"Suicidal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... immediately perceived, which it would be suicidal to attempt to refute. It ought, indeed, to have been my line. With a growing distaste I began to realize that all there was left for me was to flatter a populace that Krebs, paradoxically, belaboured. Never in the history of American "uplift" had an electorate been in this manner wooed! upbraided ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... language. Mr. Hillquit dealt with the question in a manner that immediately awakened the attention of every active socialist. Condemning without reserve every resort to lawbreaking and violence, and insisting that both were "ethically unjustifiable and tactically suicidal," Mr. Hillquit pointed out that whenever any group or section of the labor movement "has embarked upon a policy of 'breaking the law' or using 'any weapons which will win the fight,' whether such policy was styled 'terrorism,' 'propaganda of the deed,' 'direct action,' ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... had been seduced into the eating of brandy-saturated corn, and so had staggered away from his fellows. No sooner had I entered the water than this bird took it into its head to fly away with the most indispensable portion of my apparel. Postponing, therefore, for the present, my suicidal design, I just slipped my nether extremities into the sleeves of my coat, and betook myself to a pursuit of the felon with all the nimbleness which the case required and its circumstances would admit. But my evil destiny attended me still. As I ran at full speed, with my ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... excepting even Mecklenburg, there had been no more anarchic spot than Ost-Friesland for the last sixty or seventy years. A Country with parliamentary-life in extraordinary vivacity (rising indeed to the suicidal or internecine pitch, in two or three directions), and next to no regent-life at all. A Country that had loved Freedom, not wisely but too well! Ritter Party, Prince's Party, Towns' Party;—always ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... is due, Miss Howe, and the Stanhope Company has given me some very enjoyable evenings. And you'll hardly believe me, but it is a fact, I assure you, I seldom get a free hand with those notices. Suicidal to the interests of the paper as it is, the editor insists as often as not on ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... them until a bend in the river directly above the camp hid them from her sight. They were gone! She was alone, and they had left a canoe in which lay a paddle! She could scarce believe the good fortune that had come to her. To delay now would be suicidal to her hopes. Quickly she ran from her hiding place and dropped to the ground. A dozen yards lay between ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... through a separation rule now, we're absolutely helpless," he concluded. "Gunterson wouldn't have the vaguest idea of what to do—and wouldn't let any one else tell him. I can pretty nearly see the Guardian, under Samuel Gunterson's suicidal direction, setting sail with all flags flying, and heading straight for the ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... the wall of the gap in support, Vye started to walk, not out of the gap towards the distant lowlands, but back into the valley, forcing himself to that by his will alone and screaming inside against such suicidal folly. He put out his hand tentatively when he reached the two points of rock where that curtain had hung. There was no obstruction—the barrier was down! He ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... creed that behind the suicidal prejudices and laughable superstitions of the Chinese there is a mysterious fund of solid learning hidden away in the uttermost recesses—far beyond the ken of occidentals—of that terra incognita, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... Gonzaga was a fop whose capers they mimicked and whose wits they despised; whilst Valentina, though brave enough and high-spirited, remained a girl of no worldly and less military knowledge, whose orders it might be suicidal to ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... she answered. "Then you must have thought me of a suicidal tendency. Why, he would pound me up in a mortar if I disagreed with him. You have heard him ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... impressed with the fact that, having made a considerable advance under fire and having been checked, it is suicidal to turn ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... provided for, and so heavy a proportion of the garrison on the sick-list,—that I found it impossible to act promptly. The Indians gathered so rapidly without, and assumed so hostile a manner, that I thought it suicidal to attempt a march through the wilderness, encumbered as we should be, without some positive understanding with ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... fire in daylight suicidal; intrenching. The men must be impressed with the fact that, having made a considerable advance under fire and having been checked, it is suicidal to turn ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... steady (the faster men must not run away from the slower ones). 43. To form up immediately after the charge and follow the enemy with fire, not attempting a disorganized pursuit. 44. To understand that it is suicidal to turn his back to an enemy and that, if he cannot advance, he must intrench and hold on until dark. 45. To count distant groups of object or beings. 46. To recognize service targets. 47. NEVER TO FIRE UNTIL HE UNDERSTANDS WHAT ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... leaving far behind the glorious hills of Semlyn, passes through country flatter and more uninteresting at every mile, until it finds itself fairly committed to the fens. Nothing but dreary dykes, muddy and straight, guarded by the ghosts of suicidal pollards, and by rows of dreary and desolate mills, occur to break the blank grey monotony of the landscape. Walter was looking out of the window with curious eyes, and he was wondering what life in such conditions could be like, when the train uttered a despairing scream, and reached ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... he tried it himself and slunk, defeated, into a deeper obscurity. Perhaps he committed suicide; for one can easily imagine that a man who thought he had found a way to cut his own hair and then found that he hadn't, would be thrown into a suicidal depression. There is the possibility that he succeeded in cutting his own hair, and was immediately 'put away,' by his sensitive family where nobody could see him but the hardened attendants. The important fact is that the invention ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... out to the revolted districts was so remorseless that the new Procurator, Julius Classicianus, sent a formal complaint to Rome on the suicidal impolicy of his superior's measures. Nero, however, did not mend matters by sending (like Claudius) a freed-man favourite as Royal Commissioner to supersede Suetonius. Polycletus was received with derision both by Roman and Briton, and Suetonius remained ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... till very recently in one case) been all, I rather think, in the same direction. And surely with excellent reason. To avow that the doctrines of Moral Theism have no foundation to one who sees nothing preternatural in the Bible, is in a Christian such a suicidal absurdity, that whenever an atheist advances it, it is met with indignant ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... how much more to insert lead into your system every day of your life; a cumulative poison, and one so deadly and so subtle, that the Sheffield file-cutters die in their prime, from merely hammering on a leaden anvil. And what do you gain by this suicidal habit? No plum has a sweeter bloom or more delicious texture than the skin of your young face; but this mineral filth hides that delicate texture, and substitutes a dry, uniform appearance, more like a certain kind of leprosy than health. Nature made your ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... not deny that they are anxious to see the people leave the country. They give them every assistance to do so. Their object is to get more land into their own hands, but the policy will eventually prove suicidal. A revolutionary spirit is spreading fast through Europe. Already the standing subject of public addresses to the people in England, is the injustice of certain individuals being allowed to hold such immense tracts ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... with himself. But that catastrophe was the result of a totally different malady, which, as it were, projected itself upon the disease which was established. His case was in the distinctive manner a complication, and the complaint under which he really succumbed, was hereditary suicidal mania. Poor Mr. Jennings I cannot call a patient of mine, for I had not even begun to treat his case, and he had not yet given me, I am convinced, his full and unreserved confidence. If the patient do not array himself on the side of the ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... There was not only natural sorrow there, occasioned by the disappearance of her daughter, but the shame which resulted from her fall and her infamy; and though last not least, the terrible apprehension that the hapless girl had rushed by suicidal means into the presence of an offended God, "unanointed, unaneled," with all her sins upon her head. Her clothes were hanging from the branches of a large burdock* against the wall, and from time to time the father cast his eyes upon them with ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... you when you came by that little girl over there. She is, by the way, one of our most interesting cases. Came here for hip disease. She is an orphan,—nothing known about her parents,—probably alcoholic from the mental symptoms. She has hysteria and undeveloped suicidal mania." ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... jealousy which had led them in William's reign to require the suppression of the Irish woollen manufacture, now, in Anne's, rose against the proposal of a legislative union.[133] In blindness which was not only fatal but suicidal also, "they persuaded themselves that the union would make Ireland rich, and that England's interest was to keep her poor;" as if it had been possible for one portion of the kingdom to increase in prosperity without every other portion benefiting ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... unprofitable bargain for the smaller one. She had nothing to fear from Great Britain, since she had been voluntarily turned into an independent republic by her and had lived in peace with her for forty years. Her laws were as liberal as our own. But by this suicidal treaty she agreed to share the fortunes of a State which was deliberately courting war by its persistently unfriendly attitude, and whose reactionary and narrow legislation would, one might imagine, have alienated the sympathy of her progressive neighbour. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ashamed of it even when he boasts of it. That there is some connection between a love and a vow nearly every human being knows before he is eighteen. That there is a solid and instinctive connection between the idea of sexual ecstasy and the idea of some sort of almost suicidal constancy, this I say is simply the first fact in one's own psychology; boys and girls know it almost before they know their own language. How far it can be trusted, how it can best be dealt with, ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... practise virtues that unattached individuals are incapable of. It is true that too much of this domestic virtue is self-denial, which is not a virtue at all; but then the following of the inner light at all costs is largely self-indulgence, which is just as suicidal, just as weak, just as cowardly as self-denial. Ibsen, who takes us into the matter far more resolutely than Jesus, is unable to find any golden rule: both Brand and Peer Gynt come to a bad end; and though Brand does not do as much mischief ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... years, when Wade tried to recall that mad ride, he found it only a vague blur upon his memory. He was conscious only of the fact that he had traveled at a speed which, in saner moments, he would have considered suicidal. Urging the big black over the rougher ground of the higher levels, he rode like a maniac, without regard for his own life and without mercy for the magnificent horse beneath him. Time and again the gelding stumbled on the rocky footing and almost fell, only to be urged to further efforts ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... obey. It was becoming to her as a wife that she should submit. She would give up Conway Dalrymple, and would induce him,—in spite of his violent attachment to herself,—to take a wife. She herself would choose a wife for him. She herself would, with suicidal hands, destroy the romance of her own life, since an overbearing, brutal husband demanded that it should be destroyed. She would sacrifice her own feelings, and do all in her power to bring Conway Dalrymple and Clara Van Siever ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... collapse, was the ineffectiveness of the early air-ships against each other. Upon anything below they could rain explosives in the most deadly fashion, forts and ships and cities lay at their mercy, but unless they were prepared for a suicidal grapple they could do remarkably little mischief to each other. The armament of the huge German airships, big as the biggest mammoth liners afloat, was one machine gun that could easily have been packed up on a couple of mules. In addition, when it ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... enforce manhood suffrage in all the States of the Union, the Republican party has been guilty of three successive arbitrary acts, three retrogressive steps in legislation, alike invidious and insulting to women and suicidal to the nation. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... assured of it, will not clamor for any early and thoughtless surrender of our present advantages, for fear of hurting the sensibilities of the South by imposing a sense of 'subordination.' With the agony of despair, such men would remonstrate against any such suicidal policy, and entreat the Government of the United States and the people of the North to stand by them in their great distress, through, until the end. While writing, the following newspaper paragraph attracts our attention, and is ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the large part which heredity plays in the production of mental disorders. Tables XX and XXI set forth the most important results of his work. Mayet considers a case hereditary if any near relative of the subject suffered from mental or nervous disorder, or was intemperate, suicidal, criminal or eccentric.[72] ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... of Jabin's army; the famous exploits of Gideon who, if he was a superior strategist and warrior, gave little evidence, by his seventy sons, of his morality according to Christian standards; the death of Abimelech, which was half suicidal lest it should be said that a woman's hand had slain him; these, and more also of the same sort, leave the impression on the mind that those "colonial days" of the Hebrew nation were far from days of peace or ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... are her bridges! how effectually they have promoted her suburban growth! Canova thought the Waterloo Bridge the finest in Europe, and, by a strangely tragic coincidence, this noble and costly structure is the favorite scene of suicidal despair, wherewith the catastrophes of modern novels and the most pathetic of city lyrics are indissolably associated. Westminster Bridge is as truly the Swiss Laboyle's monument of architectural genius, fortitude, and patience, as St. Paul's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... without, so for days the officers and men of the United States blockading fleet outside were ignorant whether Cervera's entire fleet was cooped up within. To send in a boat to make a reconnoissance would have been suicidal, for the channel, difficult at all times, was blocked by mines and torpedoes. For this reason, too, there could be no repetition of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... temporary or permanent, amnesia or memory loss may and usually is present (e. g., general paresis, tumor, cerebral arteriosclerosis, etc.). As the result of Carbon monoxide poisoning, as after accidental or attempted suicidal gas inhalation, the memory, especially for the most recent events, is impaired and the patient cannot remember the events as they occur; he passes from moment to moment unconnected to the recent past, though his remote past is clear. ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... him forgetful of the gloom that had settled over him during these last months. That night he would see Jeanne. His body thrilled at the thought, until for a time he forgot that he would also see and talk with Eileen. A few days before he had told Gregson that it would be suicidal to fight the northerners; now he was eager for action, eager to begin and end the affair—to win or lose. If he had stopped to analyze the change in himself he would have found that the beautiful girl whom he had first seen on the moonlit rock was at the ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... notions, but forbid their practice. It was generally believed that there would be a flurry; that some of the extreme Southern States would go so far as to pass ordinances of secession. But the common impression was that this step was so plainly suicidal for the South, that the movement would not spread over much of the territory and would ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... door?" he said. "Bon Dieu! what a suicidal note that strikes—that hopeless rain—a northern autumn evening! There was a chill in the air as I drove down the Faubourg. If I were a woman I should have tea, or a cry. Being a man, I curse the weather and drive in a hired carriage to ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... desolate places, from which he took draughts till he was convalescent. In any estimate of Borrow's life the strange attacks of what he called "the Fear" or "the Horrors" must be taken into account. At times they even produced a suicidal tendency, as when, in 1824, he wrote to his friend Roger Kerrison, "Come to me immediately; I am, I believe, dying." The facsimile of this note in Knapp's "Life of Borrow" is as tremulous as if the writer was suffering ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... not tell of soup and fish In solemn silence swallowed, The sobs that ushered in each dish, And its departure followed, Nor yet my suicidal wish To BE the ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... her life that small boats were most unsafe. A little girl had been drowned in a lake near where she was visiting once through going in a boat. Why didn't the captain sail right up to the island as she had expected and put us ashore? Even at Panama with only a little way to go she had felt it suicidal—here it was not ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... I to say? It seems to me that any more suicidal thing than throwing away the borough never was done. Who will thank you? What additional support will you get? How will it increase your power? It's like King Lear throwing off his clothes in the storm because his daughters turned him out. And you didn't ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of the pairs made male and female. Into those eyes she would call up her soul, and there make it sit, flashing light, in gleams and sparkles, shoots and coruscations—not from great, black pupils alone—to whose size there were who said the suicidal belladonna lent its aid—but from great, dark irids as well—nay, from eyeballs, eyelashes, and eyelids, as from spiritual catapult or culverin, would she dart the lightnings of her present soul, invading with influence as irresistible as subtile ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... he made all sail on the ship, and bore away for the Cape with a heavy heart. The sea was like a mill-pond, but in that he saw only its well-known treachery, to lead them on to this unparalleled act of madness: each sail he hoisted seemed one more agent of Destruction rising at his own suicidal command. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... ship's officers and the commander of the gun-crew resulted in a single but definite conclusion. The desperate, even suicidal manner in which the men left the ship signified but one thing: the absolute necessity of flight before an even more sinister peril confronted them. Not a man on board doubted for an instant that ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... business associates, and, to a man, they discouraged the step, but almost invariably upon the argument that it was suicidal to leave New York. He had now a glimpse of the truth that there is no man so provincially narrow as the untravelled New Yorker who believes in his heart that the sun rises in the East River and sets in the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... say random rocks in the ocean are not what is wanted; let them strike for Acapulco and the solid continent. That does look like the rational course, but one presently guesses from the diaries that the thing would have been wholly irrational—indeed, suicidal. If the boats struck for Albemarle they would be in the doldrums all the way; and that means a watery perdition, with winds which are wholly crazy, and blow from all points of the compass at once and also perpendicularly. If the boats tried for Acapulco they would get ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... by pneumonia, had taken a long travelling holiday to rest up. But his voice, instead of coming back, grew weaker and weaker, driving him finally into a suicidal artistic frenzy, during which he put on his full suit of evening clothes, a black pearl shirt stud, a tall silk hat, in the dead of night, and flung himself from the stern of a P. & O. boat into the sea. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... fascination of, if not positive admiration for, the sublime composure with which Cato, Brutus, Petronius and a host of other ancient worthies, terminated their own earthly existence. Is it too bold to hint that the death of the first of the philosophers was partly suicidal? When we are told so minutely by his pupils how their master willingly submitted to the mandate of the state—which he knew was morally mistaken—in spite of the possibilities of escape, and how he took up the cup of hemlock in his own hand, even offering ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... off about eight o'clock, on a cloudy, rainy, muddy, suicidal morning, and the material that composed it was worthy of illustration by Cruikshank. The procession was singularly varied, and supremely bizarre. There were the army-wagons, with sick and wounded soldiers, lumbering heavily along; the paroled ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... until, having come within a hundred yards, the mass broke into single file and raced past the camp, each warrior lying along the off side of his pony and firing beneath its neck—the usual but utterly stupid and suicidal Sioux tactics, for accurate fire under such ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... turned, and then robbed him of his fatherland. Then it was that, being made the very slave of circumstance, he was driven to court the men he hated most; and at a time when his own life was in daily peril, he must see his dearest friends and fellow-citizens, nay, the very State itself, bent on a suicidal course, and yet, in the exclusion of exile, be unable to lend a helping hand. "It is not men of this stamp," they averred, "who desire changes in affairs and revolution: had he not already guaranteed to him by the Democracy a position higher than that of his ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... the victim, represents him as cutting off his own head before the idol, with a peculiar two-handled knife "like those used in currying leather." And strange as this sounds it is undoubtedly true. Ibn Batuta witnessed the suicidal feat at the Court of the Pagan King of Mul-Java (somewhere on the const of the Gulf of Siam), and Mr. Ward, without any knowledge of these authorities, had heard that an instrument for this purpose was formerly ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... truth, the Church is the custodian of faith, and the Church, on the platform of religious truth, is absolutely uncompromising and intolerant, just as the State is in regard to treason. She cannot admit error, she cannot approve error; to do so would be suicidal. She cannot lend the approval of her presence, nay even of her silence, to error. She stands aloof from heresy, must always see in it an enemy, condemns it and cannot help condemning it, for she stands for truth, pure and unalloyed truth, which ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... realities of guilt. Hers is the mock fortitude of a mind deluded by ambition; she shames her husband with a superhuman audacity of fancy which she cannot support, but sinks in the season of remorse, and dies in suicidal agony. Her speech: ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... in the sides of these scoundrels. With me out of the way, they feel that they can secure the adoption of all these infamous measures. My partners and the leaders on our side have sent for me to return secretly. They won't bring the matter to issue if they find that I've returned; it would be suicidal. Therefore it is necessary that we steal a march on 'em. I know the inside workings of the scheme. If I can steal back and keep under cover as an advisory chief, so to speak, we can well afford to let 'em rush the matter through, for then we can spring ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... was for, I could not understand. B. thought that it was put there for suicidal purposes. His idea was that the customer, after eating all the other things in the plate, would wish he were dead, and that the restaurant people, knowing this, had thoughtfully provided him with red paint for one, so that he could poison himself off ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... won or shared Beneath the starry cope— Or where the suicidal wretch Hung up the fatal rope; Or Beauty kept an evil tryste, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... moment, then, when it was suicidal to attempt an attack which his men had refused to carry out under the much less dangerous conditions that prevailed all day—it was ascertained afterwards that the first shower of bullets fell into the startled camp about ten o'clock that morning—at that moment, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... tactics for a specific and attainable object. The Lords really had no intelligible object but to embarrass a Government they could not demolish, and gratify their own spite. If the most violent Radical had been permitted to chalk out the most suicidal course for the House of Lords to follow, he could have devised nothing more ingenious and well contrived than what they have actually done, taking care to keep up their character in the nation for intolerance, and inculcating a belief in their adherence to the most ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... great and wise Dr. Perkins remarked that 'the women of America are suicidal from the cradle to the grave!' I will give you one of his pamphlets, miss, to take away with you, and you will be convinced that slippers are serpents in disguise in winter weather! The wooden shoes of Germany rather! Ay, or even the sabot of France! You must not ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... his empire by restoring the influence of the Caliphate, and rallying the Mohammedan world once more around the throne of Othman. Judged from a European standpoint, this policy is at once reactionary and suicidal. It ignores the fact that the Ottoman empire is dependent for its existence upon the good-will of Europe; that it has measured its strength with a single Christian Power, and been utterly crushed in a year. ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... full glories of the spring in Dauphine. It was only a few weeks before the ripening of cherries. Did that cherry-idyll with Mdlle. de Colombier lure him back to life? Or did the hope of striking a blow for Corsica stay his suicidal hand? Probably the latter; for we find him shortly afterwards tilting against a Protestant minister of Geneva who had ventured to criticise one of the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... loaded the roer, the hunters returned to their beds. One might suppose they would have dragged the suicidal hyena away from the spot, lest his carcass should serve as a warning to his comrades, and keep them away from the trap. But Swartboy knew better than that. Instead of being scared by the dead body of one of ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... College. His mother lives upon the victories which he despises; but at last she yields to the taint which was in her own blood as well as her husband's, and destroys herself. The son, who was aware of her suicidal tendency, and had once overheard her combating it in prayer, curses the God who would not listen to her and help her, and rejects Him from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... ever come, we can still die fighting it. But I trust to Knowledge to do her own work. You remember that sentence in the Laws, 'Many a victory has been and will be suicidal to the victors, but education is never suicidal'? Nor will you persuade me easily that the new mistress up yonder,"—the Inspector nodded back at the school building—"is going to train her children to be little beasts ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hastened away to spread the news. With the greatest difficulty the body was recovered, and conveyed to Shut-up Dubarry. The inquest that sat upon it rendered the simple verdict, 'Found Dead'; for whether the death were accidental or suicidal, or whether it resulted from the fall upon the rocks, or from the waters of the cascade, the Dogberries of ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... burst its casing with an appetizing sizzle and leaped, it seemed of its own accord, into suicidal embers. Brian rescued it with a stick and looked up. Don had ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... and degrade are not hygienic. Many who need amusement make the fatal mistake of getting it in suicidal ways, in the saloons, ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... practically identical with those of women-workers in Silesia, or at any or all of the points on the continent where women are employed. Philanthropists have cried out; political economists have shown the suicidal nature of non-interference, and demonstrated that if the State gains to-day a slight surplus in her treasury, she has, on the other hand, lost something for which no money equivalent can be given, and that the women who labor from twelve to sixteen hours in the ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... Terrors breathes his last, Infinity shall creep into her shell, Cause and effect shall from their thrones be cast, And end their strife with suicidal yell: ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... not even submit to the National Assembly. The leaders were so full of discords and personal ambition that they would not unite on anything. Mavrokordatos and Ypsilanti were not on speaking terms. One is naturally astonished at such suicidal courses, but he forgets what a powerful passion jealousy is in the human soul. It was not absent from our own war of Independence, in which at one time rival generals would have supplanted, if possible, even Washington himself; indeed, it is present ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... The suicidal war waged against trees and birds alike by the early settlers has left but little inducement to follow in this country the field-sports so fashionable in England. Riding on horseback, however, is now more popular ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... no desire to make cheap fun of the extremely abrupt conversions of all these people; that is a point of art, not of morals; and, after all, many conversions have been abrupt. This saviour's method of making people good is to tell them how good they are already; and in the case of suicidal outcasts, whose moral backs are broken, and who are soaked with sincere self-contempt, I can imagine that this might be quite the right way. I should not deliver this message to authors or members of Parliament, because they would so ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... whether married or unmarried, the more scrupulously should they strive to repress in themselves everything annoying, and to cherish both in themselves and each other everything pleasing. While each should draw on his love to neutralize the faults of his friend, it is suicidal to draw on his friend's love to neutralize his own faults. Love should be cumulative, since it can not be stationary. If it does not increase, it decreases. Love, like confidence, is a plant of slow growth, and of most exotic fragility. It must be constantly and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... Independence Club debate, and the scheme was thoroughly discussed pro and con by those who took part in the debate, it was the consensus of opinion that the turning over of the Military Department to a foreign power was suicidal policy and they decided to persuade the government to stop this scheme. The next day some 10,000 or more members of the club assembled in front of the palace, and petitioned the Emperor to cancel the agreement of ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... Presbyterians had been pressed with almost as much severity as against Catholics. Under the rule of Archbishops Boulter, Hoadly, and Stone, who had in succession governed the country, the Test Act had been employed with a suicidal severity, which had driven thousands of industrious men to join their brethren in America, where they could worship in peace, and where their presence was before long destined to produce a formidable effect ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... war, of course you have studied it all more deeply than I have the power to do; still I cannot help thinking you distress yourself unnecessarily. As I said to the wife when I first heard of it, it's suicidal. One can only feel pity for such poor ignorant creatures, rushing headlong on their ruin. Depend upon it, they will very soon come to their senses and deplore their own rash action. A very few weeks will see the finish ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... out a helping hand. Further, he has been a recipient of favours from the defunct dynasty, and he cannot bear to watch unmoved, the sight of the Ching House being made the channel of brigandage with suicidal results. Wherever duty calls, Chi-jui will go in spite of the danger of death. You, gentlemen, are the pillars of the Republic of China and therefore have your own duties to perform. In face of this extraordinary crisis, our indignation must be one. For the interest ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... shown that a good deal could be done in this direction. The new enthusiasts failed to see that the genius of Protestantism is the genius of freedom, and that man refuses to be manufactured except on suicidal terms. He must first sacrifice that which is his distinctive title to manhood—his individuality and will. That the prophets of educational realism should have failed to see this is not to be laid at their door as a fault; it merely ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... have been saved, if the result in his case could have been the same as with a man we knew in Santa Barbara, who, becoming discouraged by continual rheumatism, combined with poverty, took a large dose of strychnine, with suicidal intent, but, to his astonishment, was entirely cured of his rheumatism; and the notoriety he acquired presently procured him an abundance ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... "execute a freeman's will as lightning doth the will of God." This is its mission, the faithful execution of its fiat, the palladium of liberty for all the people. Opposition to the exercise of this right in a representative government is disintegrating by contention and suicidal in success. It has been, and still is, the cause of bitter struggle in our own country. Disregard of the ultimatum of constitutional majorities, the foundation of our system of government, as the cause of the civil war, the past and ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... their last avenue of escape. He saw clearly the force of their meaning. It had, indeed, now become a battle for life between him and Bud and their two accusers. Their testimony, once they were free, would turn suspicion directly upon Quinley and Ugger. It would be suicidal for the two men now to attempt to do anything to free them. Thure raised his eyes and looked wildly around, at the face of the alcalde, the faces of the jury, and the faces of the surrounding crowd. On all was a look of ominous sadness and sternness ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... King Charles I., Lord Baltimore established his Catholic colony, which he called "Maryland." The early history of this colony is interesting because it affords probably the first example of full religious liberty. It would doubtless have been suicidal for the Catholics, situated as they were, to attempt anything like persecution, but Baltimore and the Catholics of Maryland for many generations deserve none the less honour for the consistency with which they ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... of his reign came in 1870, when, on a flimsy pretence, a misunderstanding which called only for diplomatic adjustment, he suddenly declared war against Germany and rashly put his armies into the field to cope with that powerful rival. Never had there been a more unwise or suicidal proceeding. In shameful ignorance of the real condition of the army, which he was made to believe was "five times ready," "ready to the last gaiter button," he marshalled against the thoroughly prepared military power of Germany an army ill-organized, ill-supplied, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... infallibility, as a provision, adapted by the mercy of the Creator, to preserve religion in the world, and to restrain that freedom of thought, which of course in itself is one of the greatest of our natural gifts, and to rescue it from its own suicidal excesses. And let it be observed that, neither here nor in what follows, shall I have occasion to speak directly of the revealed body of truths, but only as they bear upon the defence of natural religion. I say, that a power, possessed of infallibility in religious teaching, is happily ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... so spiteful! All along, Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: The river which had done them all the wrong, Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... The Irish are born fighters. One of the most splendid passages which even Irish oratory ever produced was that in which Sheill protested against the insolence of stigmatizing the countrymen of Wellington as "aliens" from England, and no policy could be more suicidal than that which deflects the soldiership of Ireland from the ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... uninformed. I can only answer the last one. The sword is intended for suicidal purposes, the Ko-Katana for an enemy. This is a case of murder, ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... of physical and moral laws to anticipate the most serious danger to such an organisation as Lord Byron's, from a precocious development of the passions. Alcoholic and narcotic stimulants, in the case of such a person, would be regarded as little less than suicidal, and an early course of combined drinking and licentiousness as tending directly to establish those unsound conditions which lead towards moral insanity. Yet not only Lord Byron's testimony, but every probability from the licence of ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... toleration of injustice and absurdity, that holding back of the hand from political affairs as from something unclean, which lost France, if we are to believe M. Michelet, for the Reformation; a spirit necessarily fatal in the long-run to the existence of any sect that may profess it; a suicidal doctrine that survives among us to this day in narrow views of personal duty, and the low political morality of many virtuous men. In Knox, on the other hand, we see foreshadowed the whole Puritan Revolution and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was merely thinking that it seems suicidal for an artist of your quality to bury herself alive in a little Frontier station, on the edge of a desert, more than a hundred ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... assumption of "direction" is unconvincing, if not suicidal in character. Assuming that direction may have occurred, the fact of direction adds nothing to the qualities or possibilities of existence, any more than the "directivity" of a chemist adds to the possibilities of certain elements ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... increased. The great work of the future must be done by native ministers. If China is ever to be evangelized, it must be to a large degree by Chinese evangelists. To adopt deliberately the policy of restricting the number of such evangelists and teachers would be suicidal. As a solution, therefore, this method is quite impracticable, as it would be a relief at the expense ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... outlook upon mankind and affairs. From that to the sentiment I have called anti-British was no more than a step. Many thoroughly good, honourable, benevolent people took that step unwittingly, and all unconsciously became permeated with the vicious, suicidal sentiment, while really seeking only good. Such people were saved by their natural goodness and sense from becoming actual and purposeful enemies of their country. But as "Little Englanders"—so they were called—they managed, with ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... exclaimed Mrs. Coleman, suddenly waking up to a sense of duty, out of a dangerous little nap in which she had been indulging, and which occasioned me great uneasiness, by reason of the opportunity it afforded her for the display of an alarming suicidal propensity, which threatened to leave Mr. Coleman a disconsolate widower, and ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... conditions it is not surprising that Greece never enjoyed political unity; and just here was her great and suicidal weakness. The Romans reduced various races, in habitual war with one another and marked by variations of dialect and customs, into a single government, and kept them there; but the Greeks, though possessing a common inheritance, a common language, a common religion, and a common type ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... rushed through my excited mind, I hastily summoned the stewardess, and asked what was the matter to cause such a commotion overhead. I learnt from her that an unusual and almost fatal event had just occurred. The man at the wheel, suddenly seized with a suicidal mania, had rushed from his post, possessed himself of two mops, which were lying on the deck, and putting one under each arm, with a wild and fiendish shriek had jumped overboard. The captain immediately stopped the ship and ordered ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... suspicion was an after-thought. The effect produced upon his mental condition by the statements and actings of the "afflicted children" in 1692 was unconsciously transferred to 1687. The delusion, in which he was then fully participating, led him to put a different interpretation upon the suicidal wounds and horrible end of the wretched maniac, five ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... thoughtlessness. And should you manage, even in the time of sickness, and up to the very hour of death, to shut out the future from your mind; should long and inveterate habit enable you to succeed in the terrible, suicidal experiment, so that you shall die as you have lived—fearing nothing, because believing nothing,—can you avoid entering the other world? Can you prevent a meeting between yourself and your God; or silence an accusing conscience for ever; or hinder Christ from coming to judge ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... understand it, John. I understand that this is a chimera,—a dream that you have got. I know well that no duty can require you to do this mad—this suicidal thing. I know you love Eleanor Harding with all your heart, and I tell you now that she loves you as well. If there was a plain, a positive duty before you, I would be the last to bid you neglect it for any woman's love; but this—; oh, think again, before you ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... near London, and he took a house for his family in Kensington. And now a strange fancy possessed Cecil. It happened one day, when they were out driving, that a little boy drifting across the street with the suicidal insouciance of his kind, got knocked down by their horses, and, of course, had to be driven straight to the hospital to have his injuries investigated. It was necessary to detain the child, and Cecil walked down most days ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... irresistible, and, turning up course, they fled in dismay, leaving their dead upon the ground in windrows. Three standard-bearers in succession fell before the fatal aim of the same rifle, and no man dared repeat the suicidal act of again displaying that ensign. We have seen a letter from an officer high in command who witnessed that action, and, after describing it, he remarks,—"There is more chance of credit to your State in the new gun and men than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... of St. Paul and of Constantine merely by its being a sudden spiritual impulse. It was in no sense a conversion to any belief in person or creed, it was but the assertion of a strong manhood against an almost suicidal mood of despair; a condition set forth with superabundant paraphernalia of eloquence easily condensed. Doubt in the mind of Teufelsdroeckh had darkened into disbelief in divine or human justice, freedom, or himself. If there be a God, He sits on the hills "since the first Sabbath," ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... symptoms are: sudden feeling of deep depression, suicidal tendencies, alternating with sudden inexplicable lightheartedness. Capriciousness and great dissatisfaction with myself and life generally. Horror at my own incompleteness of sex and sudden fits of hatred toward women and a great longing ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... thou slayest none can save: Silent and dark oblivion rolls Over the glory in the grave Of fierce and suicidal souls. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... effect, the next post from England came laden with speeches and newspaper articles, denouncing, in no measured terms, the 'suicidal folly of rewarding rebels for rebellion.' A London journal of influence, speaking of the British population as affected by the measure in question, said:— 'They are tolerably able to take care of themselves, and we very much misconstrue the tone adopted ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... as it were, anticipated the strength of later life, by twelve years of incessant toil, rendered lucrative by the most violent exertions, and accompanied by such privations as made it almost suicidal. Then (for it was a time of splendid wages, compared to the present), by sleepless nights and constant labor, she contrived to earn about two shillings (fifty sous) a day, and with this she managed to educate her son and her ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the state of his health has exacted throughout an extreme caution in regard to mental application, reducing it at best within narrow and precarious limits, and often precluding it. Indeed, for two periods, each of several years, any attempt at bookish occupation would have been merely suicidal. A condition of sight arising from kindred sources has also retarded the work, since it has never permitted reading or writing continuously for much more than five minutes, and often has not permitted them at all. ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Great Britain, which had been a feature of our policy during his early career. But when Lord Beaconsfield would have plunged into a war with Russia in 1878, without an ally or a friend, he opposed that policy as suicidal. Of that policy he said at that time: 'English Radicals of the present day do not bound their sympathies by the Channel ... a Europe without England is as incomplete, and as badly balanced, and as heavily weighted ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... withdraw with his command to Peshawur, by Lord Ellenborough, without effecting one of the objects of the expedition—the deliverance of the English captives in Akbar's hands at Kabul,—protested against such a suicidal act on the part of any Englishman or any Administration, and, at great personal ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... excuse the apparent insanity of the remark, but the more I gaze on your features, the more I'm convinced that you'd never be such a suicidal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... our conversation just as the tar from the cable tanks clung to our wearing apparel, while few among us but had wild nightmares wherein the cable became a sentient thing, and made faces at us as it leapt overboard in a continuous suicidal frenzy. ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... impossible to insure that the whole energy of the Arm will be directed to the carrying out of its reconnoitring functions in conformity with the views entertained at Headquarters. It must be characterized as one of the most suicidal errors when the superior Command conceals its purposes from its executive organs. Diffused activity, waste of energy, misunderstandings, and confusion would be the inevitable consequences, and military history—not the least that of 1870-1871—gives ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... seems to have washed news away or got it under water." That was in April. In June he wrote: "I finished my readings on Friday night to an enormous hall—nearly L200. The success has been throughout complete. It seems almost suicidal to leave off with the town so full, but I don't like to depart from my public pledge. A man from Australia is in London ready to pay L10,000 for eight months there. If——" It was an If that troubled him for some time, and led to agitating discussion. The civil war having closed America, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... that a man who rides day and night, through that country, carrying five thousand dollars with him, and when everybody in the country knows that according to contract he is about due to make a five thousand dollar payment, is acting like a fool with a suicidal mania?" ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... see anything like the obstinacy and folly of these burghers?" Sainte Aldegonde said in despair to Ned, when, in spite of his entreaties, this suicidal edict had been issued. "What possible avail is it to endeavour to defend a city which seems bent on its ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... This is, indeed, one of the regular fruits of the over-studious career. Too much questioning and too little active responsibility lead, almost as often as too much sensualism does, to the edge of the slope, at the bottom of which lie pessimism and the nightmare or suicidal view of life. But to the diseases which reflection breeds, still further reflection can oppose effective remedies; and it is of the melancholy and Weltschmerz bred of reflection that ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... primary industries upon which it depends. In a word, when the forests fail, the daily life of the average citizen will inevitably feel the pinch on every side. And the forests have already begun to fail, as the direct result of the suicidal policy of forest destruction which the people of the United States have allowed ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... Outrage upon a British Commissioner on the Indian Frontier. Revolt of the Entire Bodahl Tribe. Russian Intrigue in Central Asia. Dangerous Position of the Viceroy at Simla." Oh, dear me, no; not to have a leader upon THAT, my dear sir, would be simply suicidal!' ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... you received those proposals is fair criterion," Number One resumed, "there can be little doubt as to our decision. Speaking for myself, I think it would be suicidal to reject the overtures of the Soviet Government in Russia. Let ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... consent, conceded to them. Notwithstanding all that could be urged by a number of eminent and influential preachers and writers, freethinking became a term everywhere associated with Deism and disbelief. It was a suicidal error, which rapidly gained ground, and lingers still. The Deists gained great advantage from it. They started as it were with an unchallenged verbal assumption that the most fundamental principle of correct ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... '82, the manufactures of the country revived and flourished; and the smile of contented industry was visible all over the land. In 1797 there were 15,000 silk-weavers in the city of Dublin alone. There are now but 400. Such is the practical effect of the Union, of that suicidal act of the Irish Parliament which yielded up in a moment of treachery and terror the dearest interests of the country to the legislation of an English Parliament and the tender mercies of Castlereagh,—of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... temperament often associated with moral depravity and various excesses in the first generation; in the second, severe neuroses, a tendency to apoplexy and alcoholism; in the third, psychic disturbances, suicidal tendencies and intellectual incapacity; and in the fourth, congenital idiocy, malformations and arrests of development. There are some very definite data with regard to inheritance in the nervous disease known as epilepsy. The essential condition in this ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... pirate's gold. The land-crabs are little short of a nightmare. They peep out at you from every nook and boulder. Their dead staring eyes follow your every step as if to say, 'If only you will drop down we will do the rest.' To lie down and sleep on any part of the island would be suicidal. Of course, Knight had a specially cleared place with all sorts of precautions, otherwise he would never have survived these beasts, which even tried to nibble your boots as you stood—staring hard at you the whole time. One feature that would soon ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... to British North America—it would have cut New England off from the rest of the Union. Was it legally within the power of New York to place the six States of New England in such a position? And why should it be assumed that so suicidal a power of destroying a nationality should be inherent in every portion of the nation? The Slates are bound together by a written compact, but that compact gives each State no such power. Surely such a power would have been specified had it been intended that it should be given. But ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... 1688 was the crowning triumph of this public opinion. But for the time it seemed a suicidal triumph. At the moment when the national will claimed to be omnipotent, the nation found itself helpless to carry out its will. In making the revolution it had meant to vindicate English freedom and English Protestantism from the attacks of the Crown. But it had never meant ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... chambers with great secrecy, and broke into a cold sweat to think, as he stood half through the doorway, how narrowly he had escaped from slamming the door behind him. This was an act which might have been suicidal in its stupidity; for to give any sign of his presence there after that thundering summons at the door would have been to betray himself beyond redemption. He inserted his latch-key noiselessly, and, crouching to escape imagined observers, drew the door gently after him, and turned the ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... together they send out vibrations of redemption, and have planned the spiritual technique of salvation for this age. The work of these two fully-illumined masters-one with the body, and one without it-is to inspire the nations to forsake suicidal wars, race hatreds, religious sectarianism, and the boomerang-evils of materialism. Babaji is well aware of the trend of modern times, especially of the influence and complexities of Western civilization, and realizes the necessity of spreading ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... revolution. It is profanation to compare with this patience and glory the insurrection begun by South Carolina. She—the first time such an organization ever did it—assumed to be a nation; and then madly led off in a suicidal war on the National Government, although the three branches of it, Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary, recognized every constitutional obligation, and had not attempted an invasion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... far on sacred subjects! Listen,—for what I have to say to you will but strengthen you in your faith,—and you will need more than all the strength of the Four Evangelists to bear you stiffly up against the suicidal Negation of this present disastrous epoch. Ages ago,—ay, more than six or seven thousand years ago, there were certain communities of men in the East,— scholars, sages, poets, astronomers, and scientists, who, desiring to give themselves up entirely to study and research, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Trojan war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to destroy them. Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was just, and men were the better for being punished. But that the deed was evil, and God the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which we will allow no one, old or young, to utter. This is our first and great principle—God is the author ...
— The Republic • Plato
... say, "He came forth, at best, from a long day of labor at his writing-desk, after his faculties had been at the stretch,—feeling, passion, thought, fancy, excitable nerves, suicidal brain, all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... But war to the knife cannot be confined to one of the combatants; the alternative, Weltmacht oder Niedergang, was thrust by Germany upon the Allies when she chose that motto for herself. If the modern man were as much dominated by economic motives as is sometimes supposed, the suicidal results of such a conflict would have been apparent to all; but the poetry and idealism of human nature, no longer centred, as formerly, in religion, had gathered round a romantic patriotism, for ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... little too fast,—Gager by name, who declared that the Bunfit theory "warn't on the cards." According to Gager's information, Smiler was at this moment a broken-hearted man,—ranging between mad indignation and suicidal despondency, because he had been treated with treachery in some direction. Mr. Gager was as fully convinced as Bunfit that the diamonds had not been in the box. There was bitter, raging, heart-breaking disappointment about the diamonds in more ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... abandon positions which the alteration of time makes untenable, and to admit and invite into the service of the sanctuary the fullest light of advancing knowledge. Of all positions the most fatally suicidal for Protestants to occupy is the assumption, which it is competent for Roman Catholics to hold, but not for them, that beliefs once sanctioned by the Church are sacred, and that to impugn them is not error ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... submitted to the endura; during it "she ate nothing whatever, but drank some water; she died in six weeks."[1] This case gives us some idea of this terrible practice; we see that they were sometimes allowed to drink water, which explains the extraordinary duration of some of these suicidal fasts. ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... Notwithstanding her late suicidal thoughts, the instinctive aversion to death is stronger than her weariness of life, and instinctively does she strive to ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... of the Primacy as acknowledged at Chalcedon suicidal on the part of those who believe in ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... farewell-letters to write. He had no friends with whom he was on terms of valediction. There was nothing at all for him to do. He stared blankly out of the window, at the greyness and blackness of the sky. What a day! What a climate! Why did any sane person live in England? He felt positively suicidal. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... all this national happiness and prosperity, the kingdom of France was again to appear before the world as the persecutor of her best citizens, the destroyer of her own vital interests. The Edict of Nantes was revoked on 22d October, 1685. It is not our purpose to name the causes of this suicidal policy, as they are indelibly written on the pages of our world's history, nor shall we point to the well-known provisions of this insane and bloody act. In a word, Protestant worship was abolished throughout France, under the penalty of arrest, with the confiscation of goods. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was: "If you wish it, I will abdicate." [16] He would rather give up his crown than assume the responsibility of sanctioning a policy which his whole military training and experience told him was insane and suicidal: how justly, the event soon showed. The losses of men and ships which Gallipoli cost far exceeded the whole of Greece's military and naval resources; and if that cost proved more than embarrassing to England and France, it ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... day of inactivity, and three months of it could not have devastated them more. They have touched the very bottom of suicidal gloom. Three months hence their state of mind will no doubt appear in all its absurdity, but at the moment it is too piteous for words. When you think what they were yesterday and the day before, there is no language to express the crescendo ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... unprofitable and superfluous arts.... Their iron coin would not pass in the rest of Greece, but was ridiculed and despised, so that the Spartans had no means of purchasing any foreign or curious wares, nor did any merchant ship unlade in their harbor." Even Plutarch sees nothing suicidal in all this voluntary isolating of themselves from the main ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... message; and a mighty change passes over his spirit. In a burst of magnificent poetry, he proclaims woe to the unjust Chaldean conqueror. All his greatness is a bubble which will burst; a suicidal mistake, which will work out its own punishment, and make him a taunt and a mockery to all nations round. 'Woe to him who increaseth that which is not his, and ladeth himself with thick clay! Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest on ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... of rubbish out of a little sachet, meant for handkerchiefs, which he now carried in his breast-pocket, and touched the various articles to his lips. Then for a time he would look a little less suicidal. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... going up the mountain before me. To my delight, their attendant demon was inaudible, and I pursued them rapturously. The rush of waters grew louder. They had moaned before; they shrieked and screamed now, as if in the agony of their suicidal leap. But, clear and musical, above the hell of sound rang the tinkling feet which had led ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... appearance. He told them of his dream and what it had taught him of the possibilities of a juster, nobler, wiser social system. He reasoned with them, showing how easy it would be, laying aside the suicidal folly of competition, by means of fraternal co-operation, to make the actual world as blessed as that he had dreamed of. At first they derided him, but, seeing his earnestness, grew angry, and denounced him as a pestilent fellow, an anarchist, an enemy of society, and drove him from ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... gratification, to give the individual power over others, to blind others, to weave a web of sophistry, to cast a deceitful lustre on vice, to make the worse appear the better cause. But energy of thought so employed, is suicidal. The intellect, in becoming a pander to vice, a tool of the passions, an advocate of lies, becomes not only degraded, but diseased. It loses the capacity of distinguishing truth from falsehood, good from evil, right from wrong; it becomes as worthless as an eye which cannot distinguish ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... twitching of the muscles of the face and of other muscles. The convulsions may occur frequently. The patient becomes abnormally sleepy, before the attack, and remains so. One-sided paralysis may occur. Sudden temporary blindness occurs sometimes. There may be noisy delirium or suicidal mania. Coma (deep sleep) may develop either with or without convulsions or delirium, and is usually soon followed by them; sometimes by ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... that the employment of an ordinary executive soldier as Boss of so gigantic a business as Mudros is suicidal—no less. Heaven knows K. himself had his work cut out when he ran the communications during his advance upon Khartoum. Heaven knows I myself had a hard enough job when I became responsible for feeding our troops at Chitral, two hundred miles into ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... deserted. Landing with four of his men he next proceeded to the plantation, as it was called, where some ten or twelve substantial buildings surrounded with a stockade established a very defensible position, but here again neglect and suicidal folly ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... his evil fortune to behold The labours of his painful life destroyed; His flock which he had brought within the fold Dispers'd; the work of ages render'd void, And all of good that Paraguay enjoy'd By blind and suicidal power o'erthrown. So he the years of his old age employ'd, A faithful chronicler, in handing down Names which he lov'd, and things well ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... lives. Men and the kingdom of darkness over-reached and outwitted themselves when they slew Jesus Christ. And so all antagonism to Him, whether it be theoretical or whether it be practical, and alienation of heart only, is suicidal folly. When it most succeeds it is nearest the breaking point of utter failure, like a man sawing off the branch on which he sits. Every man that sets himself against God in Christ, either to argue Him down and talk Him out of existence, or to 'break His bands asunder and cast away His cords,' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... occurs in Europe far more frequently in men than in women, the ratio among suicides being three or four men to one woman. Among child-suicides there is far less disproportion between the sexes. According to Havelock Ellis, indeed, the suicidal tendency makes its appearance in girls at an earlier ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... more on this, for as it is, I know I shall never hear the end of it, and shall go down to posterity, if for nothing else, at least for this the most suicidal folly in a student of languages; a folly comparable only to that of Leibniz, who actually conceived the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... the gallant band of the disasters at Cabul; and Dr Brydon arriving in the city, confirmed the sad news. Councils of war were held, and there was some talk of evacuating Jellalabad; but there were brave spirits among the garrison, who saw, and loudly spoke, not only of the disgrace, but of the suicidal folly of such a measure. Their bolder counsels prevailed, and it was determined to hold out to the last extremity. There was Havelock, whose name was afterwards to be in the mouth of every British soldier, as one to be loved and imitated; there were Broadfoot and ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... and the American army was being cut to pieces without a chance to fire a gun in self-defence. To advance appeared suicidal, to attempt a retreat meant utter destruction. No orders could come over the blockaded road from the Commander-in-Chief, miles in the rear, nor could word of the awful situation be sent back to him in time. The men thus trapped gazed at one another with the desperate ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe |
