"Self-destruction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contention is that philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche have embarked on the suicide of thought, and that a later disciple to this self-destruction is Bernard Shaw. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... in this, he resumed his wheedling tactics. It would be impossible, he argued, for any one to know that she had given him the soothing poison. The doctors would always believe that he had overcome his prejudice against self-destruction and had taken the tablets, just as they intended and evidently desired him to do. But he would not take his own life. He would go on suffering for years before he would send his soul to purgatory by such an act. He believed in damnation. He had lived an honourable, upright ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... to suffer; pain is the means of his preservation. His childhood is happy, knowing only pain of body. These bodily sufferings are much less cruel, much less painful, than other forms of suffering, and they rarely lead to self-destruction. It is not the twinges of gout which make a man kill himself, it is mental suffering that leads to despair. We pity the sufferings of childhood; we should pity ourselves; our worst sorrows ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... holy, and animated with divine power to discover the retreats of the unbelievers. In Germany alone they slaughtered more than a thousand Jews, notwithstanding all the efforts of the clergy to save them. So dreadful was the cruelty of their tormentors, that great numbers of Jews committed self-destruction to avoid falling into ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... going to say that your brother would have given you the proofs of this statement about his marriage if he had meditated self-destruction," Mr. Brimsdown observed. "The proofs must be in existence, of course, but I do not think that they are at Flint House. Did your brother confide the information to you beforehand—before his public ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... with a highly uncomplimentary estimate of the frivolous character of my quondam fiancee. It could serve no purpose for me to enlighten her as to the real truth, for did she know the truth she might be haunted by the dread spectre of self-destruction. So her last words as we parted were an admonition to me not to think that all women were as blind and ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... the 'Romance of Two Worlds,' has stopped me on the brink of what is doubtless a crime, and yet I had come to think it the only way out of impending madness. I speak of self-destruction—suicide. And while writing the word, I beg of you to accept my gratitude for the timely rescue of my soul. Once I believed in the goodness of God—but of late years the cry of modern scientific atheism, 'There is NO God,' has rung in ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... apparently unnecessary waste of human life. Among such questions are: Upon what general and world-wide conditions does suicide depend? Are any of its causes removable? What are the reasons for the steady and progressive increase of self-destruction in civilized countries? Is suicide controlled or affected by any natural laws, and, if so, by what laws? These are all questions of practical importance, because upon the answers to them depends the possibility of economizing human life and increasing the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... then,—his interest, his jealousy, his longing for revenge, and now his fears for his own safety,—urged him to regard the happening of a certain casualty as a matter of simple necessity. This was the self-destruction of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... the house was arrested, myself included. There was an inquest; but no clew to his death beyond that of suicide could be obtained. Curiously enough, he had made several speeches to his friends the preceding week, that seemed to point to self-destruction. One gentleman swore that Simon had said in his presence that "he was tired of life." His landlord affirmed that Simon, when paying him his last month's rent, remarked that "he should not pay him ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... with horror about what might happen if we Russians at this moment ceased to fight, and surrendered to the Japanese what they desire from us. But if it be true that the salvation of mankind from brutalization and self-destruction lies only in the establishment amongst men of that true religion which demands that we should love our neighbor and serve him (with which it is impossible to disagree), then every war, every hour of war, and my participation in it, only renders ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy
... hole in the ground. But if to have dropped it so, dust to dust, would have saved a living man—what then?... Some day, when I have the heart to look for it, you shall see his last note. I understand now that there are touches of desperate pathos—but never could he have meditated self-destruction while writing that note. He said he should write six more lectures—six more volumes. He said he was painting a new background to a picture which made him feel as if his soul had wings... and he repeated an old phrase of his, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... warrant me," said the Queen, interrupting him. "Fie, young man! I take shame to say that in our capital such and so various are the means of thriftless folly, that to give gold to youth is giving fuel to fire, and furnishing them with the means of self-destruction. If I live and reign, these means of unchristian excess shall be abridged. Yet thou mayest be poor," she added, "or thy parents may be. It shall be gold, if thou wilt, but thou shalt answer to ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... the fatal news that Mars was undoubtedly preparing to deal us a death blow. The sudden revulsion of feeling flitted like the shadow of an eclipse over the earth. The scenes that followed were indescribable. Men lost their reason. The faint-hearted ended the suspense with self-destruction, the stout-hearted remained steadfast, but without hope and ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... and self-destruction, after the death which ensued upon this devotion, I have seen quoted, but never that of their parting when she sends him forth to battle. I shall copy both. If they have been read by any of my readers, they may be so again with profit in this connection, for never ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the waters, and the trees and flowers looked more beautiful reflected in their depths. Ah, I used to think, one plunge into that lovely mirror, and I should reach that happy world—should know all. But this I said in my simplicity, for I knew not at that tender age that self-destruction was a sin; that man was forbidden to unclose a gate of which the Almighty held the key. His merciful hand was stretched over the creature of his will, and I never made ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... virtues the seed of which He has sown in their soul, and all He has given unto us has been intended for our happiness; self-love, thirst for praise, emulation, strength, courage, and a power of which nothing can deprive us—the power of self-destruction, if, after due calculation, whether false or just, we unfortunately reckon death to be advantageous. This is the strongest proof of our moral freedom so much attacked by sophists. Yet this power of self-destruction is repugnant ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... moral objections to suicide, not one had any influence over me now. I, who had once found it impossible to excuse, impossible even to understand, the despair which had driven Mrs. Van Brandt to attempt self-destruction—I now contemplated with composure the very act which had horrified me when I saw it committed by another person. Well may we hesitate to condemn the frailties of our fellow-creatures, for the one unanswerable reason that we can never feel sure how soon similar temptations may ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... the word "reason" in this particular discussion, without giving to it two different meanings. For in two chapters, "The Maniac" and "The Suicide of Thought," Chesterton was concerned to show that Authority was needed for the defence of reason (in the larger sense) against its own power of self-destruction. Yet the maniac commits this suicide by an excessive use of reason (in the narrower sense). "He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... this disposition is really self-destruction. You never can have either property or peace. Earn her a horse to ride, she will want a gig: earn the gig, she will want a chariot: get her that, she will long for a coach and four: and, from stage to stage, she will torment you to the end of her or your days; for, still ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... fortitude under them had almost led me to the grave. My illness, I well knew, had been entirely brought on by myself by such negligence of my own health, as I had felt even at the time to be wrong. Had I died, it would have been self-destruction. I did not know my danger till the danger was removed; but with such feelings as these reflections gave me, I wonder at my recovery,—wonder that the very eagerness of my desire to live, to have time for atonement to my God, and to you all, did not kill me at once. Had I died, in ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... hand and pressed it. Then he left her, bewildered by the subtle atmosphere that seemed to surround her. He did not fear her threat. There was a vitality and self-command about Mrs. Pendean that seemed to shut out any likelihood of self-destruction. She was young and time could be trusted to do its inevitable work. But he perceived the quality of her love for the man who was too certainly destroyed. She might face life, proceed with her own existence, and bring happiness into other lives; but it did not follow that she would ever forget ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... involve an indefinite volume of overhead costs, which grow with the intensity and extent of the expansive survival struggle, creating a series of crises along a path that leads to self-destruction and the return of the experimenters to a condition of ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... has a strange habit of self-destruction, contracting its skin at two or three different points, and writhing till it snaps itself into "junks," as the sailors would say, and then dies. My specimens, on breaking up, threw out from the wounded part long "ovarian filaments" ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... roof of the house and threw himself down headlong. Before he reached the ground, however, Elijah came and caught him, and reproached him, as he caught him up, with having brought him a distance of four hundred miles to save him from an act of willful self-destruction. The Rabbi told him that it was his poverty which had given to the temptation the power of seduction. Thereupon Elijah gave him a vessel full of gold denarii ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... terror at first, she presently extricated herself from the man's encircling arm, and switched on the light. She dared not lie in the darkness with the thoughts that assailed her. Never for one instant before had the possibility of the wife's self-destruction occurred to her. Yet, all at once, how probable, how almost ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... planned for me; death with the degradation of the scaffold. To strike me down with certainty he had not hesitated to end his life—a life which was, no doubt, already threatened by a melancholic impulse to self-destruction; and the last agony of the suicide had been turned, perhaps, to a devilish joy by the thought that he dragged down my life with his. For, so far as I could see at the moment, my situation was utterly hopeless. If it had been ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... she, bitterly. "Heedless of his countrymen's warnings, he believed in the patriotism of Stanislaus. When he saw his error, he felt that he merited death, and expiated his fault by self-destruction. His ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... employed at work for which he is unfit, therefore, finds it not a means of self-expression, but a slow form of self-destruction. All this wretchedness of spirit reacts directly upon the efficiency of the worker. "A successful day is likely to be a restful one," says Professor Scott,—"an unsuccessful day an exhausting one. The man who is greatly interested in his work and who finds delight in overcoming the difficulties ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... Chance, or Necessity, or Providence, that caused Ted and Hardy to meet at the parting of the ways?—that waked Ted from the dream of self-destruction, and lodged Hardy under the same roof ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... take away the smell of the spirits, I found myself very much taken with such beauty of person, combined with so much vigour of mind; and in the second, that one so young should carry on a system of deceit and self-destruction. When I rose to go away she put five guineas in my hand, to enable me to purchase what she required. "Add to this one small favour," said I, "Aramathea—allow me ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... purports to be a theory of existence, the result of deliberate philosophic argument and investigation, by which its votaries have reached the dispassionate conclusion that there is no real good or pleasure in the world that is not clearly outweighed by evil or pain, and that therefore self-destruction, or at least final annihilation is the consummation ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... which, the further I perused it, the more closely engaged my attention. I cannot now recollect the purport of it; but before I had finished it, it appeared demonstratively true to me that it was a libel or satire upon me. The author appeared to be acquainted with my purpose of self-destruction, and to have written that letter on purpose to secure and hasten the execution of it. My mind, probably, at this time began to be disordered; however it was, I was certainly given to a strong delusion. I said within myself, 'Your cruelty shall be gratified; you shall ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the human system must be covered with cartilage at its ends so as to prevent self-destruction through friction, especially in ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... himself Jimmie did not for a moment contemplate. To him self-destruction appeared only as an offense against nature. On his primitive, out-of-door, fox-hunting mind the ethics of suicide lay as uneasily as absinthe on the stomach of a baby. But, he argued, by pretending ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... wise, and prudent, and thoughtful men in the United States, who had made the science of government a study, and human nature their daily reading, who perceived principles of self-destruction in the French constitution. They saw its want of balances, and the course of the representatives under it, which must inevitably allow the gallery to rule the legislature, and mobs to give color to the opinions of the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... personal enrichment, by that much he is bound to secure the enrichment and social advantage of his fellows. To love one's self at the expense of one's fellows is for selfness to become malignancy. To love one's neighbors more than one's self is foolishness and self-destruction. ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... persecuted her in private with those unlawful addresses and proposals, which a timid female will sometimes rather endure, than encounter that share of the shame, which may be reflected upon herself by their disclosure. To the threat of self-destruction, often tried with effect in these cases, he is said to have added the still more unmanly menace of ruining, at least, her reputation, if he could not undermine her virtue. Terrified by his perseverance, and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... explosion will never be known. Preble always believed that Tripolitans had attempted to board the Intrepid and that Somers had deliberately fired the powder magazine rather than surrender. Be that as it may, no one doubts that the crew were prepared to follow their commander to self-destruction if necessary. In deep gloom, the squadron returned to Syracuse, leaving a few vessels to maintain a fitful blockade off the ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... and was very patient with the further arguments the other advanced to prove his point and the lofty character of the girl to whom, misled by appearance, the police seemed inclined to attribute the awful sin of self-destruction. ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... night of the second of July, 1798, a man at a little old tavern in Bardstown, Kentucky, committed suicide. If ever there was a justifiable case of self-destruction, it was this. No human being is permitted to take his own life, but there are instances in which the burden of existence becomes well-nigh intolerable. In the case just mentioned, the man went to his room and took poison. ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... an unusually miserable crew, we got breakfast about two P.M. To-day our tent lamp finished its erratic life, according to the Dhobie's account, by self-destruction! That good for nothing piece of charcoal had, however, doubtless dashed the solid cut-glass globe, which formed the chief glory of the instrument, against a rock, while thinking of his hubble bubble, and ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... As, however, they ran round the varanda they found her under the window, on the spot where William Barton had been murdered, lying cold and dead, with a ghastly gash in her neck, and her white garments dyed red with her life-blood. A razor, the instrument with which she had accomplished her self-destruction, was clutched, with the grip of death, in her ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... Sabina read Raymond's letter again and it now awoke a new passion. At first she had hated herself and talked of doing herself an injury; but this was hysteria bred of suffering, since she had not the temperament to commit self-destruction. Now her rage burned against the child that she was doomed to bring into the world, and she brooded secretly on how its end might be accomplished. She knew the peril to herself of any such attempt; but while she could not have committed suicide, ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... it, and forces His pity and forgiveness on the unwilling soul. Finding that it was the principle of life which grew stronger within him, the young man at last meditated an awful crime. The thought of self-destruction haunted him day and night. He lingered around the wharves, gazing into the deep waters, and was restrained from the deed only by the memory of the last loving voice he had heard. One gloomy evening, when even this memory had faded, and he awaited the approaching darkness to make his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... at self-destruction, which seem to have taken the place of the epileptic seizure, were related to my father casually by the boy's mother; but in other cases, similar incidents, although of the utmost importance to the criminologist, ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... master; that the deed of revenge is only flashed upon him from without; and that, in the intervals between such awakenings of memory, he relapses to the thought-sickness of the first soliloquy; that on the only occasion when the bitterness of his sorrow leads him to meditate self-destruction, there is no question of the ghost, the murder, or the king; that the only ungovernable bit of fury is in the presence of his mother; and that from this scene the drama is developed, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... strangulation. I pant and gasp for breath, and shudder and tremble in my terror. My spree on this occasion was not yet over; my appetite was burning and raging, and notwithstanding my almost miraculous escape from a drunken death, I watched my opportunity, like a man bent on self-destruction, and again mounted the same horse and started for Raleigh. But my father had preceded me, and given orders at the saloon and elsewhere that I should not be allowed more liquor. I was determined to satisfy my appetite, and with this purpose subjugating every other, I went on ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... the one hand and on the other a widespread effort to bring into existence Acts of Parliament. Self-destruction contrasted with efforts ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... kind which in a groove has poison that makes its wound mortal. On the old mantel-piece, over the fireplace, there is a vial in which are kept certain poisons. It would seem as if some one had meditated suicide; or else that the foul fiend had put all sorts of implements of self-destruction in his way; so that, in some frenzied moment, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... all achievement—because, having been blessed with many opportunities, he had never done anything worth while. And as he sat there, looking back through the wasted years, this miserable fool was considering, in his wretched folly, the cowardly sin of self-destruction, because he was sick of the world and all things in it—especially of his own useless self! But I hope I don't—er—bore ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... nothing loftier than his high determination to serve his turn on earth in spite of all. He was the very King Lear of music, trudging his lonely way with heart broken and hair wild in the storms that buffeted him vainly toward the cliffs of self-destruction. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... or not; but I believe I might reckon up more who, within the compass of my knowledge or observation, really drowned themselves in that year than are put down in the bill of all put together, for many of the bodies were never found who yet were known to be lost; and the like in other methods of self-destruction. There was also one man in or about Whitecross Street burnt himself to death in his bed. Some said it was done by himself, others that it was by the treachery of the nurse that attended him; but that he had the plague upon him, ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... all established control—do you call it a fight for liberty by any chance? I tell you, men, that it's a struggle for the most hideous slavery that ever disfigured this earth. This perpetual fight for self will end in self-destruction. It always does. It's the law of creation. The thing that strikes rebounds upon the striker. The man who deliberately injures another injures himself tenfold more seriously. Isn't there something in the Bible about he who takes the sword perishes with the sword? ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... husband during the campaigns that ended at Philippi, but remained in Rome. She is said to have killed herself by swallowing the live coals from a brazier, when her friends kept from her all the means of self-destruction. This story is scarcely credible; possibly it means that she suffocated herself with the fumes of charcoal. That she should commit suicide suited all the traditions of ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... 'The Two Voices' I was so utterly miserable, a burden to myself and to my family, that I said, 'Is life worth anything?'" It is the history—as Spedding put it—of the agitations, the suggestions and counter-suggestions of a mind sunk in hopeless despondency, and meditating self-destruction, together with the manner of its recovery to a more healthy condition. We have two singularly interesting parallels to it in preceding poetry. The one is in the third book of Lucretius (830-1095), where the arguments for suicide are urged, not merely ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... Abstention from injury, truthfulness of speech, benevolence, compassion,—these are regarded as penances by the wise and not the emaciation of the body. Disregard of the Vedas, disobedience to the dictates of the scriptures, and violation of all wholesome restraints, are productive of self-destruction. Listen, O son of Pritha, to what has been laid down by those that pour ten libations upon the fire at ten times of the day.—For them that perform the sacrifice of penance, the Yoga they endeavour to effect with Brahma is their ladle; the heart is their clarified butter; and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... which the bullet had traveled that interested Britz. The absence of powder marks, the disappearance of the pistol with which the mortal shot was fired, effectually eliminated the theory of suicide. Yet, a man seated in a chair, and bent on self-destruction, might easily have inflicted the wound described by the Coroner's physician. Before arriving at any definite conclusion, however, as to the position of the assassin when he sent the bullet into Whitmore's body, the detective decided to study the enlarged photograph of the ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... in various directions, finally forced the insurgents to concentrate on the northeast side of the island, where they were surrounded. After holding the island six months, the blacks, finding all chances of escape cut off, resolved upon self-destruction. "Three hundred," says an historian, "were, after a few days from the time they were surrounded, found lying dead at Brim's Bay, now Anna Burg. In a ravine, a short distance off, were discovered seven others, who appeared to have been leaders in the insurrection, who had shot each ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... the responsibility of opposing it, it was carried out: Greece rushed headlong into war with a superior power and was smashed. Upon King Constantine, then Crown Prince, had devolved the tragic duty of leading the Greek army to self-destruction, and it was upon his devoted head that afterwards the nation visited the criminal levity of M. Delyannis. Was he to suffer calmly a repetition of the same catastrophe on an infinitely larger scale—to ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... seek him, believing him bent on self-destruction, and were almost glad to find him thus. A learned physician, moreover, endeavoured to comfort his mother by [115] remarking that in any case he must certainly have died ere many years were passed, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... humiliated and driven from the Democratic ranks. The creed laid down by the Southern senators was such as no man could indorse without forfeiting his political life in free States. Douglas did not propose to rush on self-destruction to oblige the Democracy of the slave States; nor was he of the type of men who, when the right cheek is smitten, will meekly turn the other for a second blow. When his Democratic associates in the Senate proceeded to read him out of the party, they apparently failed to see that ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... exhaling the waste, offensive, or useless matter, and yet a restoring power, assisted by heat, moisture, and the nourishment of the earth, resists the tendency to decay and preserves it alive and growing. The air, the earth, nay, the ocean itself, philosophers assure us, contain powers sufficient to self-destruction. But I will not enlarge here. Let the necessary cause be exerted which will give vent to this hidden power and actions the most astonishing and destructive would be the effect. These are often witnessed in the tremendous earthquakes which devastate whole cities, states, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... him gently by the coat-sleeve and led him from the brink. Sympathy begets confidence, and, within the next ten minutes, he had learned that Arthur Heard, rejected by Emma Smith, was contemplating the awful crime of self-destruction. ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... nothing to do with the matter. If he was a deep man, and knew the stupidness of Scotland Yard, he probably sent the notes to an enemy. If not, they may have been given to a friend. Nothing is more calculated to prepare the mind for self-destruction than the prospect of a night ride on the Scotch express, and the view from the windows of the train as it passes through the northern part of London is particularly conducive to thoughts ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... hesitation, Goethe answered him: "I do not call this passion of mine an unhappy one, for in the very perception of it lies happiness. We are only wretched when we lose self-control. To this point Love shall never lead me. She yields me the highest delight, but she shall never bring me to self-destruction. Grief for her may, like a destructive whirlwind, crush every blossom of my heart; but she shall never destroy me. The man, the poet, must stand higher than the lover; for where the latter is about to yield to despair, the former ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... during 1779 extended as far as the neighbourhood of Charleston, depended upon the control of the water, and are a conspicuous example of misapplication of power to the point of ultimate self-destruction. They were in 1778-79 essentially of a minor character, especially the maritime part, and will therefore be dismissed with the remark that the Navy, by small vessels, accompanied every movement in a country cut up in all directions by watercourses, big and little. "The ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... and turned his irresolute feet towards the upper extremity of the garden, indicated by the priest, which seemed to offer more seclusion and security than the avenue of pear-trees. He was dazed and benumbed. The old dogged impulses of self-destruction—revived by the priest's reproaches, but checked by the vision of his dead and forgotten father, which the priest's words had called up—gave way, in turn, to his former despair. With it came a craving for peace and rest so insidious that ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... fruitless were her feeble struggles against the strong grasp of her preserver, the unhappy girl—she was but a girl—shrank down submissively on to the seat, still trembling and moaning, whilst brave-hearted Sally stood over her to prevent any further attempt at self-destruction. Pollie looked on in bewildered surprise at this sad scene, not knowing what to make of it; but she still kept her hold on the woman's dress, as if her small strength could be of any service; but Sally had told her to "hold ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... a belief of corporeal sense 77:6 until the Science of being is reached. Error brings its own self-destruction both here and hereafter, for mortal mind creates its own physical con- 77:9 ditions. Death will occur on the next plane of existence as on this, until the spiritual understanding of Life is reached. Then, and not until then, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... rarely plan suicide years in advance, death by one's own hand some years after taking life insurance is regarded as coming under the ordinary rules of chance. Yet it is to be feared that this liberal policy serves as a temptation at times to crime and to self-destruction. ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... applied; he has already had his wish, for what torture can be more agonising than to find myself where I now am? So tortured, indeed, have I been through a short yet wretched life, that I have often felt that anything short of self-destruction which would release me would be a blessing; but within these few minutes I have been made to acknowledge that I have still feelings in unison with my fellow-creatures; that I am not yet fit for death, and all too young, too unprepared to die: for who would not reluctantly leave this world ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... it; the last line had been read, and I sat in a maze of astonishment and awe. What my thoughts were, what my judgment upon this astounding act of self-destruction for conscience sake, it will not interest you to know. In a matter so complicated with questions of right and wrong, each man must feel for himself, and out of his own nature adjudge praise, or express censure; I, Constance ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... Search was everywhere made for the missing body, but without effect. When the matter was related to the king he was much troubled, and would fain have had masses said for the repose of the soul of the unfortunate keeper, but the priests refused to perform them, alleging that he had 'committed self-destruction, and was therefore out of the pale ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... full of those things which had driven her poor aunt to her present unyielding attitude toward the world to be the ravings of an insane mind. And suddenly panic gripped her, that panic which, in a moment of weakness, so easily tends toward self-destruction. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... you are a mere child, full of generous but romantic sentiments and dangerous impulses. You require extra vigilance and firm exercise of authority on the part of your guardian to save you from certain self-destruction. And some day, sweet girl, you will thank us for preserving you from the horrors of such a mesalliance," said Craven Le Noir, gently ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... home, and gave up all thoughts of self-destruction—even in a noble cause; and there, in penance, I somewhat hastily committed to flame the plodding labor of many midnights—an elaborate copy in pen and ink, line for line, of Retel's immortal wood-engraving ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Yamato-dake presented to the Ise shrine the Yemishi chiefs who had surrendered to him in the sequel of his invasion of the eastern provinces. The same fate seems to have befallen numerous captives made in the campaign against the Kumaso, and doubtless wholesale acts of self-destruction committed by Tsuchi-gumo and Kumaso when overtaken by defeat were prompted by preference of death to slavery. The story of Japan's relations with Korea includes many references to Korean prisoners who became the property of their captors, and that a victorious general's ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... table the delicious breakfast Katie had brought, I had a queer idea that if it were not for the publicity that would inevitably follow, Lillian would not very much regret the ultimate success of Grace Draper's attempt at self-destruction. ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... nearly to exclude the light, and kept confined if necessary, in a straight jacket, so as to walk about the room or lie down on the bed at pleasure; or by strops, etc., he may, particularly if there appears in the patient a strong determination to self-destruction, be confined on the bed, and the apparatus so fixed as to allow him to turn and ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... treatise upon this subject to proving that "the purer the German race—that is to say, the stronger the Germanism (e.g., Teutonism) of a country—the more it reveals in its psychical character an extraordinary propensity to self-destruction." ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... results, and we feel justly proud of having in our hands so excellent and efficient a means for the radical cure of so obstinate, serious and often dangerous a disease. We take pride in having saved many a young and promising life, in having often stayed the hand bent upon self-destruction, and in having many times cheated the grave or the insane asylum of its expected prey. Nor do we feel less proud in having been able, in cases of not so serious, though often of a more embarrassing nature, to restore to full Sexual Power and Vigor middle-aged and ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... stuffed the paper into a corner of the fire. It flamed up, singeing the cooking meat, but John Gaspar paid no heed. He was staring off down the hill to make sure that Sinclair should not return in time to see that little act of destruction. An act of self-destruction, too, it well ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... sunk into dreariness and inactivity. I felt as if no dependence could be placed upon my courage, as if any effort I should make for self-destruction would be fruitless; yet existence was as void as ever of enjoyment and embellishment. My means of living were annihilated. I saw no path before me. To shun the presence of mankind was my sovereign wish. Since ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... next morning to a realizing sense of her position her first impulse is to self-destruction, but she deludes herself with the thought that her "dancing" companion will right the wrong by marriage, but that is the farthest from his thoughts, and he casts her off—"he wishes a pure ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... father and a most unhappy one," groaned de Lara, turning toward Alvarado. "Perhaps it is well you did not accomplish your purpose of self-destruction after all, my poor friend. As I said before, Spain hath need of you. You may go back to the old country beyond the great sea. All here will keep your secret; my favor will be of service to you even there. You can make a new career with a ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... despair and loss had been abiding, and who was fighting a losing battle with these dark companions. The sound of the old hymn, that had been his children's lullaby, arrested John McIntyre on the brink of self-destruction: ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... man in a free country, the past appears to me like a horrible dream, a kind of missing link in my life; and when I remember that our deliverance was followed so shortly afterwards by the self-destruction of the passionate despot who held us in his power, I can find no truer solution to this difficult problem, than the words inscribed by the warm-hearted countrymen of Kerans, on the banner that floated at Ahascragh ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... With the loss of his money, and the utter beggary which stared him in the face, the unfortunate victim of play lost all relish for life; and sought in death the only refuge he could fancy from the infamy and misery which he had brought upon himself. But whilst fully resolved on self-destruction, he thought, before carrying his fatal purpose into execution, he might as well do his tradesmen an act of justice, even if in so doing he should do injustice to others. He insured his life to the extent of ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... herself in the Serpentine. The distance of time between June, 1814, and November, 1816, and the new ties formed by Harriet in this interval, prove that there was no immediate connexion between Shelley's abandonment of his wife and her suicide. She had always entertained the thought of self-destruction, as Hogg, who is no adverse witness in her case, has amply recorded; and it may be permitted us to suppose that, finding herself for the second time unhappy in her love, she reverted to a long-since cherished scheme, and cut the knot of life ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... story by backtracking along that trail through the sands; able to read those signs from the foot of the Dragoons on across the valley; and able also—because he had seen that letter—to realize the torture of memories which had come along with the torture of thirst to goad John Ringo on to self-destruction. ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... oath; my self-destruction is proof that I am sincere in the belief that I have acted ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... slight as such a hope appeared she would not admit its impossibility until the last moment had come, and she faced the fearful reality of choosing between the final alternatives—Nikolas Rokoff on one hand and self-destruction ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tried no dangerous experiments, committed no excesses. But there is no man who can habitually study from twelve to seventeen hours a day (his friend Mr. Clarke contracts it to "from six to twelve," but I have Mr. Parker's own statement of the fact) without ultimate self-destruction. Nor was this the practice during his period of health alone, but it was pushed to the last moment: he continued in the pulpit long after a withdrawal was peremptorily prescribed for him; and when forbidden to leave home for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... other, "I never pass this spot without recalling the time when I stood here without a son, or, as I thought, a chance of one, and impiously meditated self-destruction." ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... do anything you wish. I will make myself good, great, and renowned for your sake. Your smiles will keep me from every temptation. But I warn you that if you cast me off—if you trifle with me—I shall become a reckless man. I shall be ruined. My only impulse will be self-destruction." ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... mistake which nothing could retrieve. One has no right to risk making such a mistake. He believed in development, in the progress of the organic world from a lower to a higher stage. Progress and development, however, were conditional upon life, and he who has recourse to self-destruction sets an example of unseemly revolt against one of the most beautiful and comforting of all the laws of nature. Moreover, suicide was a waste of force on which it was simply heartrending to have to look. There were so many great deeds to be done which ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... why the poor wretch had not made way with herself. Escape seemed out of the question. That must have been clear to her from the beginning, else why was she going back there to give herself up? What better way out of it all than self-destruction? Sara Wrandall reached a sudden conclusion. She would advise the girl to leave the car when they reached the centre of a certain bridge that spanned the river! ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... each time he untied the bandage, when left alone, hoping to die from loss of blood, but death fled from him. A humane Franciscan came to confess him, and, hearing his tale of misery, gave him kind words, asked permission to divulge his attempt at self-destruction to the inquisitor, procured him a mitigation of solitude by the presence of a fellow-prisoner, a negro, accused of magic; but, after five months, the negro was removed, and his mind, broken with suffering, could no longer bear up under the aggravated ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... eyes, the injury to which he feared must result in total blindness. How could he bear it? he asked himself, to go groping his way through life in utter darkness? Horrible! horrible! he would not endure it; they had put the means of self-destruction out of his way now, but on the first opportunity to get hold of a pistol, he would blow his own brains out and be done with this agony. The Bible was a fable; death an eternal sleep; he had been saying it for years, till he thought his belief—or more correctly ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... as he was accustomed to say, with true humility. He did not, however, look upon the failings of his friends with indifferent eyes. "How strange it is!" he once said. "We see those whom we love going to the very verge of the precipice of self-destruction, yet it is not in our ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... been ordered to be present, but forbidden to celebrate; in punishment for his having, uncanonically, fought as a Chouan—if not also for attempted suicide. But we hear of no amorousness, and the husband Le Hardouey's jealousy, though prompted by his wife's apparent self-destruction, is definitely stated to have no foundation in actual guilt with the priest. On the contrary, she declares that he cared nothing ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... thus—would she continue to embrace me, and speak words that simulated passion while no such feeling touched her heart? Such a state of things could not endure, and my passion, mocked and baffled again and again, would rend me to pieces, and hurl me on to madness and self-destruction. For how many men had been driven by love to such an end, and the women they had worshiped, and miserably died for, compared with Yoletta, were like creatures of clay compared with one of the immortals. And was she not a being of a higher order ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... this point chiefly for the sake of method; for the strength of Madame L'Espanaye would have been utterly unequal to the task of thrusting her daughter's corpse up the chimney as it was found; and the nature of the wounds upon her own person entirely preclude the idea of self-destruction. Murder, then, has been committed by some third party; and the voices of this third party were those heard in contention. Let me now advert—not to the whole testimony respecting these voices—but to what was peculiar in that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... San Francisco alone. The whole number of suicides in the State would, if the horror of each case could be even imperfectly imagined, appall even the dryest statistician of crime. The causes for this prevalence of self-destruction are to be sought in the peculiar conditions of the country, and the habits of the people. California, with all its beauty, grandeur, and riches, has been to the many who have gone thither a land of great expectations, but small results. This was specially the case ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... was long before he could collect energy enough to talk. When he did, he made an effort to tell her the story of the boy's death, and the father's self-destruction. He told it leaning forward in his chair, his eyes on the ground, his hands loosely joined, his voice broken and labored. Julie listened, gathering from his report an impression of horror, tragic and irremediable, similar to that which had shaken ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... have spoken, if her daughter had been a member of Mr. Keller's family. With floods of tears, with eloquent protestations, with threats even of self-destruction, could she venture ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... mentality; and on the contemptible aspect of the half-crazy pose as of a brazen cheat exploiting the poignant miseries and passionate credulities of a mankind always so tragically eager for self-destruction. That was what made for me its philosophical pretences so unpardonable. Presently, passing to particular instances, we recalled the already old story of the attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory; a blood-stained inanity of so fatuous a kind that it was impossible to fathom ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... that these factors influence modern Germany. One of the roots of tragedy is to be found in the inequality between the will and power to perform. In its helplessness the will recoils upon itself, turning to gall and bitterness, or seeks a solution in self-destruction. ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... himself? if so, they were to find him guilty of wilful murder! "The community has an interest in the public execution of criminals [the crowd having an interest in the spectacle] and to take such an one out of the reach of the law [by advising him to self-destruction] is no trivial offence." "You are not to consider the atrocity of this offence in the least degree diminished by the consideration that justice was thirsting for its sacrifice; and that but a small portion of Jewett's earthly existence could, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... lady, no thoroughly wicked creature ever yet committed suicide. Self-destruction, when it is not an act of madness, implies some acuteness of feeling—sensibility to remorse or to shame, or perhaps a distorted idea of making atonement. There is no such thing as remorse or shame, or hope of ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... motives, and years sometimes elapse before the truth is known. In some cases it never reaches his family, and the harassing thought that he is, perhaps, regarded by the latter as a heartless deserter has driven many a victim of the "Administrative Process" to self-destruction. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... not contemplating self-destruction, were you?" said the Doctor, whose curiosity led him to adopt a light ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... found who, under various impulses, will commit suicide. But the conduct of the great majority everywhere is controlled by the dictates of reason and self-interest. Whatever folly, even to the extremity of self-destruction, a few madmen in the Southern States may counsel, it may confidently be expected that rational thoughts will prevail among the masses. The paths of duty and of interest are for them the same; and, upon the whole, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... Hebraism for 'this death which the body is.' For matter itself is but 'spiritus in coagulo,' and organized matter the coagulum in the act of being restored; it is then repotentiating. Stop its self-destruction as matter, and you stop its self-reproduction as a vital organ. In short, Taylor seems to fall into the very fault he reproves in Bellarmine, and with this additional evil, that his reasoning looks more like tricking or explaining away a mystery. For wherein ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... namely, those in whose minds passion so wholly overpowers reason as to deprive the party of his sober senses. Few people are entitled to more compassion than young men thus affected: it is a species of insanity that assails them; and, when it produces self-destruction, which it does in England more frequently than in all the other countries in the world put together, the mortal remains of the sufferer ought to be dealt with in as tender a manner as that of which the most merciful construction of the law will ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... and used up so that it could produce no more, just as a woman beyond her prime could no longer bear children.[127] "Whenever in any people, consciousness of its decline becomes vivid, a strange tendency to self-destruction arises in it. This is not to be explained scientifically, although it has been often observed." The best commit suicide first, for they do not fear death.[128] Romans of wealth and rank committed suicide in the first and second century with astonishing levity; ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... guessed at once what he was intending to do; it darted across his mind that this might be the best solution of the difficulty—he had only to keep silent for a few seconds. Was it certain even now that he could prevent this self-destruction if he would? But such inhumanity was impossible to him. Instinctively he rushed forward out of the shadow and, seizing Mark by the arm as he sprang upon the parapet, dragged him roughly back. 'You coward!' he cried, ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... doubtful paper—your name, which, in all money transactions, should grow higher and higher each year you live, falling down every month like the shares in a swindling speculation. You begin by what you call trusting a friend, that is, aiding him to self-destruction—buying him arsenic to clear his complexion—you end by dragging all near you into your own abyss, as a drowning man would clutch at his own brother. Lionel Haughton, the saddest expression I ever saw in your father's face was when—when—but you ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Adistinctly borrowed motif is the accidental finding of papers which contain matters of interest. This is twice resorted to; aformer occupant of the room in the inn in Nrnberg had left valuable notes of travel; and Johann, meeting a ragged woman, bent on self-destruction, takes from her a box with papers, disclosing a revolting story, baldly told. German mediocrity, imitating Yorick in this regard, and failing of his delicacy and subtlety, brought forth hideous offspring. An attempt at whimsicality of style is apparent in the "Furth Catechismus in Frage ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... long while, preoccupied with the obsession for self-destruction, he lay there face downward, exhausted, trying to fight off the swimming sense of horror that was creeping over him again..... Little by little it mounted like a tide from hell.... He struggled to his feet ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... undoubtedly corral me by main force and carry me off kicking and screaming. But if I went at them to kill or get killed, they'd have to move aside just to prevent me from killing myself. I didn't think I'd get to the last final blow of that self-destruction. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... combined with the invariable seriousness of his manner, led many persons to believe him melancholy, and even disposed to suicide. He did, indeed, confess to me, that he sometimes felt giddy on the edge of a precipice. This was his nearest approach, I am confident, to the idea of self-destruction. While we were examining the great iron furnaces of Salisbury, he told me that he was afraid of walking near the throat of a chimney when in blast, and that more than once he had turned and run from the lurid, murky orifice, lest a sudden failure of self-control should cause him to reel into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... sooner or later collapse, which would give him a chance to escape, unless they chained him, or, what was far more probable, they decided to bait him to death during an orgy. What they would probably do to him was unthinkable. Somehow he must find a way out by self-destruction. Even should he escape, he would be unarmed and without food, and there was every possibility that they would trail and overtake him in the morning. He was lame and footsore; also he was weak from want of food. Once, when despoiling his chop boxes, the corporal had contemptuously ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... exasperating demands, and the splendid madness of their latter day tactics as illustrated in their warfare against Douglas, were the sure presages of their overthrow. There was method in their madness, but it was the method of self-destruction. This was made still more strikingly manifest during the months immediately preceding the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln. The Republicans, notwithstanding their great victory, so recoiled from the thought of sectional strife ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... self is to miss its highest goodness, and to mar ourselves. To use anything for Christ and our brethren is to find its sweetest sweetness, and to bless ourselves to the very uttermost. Self-absorption is self-destruction; self-surrender ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... interests of the higher and nobler Irish animal who, he would remind the Minister for Public Worship, was not to be confounded with the herd whose example was clearly emulated by the present government in seeking self-destruction by running down a steep place into the sea. (Cries of "Order, order!") If there was any doubt before, the honorable member continued, as to the influence which was at work in that Gadarene herd, which assumed the functions of Her Majesty's ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... might just tide her over the shoal of self-destruction,' said Falconer. 'But I cannot help doubting whether any one has a right to prevent a suicide from carrying out his purpose, who is not prepared to do a good deal more for him than that. What would you think of the man ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... personal coming of Christ and the temporal reign of the saints on earth,—a sort of Mahometan paradise, which has as little warrant in Scripture as in reason. Their minds of necessity became unsettled; they meditated self-destruction; and, as it appears by a paper left behind in the handwriting of both, came to an agreement that the husband should first kill his wife and their four children, and then put an end to his own existence. This was literally executed,—the miserable man striking ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... fearful debate was going on in his mind. At last he rose up, changed in feeling as well as in aspect. His resolution was taken, and a deep, almost leaden, calmness pervaded his spirit. He had resolved on self-destruction! ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... again be fit to act. Palmerston will cut his throat if nothing comes of the Neapolitan business, and just the same if he cannot make "a good case;" the principle of intervention even against Bomba is self-destruction for England, and disgraceful in the highest degree. The fox cannot begin war in Italy at the present moment from want of money, and his accomplices are afraid of losing their stolen booty. So he tries to gain time. He will ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... walked, and then came in sight of the church where his mother used to go, and then memories of all her holy teachings. Should he find her if he attempted self-destruction? ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes |
