"Commit suicide" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we want; mere empty phrases or words of abuse we cannot accept. If the criminal law forbids suicide, that is not a reason that holds good in the church; moreover, it is extremely ridiculous, for what punishment can frighten those who seek death? When a man is punished for trying to commit suicide, it is his clumsy failure ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the Academy—it would take all their savings, and more! Do not inflate the child with foolish notions of making a fortune and winning fame! The world is cruel, men are unkind, and the strife of trying to win leads only to disappointment and vain regret at the last. Did not the artist Salvio commit suicide? Mariano had now a trade—who in Reus could make an image of the Virgin and color it in green, red and yellow so it would sell on sight for ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... intention that the poor devil should kill himself. He left it on Christmas Eve, too—a pleasant time for a man to commit suicide!" ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... anxious to redeem her, and that she was desirous of being redeemed, but that the price asked, two thousand three hundred dollars, was more than he was willing to give, though he was willing to give two thousand dollars.... There is little doubt that his inability to redeem her caused her to commit suicide.... The pocket-mother was not produced [at the inquest], and there was a general disposition on the part of the ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... a glass on the washbasin. It was made of heavy metal, with no sharp edges. Did Nuwell think she would commit suicide? Not as long as she knew Dark ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... be serious, for my business here is of a very serious character. Five hundred dollars is no trifle; a man may squander them in a few days, but they may cause him also to commit suicide. Pay me, sir, pay me; I want ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... University, under the mistaken impression that education was free. To keep from starving he became assistant in a bakery at three rubles a month; "the hardest work I ever tried," he says; sawed wood, carried heavy burdens, peddled apples on the wharf, and tried to commit suicide out of sheer want and misery.[50] "Konovaloff" and "Men with Pasts"[51] would seem to represent some of the experiences of this period, "Konovaloff" being regarded as one of his best stories. Then he went ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... about to commit suicide—the worst kind of suicide, not the suicide which is followed by oblivion, but by a life on ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... what kings, warriors, and judges are sufficient to do; these last would have absorbed it, but they cannot,—although they try to do so every day; but they can never do so, unless the Church abandons her own functions to usurp theirs. She would then, by forgetting her destination, commit suicide. But even then, another church would form in response to the spiritual hunger and thirst which never ceases. Thus the whole problem of the existence of an institution is to remain forever necessary, and therefore ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... through one of the back thoroughfares in Hankow, came upon a Tls. 50[*] note lying in the road and payable to bearer. His first impulse was to cash it, but reflecting that the sum was large and that the loser might be driven in despair to commit suicide, the consequences of which might be that he himself would perhaps get into trouble, he determined to wait on the spot for the owner and rest content with the "thanks money" he was entitled by Chinese ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... intolerable, may we not go back to God, from whom we came? may we not show thieves and robbers, and tyrants who claim power over us by means of our bodies and possessions, that they have no power? In a word, may we not commit suicide?" We know how ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... need to wash and splash herself all over like an Englishwoman." The lectures she has given me every time I have wanted to wash myself, on the harm water does an invalid, are many and precious. Whenever I ask for water I might be wanting to commit suicide; it is only after repeated requests that she brings it, and then with a quiet, resigned expression, as if to say: "I have done my best to prevent this imprudence: I wash my hands of all responsibility." Filomena, in her new phase of development, is quite different. She ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... you do it?' Lady Constantine whispered. 'O, how could you think so much of renown, and so little of me? Why, for every discovery made there are ten behind that await making. To commit suicide like this, as if there were nobody in the ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... terrible idea occurred to me as I wrote those words. The oyster-cellars,—what do they do when oysters are not in season? Is pickled salmon vended there? Do they sell crabs, shrimps, winkles, herrings? The oyster-openers,—what do they do? Do they commit suicide in despair, or wrench open tight drawers and cupboards and hermetically sealed bottles for practice? Perhaps they are dentists out of ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... to do harm to yourself. I'd be like the awful kind o' pill which a fellow'll swaller to commit suicide." She rose, not without a dignity of her own. "Well, mister, if I'm your fourth, I guess you'll have to look about you ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... simple-minded young fellow who spoke a great deal about the brotherhood of man. (The hardened old man-hunter's voice was not free from a tremor as he spoke jerkily of the dead man's enthusiasms.) He should have thought the deceased the last man in the world to commit suicide. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... rifles episode (Spring, Kansas, 60) and whose appointment as an Indian agent, early in 1861, had been successfully opposed by Lane (Robinson, Kansas Conflict, 458). There will be other occasions to refer to him in this narrative. He is believed to have held the secret that induced Lane to commit suicide in ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... is heroic, but it is also terrible," cried the abbe, in a broken voice. "It is almost a resolve to commit suicide, Edmee." ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... going to commit suicide at daybreak! He's said so once already, but now he says it in ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... desires and habits and ridiculous fancies are fostered in them. They live only for mutual envy, for luxury and ostentation. To have dinners, visits, carriages, rank and slaves to wait on one is looked upon as a necessity, for which life, honor and human feeling are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to satisfy it. We see the same thing among those who are not rich, while the poor drown their unsatisfied need and their envy in drunkenness. But soon they will drink blood instead ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a party of friends and representatives of the press, met the travelers and escorted them to the city, where thousands of people lined the bank to extend a welcome. One man, who probably intended to commit suicide, threw off his coat and shouting that he could swim as well as that fellow, jumped in and was drowned. Boyton had great difficulty in getting through the crowd to a carriage which conveyed ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... the people's idol, commit suicide? Does he desire to pay the full earthly penalty of that act? He is of first-class family. There has never been a ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... Number One, near Washington (30th) Street, lived one family of his descendants, one of whom, a young man, played the piano very well. In Number Three, lived Mrs. Shepherd from Philadelphia, a widow, who had one son. He was the first person I ever knew to commit suicide. It was a terrible shock to the town when we heard one morning that he had shot himself the night before. It was not such a common event ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... gentle eyes and the thought crossed her mind that his was perhaps one of those narrow, gentle natures that cannot outlive such a disappointment as she intended to inflict. It would be very terrible if he did commit suicide, the object of his visit to Paris would transpire. But no, he would not commit suicide, she was quite safe, and on ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... I left her—and after a while, they asked me for a divorce. I couldn't bear all the lying there was to be got through. Believe me it was easier to think of killing myself. And so I tried to commit suicide, and I tried and I couldn't. Then a kind friend came along and said, "Now, don't be foolish!" And she arranged the whole business for me. I sent my wife a farewell letter—and the next day my clothes and pocketbook were found on the bank of the river. Everybody ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... by his own hand, if arrested. Two pistols were found on him; he had always carried them since his Scottish expedition. But a PAIR OF COMPASSES was also found. Now it was with a pair of compasses that his friend, Lally Tollendal, long afterwards attempted to commit suicide in prison. The pistols were carried in fear of assassination, but what does a man want with a pair of compasses at the ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... story of a man who lived twelve years in a prison—I heard it from the man himself. He was one of the persons under treatment with my professor; he had fits, and attacks of melancholy, then he would weep, and once he tried to commit suicide. HIS life in prison was sad enough; his only acquaintances were spiders and a tree that grew outside his grating-but I think I had better tell you of another man I met last year. There was a very strange feature in ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... twelve miles out, at the farm of a presumably loyal Dutchman; then on again, the wind by now having become a hurricane, aggravated by the intensely hot rays of a scorching sun. I have never experienced such a miserable drive, and I almost began to understand the feelings of people who commit suicide. However, the long day wore to a close, and at length we reached Setlagoli store and hotel, kept by a nice old Scotch couple, Mr. and Mrs. Fraser. The latter was most kind, and showed us two nice clean rooms. Here, anyway, I trusted to find a haven of rest. This hope was of short duration, ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... said that the reason why he did not commit suicide was because he was so curious to know what was going to happen next. For any one to do pioneer work in almost any department of human activity there are two essentials: First, he must be more or less stupid and not read ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... digging out the guano. We were not surprised at seeing them look very miserable and unhappy, for the oppressive odour arising from the fresh-dug guano was intolerable, to us even for a short time. We were told that many of them in their wretchedness commit suicide, flying, through their ignorance, from present evils to those they know not of, instead of endeavouring manfully to support their lot, if inevitable, or to seek proper means to escape from it if they have the power—not that I thought this at the time, by-the-by. I ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... make alliance with the other six countries, but the Emperor refused, and Chi Yuan thought that the country would be taken by others in the near future. He could not influence the Emperor, so he made up his mind to commit suicide and jumped into the river, taking a large piece of stone with him. This happened on the fifth day of the fifth moon, so the year afterwards, the Emperor got into a Dragon boat to worship his soul, and throw ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... were bound together by community of tastes and acquirements, and unbroken happiness. He asks, "What can be sweeter than to be so dear to your wife that it makes you dearer to yourself?" When the tyrant ordered the philosopher to commit suicide, his wife insisted on opening her veins, and dying with him. After long resistance, he consented, saying, "I will not deprive you of the honor of so noble an example." But Nero would not allow her to die thus, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... prove that suicide, under some circumstances, was justifiable. Hopeful answers all his arguments, and proves it to be the foulest of murders. Bunyan, in his treatise on Justification, volume 1, page 314, thus notices the jailer's intent to commit suicide, when the doors of the prison in which Paul was confined were thrown open-"Even now, while the earthquake shook the prison, he had murder in his heart-murder, I say, and that of a high nature, even to have killed his own body and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to the mystery. The dreadful logic of the circumstances which pointed to suicide, hammered at her consciousness with deadening persistence, but she resolutely refused to give it entry. Why should Robert commit suicide? Why indeed? It was the question which had sprung to her lips when she first heard Austin's belief, and it was to that she now clung in the midst of her agonizing doubts, as though the mere wordless insistence in her mind made it an argument of negation which gathered ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... one or two exclamations that he would commit suicide rather than go to St. Helena, Napoleon had behaved with a calm and serenity that contrasted with the peevish gloom of his officers and the spasms of Mme. Bertrand. This unhappy lady, on learning their fate, raved in turn against Maitland, Gourgaud, Napoleon, and against her ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... like that would be a fool to commit suicide," said Dick, bluntly. "What are you going to ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... have killed herself by swallowing the live coals from a brazier, when her friends kept from her all the means of self-destruction. This story is scarcely credible; possibly it means that she suffocated herself with the fumes of charcoal. That she should commit suicide suited all the ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... so His counsels. He cannot precipitate them any more than a man in a state of happiness can commit suicide. Doubtless it is undeniable that a man may arm his hand with a sword: and that his flesh will be found penetrable to the sword, happy or not. But this apparent physical power has no existence, no value for a creature ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... a somewhat pompous tone, 'I am in a very strange condition of health. I find I can no longer endure to live in London; I must get away from the war. The doctor says so. If I'm to keep sane, if I'm not to commit suicide, I must give up this domestic life.' She stared at him. 'Yes, I'm sorry, I've tried to endure it,' he went on. 'I can't stand the responsibility, the anxiety of the children and everything. I'm—I'm ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... When she had three children—the eldest only four years old—her husband committed a murder, and then attempted to commit suicide, but only succeeded in disfiguring himself. Instead of hanging him, they sent him to penal servitude for life, for the sake, they said, of his wife and infant children. And she could not get a divorce from ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... Lords. 'Better be with the dead than thus,' cried the jealous fair; and, casting a languishing look at Lord B—, who, Heaven knows, is more like Pan than Apollo, she whipt up as pretty a little dessert-knife as a Lady could desire to commit suicide with, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... village. Come, let us go. You are armed, and I have got a sabre, too. Let us go, but previously let us swear that we will not surrender to the French, but rather die, even should it be necessary to commit suicide! You have a knife, and when you cut some bread for me, I saw that it was very sharp. Will you ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... answered. 'Poor Erskine did not commit suicide. He died of consumption. He came here to die. The moment I saw him I knew that there was no hope. One lung was almost gone, and the other was very much affected. Three days before he died he asked me was there any hope. I told him frankly that there was none, and that he had only a few ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... her also and send her to join her husband in the Land of Shadows. Paralyzed with terror, she remained speechless, only a stifled sob and groan now and again breaking from her agonized heart. Her first serious idea was to commit suicide, and she was preparing to fling herself into the water that gurgled along the sides of the boat, when she was restrained by the thought that if she destroyed herself, she would never be able to avenge her husband's death or bring punishment ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... twelve, on Quai de la Megisserie, in front of No. 17, the woman Delobelle, twenty-four years old, flower-maker, living with her parents on Rue de Braque, tried to commit suicide by throwing herself into the Seine, and was taken out safe and sound by Sieur Parcheminet, sand-hauler of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... out—endways. With a number nine boot just behind him. Mickie tenderly assisted his father to his feet and started him homeward. Dennie had now reached the crying stage; nobody loved him; he thought he should commit suicide; ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... not to be supposed that Congress will yield, for to yield would be to commit suicide. There is not an interest in the nation which is not concerned in its adherence to the principle, that in it the whole legislative power of the United States government is vested, and that it has the right to exact irreversible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... that thought has a mechanical equivalent would simply amount to the proof, not that thought is energy, but that thought destroys energy. And if Materialism were to prove this, Materialism would commit suicide. For if once it were proved that the relation of energy to thought is such that thought is able to absorb or temporarily to annihilate energy, the whole argument of Materialism would be inverted, and whatever evidence there is of causation as between mind and matter would become ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... great nobility of mind, [Footnote: We may add that the unexampled public grief which followed the death of Otho, exceeding even that which followed the death of Germanicus, and causing several officers to commit suicide, implies some remarkable goodness in this Prince, and a very unusual power of conciliating attachment.] were even brutal in the tenor of their lives and monstrous; besides that the extreme brevity of their several reigns (all three, taken conjunctly, having held the supreme power ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... slightest lack of dexterity in the imitator led to a flashy tawdriness such as Seneca himself had as a rule avoided. He was too facile and careless a composer to yield a canon for style. The reaction came soon. Involved, whether justly or not, in the Pisonian conspiracy of 65 A.D., he was forced to commit suicide. He died as the Stoics of the age were wont to die, cheerfully, courageously, and with self-conscious ostentation.[153] Within a few years of his death the great Ciceronian reaction headed by Quintilian began. The very vehemence ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... you mean? There she was at the table—Titian hair, hazel-grey eyes, lovely waist—everything. Love! I could fall in love with that girl, marry her, get a divorce and commit suicide, within forty-eight hours." ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... within the working-class, numbers too moral to steal even when reduced to the utmost extremity, and these starve or commit suicide. For suicide, formerly the enviable privilege of the upper classes, has become fashionable among the English workers, and numbers of the poor kill themselves to avoid the misery from which they see no ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... surrendered (which is palpably untrue) involves the confusion of two distinct ideas. It is like arguing that because no man can while he lives give up, do what he will, his freedom of volition, so no man can commit suicide. A sovereign power can divest itself of authority in two ways. It may put an end to its own existence or abdicate. It may transfer sovereign authority to another person, or body of persons, of which body it may, or may ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... amaist o' our ain working population. The intermediate class—that is, leddies and gentlemen in general—are no worth the Muse's while; for their life is made up chiefly o' mainners,— mainners,—mainners;—you canna see the human creters for their claes; and should ane o' them commit suicide in despair, in lookin' on the dead body, you are mair taen up wi' its ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... when I had been twice at the very point of fulfilling my desires, I was all of a sudden torn from her I loved in the most cruel manner imaginable: I had then no more to do, but to think of death; and I had certainly proved my own executioner, did not our holy laws forbid us to commit suicide. But there is no need of such violent means; death will soon do its own work by a sure though gentle method; I find myself in a manner gone, and that I have not long to wait the welcome blow. Here he was silent, and vented the rest of his passion only in groans, sighs, and tears, which came from ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... account? I am alone in the world, have no family to support and, so far from damaging any one, should even benefit my heir by my accelerated death. However, I am no advocate for suicide under any circumstances; there is something undignified in it, unheroic, un-Germanic. But if you must commit suicide—and there is no knowing to what people may be brought—always contrive to do it as decorously as possible; the decencies, whether of life or of death, should never be lost sight of. I remember a female ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... abdicate, or commit suicide. The first is beyond you. You know enough about Paris, but your style is against you. As for the second, abdication—if you abdicate you may come back, and the trouble will begin all over again. If you commit suicide, you ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... New Testament—admitting that it is so promised—eternal joy side by side with eternal pain. Think of living forever, knowing that countless millions are suffering eternal pain! How much better it would be for God to commit suicide and let all life and motion cease! Christianity has no consolation except for the Christian, and if a Christian minister endeavors to console the widow of an unbeliever he must resort, not to his religion, but to his sympathy—to ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... are going to press, we learn that a well-known person has disappeared, after announcing his intention to commit suicide. The statements made to us are so strange, that we defer details till to-morrow, not having time to ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... not strong enough to stand this physical and mental torture, and so she decided to commit suicide. As the means she selected gas. Fortunately, the smell became perceptible before the injury was irreparable. She was saved. But she felt that she could not stand the torture very long—and more than anything ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... act of suicide, and sane men do not commit suicide. The act itself is insanity. It will be done, if ever, in a fury and madness which cannot stop to reason. Dissolution means death, the suicide of Liberty, without a hope of resurrection—death without the glories ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... men of their time. At a dinner some years since, Dr. Parr, in ecstasies with the conversational powers of Lord Erskine, called out to him, though his junior, "My Lord, I mean to write your epitaph." "Dr. Parr," replied the noble lawyer, "it is a temptation to commit suicide." ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... "strangers within our gates" who raise the rate over 50 per cent. by their pernicious activity in perishing, the implication is clear: either Salt Lake City is one of the deadliest places in the world to a stranger, or else the newcomers simply commit suicide in large batches out of a malevolent desire to vitiate the mortality figures. The whole thing is an absurdity; as absurd as the illiterate and fallacious three-page leaflet which constitutes this community's total attempt ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... and two daughters. This is his second wife. He pays calls and tells everybody that he's got a wife and two daughters. He'll tell you so here. The wife isn't all there, she does her hair like a flapper and gushes extremely. She talks philosophy and tries to commit suicide every now and again, apparently in order to annoy her husband. I should have left her long ago, but he bears up ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... of another opinion: according to him Etienne Rambert was a sport of fate, deserving pity rather than severity, and the court would be very lenient. Another man declared that Etienne Rambert had been in an impasse: however fondly he loved his son he could not but hope that he might commit suicide: if a friend committed an offence against the laws of honour, the only thing to do was to put a pistol into his hand. And so on: the only point on which all were unanimous was their sympathy with ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... Maxim silencer on the rifle." "I see—and blank cartridges in the breech." "That is what I first thought on seeing Mr. Whitney still standing," admitted Heinrich. "I believed he was trying to commit suicide. Then I heard him exclaim: 'God be thanked! I've solved the ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... account, sign one's death warrant, strike the death knell of. give no quarter, pour out blood like water; decimate; run amuck; wade knee deep in blood, imbrue one's hands in blood. die a violent death, welter in one's blood; dash out one's brains, blow out one's brains; commit suicide; kill oneself, make away with oneself, put an end to oneself, put an end to it all. Adj. killing &c. v.; murderous, slaughterous; sanguinary, sanguinolent[obs3]; blood stained, blood thirsty; homicidal, red handed; bloody, bloody minded; ensanguined[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... hit on an agreeable method of suicide, since he could commit it unconsciously," Miss Warren remarked mischievously. "I read in Emily Warren's newspaper this afternoon," said Silas Jones, with awkward malice, "of a young fellow who got a girl to marry him by pretending to commit suicide. He didn't hurt ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... it, on the whole, the best thing. As the day approaches, she is found frequently in tears. Her mother will not permit the affianced one to see her, and he makes several attempts to commit suicide. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... all the same, good fellow that he is! But Pierre had as lief commit suicide as not commit matrimony; and who would not? Look here, Pierre Philibert," continued the old soldier, addressing him, with good-humored freedom. "Matrimony is clearly your duty, Pierre; but I need not tell you so: it is written on your face plain as the way between Peronne and St. Quintin,—a ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Western State picked up Stanton's book, "Songs of the Soil," and after reading "Hanging Bill Jones," and "A Tragedy," therein, commuted the sentence of a man who was to have been executed next day. One hopes the man deserved to escape. In another case an individual who was about to commit suicide chanced to see in an old newspaper Stanton's encouraging verses called "Keep a-Goin'," and was stimulated by them to have a fresh try at life on ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... resolve to commit suicide, nor indeed had he thought much about it; the thing was quite obvious and inevitable. He had even no definite idea as to what manner of death to choose; all that mattered was to be done with it quickly—to ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... disadvantage. With a bright fire at our feet their presence excites no uneasiness. A piece of meat hung on a tree, high enough to make him jump to reach it, and a short spear, with its handle firmly planted in the ground beneath, are used as a device to induce the hyena to commit suicide by impalement. ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... bitterly. "The Prime-Minister is a fool who forgets his old friendships now that he is head of the government. I who have seen him sighing around me like a comic opera tenor, making love to me (yes, I tell the truth to you) and ready to commit suicide because I scorned his vulgarity and foolishness! This afternoon, the same old story; lots of holding my hand, lots of making eyes, 'dear Concha,' 'sweet Concha' and other sugary expressions, just such as he sings in Congress like an old canary. Sum total, the Fleece is ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of the blessing of death is true," I said, smilingly, for I greatly prided myself on the ingenuity of my thought, "it is unnecessary to commit suicide through grief for the dead; for the more you love the more glad you should be that the object of your affection has passed into so desirable a state ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... 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, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... a sine qua non for the existence of life at all. For if people could live for ever so as to suffer from no such regret, there would be no growth nor development in life; if, on the other hand, there were no unwillingness to die, people would commit suicide upon the smallest contradiction, and the race would ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... (which is palpably untrue) is to confuse together two distinct ideas, and is like arguing that because no man can while he lives give up, do what he will, his freedom of volition, therefore no man can commit suicide. ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... hunger-strikers. Mr. BONAR LAW was at first very stiff in his attitude, pointing out quite reasonably that if the Government found it necessary to intern people suspected of crime it was absurd to let them out again because they threatened to commit suicide. Several Members, English as well as Irish, thought that there was a case for differentiating between convicted prisoners and those who were merely under suspicion, and on the adjournment the Irish Attorney-General ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... to a vivid imagination it might represent any one of many things. While the boy was wondering if the young woman in yellow who appeared in the upper corner of the picture, with outstretched arms and dishevelled hair, was about to commit suicide by flinging herself from the second story of the factory, and only hesitated for fear of crushing the badly frightened young man in red who from the street below had evidently just discovered his peril, a door opened, and his host of the evening ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... She was a beautiful girl, brought up by Simmas, a shepherd, from whom her name is derived. One of the king's generals fell in love with her and married her. Then he himself was smitten by her beauty, and wanted her himself; the husband was good-natured enough to commit suicide, and she became queen. Ninus soon died in a very accommodating manner, and Semiramis reigned alone for ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... 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 ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... Trusts. That means you have a splendid opportunity to speculate, only if anything goes wrong you have to chance all your other associates on the trust turning against you and saying it was all your fault, and then you generally have to commit suicide; but while you are head you can become frightfully rich and respected. I sat between two of the most successful of different things, and they talked all the time. They don't want to hear what you have to ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... be clever, wouldn't it?" said the ungracious Mr. Heard. "Starting to commit suicide, and then thinking better of it. Why, I should be a ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... Agrippina, after various previous attempts made by him to destroy her, was dispatched by his command (A.D. 59). His unbridled cruelty and jealousy moved him to order Seneca, one of the men to whom he owed most, to commit suicide. He came forward as a musician, and nothing delighted him so much as the applause rendered to his musical performances. He recited his own poems, and was stung with jealousy when he found himself outdone ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... came to some precipices, whereon it at once occurred to the two comedians that they would commit suicide. The pathetic way in which they shared the contents of their pockets among us, and came back more than once to give little additional parting messages which occurred to them just as they were about to take the fatal plunge, was irresistibly comic, and was the ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... threw up the appointment. He was next appointed Clerk of the Journals— a post which even the shyest man might hold; but, when he found that he would have to appear at the bar of the House of Lords, he went home and attempted to commit suicide. When at school, he had been terribly and persistently bullied; and, about this time, his mind had been somewhat affected by a disappointment in love. The form of his insanity was melancholia; and he ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... courses, smiling through her agony; though her heart is in the kitchen, and she is speculating with terror lest there be any disaster there. If the SOUFFLE should collapse, or if Wiggins does not send the ices in time—she feels as if she would commit suicide—that smiling, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... who, having wickedly lent certain moneys to a casual acquaintance, was in the end called upon to advance a sum which transcended his honest means, with a dark hint, that, if the money was refused, there was but one thing for the casual acquaintance to do,—that is, to commit suicide. The person thus solicited, in a transient fit of moral enthusiasm, caught at the hint, and with great earnestness advised the casual acquaintance to do it, on the ground that it was the only reparation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... on the point of gainsaying her word. So Shih-niang said; "I have stayed in your house for a long time, and have brought in several thousands of ounces. To-day I am marrying. If you do not keep your word, I shall commit suicide before you, and you will lose ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... due to long-continued over-drinking. The patient suffers from horrible dreams, illusions, and suspicions, which may lead him to attack people or commit suicide. ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... us consider the dead woman. The question that arises here is, Was she murdered or did she commit suicide? I think you will discover the answer as I proceed. Miss Lytton, as you know, was, two years ago, Mrs. Burgess Thurston. The Thurstons had temperament, and temperament is quite often the highway to the divorce court. It was so in this case. Mrs. Thurston discovered that her husband ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... a man who was going to commit suicide, would you? The ranch was as good as mine. If I had waited to make absolutely certain Farrel was dead, the wait might have cost me fifty thousand dollars. I rented the ranch at fifty ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... assault upon the Molino-del-Rey! I see it all now. They have decided upon the destruction of Traverse. He can do nothing. A soldier's whole duty is comprised in one word—obedience, even if, as in this instance, he is ordered to commit suicide. Let them hatch their diabolical plots. We will see if the Lord does not still reign, and the devil is not a fool. It shall go hard, but that they are 'hoist with their ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... doggedly rejoined the other, 'I cannot strip them off your back.' 'Don't trouble yourself on that head,' replied the desperate wretch; 'if I lose I shall commit suicide, which I have been meditating for some time, and you shall surely have my clothes. I shall return to my lodgings before daylight, in the most worn-out and worthless dressing-gown or great-coat you can procure for me, leaving my ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... said Captain W———, pompously, to the chaplain when the boats returned from the search. "No doubt the horror of seeing his only son a disgraced fugitive and severed from all decent associations preyed upon his mind and led him to commit suicide. Such men as Hallam, humble as was his position, are an Honour to the Service. I shall always remember him as a ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... the mystery, but he maintained a rigid silence. In his heart, the old schemer nurtured a fear that sooner or later Eddie would commit suicide or run away, either of which would signify the return of Martha to the mansion she had deserted for a cottage. And he knew that if she ever came back it would ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... a careful though condensed discussion of the right and wrong of suicide. It is cool, deliberate, philosophical. But it gives no slightest hint of the real state of the man who is deliberating within himself whether he will commit suicide or no; no hint of the real arguments that pass in shadow through his mind:—the weariness of life which summons him to end all; the nameless, indefinable dread of the mystery and darkness and night into which death carries ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... start to-day. I hurt too much, and my mits is froze. If you want to wait till I'm healed up so I can die in comfort, why, go ahead and buy that fool-killer boat, and we'll all commit suicide together." He stumped indignantly out of the room, his friends too greatly dumfounded even ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... Count Valonne said. "You must look at her, Madame Loraine; she was one of the best dancers at the ballet, and last year she tried to commit suicide in a charmingly dramatic way at one of Gritzko's parties. She was at the time perhaps his chre amie— one never knows, but in all cases violently in love with him—and is still, for the matter of that—or so it is said—and in the middle of rather a wild feast ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... that smile of yours that made me remember you. You looked like a kid when you mounted to the boot; and you drove down off smiling, and you had one helanall of a trip, and you drove off that grade looking like you was trying to commit suicide and was smiling still when you pulled up at the post-office. ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... get in the dumps and fret and fume and wish you were dead, just stop right there and tell yourself that you are a liar. You do not wish anything of the kind. I heard of a man once who was always threatening to commit suicide. He had a good friend who was a pious man and who was grieved by such threats. But he heard them till he knew they meant nothing, so one day he stepped into this man's room at the hotel, laid an ugly looking revolver down on the dresser and said, "John, old man, you have ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... no fear of any trouble from the others. I've got an idea that'll prevent that. To save appearances, he can commit suicide." ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... Hermoso in 1835, the marquesa found herself in straitened circumstances, and in less than two years she married Antonio Arron de Ayala, a man considerably her junior. Arron was appointed consul in Australia, engaged in business enterprises and made money; but unfortunate speculations drove him to commit suicide in 1859. Ten years earlier the name of Fernan Caballero became famous in Spain as the author of La Gaviola. The writer had already published in German an anonymous romance, Sola (1840), and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... unproven and discredited theory, the acceptance of which destroys faith in that infallible and inerrant Word on which she was founded, and on whose "thus saith the Lord" she must rest her message to a lost world. There is no middle ground. To compromise would be to commit suicide. If the Church and the Schools are ever to come into harmony, it cannot be because the Church gives up an infallible Book and accepts a discredited theory in its place, and so it must be because the Schools ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... smallest manifestations, obeyed in their totality constant and immutable laws. Concerning this curious fact Adolf Wagner says: "If a traveler had told us something about some people where a statute determines exactly how many persons per year shall marry, die, commit suicide, and crimes within certain classes,—and if he had announced furthermore that these laws were altogether obeyed, what should we have said? And as a matter of fact the laws are ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... calmly. "All very subconsciously, of course, but I did try to commit suicide. The crystals triggered it. I'll explain how in a minute, but since Sam Atkins was an ethical being he felt the responsibility for what had happened to me. He had to reveal himself to the extent of saving my life—and helping me to change so that the suicidal ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... did I add myself to it," he said, "I did. I am an enlisted man now, Jed. As soon as Von Hindenburg hears that, he'll commit suicide, ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Bowen advised Jewett to commit suicide; but the jury, in defiance of the judge's charge and Mr. Kelyng's law, nevertheless ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... his feet. He saw at once the reason for all the assumed coolness. The doctor was merely gaining time in order to commit suicide. ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... 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 muslin handkerchiefs ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... appreciate this. You're going to make a quotation; please don't. It's perfectly useless to tell me that Wordsworth calls duty 'stern daughter of the voice of God.' It may be; I don't know. I only know that if I believed it was my duty to live, I'd commit suicide to-morrow. I don't like stern daughters. But granted that Wordsworth had the facts at his finger-ends, God's voice is freedom, whatever its daughters may be. That's not a doctrine I'd preach to every one; but for me, and those like me, freedom, absolute freedom, is the condition of all ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... and I lost Miles, and met this man, who brought me home instead. He was in great trouble—I found it out from something he said—in such terrible trouble that he had lost all hope, and made up his mind to commit suicide. That was the first time that I had ever been brought face to face with real trouble, and it changed my whole life. Think of it! I was coming back to my happy home from an afternoon's pleasure, and ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey |
