"Suicide" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... evening!' and in the evening, 'Would God it were morning!' Low-sunk life imagines itself weary of life, but it is death, not life, it is weary of. Never a cry went out after the opposite of life from any soul that knew what life is. Why does the poor, worn, out-worn suicide seek death? Is it not in reality to escape from death?—from the death of homelessness and hunger and cold; the death of failure, disappointment, and distraction; the death of the exhaustion of passion; the death of ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... after a vain attempt to obtain an appointment as a surgeon's mate to Africa, he made up his mind to suicide. A guinea had been sent him by a gentleman, which he declined. Mrs Angel, his landlady, knowing him to be in want, the day before his death offered him his dinner, but this also he spurned; and, on the 25th of August 1770, having first destroyed all his papers, he swallowed arsenic, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... room was Bayard Shaynon still in death upon the floor, one temple shattered by a shot fired at close range from a revolver that lay with butt close to his right hand—carefully disposed with evident intent to indicate a case of suicide rather than ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... and the anxiety horror. The cruel fancy took possession of my mind, installed there by my treacherously imaginative temperament, that some awful calamity was about to befall my dear father; that he, patient, submissive Christian that he was, even meditated suicide; and that shape of fear so shook my soul with terror in the daytime, so filled my dreams with horror in the night, that, as if it were not myself, I turn back to pity the poor child now, and wonder that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... happened that morning to pay a visit to the Tower. Essex was subject to fits of deep melancholy, and had been seized with one immediately upon his commitment: he was accustomed to maintain the lawfulness of suicide: and his countess upon a strict inquiry, which was committed to the care of Dr. Burnet, found no reason to confirm the suspicion: yet could not all these circumstances, joined to many others, entirely remove the imputation. It is no wonder, that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... tight-lacing, than are destroyed among the other sex by the use of spirituous liquors in the same time." Is it possible that thousands of our own sex, in our own native land, lay, with their own hand, the foundation of diseases that destroy life!—and are willing, for fashion's sake, to commit suicide! ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... agency of death, it was characteristic of him that, even now, at the supreme moment of his impending deliverance, his self-respect imperiously demanded of him that at all costs must he eschew even the faintest taint of so cowardly an act as that of suicide; if death were really close at hand—as it certainly appeared to be—well and good; it was what he was hoping for, and would be thrice welcome. Nevertheless, he felt it incumbent upon himself that he should take ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... people all ran out and cheered us as we passed. England was going wild over Canadians then, for it was just after the Second Battle of Ypres, where our boys had made such a name for themselves. On one street there were about five hundred kids, and Baldy remarked, "No race suicide here." ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... were not hi themselves passionately interesting, and that such relations as she might have with other men did not exhale, naturally, in a universal sense, or for every rational being, a spirit of morbid gloom capable of infecting with fever or of inciting to suicide. He realised, at such moments, that that interest, that gloom, existed in him only as a malady might exist, and that, once he was cured of the malady, the actions of Odette, the kisses that she might have bestowed, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... easy to persuade a man to leave a business that he's built up over a long period of years, especially during the busy season. To leave the Boardwalk during the summer would, as far as Forsythe was concerned, be tantamount to economic suicide. He had to be offered not only an income better than the one he was making, but better security as well. At fifty-four, one does not lightly throw over the ...
— Fifty Per Cent Prophet • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to disregard it. I do not believe General Grant ever seriously entertained the thought of a third term, but even if he did, the established usage against it would make his nomination an act of suicide. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... violent revolutionary in France, self-styled Gracchus; headed an insurrection against the Directory, "which died in the birth, stifled by the soldiery"; convicted of conspiracy, was guillotined, after attempting to commit suicide (1764-1797). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... as Gerard de Nerval, was one of the group of young Romanticists who gathered around Hugo. Symptoms of insanity developed early, and at different times he was an inmate of an asylum. He finally committed suicide. He felt profoundly the influence of German literature, and his lyrics show something of this in the spiritual quality of ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... know, Lily, committed suicide in their room ... awful poverty. The wife wasn't ... Tottie enough ... and the husband was teaching the English accent to continental clowns! Poland? A magnificent engagement in Russia. Old Martello hasn't three days to live. Oh ... and Nunkie! There's ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... of Hilda, character of her tower Hillard, George S. Hoar, Miss Elizabeth Holiday epauletes Holmes, Oliver Wendell Hosmer, Harriet Houghton, Lord "House of the Seven Gables, The" Howe, Dr. Samuel G. Hunt, suicide of Miss ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Odaliques, and white bears, were sometimes so inexpressibly absurd that Mr Percival, to avoid fits of laughter, was obliged to look over his exercises alone. Nor were his eccentricities always confined to his English themes; his Latin verses were occasionally no less extraordinary, and in one set, on the suicide of Ajax, the last few lines consisted of fragmentary words interspersed here and there with numerous stars—a phenomenon which he explained to Mr Percival in the gravest manner possible, by saying that here the voice of ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... said to Doris: "I'm afraid I can't go to see Miss Tubbs this evening. Can't we devise something else? Another dinner in a boarding-house would lead me to suicide, I think." ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... waits quietly, facing the enemy unmoved. With the terrific force with which the eagle makes its attack, the boasted king of birds is often impaled and run through on the quiet, lance-like bill of the heron. The means that man takes to kill another's character becomes suicide of his own. ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... revival of La Trappe and other austere orders. He contended that they might operate as a safety-valve for the fanatical and visionary ferment which would otherwise burst forth and disturb society. In his remarks on the death of Duroc and in the reasons he alleged against suicide, both in calm and speculative discussion and in moments of strong emotion (such as occurred at Fontainbleau in 1814), he implied a belief ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... before. What a contrast was presented, as man judges, by the shy shoemaker, schoolmaster, and Baptist preacher, who found not a place in which to lay his head save a hovel lent to him by a Hindoo, to Clive, whose suicide he might have heard of when a child; to Hastings, who for seventeen years had stood before his country impeached. They were men described by Macaulay as of ancient, even illustrious lineage, and they had brought into ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... found, super-distilled, the very essence of all the best qualities of this writer. It is written with fine reserve; the story holds; the characters are unusually well observed, felt, and expressed. Irony shines through the pages and the final cadence includes a murder and a suicide. For the former, bromide of potassium and gas are utilized in combination; for the latter laudanum, taken hypodermically, suffices. There are scenes in Biarritz and Northern Spain which include a thrilling picture of a bull-fight. There is an interesting glimpse of ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... town, named "Inspector Byrnes," because of his remarkable assistance to the police force. When, one night, a prisoner in the jail had stuffed the cracks to his cell with straw, and turned on the gas in an attempt to commit suicide, "Inspector Byrnes" hurried off and notified the night keeper that something was wrong, and induced him to go to the cell in time to save the prisoner's life. He once notified the police when a fire broke out on the premises, ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... stated. The farrier-sergeant told the requisite number of lies. I denied them, but of course admitted shooting the beggar. Dirty, unwashed, unkempt, unshaven, ragged wretch that I looked, I daresay on a charge of double-murder, bigamy and suicide, I should have fared ill. The captain gave me what I suppose was a severe reprimand, told me that probably in Pretoria I should have to pay something, and said he would have to take away my stripe, so down it went, "reduced to the ranks." "Salute! Right turn," etc. Thus, did your humble servant ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... woman's character is not particularly novel. Poor Sir John Suckling, long curled, arrayed in velvets and satins, a princely host, seemingly the typical gallant, yet secretly devoured by melancholy, a suicide at the end, doubtless knew whereof he spoke when ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... what has happened; I know she will act like a sensible woman. You know, Madge, she is always composed. I verily believe," added Mrs. Arnold, "that mamma would feel at ease if all the friends she had committed suicide, or died from ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... [Footnote 141: He committed suicide on June 22, under the influence of the disappointment caused by the indifference of the public to his pictures, the final instance of which was its flocking to see General Tom Thumb and neglecting Haydon's large pictures of 'Aristides' and 'Nero,' ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... men and common women, who would commit suicide in a stream or ditch, no one knowing anything about them?' CHAP. XIX. 1. The great officer, Hsien, who had been family-minister to Kung-shu Wan, ascended to the prince's court in company with Wan. 2. The Master, having heard of it, said, ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... house of Gauthier, and, in company with an associate, established a small printing-office in Besancon. His contribution to the partnership consisted, not so much in capital, as in his knowledge of the trade. His partner committing suicide in 1838, Proudhon was obliged to wind up the business, an operation which he did not accomplish as quickly and as easily as he hoped. He was then urged by his friends to enter the ranks of the competitors for the Suard pension. This pension consisted of an income ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... prosperous. He was at length persuaded by his friends to go to Buenos Ayres to consult a doctor, and went alone and stayed in the house of an Anglo-Argentine family who were also friends of ours. By-and-by the dreadful news came that he had committed suicide by cutting his throat with a razor. His wife and daughters then left the Casa Antigua, and not long afterwards Dona Mercedes wrote to my mother that they were left penniless; that their flocks and other ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... pains we take to persuade others as well as ourselves amply show that the task is far from easy. For many reasons we may be disgusted with life, but for none may we despise it. Not even those who commit suicide regard it as a light matter, and are as much alarmed and startled as the rest of the world if death meets them in a different way than the one they have selected. The difference we observe in the courage of so great a number ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... pay strict attention to public opinion and act in harmony with it. For the American statesman, whose highest ambition consists either in being re-elected, or at least in seeing his party returned to power, any other course would amount to political suicide; for any attempt at swimming against the tide will certainly be avenged at ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... some high-class thought transference stunt? Some magnetic influence that irresistibly impelled Mrs. Vandemeyer to commit suicide?" ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... conducted the case for the Crown when she was in the dock, charged with murder, and that formed a sort of bond between them; but even so I don't see how he could have got much nearer to a complete understanding, considering that the girl dashed off and committed suicide almost before he could get a word in. If my enjoyment of The Blows of Circumstance waned towards the end and the book seemed to me to lose grip, it was because the sudden discovery on the part of Quinn and Amalie Gayne that they were soul-mates was too sudden to convince me. Up to the beginning ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... in the sight of as many as were then assembled. It was believed at the time that Lady Stanfield had a hand in the assassination, or was at least privy to her son's plans; but I see nothing inconsistent with the old gentleman's having committed suicide.