"Commit suicide" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 bigger laughing-stock ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... was done. The prisoner made frantic appeals against the sentence; he wrote imploring letters to President Johnson, and lying ones to the New York News, a Rebel paper. It is said that his wife attempted to convey poison to him, that he might commit suicide and avoid the ignomy of being hanged. When all hope was gone he nerved himself up to meet his fate, and died, as thousands of other scoundrels have, with calmness. His body was buried in the grounds of the Old Capitol Prison, alongside of that of Azterodt, one of the accomplices ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... younger," he suggested optimistically. "And anyway, can you bear to think of me living all alone at the Cottage after Ann is married? I should probably commit suicide." ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... no immediate danger," he said, in answer to our questioning. "One doesn't know how much she took. It may be that she will get off with a fright. Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed. It's generally a gesture to arouse pity or terror ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... does not as a rule commit suicide simply because he is eccentric or because he has made a mess of his estates, or because being a practical joker he suddenly finds his twin image to defraud. Rochester had evidently done nothing to bar him from society. Though perhaps coldly received by his club, he was still ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... There's always a kind of irresponsibility. The habit of letting themselves go in their art, I suppose, makes them, in real life, throw things down so hard when they don't like them. Living at high pressure is an art like music. It alters the whole equilibrium, I suppose. A woman like Al'mah would commit suicide, or kill a man, without realizing the true significance ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 Rue ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... visit of a soldier whom I did not know. He stated that he was called Corporal Vinson, and informed me that he had become part and parcel of the spy system; that he regretted it, and, not being able to extricate himself, he was going to commit suicide.... Desiring to give this unfortunate a chance of rehabilitating himself, desiring also to come to close quarters with this gang of spies, I decided to assume his personality, and take advantage of his entrance into a regiment where ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... livelihood. Life has its pleasures, but also its pains. Death has no pleasure of life, but also none of its pain. So that if we balance their smiles and tears, life and death are equal. It is not wise for us, therefore, to commit suicide while the terms of our life still remain, nor to fear death when there is no way ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... 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 give ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... me this. Why should Hannah, a girl about to commit suicide, care whether any clue was furnished, in her confession, to the actual desk, drawer, or quire of paper from which the sheet was taken, on ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... 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
... the Mission school, and yesterday Topsy was sent home in dire disgrace for lying and cheating. She is not to be permitted to return until she is willing to confess and apologize. She thereupon tried to commit suicide by swallowing paper pellets, and in the night the doctor had to be called in to prescribe. She is white and wan to-day, but when I went in to bid her good-night I found her thrilling over a new prayer which she had learned, and which she repeated to ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... 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 of wine, they are being ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... murder 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 ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... 1889, driven out of their hunting grounds inland from Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, by a scarcity of game. The two tribes live in peace and intermarry. The aged among them are respected. Criminals and lunatics are quietly removed from the drama. Supposed incurables commit suicide and in that act reach immediately a hot ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... 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
... to understand the resistance the Government offers to the doctrine that a State may commit suicide, or by its own act abdicate its rights and cease to be a State in the Union. It is admissible on no theory of the constitution that has been widely entertained. It is not admissible on Mr. Calhoun's theory of State sovereignty, for ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... a celebrated lady," 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 ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... punish, and then he does it like steel; but I've seen him afterwards in his tent with a face that looks sixty, and he's got to travel a while yet before he's forty. None of us dares be as afraid as we could be, because a look at him would make us so ashamed we'd have to commit suicide. He hopes when no one else would ever hope. The other day I went to his tent to wait for him, and I saw his Bible open on the table. A passage was marked. It ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... no idea how easy it was to commit suicide. There seems nothing left of me; I died a while ago; I do not know who it is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who knew all of the ins and outs of the game as well as myself. And here—" He interrupted himself, and chuckled audibly, "here you are asking permission to go after him alone! Why, man, it's the very next thing to inviting yourself to commit suicide! Now, if I were to send you, and along with you a good, level-headed man ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... doubt that Bowen advised Jewett to commit suicide; but the jury, in defiance of the judge's charge and Mr. Kelyng's law, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... understood that the veil concealed her coquetry or prevented her from enjoying her liberty and planning her future. Then, as to-day, there were many examples of fanaticism and folly; one widow would endeavor to commit suicide; another lived with the figure of her husband in wax; another conversed, for several hours of the day, with the shade of her husband; others ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... that, there had been unmistakable relief in the man's voice when he, Jimmie Dale, had agreed to the other's request. And what had been the meaning of that "financial help"? Had, for instance—for it was pitifully obvious that if the bank had been looted an innocent man would not commit suicide on that account—a greater measure of the depredation been uncovered than had been counted on, so much indeed that, say, the financial assistance Forrester had intended to ask for had now increased to such proportions that he had realised ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... 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
... Chang-sik, a Presbyterian for sixteen years, had refused even under the torture to confess, and had tried to escape by suicide. "I thought that I had better commit suicide than be killed by their cruel tortures," he said. "They asked me if I had joined the conspiracy at the suggestion of Mr. McCune. I would not consent to this, so they tortured me harder. I was nearly naked, and so cold water was poured upon me. I was also beaten. Sometimes I would be tortured till ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... 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 the money and ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... for some clue 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 force ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... 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 ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... 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
... the Reformatory hospital and underlined the remark of the Inspector in the Visitors' Book to the effect that one Moussa Isa would commit suicide or murder, if kept at Duri, and would certainly not be "reformed" in any way. In hospital, Major Jackson of the Royal Army Medical Corps, a Visitor of the Duri Jail, paying his periodical visits, grew interested in the sturdy bright boy and soon came to like him for his directness, ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... Wheels seem to think there'll be a shooting war in a couple of months. There's only three or four destroyers left in the whole damn Asteroid Belt. And without the big stick behind me I'm not hankering to commit suicide by ...
— This One Problem • M. C. Pease
... to marry Sir Victor Catheron. Pity him, if you like, poor fellow! for he loves me with his whole heart, and he is a brave and loyal gentleman. But don't pity your brother, my dear; believe me, he doesn't need it. He's a good fellow, Charley, and he likes me, but he won't break his heart or commit suicide while he has ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... found she could not affect it, in as pathetic a despair and mental agony as any man ever felt who has killed himself, she thrust one horn into the ground, broke it off flush with her head, and threw herself down with her neck doubled under her shoulder, as if trying to commit suicide, as I verily believe she was. And yet dogs and cats get credit for being creatures of finer feelings than cows, merely because cows have no tricks of barking, purring, and ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... thirteen thousand individuals commit suicide every year in Germany. Unwilling or unable to adjust themselves to the phenomena of life, they choose death in preference to the compromise—life. A leaning towards the tragic characterizes the ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... commit suicide together because external circumstances prevent their union. This is a step corresponding to suicide from offended vanity or incurable disease; life has become unbearable to the individual haunted by a fixed idea, and he throws it away. But this has nothing ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... freight thundered up the grade, he stepped mechanically to one side, keeping a vigilant eye on the couple ahead, and begrudging the time he lost while the train went by. It was not until an hour later that he remembered he had forgotten to commit suicide. ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... as if he had come up out of the sea like a modern Neptune and like Old Neptune has gone back into it again," Jack said, his voice shaking. You don't suppose the fright he had turned his head and made him commit suicide, ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... right, Speckbacher; you are a skilful soldier, and are better able to be a general than many an officer—for instance, General Kinkel. Kinkel is an old woman; he wept and swore in one breath when I was with him just now; he says all the time that he will commit suicide, and yet he is not courageous enough to do it, but preferred to comply ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... truly reported) argue 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 ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... account. What, then, was he to do? Return to the Princess? The road to her lay blocked—blocked a hundred thousand times, by his own pride! Break with Amanda and speed further afield, perhaps to the Spanish civil war? This would be the life of an adventurer, mere folly; he might almost as well commit suicide quietly at home. Should he retrace his steps and let things be as they were before? The Princess lost to him, the envy and admiration of his comrades foregone, his confidence in himself destroyed? There was no means of retreat open to him, except and only ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... Doctor, or any other man, ever presume to contribute his share to the shortening of a person's life by aiding him to commit suicide? We must emphatically say No, even though the patient should desire death: the Doctor cannot, in any case, lend his assistance to violate the right and the law of the Creator: "Thou ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... road-way. In Cooke's Topography we find it stated, (though it is not mentioned upon what authority,) that the architect built a former arch which fell, and that the apprehension of the second experiencing the same fate induced him to commit suicide. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... rewarded by the hand of the king's daughter. Five years was given to him to complete the work, and an unlimited supply of labour and material. Three times did his arch fall, till at last, seeing failure to be inevitable, he determined to commit suicide on the morrow of the third collapse. That night, however, a beautiful woman came to him in a dream and touched his forehead, and of a sudden he saw a vision of the completed work, and saw too through the masonry and how the difficulties connected with the ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... must give up his drug in toto and at once, especially after such an acute attack as that just described. He would be very likely to die of exhaustion, to endure an amount of agony which would permanently enfeeble his mind, or to commit suicide as his only way of escape from it, if we cut him short from the equivalent of 15 or 20 grains of sulphate of morphia after having used the drug for five years. The most terrible case of opium-eating which I ever saw instantly cu short was one where the patient used 33 ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... a claim for pension in 1885, claiming that the insanity which caused him to commit suicide resulted from the hardships of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... he was going to commit suicide at daybreak! He's said so once already, but now he says it in so ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... "The Father murthered him betther nor ye could, wid an answer. 'Don't let yer bad timper make ye thry to commit suicide, Mr. Roberts,' sez he, and off he marched. Sure the whole town is laffin' at ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... 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
... you mean 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, I'm sure." ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... I tell you—so long as I stop there I'm assured of a pound a week! If I come any nearer to England the money stops. They probably hope I'll commit suicide and save them the expense of the pound a week. It'll even save them the expense of a funeral and buying mourning, won't it? I'll do it ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... of that game were of higher rank and longer purse, but I can allege no reason justifying my notion. All that I can say is that the tables devoted to it commanded the seaward views, and the tops of the gardens where the players withdrew when they wished to commit suicide. The rooms are decorated by several French painters of note, and the whole interior is designed by the famous architect Gamier, to as little effect of beauty as could well be. It is as if these ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... reckon," he mumbled. "A girl like Alice is some comfort: she don't come around acting as if she'd commit suicide if she didn't get three hundred and fifty dollars in the next five minutes. I expect I can spare five or six dollars for your show-off if ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... armies of Gaul and Spain, for a long time irregularly paid, led by their officers, revolted. This act of energy sufficed. On the 9th of June, 68 A.D., abandoned by all the world, Nero was compelled to commit suicide. ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... for commissions from some of the Russian nobility, and had either spent or speculated with them. That was why she had to invent the story of an embezzling manager, to cover her own shortcomings. But the truth was leaking out in spite of her endeavours, and she made up her mind to commit suicide rather than face the horrors of a Russian prison. The paper goes on to say that she chose a most terrible death, little realising what the torture would be. It seems that she waited till the middle of the night ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... incredulity on Henshaw's face manifestly deepened. "By his own hand?" he echoed. "Suicide? Clement commit suicide? Impossible! Inconceivable!" ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... 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 ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... 