Rapids at not less than ten paces from the brink; and they would not let him toss the smallest pebble over the parapet, though he laughed to scorn the notion that anybody ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the year,— Suicidal atmosphere, Everything is dark and drear, Filling nervous minds with fear, Skies are seldom ever clear, Fogs are ever hov'ring near,— 'Tis a heavy load ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... the day and the heaviness of the equipment and the after-effects of the noisome deck, the men could scarcely be blamed for availing themselves of such hospitality, though to drink intoxicants on the march is suicidal. Men "fell out," first by ones and twos, then by whole half-dozens and dozens. The Subaltern himself was scarcely strong enough to stagger up the long hills at the back of the town, let alone worrying about his men. The Colonel was aghast, and very furious. He couldn't ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... stop people from thinking about it—but I can stop them from talking. Our job is to contact the Disans and stop this suicidal war. I have done more in one day than you all have done since you arrived. I have accomplished this because I am better at my work than the rest of you. That is all the information any of you are going ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... to tell us just a little about a particular body among the learned class of the nineteenth century, which, according to the professions of its members, ought to have known and to have taught the people all that we have so easily perceived as to the suicidal character of the profit system and the economic perdition it meant for mankind so long as it should be tolerated. I refer to ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... initiative and national referendum can only provoke opposition and cause reaction. Even those who sympathize with the ultimate objects of the Labour unions must see the folly of their present unpatriotic and suicidal tactics. ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... together they send out vibrations of redemption, and have planned the spiritual technique of salvation for this age. The work of these two fully-illumined masters-one with the body, and one without it-is to inspire the nations to forsake suicidal wars, race hatreds, religious sectarianism, and the boomerang-evils of materialism. Babaji is well aware of the trend of modern times, especially of the influence and complexities of Western civilization, and realizes ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... not so at the South." Now do you not know enough of Southern affairs to see that the South by their very Constitution cannot admit incendiary documents to be cast into their midst—it were suicidal. If the South should publish papers uttering sentiments detrimental to Northern manufactories (in general) & in favor of foreign manufac's, how long would the North permit such papers to pass ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... Nat struck a most tragic attitude. "Tavia will ever be the queen of my heart!" and he made a thump toward that organ, with seeming suicidal intent. ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... first: we must relieve Marie Fauville of her suicidal obsession by letting her know that we have discovered ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... his new life very much. Never for a moment did he think of marrying the girl. That, of course, never dawned on him. Recollect, he was in all things decent and correct, and such a step would have been suicidal. Until the time came for him to go Home, she was merely being made use of—and to be useful to the ruling races is the main object in life for the Chinese. They exist for the profit and benefit of the superior ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... and pity the crowd of people who gave themselves up to it, for they were making a hero of the vilest stuff, and clamouring for the murder of the world's one Divine man. There never was a more brutal and insane shout than that; never again can there be a choice so fatal and so suicidal as the choice they made: "Away with this man, ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... But the last suicidal push did not avail. With screams as of a thousand devils and deafening rending roars, the whole side of the Glacier seemed to lean over and fall in a ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... yourself, by your present off-putting apathy and wilful thoughtlessness. And should you manage, even in the time of sickness, and up to the very hour of death, to shut out the future from your mind; should long and inveterate habit enable you to succeed in the terrible, suicidal experiment, so that you shall die as you have lived—fearing nothing, because believing nothing,—can you avoid entering the other world? Can you prevent a meeting between yourself and your God; or silence ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... beneficence and protection to the Church of Christ understood as a bribe to her, to betray and deliver up into their hands the powers committed into her charge by Christ." Nor did he fail to point out the suicidal nature of Erastianism. For the church's hold upon men is dependent upon their faith in the independence of her principles. "When they see bishops," he wrote wisely, "made by the Court, they are apt to imagine that they speak to ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... still further consideration influenced her. It was understood that, if the war in which Germany and Austria engaged should involve England as an enemy, Italy's obligation to support the Triple Alliance would cease. Since it would be suicidal for Italy to accept the liability of a casus foederis which should expose her to attack by the English and French Navies, her participation in the Triple Alliance always carried the proviso that it did not bind her to ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... talk. According to all the rules of the game, he ought to get over the shock to the system with perfect ease and certainty. But I don't think he will. I don't think he wants to. And moreover, I think he is still under the influence of suicidal mania. If he had a razor he would cut his throat. You must keep his strength up. Inject, if necessary. I will come in this afternoon. I am due now at St James's Palace.' And the specialist hurried away, with an elaborate ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... ye your souls, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.' Yes—He came then, and the Babel-tyranny of Rome fell, even as the more fearful, more subtle, and more diabolic tyranny of Mammon shall fall ere long—suicidal, even now crumbling by its innate decay. Yes—Babylon the Great—the commercial world of selfish competition, drunken with the blood of God's people, whose merchandise is the bodies and souls of men—her ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... while the Davenports and Dr. Lynn's man should wriggle out of or into iron rings and their own dress coats! Until some such contest takes place, the public mind will probably gravitate towards the conjurers rather than the spiritualists, and that through the actually suicidal policy of the latter; because while the spiritualists of necessity can show no visible source of their manifestations, one of their own rank devotes himself to aiding the conjurers by showing in reference to their tricks, "How it's done." ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... said, trying to make up for my nasty attitude about that suicidal woman. "So she's blue about it, and thinks she's to blame. An automobile trip will certainly do her ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... position, and the American army was being cut to pieces without a chance to fire a gun in self-defence. To advance appeared suicidal, to attempt a retreat meant utter destruction. No orders could come over the blockaded road from the Commander-in-Chief, miles in the rear, nor could word of the awful situation be sent back to him in time. The men thus trapped gazed ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... suicidal purposes with nitrate of silver are in most cases prevented from the fact that this salt has such a disagreeable metallic taste as to be repulsive; cases therefore of poisoning are only liable to occur by accident or by the willful administration ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... he said with suicidal conviction that he could not live without her, she burst into tears of pity and yielded. And instantly, amazingly, with the famished swiftness of a springing panther he caught her body into his arms and kissed her ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... to lay oneself open to the curse of the evil eye, the beggar was regarded as the chief possessor of this bespelling member. The guild of tattered wanderers naturally nourished this superstition, and to permit one of its members to hobble off muttering threats or curses was looked upon as suicidal. Indeed, the mendicants were wont to boast of their feats of sorcery to the terrified peasants, who hastened to placate them by all ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... indecorously made the topics of general discussion. The incident alluded to was an extravagant scene enacted by a lady of high rank, at a rout given by Lady Heathcote; in which, in revenge, as it was reported, for having been rejected by Lord Byron, she made a suicidal attempt with an instrument, which scarcely penetrated, if it could even inflict any permanent mark on, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... guncotton in their heads,—which sought in the water a twenty-foot depth, and hurried where pointed at a thirty-knot rate of speed. Their impact below the water-line was deadly, and only equaled in effect by the work of the ram-bow, the blow of the ship as a whole—the last glorious, suicidal charge on an enemy that had dismounted the guns, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... his mind. Indeed there is something touching and even tragic about the thought of the thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders, embracing Chinamen, and clasping Patagonians to his heart in Hampstead or Surbiton, but for his blind and suicidal impulse to go and see what they looked like. This is not meant for nonsense; still less is it meant for the silliest sort of nonsense, which is cynicism. The human bond that he feels at home is not an illusion. On the contrary, it is rather an inner reality. Man is inside all men. In a real ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... did this with the tacit understanding and backing up of Germany. I knew that as a result of this, Russia was again at work in the Balkans. Greeks, Servians, Bulgarians, and Montenegrins, up till now suicidal enemies, were arriving at an understanding. There are as many differences of nationalities, castes and opinions in the Balkans as there are in India and it took clever manipulation, much money, and strenuous efforts on the part of Russia to unite these countries ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... as they retreated, and the Allies firing as they charged, and right in the center of the fray stood Gys. The man ought to have been shot to pieces, but nothing touched him until a Frenchman knocked him over because he was in the way of the rush. It was the most reckless, suicidal act I ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... seminary as "t'other school" for Winchester, and sent three of us there, one after the other, at the age of seven. My father at this time was a Chancery barrister practising in London, occupying dingy, almost suicidal chambers, at No. 23 Old Square, Lincoln's Inn,—chambers which on one melancholy occasion did become absolutely suicidal. [Footnote: A pupil of his destroyed himself in the rooms.] He was, as I have been informed by those quite competent ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... exhilaration, and made him forgetful of the gloom that had settled over him during these last months. That night he would see Jeanne. His body thrilled at the thought, until for a time he forgot that he would also see and talk with Eileen. A few days before he had told Gregson that it would be suicidal to fight the northerners; now he was eager for action, eager to begin and end the affair—to win or lose. If he had stopped to analyze the change in himself he would have found that the beautiful girl whom ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... past year, there was no record whatever of its employment. In the cases of twenty-two patients, distributed over ten asylums, it had been resorted to for the above-mentioned reasons, and in six asylums it had been used to counteract violent suicidal or destructive propensities; the number of patients restrained for these latter reasons (exclusive of Colney Hatch and Wandsworth) having been one in the Macclesfield, nine in the Glamorgan, six in the Prestwich, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... brain, temporary or permanent, amnesia or memory loss may and usually is present (e. g., general paresis, tumor, cerebral arteriosclerosis, etc.). As the result of Carbon monoxide poisoning, as after accidental or attempted suicidal gas inhalation, the memory, especially for the most recent events, is impaired and the patient cannot remember the events as they occur; he passes from moment to moment unconnected to the recent past, though his remote past is clear. Since memory is the basis of certainty, of the feeling ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... their suicidal blindness and remorse, pass sentence upon themselves, and weakly deliver their souls into the keeping of that inexorable jailer, Despair, forgetting the possibilities—nay, certainties—of good that ever dwell in God. If man had no better ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... excellencies of which we have great reason to be proud, and boasting of others that, to say the least, are exceedingly equivocal. But it takes time to learn all this, and I have no intention of getting ahead of my story, or of my country; the last being a most suicidal act. ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... was the duty of the army "to catch run-away slaves"; and they afforded rebels every facility to search their camps. They arrested fugitive Negroes and held them subject to the order of their masters. Congress was not long in seeing the suicidal tendency of such a policy, and on the 6th of August, 1861, passed "An Act to Confiscate Property Used for Insurrectionary Purposes." Notwithstanding this act, General McClellan and other officers still clung ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... be put forth for other purposes,—to amass wealth for selfish gratification, to give the individual power over others, to blind others, to weave a web of sophistry, to cast a deceitful lustre on vice, to make the worse appear the better cause. But energy of thought so employed, is suicidal. The intellect, in becoming a pander to vice, a tool of the passions, an advocate of lies, becomes not only degraded, but diseased. It loses the capacity of distinguishing truth from falsehood, good from evil, right ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the heart to tell you this before, but the time has come for you to know that Mr. Roberts' cause is not so favorably affected, as you seem to think, by this suicidal death of one who without doubt would have proved to be a leading witness against him. I am sure you will agree with me in this when I inform you that in pursuing the task you set me, I ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... as much a fact as the law of gravitation, and it would be as suicidal to ignore the operation of the one as that of the other. Mournful complaint is as impotent as an infant crying against the fury of the wild wind. History has taught you that the path of moral progress has never taken a straight line, but has ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 3, September, 1898 • Various
... the docks one day looking at the dirty green water, which, by the way, did not appeal to me for suicidal purposes, when I was accosted by a kind faced lady who held out her hand to me saying, "You poor homeless creature, come with me." Could it be possible that anyone wanted me? I could not believe my senses. She drew nearer. I crouched, as everyone who ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... consistent. On the other hand, the nation grasped the fact that to have one brand of democracy at home and another for dealing with foreign nations was not only illogical but, in the long run, would be suicidal to the Republic. And the people at large were committed to democratic progress at home. They were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Sally, and she assured me there was not one atom of truth in any part of the story. 'The young lady was put in here by her mother; none too soon, neither.' I asked her what she meant. 'Why, she came here with her throat cut, and strapping on it. She is a suicidal.'" ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... myself up—exchange myself for Harry, I can't let you give your lives for him this way. It wouldn't be fair. It would be depriving the Allies of two valuable fighters, to possibly get back one, and the possibility is so slim that—well, it's suicidal!" she exclaimed. ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... secure the adoption of all these infamous measures. My partners and the leaders on our side have sent for me to return secretly. They won't bring the matter to issue if they find that I've returned; it would be suicidal. Therefore it is necessary that we steal a march on 'em. I know the inside workings of the scheme. If I can steal back and keep under cover as an advisory chief, so to speak, we can well afford to let 'em rush the matter through, for then we can spring ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... not die by his own act. It was not the way in his family. There may have been other, perhaps better reasons, but this was enough; he did not come of suicidal stock. He must live for this child's sake, at any rate; and yet,—oh, yet, who could tell with what thoughts he looked upon her? Sometimes her little features would look placid, and something like a smile ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that to the sentiment I have called anti-British was no more than a step. Many thoroughly good, honourable, benevolent people took that step unwittingly, and all unconsciously became permeated with the vicious, suicidal sentiment, while really seeking only good. Such people were saved by their natural goodness and sense from becoming actual and purposeful enemies of their country. But as "Little Englanders"—so they were ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... it resembled the "illuminations" of St. Paul and of Constantine merely by its being a sudden spiritual impulse. It was in no sense a conversion to any belief in person or creed, it was but the assertion of a strong manhood against an almost suicidal mood of despair; a condition set forth with superabundant paraphernalia of eloquence easily condensed. Doubt in the mind of Teufelsdroeckh had darkened into disbelief in divine or human justice, freedom, or himself. If there be a God, He sits on the hills "since the first Sabbath," ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... anything up there, Smith?... A dragon, or... sea serpent, or..." Madden stared dumbfounded at his friend, marveling what manner of sight had put suicidal thoughts into Smith's head. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... study the phenomena of suicide as they appear in the light of statistics, we are struck by the fact that among the general and world-wide conditions that limit or control the suicidal impulse are weather and war. Other factors, such as education, religion, or economic status, may seem to be more influential, if observation be limited to a single nation or a single continent; but if a comprehensive survey be made of the whole world, weather and war will be seen to take a prominent ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... meditation, to literature, or to art, the social condition of the time was such that they had no refuge elsewhere than in the bosom of the Church. But she chose to preach and exact celibacy. The consequence was that these gentle natures had no continuance, and thus by a policy so singularly unwise and suicidal that I am hardly able to speak of it without impatience, the Church brutalised the breed of our forefathers. She acted precisely as if she had aimed at selecting the rudest portion of the community to be alone the parents of future generations. She practised the arts that breeders would ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... the King of Terrors breathes his last, Infinity shall creep into her shell, Cause and effect shall from their thrones be cast, And end their strife with suicidal yell: ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... "Be so obliging as retire, Friend (Er ziehe sich zurueck, Freund), and with promptitude!" This logic even the Hyperborean understands; fast enough, with apologetic, petitionary growl, he sidles off; and, except for suicidal as well as homicidal purposes, need ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... but fortunately the swimmers are strong, and able to save the suicidal Ibsenites. For my part,—that is, as one of the audience drawn by curiosity,—I should say that were it not for the excellent acting of all concerned in the piece, and especially of Miss ELIZABETH ROBINS as the Hanwellian heroine, IBSEN's Hedda Gabler would scarcely have ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... wasn't an Irish war. It was a matter of agriculture.... A war of peasants against careless landlords, Irish themselves in the main, who had fled to England to avoid the suicidal monotony of Irish country life, and lost their money in the pot-houses and gambling-dens of London, and turned to their tenants for more, forgetting in the glamour of London the poverty of the Irish bogs.... It was ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... "I consider it suicidal," Dominey protested. "What explanation can I possibly make for going to Germany, of all countries in the world, before I have had time to settle ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and attainable object. The Lords really had no intelligible object but to embarrass a Government they could not demolish, and gratify their own spite. If the most violent Radical had been permitted to chalk out the most suicidal course for the House of Lords to follow, he could have devised nothing more ingenious and well contrived than what they have actually done, taking care to keep up their character in the nation for intolerance, and inculcating a belief in their adherence to the most illiberal maxims of foreign ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... had not the slightest idea of doing anything that would put Texas in jeopardy. In northern Texas sympathy for the Federal cause, or "rottenness" as the Confederates described it, was rife.[824] It would be suicidal to take the home force too far away. Moreover, it was Bankhead's firm conviction that Steele would never be able to maintain himself so near to Fort Gibson, so he would continue where he was and decide what to do when time for real action came.[825] It would be hazarding a ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... other showed the handsome speaker off to such advantage that the coroner was rather inclined to consider how a woman, even of Miss Challoner's fine taste and careful breeding, might see in such a situation much for regret, if not for active despair and the suicidal act. He gave no evidence of his thought, however, but followed up the one admission made by Mr. Brotherson which he and others must naturally view as ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... that door?" he said. "Bon Dieu! what a suicidal note that strikes—that hopeless rain—a northern autumn evening! There was a chill in the air as I drove down the Faubourg. If I were a woman I should have tea, or a cry. Being a man, I curse the weather and drive in a hired carriage to the ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... Besides, every social law aims at the amelioration of man's life. What way, then, can the annihilation of the life of some men ameliorate men's life? Annihilation of life cannot be a means of the amelioration of life; it is a suicidal act. ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... uninformed. I can only answer the last one. The sword is intended for suicidal purposes, the Ko-Katana for an enemy. This is a case ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... everything, and but repeats his triumphs later when he goes to Amherst College. His mother lives upon the victories which he despises; but at last she yields to the taint which was in her own blood as well as her husband's, and destroys herself. The son, who was aware of her suicidal tendency, and had once overheard her combating it in prayer, curses the God who would not listen to her and help her, and rejects Him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... politician of weight in the country now urges so impossible or suicidal a scheme as the foundation of an independent French nationality on the banks of the St. Lawrence. The history of the fifty years that have elapsed since the dark days of Canada, when Papineau wished to establish a "Nation Canadienne," goes to ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... so direct an exchange of services? All that is wanted is that we should recognise this fact, and give it all the assistance in our power. We cannot be independent of one another. The attempt is more than unsocial; it is suicidal. Could either dispense with the labour of the other, it would immediately lose the reward of its own industry. Whether national jealousy, or the thirst for warlike enterprise, or the grosser appetite of commercial monopoly, attempt ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... makes his investments in the Government cut stocks with the most assured confidence of ultimate reimbursement; and whatever may be said of a period of great financial prosperity, such as existed for some years after 1833, I should regard it as suicidal in a season of financial embarrassment either to alienate the lands themselves or the proceeds arising from their sales. The first and paramount duty of those to whom may be intrusted the administration of public affairs is to guard the public ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... usually checquers my same-seeming existence.—Mercy on me, what a traveller have I been since I wrote you last! what foreign wonders have been explored! I have seen Bath, King Bladud's ancient well, fair Bristol, seed-plot of suicidal Chatterton, Marlbro', Chippenham, Calne, famous for nothing in particular that I know of—but such a vertigo of locomotion has not seized us for years. We spent a month with the Morgans at the last named Borough—August—and such a change has the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... like the obstinacy and folly of these burghers?" Sainte Aldegonde said in despair to Ned, when, in spite of his entreaties, this suicidal edict had been issued. "What possible avail is it to endeavour to defend a city which seems bent ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... individuals are incapable of. It is true that too much of this domestic virtue is self-denial, which is not a virtue at all; but then the following of the inner light at all costs is largely self-indulgence, which is just as suicidal, just as weak, just as cowardly as self-denial. Ibsen, who takes us into the matter far more resolutely than Jesus, is unable to find any golden rule: both Brand and Peer Gynt come to a bad end; and though Brand does not do as much mischief as ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... Hillquit dealt with the question in a manner that immediately awakened the attention of every active socialist. Condemning without reserve every resort to lawbreaking and violence, and insisting that both were "ethically unjustifiable and tactically suicidal," Mr. Hillquit pointed out that whenever any group or section of the labor movement "has embarked upon a policy of 'breaking the law' or using 'any weapons which will win the fight,' whether such policy was ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... certainly suffer eternal damnation." These words were spoken to one who felt some sort of apostleship growing into act within his bosom: to preach the Gospel to those who are totally depraved he perceived to be both vain and suicidal. Furthermore, the consciousness of his own upright character, his experience and observation of human virtue in others, made abstract arguments needless to prove that Calvinism is an outrage on human kind and a blasphemy ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... jealousy which had led them in William's reign to require the suppression of the Irish woollen manufacture, now, in Anne's, rose against the proposal of a legislative union.[133] In blindness which was not only fatal but suicidal also, "they persuaded themselves that the union would make Ireland rich, and that England's interest was to keep her poor;" as if it had been possible for one portion of the kingdom to increase in prosperity without every other portion ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... being convicted in his conscience of guilt before God, endeavors to attain peace by resolutions to alter his course of conduct, and strenuous endeavors to obey the commands of God,—in short by relying upon the law in any form, as a means of reconciliation. Such is the suicidal effort of every man who substitutes the law for the gospel, and expects to produce within himself the everlasting peace of God, by anything short of ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... jar and din of the streets certainly served to make connected philosophical meditation upon the futility and unimportance of human existence decidedly unfruitful. By the time he reached the cattle-market the noise of this strange place drove all suicidal intentions from him. Butchers were slaughtering kine; drovers were driving oxen off of barges that had come down the Tiber; sheep and goats were bleating—everywhere around the stalls, booths, shops, and ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... required by law. The escape chambers contained space suits for personal exit from the ship in case of emergency. They were never expected to be used. In any emergency requiring abandonment of the vessel it would be as suicidal to go into space in a suit as to remain with the ship. But fusty lawmakers had decreed their necessity, and passengers received a perfunctory briefing in the use of the chambers and the ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... This suicidal policy had its effect. Cut off from all markets, the farmer planted only for family use. At the close of the war the people of Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas had to be fed by the government. The farmers in 1864 refused to feed the Southern ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... curved along the Dome to the ground, he threw himself at the polished round side of the great hemisphere. With increasing speed he slid downward, the gleaming surface breaking only slightly the velocity of his fall. On Earth this would have been suicidal. Even here, where the pull of gravity was so much less, the feat was insanely reckless. But the heat-softened ground, the strength of his metal suit, brought ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat
... better to wear out than rust out, but if a man has a wife and children he has no right to risk his life in this way. It might not hurt a younger man to rise from his bed night after night in the depths of winter, but for my husband it is simply suicidal. When he gets well he must and shall have a partner. What is the use of waiting until Wilfred is ready to come into the practice," for Wilfred Bevan, the eldest son, was at that time walking the hospitals. And here Mrs. Bevan, with her comely face looking quite worn and aged ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... have been overcome, if in years past we had owned our share of the world's shipping, and multiply the $130,000,000 of freight money we annually pay to foreigners by the number of years we have been engaged in this suicidal policy of protecting them in earning money that of right belonged to our ...
— Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade • John Codman
... he left his chambers with great secrecy, and broke into a cold sweat to think, as he stood half through the doorway, how narrowly he had escaped from slamming the door behind him. This was an act which might have been suicidal in its stupidity; for to give any sign of his presence there after that thundering summons at the door would have been to betray himself beyond redemption. He inserted his latch-key noiselessly, and, crouching to escape imagined observers, drew the door gently after him, and turned ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... won the approbation of the whole body by the ability and impartiality with which he presided over the proceedings. During this term of office the question of repudiating the State debt was broached. Mr. Spalding took strong ground against such a course, holding it not only disgraceful but suicidal. In this he was supported by the late John Brough, then Auditor of State, and largely through the bold and persistent opposition of these gentlemen the scheme ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... you a heavy blow, to leave a mark that lingers so long. She told me how desperately you wrestled to stay her suicidal course, and as a family we owe you much for your firm ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... his friend Lockhart say, "He came forth, at best, from a long day of labor at his writing-desk, after his faculties had been at the stretch,—feeling, passion, thought, fancy, excitable nerves, suicidal brain, all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... knew their secrets); next, the managers of the great Whig conspiracy in favour of the authenticity of Oates's Popish Plot; last, Godfrey himself, who was of an hereditary melancholy (his father had suicidal tendencies), and who was involved in a quandary whence he could scarcely hope to extricate himself with life ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... the contrary, calling itself Liberty, Rights of Man; and singing boundless Io-Paeans to itself, as is common in such cases; an Anarchy which has been challenging the Universe to show the like ever since. And which has, at last, flamed up as an independent Phenomenon, unexampled in the hideously SUICIDAL way;—and does need much to get burnt out, that matters may begin anew on truer conditions. But neither the PARTITION OF POLAND nor the AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE have much general importance, or, except ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... young men are daily stepping into counting-houses, or behind sales-counters, or into independent stores, who will never lift their eyes from their goods and account-books, nor rise above the linen, hardware, groceries, or house-fixtures which they sell. Such a situation is suicidal of national prosperity, and blocks the high hopes ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... occasioned by the disappearance of her daughter, but the shame which resulted from her fall and her infamy; and though last not least, the terrible apprehension that the hapless girl had rushed by suicidal means into the presence of an offended God, "unanointed, unaneled," with all her sins upon her head. Her clothes were hanging from the branches of a large burdock* against the wall, and from time to time the father cast his eyes upon them with a look in which might ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... tax coal, iron, copper and other raw materials of manufacture to the amount of $5,000,000 per year, a considerable sum in those days when manufacturing was in its infancy. Boulton also joined in opposition. They wisely held that for a manufacturing nation "to tax raw materials was suicidal: let taxes be laid upon luxuries, upon vices, and, if you like, upon property; tax riches when got, but not the means of getting them. Of all things don't cut open the hen that ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... wind, on that last depressing day in the prison-cell of Socrates; and the venerable commonplaces then put forth, in which an overstrained pagan sensuality seems to be reacting, to be taking vengeance, on itself, turned now sick and suicidal, will lose none of their weight with Plato:—That "all who rightly touch philosophy, study nothing else than to die, and to be dead,"—that "the soul reasons best, when, as much as possible, it comes to be ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... manufacturers of the north, were almost to a man Presbyterian, and the laws against Presbyterians had been pressed with almost as much severity as against Catholics. Under the rule of Archbishops Boulter, Hoadly, and Stone, who had in succession governed the country, the Test Act had been employed with a suicidal severity, which had driven thousands of industrious men to join their brethren in America, where they could worship in peace, and where their presence was before long destined to produce a formidable ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... express his jealousy of the other Sheikhs, and of the Sultan himself, and to beg another present, I was by no means pleased with my visit. He evidently wished me to give him all the presents as the "Friend" of the English. But this would have been both unjust and suicidal policy on my part. I could not have considered myself safe, at any rate, respected or esteemed, unless I had given a present to all the principal personages in Ghat and the surrounding districts. Hateetah ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... let it be blessed; whatsoever thou shalt sanctify, let it be sanctified."(365) Their hands were lifted up with authority and clothed with supernatural power; but the hands of the Episcopal Bishops are spiritually paralyzed by the suicidal act of the Reformers, and they expressly disclaim any sacramental efficacy in ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... prisoners were visited in their cells by very polite and sympathetic persons, who pointed out to them what a suicidal course they were following, and how dangerous these extreme courses were for the popular cause. Says one of the prisoners: 'It was great sport comparing notes when we came out anent the attempt of the Government to "get at" us separately in prison, and how we answered the blandishments of ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... prevailed, and he made all sail on the ship, and bore away for the Cape with a heavy heart. The sea was like a mill-pond, but in that he saw only its well-known treachery, to lead them on to this unparalleled act of madness: each sail he hoisted seemed one more agent of Destruction rising at his own suicidal command. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... pass a coster's barrow which was drawn up beside the curb. The coster was dressed in the soiled khaki of a man recently released from the Army; his barrow was piled high with narcissi and daffodils, and a drowsy donkey drooped between the shafts. In avoiding a suicidal pedestrian, Tabs misjudged the room that he had to spare. He felt a jolt, guessed what had happened, and jammed on his brakes. A policeman in front of him was holding up a magisterial hand. Behind him a stream of familiar ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... with his good hand and wondered if they would try the sheer walls on the other side of the Temple. He had scaled one of these ancient walls, but would they try it? Certainly they stood little chance coming up the stairs, unless they gathered for a concerted rush. And who would lead such a suicidal attack? These men were vicious, but they ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... in that shivering circle of light the two men saw the king kneeling up in the cart and Peter on the barn floor beside him. The old fox looked at them sideways—snared, a white-faced evil thing. And then, as with a faltering suicidal heroism, he leant forward over the bomb before him, they fired together and shot ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... subjected to heavy cross machine gun fire from the enemy positions which had not been attacked. It was evident that unless these latter were taken also they could not hold on. In other words, the policy of local attacks was suicidal and was, in fact, playing into the German ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... to put an end to the struggle, and, along with it, the agony of that terrible hour, by suspending the action of his arms, and suffering himself to sink to the bottom of the sea. He was only restrained from the suicidal act, by the influence of that instinct of our nature, which abhors self-destruction, and admonishes, or rather compels us, to abide the final moment when death comes to claim us ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... and the minister condoles them with the sad old story of God's inscrutable ways. But to me it is not inscrutable. It is another case of suicide. Could the grave-yards all over the country speak, they would utter fearful tales of this suicidal ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver |
