"Suicidal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... us; who but this convention will be held responsible for it? And who but him who shall have given his vote for this unwise and ill-timed measure, as I honestly think and believe, shall be held to strict account for this suicidal act by the present generation, and probably cursed and execrated by posterity for all coming time, for the wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this act you now propose to perpetrate? ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... principle, on the part of the officiary of the Company, it is to me simply inconceivable that shrewd business men as these officials are known to be would be guilty of an act which from a purely business point of view would be a stupidly suicidal one. It taxes one's credulity to too great a degree to ask one to believe that, in view of the recent plebiscite taken in several Provinces, that any officer, possessed of mental qualifications sufficient to secure a position of power in the Company, would ally himself with a coterie of lawbreakers ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... creed that behind the suicidal prejudices and laughable superstitions of the Chinese there is a mysterious fund of solid learning hidden away in the uttermost recesses—far beyond the ken of occidentals—of that terra incognita, Chinese literature. Sinologues darkly hint at elaborate ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... and the Courts to preserve the liberties of the Republic, which are the liberties of the people. To wilfully neglect the suffrage, to hold it lightly, is to tamper with a sacred right; to yield it for anything else whatever is simply suicidal. Dropping the element of race, disfranchisement is no more than to say to the poor and poorly taught, that they must relinquish the right to defend themselves against oppression until they shall have become ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... I rather think, in the same direction. And surely with excellent reason. To avow that the doctrines of Moral Theism have no foundation to one who sees nothing preternatural in the Bible, is in a Christian such a suicidal absurdity, that whenever an atheist advances it, it is met ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... needn't be suicidal," Olive objected. "My father, even, says it is taking it out of you rather badly, and he insists that they must hurry about the curate. Seven hours a day is enough for any man, he says; and he declares that you are working twenty. In fact," Olive looked up at him to carry home her admonition; ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... have said, that strong fellow-feeling between officers and men; and hence mutinies (as Sir Richard Hawkins tells us) were all but unknown in the English ships, while in the Spanish they broke out on every slight occasion. For the Spaniards, by some suicidal pedantry, had allowed their navy to be crippled by the same despotism, etiquette, and official routine, by which the whole nation was gradually frozen to death in the course of the next century or two; forgetting that, fifty years before, Cortez, Pizarro, and the early Conquistadores ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... not tell me where you are going after the marriage? I could be at the wedding if I liked, and learn in that way," said Lydia, not shrinking from the one suicidal form of threat ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... forces—the forces of attraction and repulsion. When they join hands, all the fire and fight are changed into the smile of flowers and the songs of birds. When there is only one of them triumphant and the other defeated, then either there is the death of cold rigidity or that of suicidal explosion. ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... Montaliva submitted to the endura; during it "she ate nothing whatever, but drank some water; she died in six weeks."[1] This case gives us some idea of this terrible practice; we see that they were sometimes allowed to drink water, which explains the extraordinary duration of some of these suicidal fasts. ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... an obscurer history than the book trade. It seems to lie choked in mountains of dust which it would be suicidal to disturb. Men have lived from time to time of literary skill—Dr. Johnson was one of them—who had knowledge, extensive and peculiar, of the traditions and practices of 'the trade,' as it is proudly styled by its votaries; but nobody has ever thought ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... stage; and may prepare, with whatever difficulty, reluctance and astonishment, for one of two things, for changing or perishing! With the millions no longer able to live, how can the units keep living? It is too clear the Nation itself is on the way to suicidal death. ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... entered the lists with us, we were without competitors, and absolute masters of the commerce of the world, this make-all save-all principle was undoubtedly the most effective. But now, when our manufacturers meet with the keenest competition in every market; when a suicidal export of machinery enables the foreigner immediately to benefit by every mechanical discovery, or improvement in machinery, that is made by our engineers, the case is wholly altered, and the English manufacturer finds out the grievous mistake that he has made. Beauty of design has at length ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... death, and before he could possibly have heard of it by the ordinary channels; and that he was sent to —— Asylum, where, after his frenzy had subsided, he remained for many days in a state of suicidal melancholia, until, to the surprise of all, he rose one morning in high spirits, and apparently cured of all serious symptoms of insanity; so he remained until his death. It was during the last year of his life that he wrote his ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... 'let up' on that suicidal talk of marrying," replied John, "and all that harangue of incoherency about your growing old. Why, my dear fellow, you're at least a dozen years my junior, and look at me!" and John glanced at himself in the glass with a feeble pride, ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... of all 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 ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... 