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 send for ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... device? I'm not surprised—he's a crafty old fox; but the Lord's wiser than him. I see what he's been up to: he couldn't keep the sword of the Spirit out of your hand any longer, so he's been trying to make you turn the point away from him, and commit suicide with it. Set your mind at rest, William, about these verses, and about the unpardonable sin; those who are guilty of it never seek forgiveness, and so they never get it. These words ain't meant for such a case as yours. This is the sort of text for ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... madam. War has made me popular, powerful, famous, historically immortal. But I foresee that if I go on to the end it will leave me execrated, dethroned, imprisoned, perhaps executed. Yet if I stop fighting I commit suicide as a great man and become a common one. How am I to escape the horns of this tragic dilemma? Victory I can guarantee: I am invincible. But the cost of victory is the demoralization, the depopulation, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... 'em," said Jimmy. "I'm fast going mad. I'm not knocking 'em off my jam, but swallowing the little devils as they sit there. If I didn't do that, they'd commit suicide down my throat. Every time so far that I've opened my mouth to inhale the breeze, I've taken down a fly. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... saying it is a fine November, and the Stock Exchange is no place to play in, and if it weren't for bridge they would all commit suicide. That is what we talk of ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... 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
... And, in the same way, in appearance, Fauville killed his son and committed suicide; Marie Fauville committed suicide; Gaston Sauverand committed suicide. In reality, it was this man who wanted them dead, who prompted them to commit suicide, and who supplied them with the means ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... thesis, to 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 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Equally interesting is the roll that describes the prosecution of certain highly placed officials and relations of Rameses III who had conspired against him and wanted to kill him. Several of the conspirators were compelled to commit suicide. The text is written in hieratic on papyrus, and is preserved ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... name they recite the Kalama, day in and day out, they will forfeit their title if they do not put their shoulders to the wheel and lift this cloud that is hanging on them. But we shall make a serious blunder. India will commit suicide, if we do not understand and appreciate the forces that are arrayed against us. We have got to face a mighty Government with all its power ranged against us. This composed of men who are able, courageous, capable of making sacrifices. ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... observed where his second bullet hit. But the others were eyeing Applehead uneasily and paid no attention to Pink or his attempts to hit an Indian on the run. And presently Pink forgot it also while he watched Applehead, who was apparently determined to commit suicide ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... destruction of its graceful flowering trees and vivid gardens, its air of an opulent village; it will match with the rest of Kensingtonia in huge, handsome buildings and be much sought after by the people who devote their lives—till they commit suicide—to illicit love and the Victory Balls at the Albert Hall. But in 1909—would that we were all back in 1909!—it was as nice a part of London as a busy, energetic, sober-living spinster, in the movement, yet ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... will to live persisted amazingly. Had Lanyard wished it he could not have ceased to swim, at least to keep afloat. Vaguely he wondered how people ever managed to commit suicide by drowning; it seemed to pass human power to resist that buoyancy which sustained one, to let go, let one's self go down. Impossible to conceive how ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... 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, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... and a dog. He states that he couldn't get along somehow with the other boys, that he often thought that the whole world was trying to down him and persecute him. About that time someone stole his dog. He brooded over this so much that he finally jumped into a creek, intending to commit suicide, but was rescued by bystanders. He has made several other attempts at suicide in later life. In describing these he elaborates them with a lot of fanciful trimming, dilates on the importance of the various situations attending ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... feelings on the part of the assimilation Jews are comprehensible. From their standpoint they are justified. These Jews, however, have no right to expect that Zionism should for their sake commit suicide. The Jews who are happy and contented in the land of their birth, and who indignantly reject the suggestion of abandoning it, are about a sixth of the Jewish nation, say two millions out of twelve. The other five sixths, or ten millions, feel themselves profoundly ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... at the proper season beat her breast against the wires of her cage, until it is bare and bloody. It causes young salmon to leap out of the fresh water, in which they could continue to exist, and thus unintentionally to commit suicide. Every one knows how strong the maternal instinct is, leading even timid birds to face great danger, though with hesitation, and in opposition to the instinct of self-preservation. Nevertheless, the migratory instinct is so powerful, that late in the autumn ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... speak with reluctance. But now that I have spoken, let me beg of you for your father's sake, for your dead mother's sake, for my sake—I'm your one disinterested friend and you know that my love is real—for the sake of your own soul's salvation in this world and the next—don't marry that brute! Commit suicide if you will—jump off the bridge—take poison, cut your throat, blow your brains out—but, oh ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... came. They were great financiers or business men or heads of 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 ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... tell it, a fellow 'd think that all the denizens, as you impolitely call 'em, are so confoundedly unhappy that it's a wonder they don't all up and commit suicide. But they seem ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... anger and threw the gun to the other end of the couch so he wouldn't be tempted to commit suicide. He had hoped no one knew him on Cassylia and was looking forward to a big kill at the Casino. He would worry about that later. This weight-lifter type seemed to know all the answers. Let him plot the course for a while and see where ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... Prendick, I will explain," said Doctor Moreau, so soon as we had eaten and drunk. "I must confess that you are the most dictatorial guest I ever entertained. I warn you that this is the last I shall do to oblige you. The next thing you threaten to commit suicide about, I shan't ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... of us have the power of recalling a simple melody; and who has not been tormented at times by an unbidden melody persistently haunting his ears until he was almost ready to commit suicide? But to recall a melody at will with any particular tone-color, i.e., to imagine it as being played by a flute, or a violin, or a horn, is much less easy; and still more difficult is it to hear ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... Bill Jones," and "A Tragedy," therein, commuted the sentence of a man who was to have been executed next day. One hopes the man deserved to escape. In another case an individual who was about to commit suicide chanced to see in an old newspaper Stanton's encouraging verses called "Keep a-Goin'," and was stimulated by them to have a fresh try at life on earth instead ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... far from damaging any one, should even benefit my heir by my accelerated death. However, I am no advocate for suicide under any circumstances; there is something undignified in it, unheroic, un-Germanic. But if you must commit suicide—and there is no knowing to what people may be brought—always contrive to do it as decorously as possible; the decencies, whether of life or of death, should never be lost sight of. I remember a female Quaker who committed suicide by cutting ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... who have cheered others, who have brought their grand sunshine of good into the hearts of others, cannot cheer themselves when the twilight comes, and so they often fall victims to gloom and melancholy, and many commit suicide. ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... 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
... proffering matches, green apples, bootlaces, their strident tongues mastering the noises of the street, their rapacious, humorous eyes observant of all things. All these did Dr. Mangan encounter and circumvent, frustrating their apparent determination to commit suicide by those diverse methods of abuse, cajolery, and, on the part of the car, mechanical activity, that formed an important part of the necessary equipment of an Irish motorist of the earlier time. Nevertheless, the more intimate portion of his brain ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... should a young man who had invented a new method of polymerising isoprene, who was going to become wealthy, and was engaged to a beautiful young girl, commit suicide?" ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... fits of desperation Kerrison had gone into separate lodgings: if his friend were to return in this state and find himself alone he would "again make some attempt to destroy himself." Nothing was done, so far as is known, and he did not commit suicide. It is a curious commentary on the work of hack writers that this youth should have written as a note to his translation of "The Suicide's Grave," {85} that it was not translated for its sentiments but ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... said, with elaborate politeness, "I scarcely understand what it has to do with me that Hartley Parrish should apparently commit suicide within a few days of becoming engaged ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... had been exiled from his country, he had not fallen low enough to turn traitor. He proudly refused to fight; and it is said that he preferred to commit suicide, rather than injure the people he ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... one's child, one's slave, are only apparently and by a conventional illusion of language one's real and actual "possession." That this is the case can be proved by the fact that any of these "human possessions" has only to commit suicide, to escape ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... Etienne Rambert was a sport of fate, deserving pity rather than severity, and the court would be very lenient. Another man declared that Etienne Rambert had been in an impasse: however fondly he loved his son he could not but hope that he might commit suicide: if a friend committed an offence against the laws of honour, the only thing to do was to put a pistol into his hand. And so on: the only point on which all were unanimous was their ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... have been expected, we run into some snags. The Euthanasia Society serve us with papers as they maintain nobody can commit suicide in the year 2022 without permission from the Board. Gulflex and other oil companies protest to Number One as they say we might open up a hole that will spill all the petroleum out of the earth all at ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... be free not towards the limitations of our self, not where it is maya and negation, but towards the unlimited, where is truth and love. Our freedom cannot go against its own principle of freedom and yet be free; it cannot commit suicide and yet live. We cannot say that we should have infinite freedom to fetter ourselves, for the ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... Chou had a Prime Minister named Chi Yuan, who advised him to make alliance with the other six countries, but the Emperor refused, and Chi Yuan thought that the country would be taken by others in the near future. He could not influence the Emperor, so he made up his mind to commit suicide and jumped into the river, taking a large piece of stone with him. This happened on the fifth day of the fifth moon, so the year afterwards, the Emperor got into a Dragon boat to worship his soul, and throw rice cakes, called Tzu Tsi, into the river. On that day the people have celebrated ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... dash it, I could out-general a mere kid with a face like a ferret. I went downstairs again. Just as I was passing the smoking-room door, out curveted Edwin. It seemed to me that if he wanted to do a real act of kindness he would commit suicide. ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... deep melancholy took possession of him, and gave a dark tinge to all his views of human nature and of human destiny. Such wretchedness as he endured has driven many men to shoot themselves or drown themselves. But he was under no temptation to commit suicide. He was sick of life; but he was afraid of death; and he shuddered at every sight or sound which reminded him of the inevitable hour. In religion he found but little comfort during his long and frequent ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be necessary before I meet you on the field. First, you must marry and have four children—all girls. Second, you must prove that the greater part of the provision which you make for them depends upon you life, and you must be under bond for four thousand pounds not to be hanged, commit suicide, nor be killed in a duel, which are the conditions upon which I have insured my life for the benefit of my wife and daughters. Third, you must convert me to infidelity. We can then meet on equal terms, and your challenge will be ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... over scriptural truth, a much worse danger would have threatened it than any malice in the human will, suborning false copyists, or surreptitiously favoring depraved copies. Even a general conspiracy of the human race for such a purpose would avail against the Bible only as a general conspiracy to commit suicide might avail against the drama of God's providence. Either conspiracy would first become dangerous when first either became possible. But a real danger seems to lie in the insensible corruption going on for ever within all languages, by means of which they are eternally dying away ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... all the 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, jolly woman! ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are right enough. I must tell you about them one of these days, lots of stories. There was a little Italian girl I met at Milan. It was a job to get away from her; she followed me, 'pon my word, she did; she declared she would commit suicide. I was awfully frightened. Naples is really too shocking. I'm not a prude, but Naples is ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... Dennie came 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; in ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... been picking in a distant hop-garden. It was common for people to shut their houses and do this at that season of the year, but their blind malice was too eager to remember this. Another person by continually dunning a poor debtor to pay him half a sovereign had driven him to commit suicide! So ran their bitter tongues. Backbiting is the curse of village life, and seems to keep people by its effects upon the mind far more effectually in the grip of poverty than the lowness of wages. They become so saturated with littleness that they cannot attempt anything, and have ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... conversation became private, owing to Mrs. Paley's deafness and the long sad history which Mrs. Elliot had embarked upon of a wire-haired terrier, white with just one black spot, belonging to an uncle of hers, which had committed suicide. "Animals do commit suicide," she sighed, as if she asserted a ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... calling Taitsong one of the greatest rulers who ever sat on the Dragon Throne, and his death was received with extraordinary demonstrations of grief by the people he had ruled so well. Several of his generals wished to commit suicide on his bier, the representatives of the tributary nations at his capital cut off their hair or sprinkled his grave with their blood, and throughout the length and breadth of the land there was mourning ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... taking refuge first probably in England, then in Germany, and finally in a convent at Liege, whence she was decoyed by a police emissary disguised as a priest. A full account of her life and crimes was found among her papers. Her attempt to commit suicide was frustrated, and she was taken to Paris, where she was beheaded and her body burned on the 16th ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... ditched the shack gave me a lecture. He told me I was risking my life, that it was a fast freight and that she went some. I told him I was used to going some myself, but it was no go. He said he wouldn't permit me to commit suicide, and I hit the grit. But I nailed her a third time, getting in between on the bumpers. They were the most meagre bumpers I had ever seen—I do not refer to the real bumpers, the iron bumpers that are connected by the coupling-link and that pound and grind on each other; what I refer ...
— The Road • Jack London
... he said. "I am a scoundrel, but I am not going to be a villain. It is I who should commit suicide. Farewell! my death ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... indications about I was soon assured that if the family were not in the pan that day they spent a good deal of their spare time there. But if there, the question was how to get them out; for it was clearly impossible to think of going in after them unless one was quite determined to commit suicide. Now there was a strong wind blowing from the direction of the waggon, across the reedy pan towards the bush-clad kloof or donga, and this first gave me the idea of firing the reeds, which, as I think I told you, were pretty dry. ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... 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, ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... Godwin, Paine, Priestly, and Fuseli, the painter. She then, 1792, went to Paris, where she met Captain Imlay, with whom she formed a connection, the fruit of which was her daughter Fanny. Captain Imlay having deserted her, she tried to commit suicide at Putney Bridge, but was rescued. Thereafter she resumed her literary labours, and lived with W. Godwin, who married her in 1797. Their dau., Mary, whose birth she did not survive, became the second wife of Shelley. Her chief original writings are a Reply to Burke's Reflections on ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... be shed, he can have no remission for this sin. Believing this firmly, there are men who have confessed this crime to Brigham, and asked him to have them killed. Their superstitious fears make life a burden to them, and they would commit suicide were not that also ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... now? It suddenly occurred to her that Wayne might be rather annoyed at having Ann commit suicide. But there was a little catch in her laugh at the thought ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... into a fresh caste with other Hindus and Muhammadans doing the same work, just as the camp language formed by the superposition of a Persian vocabulary on to a grammatical basis of Hindi became Urdu or Hindustani. The readiness of the Charans to commit suicide rather than give up property committed to their charge was not, however, copied by the Banjaras, and so far as I am aware there is no record of men of this caste taking their own lives, though they had little scruple ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... part in the institutions of civil life, and particularly to marry. He might indeed enter into illicit relations, and rear a family of "nephews" and "nieces," without losing prestige; but to marry was to commit suicide. Such was the condition of things ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... manner, and the farewell he had taken of him; unaccountably fervent at the time, but quite intelligible now: a terrible apprehension strengthened on the Captain, that, overpowered by his anxieties and regrets for Walter, he had been driven to commit suicide. Unequal to the wear and tear of daily life, as he had often professed himself to be, and shaken as he no doubt was by the uncertainty and deferred hope he had undergone, it seemed no violently strained misgiving, but only too probable. Free ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... off of the forty men would do the work that I wish to see done I would be glad; but it will require a sacrifice on our part of more than our prejudice against taking of life. We shall each have to kill our man, and then commit suicide." ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... bank bills, but I lost them. Twenty-two cents is all I've got, but I wasn't going to commit suicide on ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... a condition of things possible is not only a disgrace to any community, it is a monstrous evil against the womanhood of that community. Is it any wonder, then, that so many of the women of India, under these circumstances, should commit suicide? Is it strange that a wife, in such a land, should find it best to obey and submit to the indignities of the worst kind from her husband? And is it remarkable that the Hindu widow, rather than endure the neglect, the temptations and the obloquy of her widowhood, should have ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... working-class, numbers too moral to steal even when reduced to the utmost extremity, and these starve or commit suicide. For suicide, formerly the enviable privilege of the upper classes, has become fashionable among the English workers, and numbers of the poor kill themselves to avoid the misery from which they see no other means ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... walls newly painted at that!" Remorse would then double up the manly form of Captain Dunnitt, who would fall on his knees before the landlady,—"his benefactress! his better angel!"—and then arrangements would be entered into by which he was not to commit suicide for the present, but could avail himself of the landlady's indulgence and wait for "that remittance," which was always coming, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that the story concerning Miss Coddlins was a shameful calumny, why, of course, the widow married Captain Blackbeard. Dr. Sly married them, and has always declared that he knew nothing of his nephew's doings, and wondered that he has not tried to commit suicide since his last disappointment. ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... say 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 ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... to do was commit suicide in peace. He tried, but the things that happened after he'd pulled the trigger were all wrong. Like everyone standing around like statues. No St. Peter, no pearly gate, no pitchforks or halos. He might just as well ...
— The Day Time Stopped Moving • Bradner Buckner
... question of the reality of duty, which is the same as the establishment of the possibility of the Imperative as a synthetic practical proposition a priori, at present altogether apart. Suppose a man tempted to commit suicide, with the view of bettering his evil condition; but it is contradictory that the very principle of self-conservation should lead to self-destruction, and such a maxim of conduct cannot therefore become a universal law of nature. Next, the case of a man borrowing without meaning to repay, has only ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... 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
... alive! One night was enough to tame the little rogue and to make Dalbreque as handsome as Prince Charming in her eyes! For see the difference. On the films or in novels, the Happy Princesses resist or commit suicide. But in real ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... said Grell, making a gesture as though waving the subject aside. "I shall not commit suicide—at any rate, while I've got a fighting chance. Let's get to the point. Will you lend ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... periodicals with which you are connected. Last time I wrote a novel, my nephew reviewed it, very perfunctorily, in the Pandrosium; this time I want only to be reviewed by my friends." He was kicking on the sofa, and apparently trying to commit suicide with the pillows. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various |