[134] The ordeal of touching the corpse was observed in ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... did follow him to some foreign country; she would come without fortune, despoiled of everything, and then, alas! she would merely be one more embarrassment to him. A mind of a second order, and a proud mind like that of Nathan, would be likely to see, under these circumstances, and did see, in suicide the sword to cut the Gordian knots. The idea of failure in the face of the world and that society he had so lately entered and meant to rule, of leaving the chariot of the countess and becoming once more a muddied pedestrian, was ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... half the unhappiness in the world proceeds from a vexed stomach, or vicious bile: from small stoppages, or from food pressing in the wrong place. Old friendships may be destroyed by toasted cheese; and tough salted meat has led a man not infrequently to suicide." ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... made up her medicine-chest, and who had been her attendant for many years, declared he never prescribed it for her; and it was next to impossible she could have possessed it. To the various rumors that arose out of her death I do not allude. I do not believe she committed suicide; nay, I am sure she did not, although I know she was most wretched in her mournful banishment, most miserable in her changed condition, and that, if her past years had been gloomy, her future was very dark; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... smoked until the air became bluer than before. In a ghastly way, he was trying to decide whose death it should be,—as one decides a winter's flitting, whether to Florida or California; only now the question was: should it be suicide, or,—as in the saloon yesterday,—leave the decision to Chance? For the time the personal equation was eliminated; the man weighed the evidence as impartially as though he were deciding the fate ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... childhood, as she had been by the rough Mr. Jackson,—that she should become the slave of that bad man, and never, never see Alfred again. "But I can die," she often said to herself; and she revolved in her mind various means of suicide, in case the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... wish. Swiftly, Everett opened a dressing-case which stood on a table near him: the officer heard the sharp clicking of a pistol-lock, and turned swiftly round. Too late! A loud report rang through the house; the room was filled with smoke; and the wretched assassin and suicide lay extended on the floor a ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... unfortunate officer, whose only son, a lieutenant, had died of the pestilence which scourged the allies, could not support the odium. Being of a deeply religious character, the refuge which Villeneuve after Trafalgar found in suicide was denied him; but he threw up his command and retired into a ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... caught her dress in a wheel while we was talkin', 'n' we had to turn her 'n' the express-wagon both upside down 't once afore we could unwind it, 'n' while we was doin' that, one o' the twins fell out o' the carriage. The minister says he don't thank no man to talk race-suicide when he's aroun'; he says his blood runs cold to think what his family 'll be at his silver weddin'. I tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, I will own 't I've always felt some sore at the minister on a'count o' his not marryin' me, but 'f I ever ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... and intentions of the Tsar were unknown and numerous rumors were afloat. Some said that he had committed suicide, that he was in the city, that he was on the way, that he was under arrest, that he had fled the country. Another interesting question was the form of the new government, should it be a republic or a constitutional monarchy. Many of the educated classes and members of the Duma advocated ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... with his levies and mounted police, and before night 120 fugitives were killed and as many more made prisoners. The remainder found no welcome among the hill tribes, and eventually became wanderers over the country until they died or were killed. Poor Spottiswoode, the Colonel, committed suicide shortly before the Peshawar ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... like Canton, built in the meshes of tideswept rivers and canals; like Hankow on the banks of one of the largest rivers in the world; nor yet in modern Shanghai, Yokohama or Tokyo, is such waste permitted. To them such a practice has meant race suicide and they have resisted the temptation so long that it has ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... dead! Far happier had it never been born!" Among the varied feelings with which so many noble hearts throbbed high, were there indeed many which never incurred this fearful malediction? Like the suicide lover in Mickiewicz's poem, who returns to life in the land of the Dead only to renew the dreadful suffering of his earth life, perhaps among all the emotions then so vividly felt there is not a single one which, could ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... Supreme Brahman (being a state of pure felicitous existence).[107] Thou art he that took the shape of a jackal (for consoling the Brahmana who, when insulted by a wealthy Vaisya, had resolved to commit suicide). Thou art he whose object are all crowned with fruition, of themselves and without waiting for the puissance (derivable from penances). Thou art one who bears a bald head (as the sign of the mendicant ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... would cease to be the vehicles of the trade of the nation and of the world. Each State, as under the old Confederacy, would force commerce into her own ports by prohibitory or discriminating statutes. No, when New York takes from the Union the exclusive control of commerce, she commits suicide. One uniform regulation of commerce, and one uniform currency, are more essential to the prosperity of New York than to that of any other State. New York represents interstate and international commerce. There are concentrated our imports and exports, and there three ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... who still hold that the Enemy of Mankind brought these two wretches together upon that night, by supernatural interference, that they might fill up the cup of their guilt and receive its meed, by murder and suicide. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... not surprised at seeing them look very miserable and unhappy, for the oppressive odour arising from the fresh-dug guano was intolerable, to us even for a short time. We were told that many of them in their wretchedness commit suicide, flying, through their ignorance, from present evils to those they know not of, instead of endeavouring manfully to support their lot, if inevitable, or to seek proper means to escape from it if they have the power—not that I thought this at the time, by-the-by. I only ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... after my friend's departure that I suddenly recollected the mysterious interview which I had been told of as preceding the suicide of young Prescott. Then I thought of the ravings of poor Reeves, rendered more tragic by the fact that I had heard that very day of his death. What was the meaning of it all? Had this woman some baleful secret to disclose which must be known before her marriage? ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this man would slice you all up. You better jump off the bridge if you want to commit suicide. You wouldn't stand a ghost of a chance ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... indeed, glorified, as much as words could glorify, the devotion of woman; but once become a devotee, it had locked her in the cloister. As far as action on the world without was concerned, the veil served simply as a species of suicide, and the impulses of woman, after all the crowns and pretty speeches of her religious counsellors, found themselves bottled up within stout stone walls and as inactive as before. From this strait, woman, at the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... "or, no, I think she is not so bad as that; but she would regard the idea of suicide as unspeakably wicked. At least I think so; I never saw her but once. Oh, I do hate to have Arthur marry her. ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... had not resolution enough to kill himself,(41) I do not thereby pretend to justify the practice of the heathens, who looked upon suicide as lawful; but simply to relate an incident, and the judgment which Paulus AEmilius passed on it. Had I barely hinted a word or two against that custom, it would have obviated all mistake, and left no ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... resisted in good faith and upon reasonable grounds.[336] It is also proper by law to cut off a defense by a life insurance company based on false and fraudulent statements in the application, unless the matter misrepresented actually contributed to the death of the insured.[337] A provision that suicide, unless contemplated when the application for a policy was made, shall be no defense is equally valid.[338] When a cooperative life insurance association is reorganized so as to permit it to do a life ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... tinker should turn out a wandering genius, for in her heart she could not believe the accusations she had hurled against him the night past; when they reached Arden they would come upon the younger Burgeman, contemplating immediate suicide; this would give her her cue, and she would administer trust and a general bracer with one hand as she removed the revolver with the other; in gratitude he would divulge the truth about the forgery—he did it to save the honor of some lady—after which the tinker would sponsor him, ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... to House and Jones says that he informed House that he had killed Rice by chloroform, and gave him the "same story which he told on the witness stand." After this Jones apparently lost his nerve and told Patrick that he intended to commit suicide. This idea Patrick encouraged, agreeing that they should both do it at about the ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... the man said, with an air of some relief, as Westray's coolness convinced him that he was not contemplating suicide. "Just so, I see; some experiments. Well, in that case, I suppose, you would not require any special facilities for loading again quickly, otherwise I should have recommended one of these," and he ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... admire as art, they wish to introduce into real life; and poetry, philosophy, the ideal, in short, have often an even greater empire over the Germans than nature and the passions." In proof of this, she adduces the number of young Germans who committed suicide in consequence of reading "Werther"; or took to highway robbery in emulation of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... he ascended the winding walk among the palms and orange blossoms, this "suicide's tag," as Malcourt called it, was not demanded of him at ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... suicide with it the way they used to do with the old kind of gas, because, you see, it was, after all, only hot air, which is good for the lungs whichever way it's going, in or out. We use hot air all the time in our Administration and ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... was easy, the handle fitted his hand, but to die so that no shock or shame would come to her, that was his problem. "I will not leave her the widow of a suicide," he resolved. "I must go so sly, so casual-like, that no one will be able to point the finger at ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... can speak, dear friend," she said quite steadily. "I shall be glad to hear the whole of it, though it is an ugly story. The man was miserable, and he is dead, and the circumstances of his death point to—what—suicide?" ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... buries himself in an old haunted house in the wilds of Ireland and abandons himself to the practice of magic. The result is highly successful, for he raises, not a spirit indeed, but something much more desirable to a lonely young man who has been contemplating suicide. So much for the romance. The mystery is provided by a villain, an enterprising young married woman, and the sinister denizens of a creepy boarding-house. I heartily recommend Punch readers who like a mystery to buy the book and find out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... "Suicide, I call it," said the captain harshly, to conceal his emotion of horror and admiration. "But there's one there who is going to save his skin. See that young lad who was in the first canoe. He is poling away now that his ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... attached. None knew the whole story, and none spoke of it now; but his sisters remembered that Willy had fallen in love with a girl whom he had seen play "Sweet Anne Page." They remembered long letters, tears and wild looks. He had sent her diamonds; and one night he had attempted suicide. All was now forgotten; at least it was the past, and nothing remained but one little melody which he had heard her sing, and which he sometimes whistled out ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... after weeks of delay, the surviving vessels struggled one by one into the harbour of Chedabucto. In deadly dejection, D'Anville had succumbed to apoplexy; moreover, his successor, the Admiral D'Estournelle, had committed suicide; and the new commander was La Jonquiere, a distinguished naval officer, then on his way to Quebec to assume the office of Governor-General. His sorry fleet notwithstanding, La Jonquiere decided to strike a blow at Annapolis. ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... He drew a most heart-rending picture of the broken-spirited husband and father, rejected by an unforgiving wife and ill-conditioned children, becoming a friendless and houseless wanderer over the wide world; in danger of being driven, by despair, to madness and suicide! He compared the plaintiff to Byron, whose poetry he liberally quoted. And he concluded by imploring the court, with tears in his eyes, to intervene and save his unhappy client from the gulf of perdition to which his implacable wife would drive him. And he sank down in his seat ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... honest about public men. A man's own party praises, the opposite party damns him. In an old nation this intellectual strabismus is pardonable. In a young nation it is a form of political suicide. We too often wait for a man to make a great speech before admitting independent of party, that he is anything great as ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... men out under those circumstances and staying here on this ship and watch them blow themselves up. If that bomb's our only hope, it's got to be dropped right, and I'm not going to take a chance on having it dropped by a crew who think they've been sent out on a suicide mission. What happened to the Gaucho when she blew the Smuts up is too fresh in everybody's mind. But if I, who ordered the mission, accompany it, they'll know I have some confidence that they'll come ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... was one inconvenience about our villa (besides its flavour of suicide) which it is necessary to mention here. By common consent all the cats of the neighbourhood had selected our garden for their evening reunions. I fancy that a tortoise-shell kitchen cat of ours must have been a sort of leader of local ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... are proud of their success in this battle, and mention it to every visitor. The English Admiral committed suicide early in the attack. The fleet retired to San Francisco, and returned in the following year prepared to capture the town at all hazards, but Petropavlovsk had been abandoned by the Russians, who retired beyond the hills. An American remained in charge of a trading establishment, and hoisted ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... bigger spoonfuls than all the others. He's got a mouth like a money box—open to take all he can get. But when he first came to "Babies' Castle" he was so weak—starved in truth—that for days he was carried about on a pillow. Another little fellow's father committed suicide. Fail not to observe and admire the appetite of Albert Edward. He came with no name, and he was christened so. His companions call him "The Prince!" Yet another. This little girl's mother is to-day a celebrated beauty—and her next-door diner was farmed out and insured. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... hopelessness and despair in which these girls live continually, makes them reckless of consequences, and large numbers commit suicide who are never heard of. A West End policeman assured us that the number of prostitute-suicides was terribly in advance of anything guessed at ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... which human infirmity will fall; they might still stand, though some of their conclusums should taste of the prejudices of country or of faction, whether political or religious. Some degree even of corruption should not make me think them guilty of suicide; but if we could suppose that the Aulic Council, not regarding duty or even common decorum, listening neither to the secret admonitions of conscience nor to the public voice of fame, some of the members basely abandoning their post, and others continuing in it only the more ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... public knew only of the attempted suicide of Mme. Fauville, the capture and escape of Gaston Sauverand, the murder of Chief Inspector Ancenis, and the discovery of a letter written by Hippolyte Fauville. This was enough, however, to reawaken their curiosity, as they were already singularly puzzled by the ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... and promises of overwork, it is a species of suicide to continue it at the expense of health. Good men in every department and calling, stimulated by zeal and an ambition commendable in itself, have worked till the vital forces were exhausted, and so were compelled to stop all effort in the ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... obtained permission to carry out on themselves the sentence passed upon them, and thus avoided by suicide the shame of public execution. Before tribunals thus constituted, the fellah who came to appeal against the exactions of which he was the victim had little chance of obtaining a hearing: had not the scribe who had ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Knighthood; his continuous editorial work upon the journal, Fireside Conversations, from 1849 until the appearance of his other great contemporary novel, The Magician of Rome, 1858-61; his attack of insanity under the strain of ill health in 1865 and unsuccessful attempt at suicide; and, finally, his rapidly declining health and frequent change of residence from Berlin to Italy, thence to Heidelberg, and from there to Sachsenhausen, near Frankfurt-on-the-Main, and his tragic death there, either intentional ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... 'is suicide. The egoist withers like a solitary barren tree; but pride, ambition, as the active effort after perfection, is the source of all that is great.... Yes! a man must prune away the stubborn egoism of his personality to give ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... have captured Gov. Leopoldo Garcia Penas, of Cavite province, and Gov. Antonio Cardola, of Bataan province. Cardola tried to commit suicide before surrendering. He shot himself three times in the head, but will recover. The insurgents behaved gallantly in the fight for the possession of the stone convent in Old Cavite, June 1st. General Augusti sent two thousand Spanish regulars of the Manila force ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... murderer of President McKinley in order to get the presidency of the United States, because the way things were that time he was not supposed to be a president; all the leaders did not want him, that's the reason they give him the vice-presidency, which is political suicide; and that's what I am sore about, to think Mr. McKinley appeared to me in a dream and said, "this is ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... Vinson from suicide, Fandor had made him promise to leave France and await developments, whilst Fandor, posing as Vinson, studied at close quarters the spies who had drawn the miserable corporal into their net. Fandor could personate Vinson with every chance of success, because the 257th of the line had never set ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... Capataz, the respected and feared Captain Fidanza, the unquestioned patron of secret societies, a republican like old Giorgio, and a revolutionist at heart (but in another manner), was on the point of jumping overboard from the deck of his own schooner. That man, subjective almost to insanity, looked suicide deliberately in the face. But he never lost his head. He was checked by the thought that this was no escape. He imagined himself dead, and the disgrace, the shame going on. Or, rather, properly speaking, he could not imagine ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... for a meritorious canvas, and if he had had his father's stable temperament he would have ended an admirable artist. But he was reckless, and died at Venice in a mysterious manner, drowned in a canal, whether by murder or suicide no one knew. Chardin never recovered his spirits after this shock. The king offered him lodging in the gallery of the Louvre (Logement No. 12). This was accepted, as much as he disliked leaving his comfortable little house in the Rue Princesse. As he aged ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... FIRST.... To be perfectly frank I was not anxious to commit myself unreservedly without knowing ALL he expected of me, but it sounded cowardly ... so with a mental reservation I finally said: 'You don't look like a man who would ask another to commit suicide. Go ahead! I've decided to take a chance.'... Colonel Z—— S—— looked me straight in the eye and said: 'We expect you to use the same tactics that are used against you. We can't be squeamish.... The interests at stake are too sacred ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... went on very much us usual. Six long years revolved, and still no word of Catherine Wilson. Many conjectured that she had missed her foot in the dark, and fallen into the river, and been carried out to sea by the reflux of the tide. Others again hinted at suicide, from extreme grief; and some very charitable females nodded and winked something meant to be significant, about some people's not being easily known—and that some people, provided that they got a grip of a man, would ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... saw just ahead of us David Copperfield and Mr. Peggotty following a woman whom we could make out walking excitedly a block ahead. It was Martha, intent on suicide. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... showers, and his boots were laced, but not polished. On Wednesday there was frost, fog, and gloom, and they were neither laced nor polished. On Thursday there was a snowstorm, and he had no boots at all on; and after that I did not see him, and I wondered if he had committed suicide—in which case I thought the jury might almost have brought in a verdict of 'justifiable felo-de-se.' And when I told that story the other old gentleman shut his book, and began to talk too. And I said I thought the weather was much colder than it used to ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... would be preferable to life without her. He was still young enough to feel the tyrannous fascination which fully-developed womanhood exerts over immature and impassioned natures; and, consequently, he was to spend one of those stormy nights when a young man's thoughts travel from happiness to suicide and back again—nights in which youth rushes through a lifetime of bliss and falls asleep from sheer exhaustion. Fateful nights are they, and the worst misfortune that can happen is to awake a philosopher afterwards. M. de Nueil was far too deeply ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... are told how a Venetian died because of the death of his son, a youthful prodigy; and how mother and brothers followed, as if the lost child drew them all after him. Many, especially Florentines, ended their lives by suicide; others through the secret justice of a tyrant. Who, after all, is happy?—and by what means? By blunting all feeling for such misery? One of the speakers in the dialogue in which Pierio clothed his ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Protestant, deliberately enough; wrote books on controversial subjects, against his old party, before he had taken orders in the Church of England; besides a strange, morbid speculation on the innocence of suicide. He used his lawyer's training for dubious enough purposes, advising the Earl of Somerset in the dark business of his divorce and re-marriage. And, in a mournful pause in the midst of many harrowing concerns, he writes to a friend: 'When I must shipwreck, I would ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... longer confined to his own thoughts. The Author of Evil was present in the room with him in bodily shape, and, potent with spirits of a melancholy cast, was impressing upon him the desperation of his state, and urging suicide as the readiest mode to put an end to his sinful career. Amid his errors, the pleasure he had taken in prolonging his journey unnecessarily, and the attention which he had bestowed on the beauty of the fair female, when his thoughts ought to have been dedicated to the religious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... famous cross-examination in our day was Sir Charles Russell's of Pigott. It outstands by reason of the magnitude of the issue, and the flight and suicide of the witness. Had Pigott been of the stuff to stand up to Russell, and make a fight of it, I should regret far more keenly than I do that I was not in court. As it is, my regret is keen enough. I was reading again, only the other day, the verbatim report of Pigott's evidence, in one of ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... was straddling up and down the room, a pent volcano ready to explode. He knew Whaley's advice was good. It would be suicide to encumber himself with this girl in his flight. But he had never disciplined his desires. He wanted her. He meant to take her. Passion, the lust for revenge, the bully streak in him that gloated at the sight of some one young and fine trembling before him: all these were ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... clothing in her arms, she added the revolver that lay on the blanket, and, returning to the little trap-door in the ceiling, hid them away; but her brain was whirling again in a turmoil of doubt. This was madness, utter, stark, blind madness, this thing that she was doing! It was suicide, literally that, nothing less than suicide for one in Gypsy Nan's condition to attempt this thing. But the woman would certainly die here, too, with out medical assistance—only there was the police! Rhoda Gray's face, as she stood upright in the ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... captured and the unlucky admiral was taken to England, where he remained a prisoner for three years. Having been released on exchange, he decided to go to Paris, but, detained at Rennes, he committed suicide. ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... had bargained with Burr to give up all claim to Madelon, and he would set him free by confessing an attempt at suicide. Margaret Bean, it was reported, had seen the letter which Lot had written to Burr in prison. When Madelon, who, half crazed by anxiety about her lover, had wrongfully accused herself to save him, had seen ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the present claimant, filed an application for pension March 12, 1878, alleging that her husband committed suicide September 10, 1873, from the effects of chronic diarrhea and general debility contracted in the service. Upon the evidence then produced her claim was allowed at the rate of $8 a month. She remained upon the rolls until July, 1885, when ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... injunction requiring all husbands to separate themselves by at least a hundred miles from their wives, for several months in every year, it would cut down divorces ninety-five per cent, add greatly to domestic peace, render race-suicide impossible, and generally liberate millions of love vibrations that would ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... race-course which has proved the prolific mother of the tracks to be found to-day all over the country. In this first trial M. de Normandie was the winner. The fate of Chantilly was decided. Since the suicide—or the assassination—of the last of the Condes the castle had been abandoned, the duc d'Aumale, its inheritor, being then a minor. The little town itself seemed dying of exhaustion. It was resolved ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... was the story of how her brother had it and was driven crazy until he gave it up to somebody, then committed suicide by throwing himself into Titicaca. The other was the tradition that in the days after Pizarro a Mendoza was murdered by it, just as her father has now ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... public benefactor, for in those days, though Chesterfield was the writer on etiquette, people were not well-bred enough to keep their tempers, and rivals for a lady's hand at a minuet, or gamblers who disputed over their cards, invariably settled the matter by an option between suicide or murder under the polite name of duel. The M.C. wisely saw that these affairs would bring Bath in bad repute, and determined to supplant the rapier by the less dangerous cane. In this he was for a long time opposed, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... 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
... me anything. Chere Miss Temple, this business haunts me; it will end badly. I know that dear Armine so well; no one knows him like me; his feelings are too strong: no one has such strong feelings. Now, of all my friends, he is the only man I know who is capable of committing suicide.' ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... sir! It's suicide! We couldn't swim, and just a bit farther on, I tell you, the place must be full to the roof. Why, there must be eight or ten foot ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... the cowardly act of suicide and gains new strength through the awakening, for a time at least, of the consciousness, which had slumbered within him since the unreasoning days of childhood, that there is that beyond life which alone ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... being overreligious," she said in her quiet, frank manner, "but that does not prevent me thinking the children very cruel who obstinately commit such suicide." ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... the reason why he did not commit suicide was because he was so curious to know what was going to happen next. For any one to do pioneer work in almost any department of human activity there are two essentials: First, he must be more or less stupid and not read the handwriting on the wall; ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... were at last permitted to see the king; and at half-past eight were told that he was ready. The queen took Louis by the hand, and led him downstairs, the princesses following. It appears that the guards had some idea that the king would attempt suicide; for they would not allow him to have a knife at his dinner; and they now would not lose sight of him, even while meeting his family. They would not have allowed the door to be shut, but that it was a glass door, through which they ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... desperate by his straits, and so anxious to escape from the crime into which his friend sought to plunge him, that he meditated suicide; but, lacking the courage to accomplish this, he relieved his feelings by carrying out the details of his business and the preliminary steps of his plan, with the wild and reckless energy of a maniac. The more he thought of the meshes which Gorman had cast around him, the more did he ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... to appeal to the Court of Cassation for a revision of his trial, but on December 4 his appeal was rejected. Two days later he was executed. He had attempted suicide by means of poison, which one of his friends had brought to him in prison, concealed inside a watch. His courage failed him at the last, and he met his death in a state ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... one black ship that slunk out of that mass suicide of man's last remnant. Within its long hulk three motionless forms lay in a welter of blood that smeared their officers' badges, and a dozen gibbering men labored at the controls of their craft. The long black shadows came at last to veil ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... little disappointment far better than his friends had feared. The long fit of depression, thoroughly broken by his attempt at suicide, had not yet returned. The summer had been spent on a walking tour through Finland, with Lechetizsky and Serov and he came home full of animal vigor. On his way back he had had a fortnight in Petersburg, and there spent two evenings in the company of Nathalie and his aunt, who ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... might be led into self-contradictions or to making damaging admissions against himself. De Groot and Hoogerbeets had to undergo a similar, though less protracted, inquisition. Such was its effect upon Ledenburg that he committed suicide. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... tones, "Sire, death shuns you; you will but be made a prisoner." Napoleon shook his head, and for a moment resisted; but his better judgment told him that thus to throw away his life would be but an act of suicide. With tearful eyes, he bowed to those heroes who proved faithful even to death; with a melancholy cry, they shouted, "Vive l'Empereur!" These were their last words—their dying farewell. Silent and sorrowful, Napoleon put spurs to ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... may call the first scene in the story," he added, although what connection there was between suicide and his proposed marriage with Ida, poor mamma ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... her special weakness in the patriarchal line. Is the only result of our admitting a Territory on Monday to be the giving it a right to steal itself and go out again on Tuesday? Or do only the original thirteen States possess this precious privilege of suicide? We shall need something like a Fugitive Slave Law for runaway republics, and must get a provision inserted in our treaties with foreign powers, that they shall help us catch any delinquent who may take refuge with them, as South Carolina has been trying ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... hand, Mackenzie instances the case of a woman among the Slave Indians who, in a winter of great scarcity, managed to kill and devour her husband and several relations.) So terrible was the ill-treatment of the women in some tribes that these wretched beings sometimes committed suicide to end their tortures. Even in this, however, they were not let off lightly, for the Siou men invented as a tenet of their religion the saying that "Women who hang themselves are the most miserable of all wretches in ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... to the purple upon the suicide of Nero, dismissed the Batavian life-guards to whom he owed his elevation. He is murdered, Otho and Vitellius contend for the succession, while all eyes are turned upon the eight Batavian regiments. In their hands the scales of empire seem to rest. They declare for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... words of an item of news headed: "Suicide of Lady Passenger from a cross-Channel Boat." Comrade Ossipon was familiar with the beauties of its journalistic style. "An impenetrable mystery seems destined to hang for ever. . . . " He knew every word by heart. "An impenetrable ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... three weeks[L] no less than five cases of attempted suicide by opium poisoning have come under my personal notice in the town in which I am residing, and there have doubtless been fifty more which have not. If there is no opium, where do the people so easily ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... his consciousness by drugging or bludgeoning, but it would be racial suicide to attempt it. In the split moment of realization he would kill every human being on Earth. There would be nobody left to operate on his brain, to make him a mindless, powerless idiot for the rest of time. For any period of time, ...
— The Mightiest Man • Patrick Fahy
... the Five Towns in 1873. However, the effect of its disturbing geological evidence that the earth could scarcely have been begun and finished in a little under a week, was happily nullified by the suicide of its author; that pistol-shot had been a striking proof of the literal inspiration ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... "listen. Everything you say springs from mistaken and blind selfishness. Yours is the spirit of the suicide and coward; surely, this is unworthy of you. And, besides, what you say is not true. Your life is not wrecked, only as you determine to wreck it. You say you have nothing to live for. I know of no young man that has more to live for. ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... Larry, with periods of hilarity ending in peaceful "shlape." Certain peoples have their peculiar racial characteristics, but after all, love of an occasional drink seems a more natural proposition than a tendency to suicide, while as to the relative value of the labour itself, that is always an individual ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... with his child disappeared forever from the town of ——-. From that day no tidings whatsoever respecting him ever reached the titillated ears of his anxious neighbours; and doubt, curiosity, discussion, gradually settled into the belief that his despair had hurried him into suicide. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... situation. The circumstances might have elicited laughter; but the contingency, turn whatever way it might, was too serious to admit of levity on my part. Either horn of the dilemma presented a sharp point. To suffer one's-self to be killed, in this sans facon, was little else than suicide—while to kill, smacked strongly of murder! And one or the other was the probable issue—nay, more than probable: for, as I bent my eyes on the resolute countenance of my vis-a-vis, I felt certain that there was no chance ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... now and then by herring-sized pinkeens. In rocky streams, where the quantity of bank food is far smaller, this rule will perhaps not hold good; though who knows not that his best fish are generally taken under some tree from which the little caterpillars, having determined on slow and deliberate suicide are letting themselves down gently by a silken thread into the mouth of the spotted monarch, who has but to sail about and about, and pick them up one by one as they touch the stream?—A sight which makes one ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you."[1] His comrades however prevented him from giving himself up, and called on him to play a braver part and die with them, each by his own hand. He put them off by talking philosophically, as he has it, about the sin of suicide, a euphemism for a collection of commonplaces on the duty of preserving their lives. But when this enraged them, he bethought him of another device, and proposed that they should cast lots to kill each other. ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... the Legation Quarter that he had died a few minutes after ten o'clock that morning from uraemia of the blood—the surgeon of the French Legation being in attendance almost to the last. A certificate issued later by this gentleman immediately quieted the rumours of suicide, though many still refused to believe that he was actually dead. "I did not wish this end," he is reported to have whispered hoarsely a few minutes before he expired, "I did not wish to be Emperor. Those around me ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... corners, and lie in wait to injure unfortunate passers-by, often for no cause whatever. The spirits of persons who have been wronged are especially dreaded by those who have done the wrong. A man who has been defrauded of money will commit suicide, usually by poison, at the door of the wrongdoer, who will thereby first fall into the hands of the authorities, and if he escapes in that quarter, will still have to count with the injured ghost of his victim. A daughter-in-law will drown or hang ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... said, "there'll be nobody in the Cooper Union that night but you and me. I am on the verge of suicide. I would commit suicide if I had the pluck and the outfit. You must paper the house, Fuller. You must send out a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine |