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 ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... children, practise virtues that unattached 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 ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... Mr. Earnshaw should have been at the funeral. He kept himself sober for the purpose—tolerably sober: not going to bed mad at six o'clock and getting up drunk at twelve. Consequently, he rose, in suicidal low spirits, as fit for the church as for a dance; and instead, he sat down by the fire and swallowed gin or ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... "It is no suicidal mania, Miss Dent," he reassured her. "I like the rush and excitement of it all; but I had a summer on a ranch, and I learned the trick of sitting tight until the beast tires itself out. Broncho-busting is only a concrete form ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... stipulating that, so far as Russia could help it, she should be spared the desolation and horrors of war within her frontiers. But what course did the Porte adopt? Not recognising the force majeure which had driven Roumania to this decision, she was suicidal enough to declare her an enemy, and to threaten to depose the Prince, thus giving to her bitterest foe an ally who, at a critical period, in self-defence, turned the scale against her, and caused her to ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... Mr. Kelly, "because I feel positive my day is yet to come, and with all this misery before me I feel suicidal. Don't my dear fellow! don't look like that! Give her up; go and fall in love with some little girl of your own age ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... volume from which the last extract is taken, even the hardihood of assertion is surpassed by the suicidal character of the argument. It is called "The Church before the Flood," and is devoted chiefly to the adjustment of the question between the Bible and Geology. Keeping within the limits we have prescribed to ourselves, we do not enter ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... undoubtedly died of an excessive dose of hydrocyanic acid, of which poison there was, naturally enough, a bottle in the doctor's surgery; but how it had been administered, whether by accident, purposely, or with suicidal intent, it was impossible to say; and apparently the only man who could throw any light upon the subject was Doctor Chartley himself, who was now lying in a precarious state, perfectly insensible from the pressure of ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... With luck, it was bound to enrich him to the extent of $50,000. The plans had been so well prepared and the execution had been so faultless that there seemed to be no possibility of failure. To take his fair-minded son—with the mother's eyes—into the game would be suicidal. The young fellow would turn from him forever. Bansemer never went so far as to wonder whence came the honest blood in the boy's veins, nor to speculate on the origin of the unquestioned integrity. He had but to recall the woman who bore him, the woman ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... Eastern Conference to put through a separation rule now, we're absolutely helpless," he concluded. "Gunterson wouldn't have the vaguest idea of what to do—and wouldn't let any one else tell him. I can pretty nearly see the Guardian, under Samuel Gunterson's suicidal direction, setting sail with all flags flying, and heading straight for the bottom ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... company of his former companions, who rallied him on his distraught appearance. He told them of his dream and what it had taught him of the possibilities of a juster, nobler, wiser social system. He reasoned with them, showing how easy it would be, laying aside the suicidal folly of competition, by means of fraternal co-operation, to make the actual world as blessed as that he had dreamed of. At first they derided him, but, seeing his earnestness, grew angry, and denounced him as a pestilent fellow, an anarchist, an enemy of society, and drove him from them. Then ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... at this date to realize the condition of England when that horrible Sirocco, as Robert Browning called it, the tax on corn, was blighting the land. The suicidal policy which had prevailed since the Peace of 1815 had brought the country to the verge of ruin; and when, in 1838, those reformers of Manchester repaired to that first meeting of the Anti-Corn-Law League, it was through crowds of pale, haggard, starving men, each with his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... 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 army. Seventy thousand men deserted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... time when 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
... the next post from England came laden with speeches and newspaper articles, denouncing, in no measured terms, the 'suicidal folly of rewarding rebels for rebellion.' A London journal of influence, speaking of the British population as affected by the measure in question, said:— 'They are tolerably able to take care of themselves, and we very ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Heavitree the great Stanbury peril, and, arising out of that, had sprung new hopes to Arabella, which made her again capable of all the miseries of a foiled ambition. She could again be patient, if patience might be of any service; but in such a condition an eternity of patience is simply suicidal. She was willing to work hard, but how could she work harder than she had worked. Poor young woman,—perishing beneath an incubus which a false idea of fashion had imposed ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... not break the crowding spell of it, twist mentally as he would; and the counter-thought was dimly suicidal. The sea there; a few strides would carry him to the end of the bridge, and then—oblivion. And the girl would not permit him to enact this thought. He laughed. God had mocked him at his birth, and the devil had ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... particular and the Westerners in general at that time, the three suicidal terms, unless one was an expert in drawing quick and shooting straight with one movement, were the words "liar," "coward," and "thief." Any man who was called one of these in earnest, and he was the judge, was expected to shoot if he could and save his life, for the words were seldom ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... 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 ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... even the vigorous health of "the Little Giant" succumbed to these assaults. For a fortnight he was confined to his bed, rising only by sheer force of will to make a final plea for sanity, before his party took its suicidal plunge. He spoke on the 22d of March under exceptional conditions. In the expectation that he would speak in the forenoon, people thronged the galleries at an early hour, and refused to give up their seats, even when it was announced that the Senator from Illinois would not ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... rebel 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 the highly ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... for the safe and conservative conduct of his business; and he was consequently obliged to be adventurous, or else to be left behind in the race. He might well be earning enormous profits one year and skirting bankruptcy the next. Under such a stress conservatism and caution were suicidal. It was the instinct of self-preservation, as well as the spirit of business adventure, which kept him constantly seeking for larger markets, improved methods, or for some peculiar means of getting ahead of his competitors. He had no fortress behind which he ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... architectural monotony are her bridges! how effectually they have promoted her suburban growth! Canova thought the Waterloo Bridge the finest in Europe, and, by a strangely tragic coincidence, this noble and costly structure is the favorite scene of suicidal despair, wherewith the catastrophes of modern novels and the most pathetic of city lyrics are indissolably associated. Westminster Bridge is as truly the Swiss Laboyle's monument of architectural genius, fortitude, and patience, as St. Paul's is that of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... the North or Europe. Both these sources of supply were cutoff by the war, and the country was thrown upon its own slender manufacturing resources. To force its mechanics into the army would therefore be suicidal. The Army would gain a few thousand men, but its operations would be embarrassed, if not stopped altogether, by a want of supplies. This condition of affairs reminded one of the singular paucity of mechanical skill among the Bedouins of the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... spread the news. With the greatest difficulty the body was recovered, and conveyed to Shut-up Dubarry. The inquest that sat upon it rendered the simple verdict, 'Found Dead'; for whether the death were accidental or suicidal, or whether it resulted from the fall upon the rocks, or from the waters of the cascade, the Dogberries of that jury ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... reign came in 1870, when, on a flimsy pretence, a misunderstanding which called only for diplomatic adjustment, he suddenly declared war against Germany and rashly put his armies into the field to cope with that powerful rival. Never had there been a more unwise or suicidal proceeding. In shameful ignorance of the real condition of the army, which he was made to believe was "five times ready," "ready to the last gaiter button," he marshalled against the thoroughly prepared military power ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... the futility, the suicidal folly of trying to charge some three hundred entrenched men with a handful of panting, exhausted soldiers armed ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Renard. To begin with he had the inestimable advantage of having the gasoline motor. He further lightened his craft by having the envelope made of Japanese silk, in flat defiance of all the builders of balloons who assured him that the substance was too light and its use would be suicidal. "All right," said the innovator to his favourite constructor, who refused to build him a balloon of that material, "I'll build it myself." In the face of this threat the builder capitulated. The balloon was built, ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... pains through the head and acts as if frightened. His eyes have a glassy appearance and pupils are dilated. At times a suicidal mania attacks him, seemingly using all his strength to ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... Hamlet goes mad in a revulsion of rage and nausea. Yet the women-murderers only represent some ultimate judgement in his own soul. At the bottom of his own soul Hamlet has decided that the Self in its supremacy, Father and King, must die. It is a suicidal decision for his involuntary soul to have arrived at. Yet it is inevitable. The great religious, philosophic tide, which has been swelling all through the Middle ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... 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 ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... 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 an accusing conscience for ever; or hinder Christ ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... fouled before you rise to enjoy it. Where no one lives, the breeze of heaven still blows; where human life is thickest, there it is not fit to live. Is it not an anomaly, is it not farcical? What term is strong enough to stigmatize such suicidal folly? But we will not be in earnest, and our rulers will talk, and our lives will go on and go out, and next century will be soon upon us, and here is a reform gigantic, ready to our hands, easy to accomplish, really easy to accomplish if the right heads and vigorous means were ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... 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, and release ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... 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 ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... victims as the hot. In the face of these indisputable facts Von Oettingen, while rejecting the idea that there is any inexorable fatality, as Buckle believed, connected with their recurrence, is obliged to admit that the hot weather exercises a propelling influence on suicidal tendencies, and that the cold weather on the other hand acts in an ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... 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
... des Universites du Midi, April-June 1897), seems, by way of reaction against the hypercriticism of Niebuhr and Droysen, to incline towards an analogous theory: "Historical criticism, if it is not to degenerate into agnosticism—which would be suicidal—or into individual caprice, must place a certain amount of trust in testimony which it cannot verify, as long as it is not flatly contradicted by other testimony of equal value." M. Bouche-Leclercq is right as against ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... cried Dennis, "and something very much to the point. You see now the absurdities into which you are led by the position you insisted on assuming, that Good involves conscious activity. If it does, as you rightly inquired (though with a suicidal audacity), conscious activity in whom? And to that question, of course, you can ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... ever, fought. As when, by dogs and hunters circled round, A boar, or lion, in his pride of strength, Turns on his foes, while they in close array Stand opposite, and frequent shoot their darts; Nor yet his spirit quails, but firm he stands With suicidal courage; swift he turns, Where best to break the circling ranks; where'er He makes his rush, the circling ranks give way: So Hector, here and there, amid the crowd, Urg'd his companions on to cross the ditch: The fiery steeds shrank back, and, snorting, stood Upon the topmost ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... Parallel to the bitter struggle between the kings and their subjects was the bitter feud between the Sadducees and the Pharisees. Normal party rivalry grew into murderous hatred, and in taking revenge upon each other they brought ruin upon the commonwealth. The final end was hastened by the suicidal feud between the brothers Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, fomented by the unprincipled machinations of the Idumean Antipater. In the final crisis the Pharisaic policy of submission and of peace at any cost paved the way for the realization of Rome's ambition and made the ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... confess the fascination of, if not positive admiration for, the sublime composure with which Cato, Brutus, Petronius and a host of other ancient worthies, terminated their own earthly existence. Is it too bold to hint that the death of the first of the philosophers was partly suicidal? When we are told so minutely by his pupils how their master willingly submitted to the mandate of the state—which he knew was morally mistaken—in spite of the possibilities of escape, and how he took up the cup of hemlock in his own hand, even offering libation from its ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... 1688 was the crowning triumph of this public opinion. But for the time it seemed a suicidal triumph. At the moment when the national will claimed to be omnipotent, the nation found itself helpless to carry out its will. In making the revolution it had meant to vindicate English freedom and English Protestantism ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... knew that by inflicting prolonged pain on 100 rabbits you could discover a way to the extirpation of leprosy, or consumption, or locomotor ataxy, or of suicidal melancholia among human beings, dare you refuse to inflict that pain? Now I am quite unable to say that I dare. That sort of daring would seem to me to be extreme moral cowardice, to involve ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... of the carotid artery protects the vessel, in some degree, against the suicidal act, as generally attempted. The depth of the incision necessary to reach the main blood-vessels from the fore part of the neck is so considerable that the wound seldom effects more than the opening of some part of the larynx. The ossified condition ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... 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 victims of a sudden ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to destroy them. Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was just, and men were the better for being punished. But that the deed was evil, and God the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which we will allow no one, old or young, to utter. This is our first and great principle—God is the ...
— The Republic • Plato
... hand, a good many persons, not suicidal in their tendencies, get more of life than they want. One of our wealthy citizens said, on hearing that a friend had dropped off from apoplexy, that it made his mouth water to hear of such a case. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... late in the season and they were convinced it would be suicidal to continue their journey on foot, as still many hundred miles lay before them to the Missouri River. The absorbing question now was where to choose a suitable wintering place; they happened the next day to come upon a bend of the river which appeared to be just the spot they were seeking. Here ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... Railway Station at seven o'clock in the morning. In Paris the day has at that early hour not yet begun, and but very few persons, mostly travelling foreigners and labourers, are seen on the streets. Since it has become the fashion to use the moving train for suicidal purposes, the perron is locked, and only those travellers admitted whose luggage is undergoing ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... was fulfilled to the letter. The people seemed possessed with fury. The hardened Roman pagans were astonished at their suicidal rashness. Titus's efforts to save the temple failed, and it went down in ruin, as Christ ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... rests content with triumphs even so transcendent as these. It disports itself also in "self-supporting" colonization; it runs riot in the ruin of "penny-postage;" it would be gloriously self-suicidal in abolition of corn-laws and free ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... they pitied themselves; and though I fumed and stormed in their presence when they were disposed to lie down and give up, never was a man further from doing them injury. I was too proud of them; but under the circumstances it was dangerous—nay, suicidal—to appear doubtful or dubious of the road. The mere fact that I still held on my way according to the Doctor's little pearly monitor (the compass) had a grand moral effect on them, and though they demurred in plaintive terms and with pinched faces, they followed my footsteps ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... intimate a slander against the South. You say "all papers have free issue at the North & 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 into their territory? Again, just as you say you "wish that North^n. papers could circulate ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... aboriginal understanding, the rare possession of but a few of the pairs made male and female. Into those eyes she would call up her soul, and there make it sit, flashing light, in gleams and sparkles, shoots and coruscations—not from great, black pupils alone—to whose size there were who said the suicidal belladonna lent its aid—but from great, dark irids as well—nay, from eyeballs, eyelashes, and eyelids, as from spiritual catapult or culverin, would she dart the lightnings of her present soul, invading with influence as irresistible as subtile the ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... 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 trench profanity was gathering ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... corn, and so had staggered away from his fellows. No sooner had I entered the water than this bird took it into its head to fly away with the most indispensable portion of my apparel. Postponing, therefore, for the present, my suicidal design, I just slipped my nether extremities into the sleeves of my coat, and betook myself to a pursuit of the felon with all the nimbleness which the case required and its circumstances would admit. But my evil destiny attended me still. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... last avenue of escape. He saw clearly the force of 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 ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... was gone to reside with his friend Mr. John Morgan, in a small house, at Calne, in Wiltshire. So gloomy were our apprehensions, that even the death of Mr. C. was mournfully expected at no distant period! for his actions at this time, were, we feared, all indirectly of a suicidal description. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Melancholia are driven to suicide by suppressed grief, precordial agitation, or hallucinations. Sometimes the suicidal attempt is indirect and takes the form of the murder of some important personage or their own kin, in the hope that their own condemnation may follow, or it is to save those dear to them from ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... deserted. Landing with four of his men he next proceeded to the plantation, as it was called, where some ten or twelve substantial buildings surrounded with a stockade established a very defensible position, but here again neglect and suicidal folly stared him in ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... work before many of his profession had left their beds. Though he worked hard and long, he still worked judiciously. Bent upon accomplishing what was almost impossible within the limited time remaining, he determined that, with all his labor, Dr. Arten should never charge him with suicidal tendencies again. Therefore he trained himself mentally and morally for his struggle as ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... ill-used. She would obey. It was becoming to her as a wife that she should submit. She would give up Conway Dalrymple, and would induce him,—in spite of his violent attachment to herself,—to take a wife. She herself would choose a wife for him. She herself would, with suicidal hands, destroy the romance of her own life, since an overbearing, brutal husband demanded that it should be destroyed. She would sacrifice her own feelings, and do all in her power to bring Conway Dalrymple and Clara Van Siever together. If, after ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... a terrible 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 at one another with the desperate look ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... He's headstrong and means to see this thing through. Had I thought that he would ever dream of contemplating such a suicidal feat as attempting that path, I'd never have let him see the cattle cross last night. My God! it turns me sick to ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... wise Dr. Perkins remarked that 'the women of America are suicidal from the cradle to the grave!' I will give you one of his pamphlets, miss, to take away with you, and you will be convinced that slippers are serpents in disguise in winter weather! The wooden shoes of Germany rather! Ay, or even the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... a small whetstone, a small hammer, matches, and some volatile oil, like citronella, lavender, wintergreen, or other black fly and mosquito repellant. It is almost suicidal to slap a mosquito on the back of your neck with a keen grafting knife in your hand. A supply of parowax and alcohol for the lantern's sake should ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... struck 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
... empire was doomed, and the Teutons only kept at bay by bribing one tribe to fight another, or by enlisting their more adventurous spirits into the Roman legions, to fight against men of their own blood;—a short-sighted and suicidal policy; for by that very method they were teaching the Teuton all he needed, the discipline and the military ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... housebreakers allow themselves to perish stupidly in the prison of a paper bag, which they could have torn open with one stroke of their mandibles! They are capable of tearing it, but they do not dream of doing so! There can be only one explanation of this suicidal inaction. The insect is well-endowed with tools and instinctive faculties for accomplishing the final act of its metamorphosis, namely, the act of emerging from the cocoon and from the cell. Its mandibles provide it with scissors, file, pick-axe and lever wherewith to ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... hatred, jealousy, are suicidal emotions. We cannot for our own sakes afford to indulge in them, while from selfish reasons alone we should be incited to ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... doctrine, I immediately perceived, which it would be suicidal to attempt to refute. It ought, indeed, to have been my line. With a growing distaste I began to realize that all there was left for me was to flatter a populace that Krebs, paradoxically, belaboured. Never in the history of American "uplift" had an electorate been in this manner wooed! ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 had spoken to me recently had either ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... in the pathway of the terrified animal, but not in season to stop the maddened creature or turn it aside, though he did make a frantic effort to do so. As if bent upon its own destruction, the pony made a suicidal leap ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... men who followed the Pfalzgraf, but their impetuosity in seeking the barge prevented an accurate estimate, although he knew there were more than double the force that obeyed him, and therefore it would be suicidal to lead his untrained coterie against the ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... For what do you take me? No, I have been wretched. What on earth are you doing down there? You have been hours about it already. Surely, whatever it is, it must be done now. If you don't come out shortly you will have murder on your soul, as I feel suicidal." ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... roses, lilies, jasmines and violets, their perfume spicing all the air, and the oriole and mocking-bird enrapturing it with their songs, although it was that same dire twenty-fourth of April of which we have been telling. Townward across the wide plain the distant smoke of suicidal conflagration studded the whole great double crescent of the harbor. Again the slim railway, its frequent small trains from the city clanging round the flowery miles of its half-circle, again the ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Most High. We forgive them for entertaining such notions, but forbid their practice. It was generally believed that there would be a flurry; that some of the extreme Southern States would go so far as to pass ordinances of secession. But the common impression was that this step was so plainly suicidal for the South, that the movement would not spread over much of the territory and would not ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... discretion first, last and all the time. Then I want foresight, tact, genius—everything in you that can think and plan. Here are the facts: Mrs. Marteen has come back—suddenly. She's been ill. Her mind, from all I can learn, is affected. She has delusions; she may have suicidal mania. She has disappeared, and she must be found—as secretly as possible. Her delusions and illness must not become a newspaper headline. I needn't tell you it would make 'a story.' There's one chance in ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... the proposition to enforce manhood suffrage in all the States of the Union, the Republican party has been guilty of three successive arbitrary acts, three retrogressive steps in legislation, alike invidious and insulting to women and suicidal to the nation. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... who must behave according to the laws of nature, it cannot avoid offering us the actual events for which we were waiting. To be sure, even on the stage the hero may talk, the revolver in his hand, until it is fully suggested to us that the suicidal shot will end his life in the next instant; and yet just then the curtain may fall, and only the suggestion of his death may work in our mind. But this is evidently a very exceptional case as a fall of the curtain means the ending of the scene. In the act itself every series of events must come to ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... appeared a little excited when he came home, but confessed that the alteration in his manner was very slight, hardly noticeable, indeed. It seemed hopeless to seek for any clue, and the suggestion that Lord Argentine had been suddenly attacked by acute suicidal mania was generally accepted. ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... Church has been almost suicidal in its treatment of women (and I write as one whose name still stands on the membership list of the Presbyterian Church). Persons who have not walked with wounded, lacerated hearts through the terrible realities, can form no ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of love and malice, the attribute of "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 ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... seen, he had himself not long before received a secret and liberal offer from Philip II., if he would agree to make war upon the King. But the Bearnese was not the man to play into the hands of Spain, nor could he imagine the possibility of the Valois or even of his mother taking so suicidal a course. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... system of tactics for a specific 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, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... and Carrots," "Baked Sheep's Heart stuffed with Sage and Onions," "Whatcher, me Old Brown Son!" "With me old Hambone," "William the Conqueror," "Standard Bread." If you are sad, you will feel better. If you are suicidal, you will throw the poison away, and you will not be the first man whose life has been saved by a low comedian. You may wonder why this eulogy of food in all these songs. The explanation is simple. In the old days, the music-hall was just a drinking den, and all the jolly songs ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... nothing had changed.... Strikes, Russia, nothing will warn them. There are men on that Commission who would steal the brakes off a mountain railway just before they went down in it.... It's a struggle with suicidal imbeciles. It's—! But I'm talking! I didn't come here to ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... answered. "Then 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
... Government, and do not mean to vote for it. This comes from a very knowledgable member of the Government outside the Cabinet. If the Government proceed with their project they will either split or seriously dishearten the party, and to do either on the verge of a general election would be suicidal. This is what they ought to do. They ought to say that Irish Local Government is far too large a question to be dealt with by a moribund Parliament; they ought to say that there is not sufficient agreement ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... in question, are not selfish enough: they appraise themselves not too dearly, but too cheaply: it is the suicidal unselfishness of modern women which makes the selfishness of modern bachelors possible. Bachelors are not all misogynists, and the fact that a man remains unmarried is no proof that he is insensible to the charm of woman's companionship, or that he does not have such ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... arts.... Their iron coin would not pass in the rest of Greece, but was ridiculed and despised, so that the Spartans had no means of purchasing any foreign or curious wares, nor did any merchant ship unlade in their harbor." Even Plutarch sees nothing suicidal in all this voluntary isolating of themselves from the ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... 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 ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... broad, tolerant spirit, and a wide outlook upon mankind and affairs. From 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
... the Church was entitled to a similar privilege, and kings should not "have their 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 them the court ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... was to be deprecated in any event, it was suicidal amongst these infant settlements by reason of the vicinage and antagonism of the fierce and only half-subdued Cherokees, sullenly nourishing schemes of revenge for their recent defeat and many woes. But when he urged this upon the attention of the herders, ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... entails the death of the animal which had to give up its life blood to cure the other and therefore this method of cure is not adaptable to human beings. Even though an individual, with suicidal intent, would be willing to give up his life for a stipulated legacy to his relatives, the law ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... historian and the novelist, the dramatist, the poet, the painter or sculptor to present in all seriousness as instances of sane human conduct, the aberrations resulting from various forms of disease ranging from indigestion in its mild, temper-breeding forms to acute homicidal or suicidal mania. In that day of greater enlightenment a large body of now much esteemed art will become ridiculous. Practically all the literature of strenuous passion will go by the board or will be relegated to the medical library where it belongs; and it, and the ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... 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 the necessity of spreading the self-liberations ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... of men and their Father. Jesus completely represented Him, and this broken body on the gibbet was the inevitable result. Golgotha convinces us of the ruinous forces that live in and dominate our world; it faces us with the suicidal elements in men's spirits that drive them to murder the Christlike in themselves; it tears the veil from each hostile thought and feeling that enacts this tragedy and exposes the God-murdering ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... objection to the argument or illustration to say, as we often have said, that it does not account for the watchmaker. The object of the argument from design is to prove the existence of a designer: not to explain that existence. Indeed, it would be suicidal to the whole argument in its relation to Theism, if the possibility of any such explanation were entertained; for such a possibility could only be entertained on the supposition that the being of the Deity admits of being explained—i.e. that ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... us to a realisation of our national humiliation. This opinion comes from a Christian minister who wishes to obtain a welcome in Liverpool, where operatives are suffering almost unprecedented hardships caused by the suicidal war raging in the States of North America, and which is being urged on by fanatical statesmen and preachers ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... manufacture men, and, in truth, the Jesuits had shown that a good deal could be done in this direction. The new enthusiasts failed to see that the genius of Protestantism is the genius of freedom, and that man refuses to be manufactured except on suicidal terms. He must first sacrifice that which is his distinctive title to manhood—his individuality and will. That the prophets of educational realism should have failed to see this is not to be laid at their door as a fault; it merely shows that they belonged to their own ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... pneumonia is very apt to follow. 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, ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... 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, if such ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... oppose these horrible proceedings with all his might. I met her on another occasion at the house of my old friend Heine, where she had taken refuge. When she noticed my indifference she again adjured me to use every possible effort to prevent the senseless, suicidal conflict. I heard afterwards that a charge of high treason on account of sedition had been brought against Schroder- Devrient by reason of her conduct in regard to this matter. She had to prove her innocence in a court of law, so as to establish beyond dispute her ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... their third day of inactivity, and three months of it could not have devastated them more. They have touched the very bottom of suicidal gloom. Three months hence their state of mind will no doubt appear in all its absurdity, but at the moment it is too piteous for words. When you think what they were yesterday and the day before, there is no language to express the crescendo of their despair. I came upon Mr. Riley this morning, ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... firing 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 ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... trees and rough defenses, a pre pared ambuscade, poured a galling fire into the compact divisions of the English, whose scarlet coats furnished ideal targets. The obstinacy of the British commanders in refusing to permit their troops to fight Indian fashion was suicidal; for as Herman Alriclis wrote Governor Morris of Pennsylvania (July 22, 1755): "... the French and Indians had cast an Intrenchment across the road before our Army which they Discovered not Untill they came Close up to it, ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... epidemic citation from Weininger, whose book is obviously rich in characters that make it attractive to the ignorant and the many; and it is high time that we should concern ourselves less with the product of a suicidal and much-to-be-pitied boy, and more with the sober and scientific work for which daily verification is always ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... uncomplimentary allusion to himself, replied rather warmly: "My dear sir, were it not for the fact that I feel in particularly good spirits this morning, I should resent your ill-timed remarks and leave you to end your miserable existence with rope or pistol," and Satan pantomimed both suicidal contingencies. ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... were some people in whom any extremity of prolonged anguish, bodily or mental, never produced the smallest desire to quit life; while there were others whose attachment to life was slight, and that a very little pressure of care or calamity developed a suicidal impulse. This is, I suppose, a question of vitality, not necessarily of activity of mind and body, but a deep instinctive desire to live; the thought of deliberate suicide was wholly unintelligible to Johnson, death was his ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... certainly a little too fast,—Gager by name, who declared that the Bunfit theory "warn't on the cards." According to Gager's information, Smiler was at this moment a broken-hearted man,—ranging between mad indignation and suicidal despondency, because he had been treated with treachery in some direction. Mr. Gager was as fully convinced as Bunfit that the diamonds had not been in the box. There was bitter, raging, heart-breaking disappointment about the diamonds in more quarters ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... all her life that small boats were most unsafe. A little girl had been drowned in a lake near where she was visiting once through going in a boat. Why didn't the captain sail right up to the island as she had expected and put us ashore? Even at Panama with only a little way to go she had felt it suicidal—here it was not to be ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... for our merchant ships in time of peace, the fishing business has proved of immense advantage to the country, and that policy may justly be regarded as suicidal on the part of the national government which would throw barriers in the way of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... ambition, she mistakes the courage of fantasy for the power of bearing the consequences of the realities of guilt. His is the mock fortitude of a mind deluded by ambition; she shames her husband with a superhuman audacity of fancy which she cannot support, but sinks in the season of remorse, and dies in suicidal ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... twinkle when he told me he had been sacked three weeks ago from the sporting paper that had provided him with his sole visible means of subsistence. It was his blessed (only he didn't call it blessed) style that had dished him: the suicidal elan that he brought to the business. He was warned, he said. He was aware that his existence as a reporter hung by the bare thread of statement (wearing thinner and thinner) on which he weaved his fantastic web. His editor told him he was engaged to report ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... the sky, across which the clouds were drifting, he suddenly found himself on the edge of a rolling strip of open country sloping gradually down in what he imagined to be the direction of the British line; but to attempt to cross it would have been suicidal, for a rain of German shells burst furiously among the ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... the result in his case could have been the same as with a man we knew in Santa Barbara, who, becoming discouraged by continual rheumatism, combined with poverty, took a large dose of strychnine, with suicidal intent, but, to his astonishment, was entirely cured of his rheumatism; and the notoriety he acquired presently procured him an abundance ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... in the upper classes sufficiently intelligent and refined to appreciate the wit and sentiment of the people. But his wit is so truly French in its lightness and sparkling, feathering vivacity, that one like me, accustomed to the bitterness of English tonics, suicidal November melancholy, and Byronic wrath of satire, cannot appreciate him at once. But when used to the gentler stimuli, we like them best, and we also would live awhile in the atmosphere of music and mirth, content if we have "bread for to-day, and ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... customers paid the same yearly price and then used their telephones as often as they pleased. This was a simple method, and the most satisfactory for small towns and farming regions. But in a great city such a plan grew to be suicidal. In New York, for instance, the price had to be raised to $240, which lifted the telephone as high above the mass of the citizens as though it were a piano or a diamond sunburst. Such a plan was strangling the business. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... at a coincidence which conveyed a tribute of respect to the memory of the great author of striking significance, while it recorded the painful catastrophe which has broken over upon the American Republic. It was a sad sight to me to see the profane and suicidal antagonisms which have rent it in twain brought to the shrine of this great memory and graven upon its sacred tablet as it were with the murdering dagger's point. New and bad initials! The father and patriot Washington would have wept tears of ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... decide on future plans. But some sort of campaign had to be laid out, for dawn was not many hours away. I think it was about two-thirty, and before light I had to be out of those environs, if ever I was to get out. But at the moment it would have been suicidal to move. The night had become so quiet that I hardly dared raise my head for fear the edge of the helmet would scrape against something. Once, when my head dropped from sleepiness, the helmet brought up against the muzzle of my gun. It sounded ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... bay invisible from without, so for days the officers and men of the United States blockading fleet outside were ignorant whether Cervera's entire fleet was cooped up within. To send in a boat to make a reconnoissance would have been suicidal, for the channel, difficult at all times, was blocked by mines and torpedoes. For this reason, too, there could be no repetition of Dewey's exploit ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... cheerful spirit to the business of life. The prescriptions of state physicians cannot fully reach the root of the disease. Say that it is a sentimental malady—a delusion. What is gained by saying that, if the sentiment or the delusion makes life wretched, unfits for business, produces suicidal ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... seems to me incredible that the two great Central European Powers should ever fall into sustained conflict again with one another. They, too, will be forced to create some overriding body to prevent so suicidal a possibility. America too, it may be, will develop some Pan-American equivalent. Probably the hundred millions of Latin America may achieve a method of unity, and then deal on equal terms with the present United States. The thing has been ably advocated already ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells |
