"Self-destruction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to restrain such an exuberance of sensibility and fancy: and those who praise the philosophy of Portia and the heroism of her death, certainly mistook the character altogether. It is evident, from the manner of her death, that it was not deliberate self-destruction, "after the high Roman fashion," but took place in a paroxysm of madness, caused by overwrought and suppressed feeling, grief, terror, and suspense. Shakspeare has ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... 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, he might ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... showed signs of intentions to commit suicide; and her family and friends lived in a wretched state of apprehension. In spite of the most faithful watchfulness, she twice succeeded in securing the means for self-destruction, but something prevented her from accomplishing her design. At last, it occurred to a friend to present this woman's case in the prayer-meeting, to the Lord, and earnest prayer was offered ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... 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, ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... not an unfrequent case with suicides, that we find reason to suppose, if they had survived their gloomy purpose, that they would, at a subsequent period, have been considerably happy. It arises indeed, in some measure, out of the very nature of a spirit of self-destruction; which implies a degree of anguish, that the constitution of the human mind will not suffer to remain long undiminished. This is a serious reflection, Probably no man would destroy himself from an impatience of present ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... If, however, the Spanish commander could unite the strength of his vessels and that of the coast defenses, Dewey might find it impossible to destroy the Spanish fleet. In that case, the plight of the American squadron would be precarious, if its ultimate self-destruction or internment did ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... than that. Man reaches physical maturity between twenty and twenty-five years of age. This would make his natural age one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty years. There are cases on record that have lived longer and it may be that if man would cease going in the way of self-destruction and spend more thought and time on the welfare of the race, life would be prolonged beyond even one hundred and fifty years. R. T. Trall, M. D., thought that man should live to ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... acts, good or bad, that they do. One sinful act proceeds from another. Therefore, O tiger among kings, avoid all evil acts and do not thus set thy heart upon grief. Thou shouldst adhere, O Bharata, to the duties, even if reproachable, of thy own order. This self-destruction, O king, does not look well in thee. Expiations, O king, have been ordained for (evil) acts. He that is alive can perform them, but he that dies fails in their performance. Therefore, O king, without laying down thy life, perform those expiatory acts. If thou dost not perform them thou ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... they may be called—are all equally impotent to withdraw an acre of territory or a single inhabitant from the rightful jurisdiction of the United States. But while thus impotent against the United States, it does not follow that they were equally impotent in the work of self-destruction. Clearly, the Rebels, by utmost efforts, could not impair the National jurisdiction; but it remains to be seen if their enmity did not act back with fatal rebound upon those very State Rights in behalf of which they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... could endure to think of, and he was charged with having meditated suicide. Perhaps he had already formed the purpose afterwards carried into effect, and may have dropped expressions, under that thought, which to others might appear to indicate a design of self-destruction. He was accused of having said that "he would make away with himself, and charge his death upon his son." His sons-in-law, Crosby and Parker, were acting with the crowd that were pursuing him to his death. Little did it enter the imagination ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the race. On the contrary, it is possible to conceive of a society in which every one has an economic surplus,—a society rolling in wealth, approximately equally divided, and yet one in which human misery in its worst forms of vice and crime, pessimism and self-destruction, prevail. It is an old truth that making men "better-off" does not necessarily make them "better," and one which cannot be too often emphasized, but one which the modern socialist gets angry at when it is mentioned to him. It is therefore a matter of comparative indifference, from ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... nothing swayed, To better hopes his more attentive mind Labouring had raised; and thus to Eve replied. Eve, thy contempt of life and pleasure seems To argue in thee something more sublime And excellent, than what thy mind contemns; But self-destruction therefore sought, refutes That excellence thought in thee; and implies, Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret For loss of life and pleasure overloved. Or if thou covet death, as utmost end Of misery, so thinking to evade The penalty pronounced; ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... the universal deliverer, and therefore some who want courage to bear what they see before them, hang themselves for fear; for certainly self-destruction is the effect of cowardice in the ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... prayers, then let me go I pray, and leave my home. O! place no difficulties in my path; your son is dwelling in a burning house, would you indeed prevent his leaving it! To solve a doubt is only reasonable, who could forbid a man to seek its explanation? Or if he were forbidden, then by self-destruction he might solve the difficulty, in an unrighteous way: and if he were to do so, who could restrain him ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... 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 hated ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... that terrible hour, by suspending the action of his arms, and suffering himself to sink to the bottom of the sea. He was only restrained from the suicidal act, by the influence of that instinct of our nature, which abhors self-destruction, and admonishes, or rather compels us, to abide the final moment when death comes to claim us ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... awakes the 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 woman for ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... ear of a man with whom only 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
... lover, companion of her flight, being wanting? It was a strange thing altogether, and the country was alive with wild theories and wild reports. But in a few days a letter from Mr. Dundas to the rector, and another to Edgar, set the question of self-destruction at rest, though also they gave loose to other energies of conjecture, for in both he said, "No harm has come to her, and I am content to let her remain where she has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... Beholding their sovereignty over the world and vast affluence, as also that sacrifice, who is there like me that would not smart under all that? Alone I am incapable of acquiring such royal prosperity; nor do I behold allies that could help me in the matter. It is for this that I am thinking of self-destruction. Beholding that great and serene prosperity of the son of Kunti, I regard Fate as supreme and exertions fruitless. O son of Suvala, formerly I strove to compass his destruction. But baffling all my efforts he hath grown in prosperity even like the lotus from within a pool of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... should have brought her to me, brought a note instead. It was dated boldly 'August tenth.' It was without beginning or signature. It said—I can repeat every word—'Of the two roads to self-destruction open to me, I have chosen the one that will, in the end, give the least pain to you. I love you. I have always loved you since I was a child. I do not regret anything yet! Thank God for me that I depart without ever having seen a look of weariness in the eyes that gazed so lovingly ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... 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 ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... may be wrung from soft roadbeds and rotten rails, for excursion boats so built as to prevent the saving of passengers in case of accident; and what must be said of those economic and social conditions that drive thousands to self-destruction every year and that destroy all Christian and political ideals, the proper development of which would ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... a girl of 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 ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... 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 on ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... being 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 his little blackamoors ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... was to be 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 ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Byron for nearly a year in the habit of a page. Love, desperate and all-engrossing, seems to have been the cause of her singular conduct. Neglected at last by the man for whom she had forsaken all that woman holds dear, she resolved upon self-destruction, and provided herself with poison. Her designs were discovered by Lord Byron, who changed the poison for a sleeping potion. Miss G., with that delicate feeling of affection which had ever distinguished her intercourse with Byron, stole privately away to the funeral vault ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... expected by me. I had cast a thought to my understanding that the philosophy of Confucius did not contemplate self-destruction, and had been divided between relief and ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... 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 Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... law, doubtless, but a law neither more nor less normal than that of destruction, even self-destruction. Is it possible that the whole normal law of humanity is contained in this sentiment ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... moistening his cheek. We parted with the hunter as with an old friend; and we never met again. His fate was a sad one. After we left that part of the country, he fell into a moping melancholy, which ended in self-destruction. But a kinder, warmer-hearted man, while he enjoyed the light of reason, has seldom ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Carey set about doing it in a strange way. He cast himself down in his degradation at the feet of this woman whom he was resolved to help, and he said, "Help me!" He came to this woman who was on the brink of self-destruction and he said, ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... doing anything with or for these people. The fiat for their overthrow had evidently been issued. The fatuity which leads to self-destruction was fixed upon them; and, with a feeling rather of commiseration than anger, I prepared to leave the house. In this interview, I made a discovery, which tended still more to lessen the hostility I might otherwise have felt toward my uncle. I was constrained ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... 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. ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... Mithradates had instead of embarking for Asia marched on Rome, that the most celebrated Roman generals were fighting battles with each other in order to settle to whom the chief command in the Asiatic war should belong. Rome seemed zealously employed in the work of self-destruction: it is no wonder that, though even now minorities everywhere adhered to Rome, the great body of the natives of Asia Minor joined the Pontic king. Hellenes and Asiatics united in the rejoicing which welcomed the deliverer; it became ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... this account, had carried with him, ever since the retreat from Moscow, a packet containing a preparation of opium, made up in the same manner with that used by Condorcet for self-destruction. His valet-de-chambre, in the night betwixt the 12th and 13th of April, heard him arise and pour something into a glass of water, drink, and return to bed. In a short time afterwards, the man's attention was called by sobs and stifled groans—an alarm ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... and courageous enough to take 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 see his country trampled under German and ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... be prejudicial to the 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 government, the sounds that now came ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... 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
... while in this condition I should become hypochondrical, and fearful suggestions of self-destruction occasionally presented themselves. I experienced an insatiable desire for sleep, but on retiring would lie awake for a long time, tormented with troubled reflections, and when at last I did fall into an uneasy slumber of short duration, it was disturbed ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... unsurrendered province, stopped in his course for the purpose of preventing the rebellious inhabitants of that province from destroying each other, or refuse to take command of a conquered province lest he should be made responsible for their self-destruction? ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... 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 my ears till my brain has reeled at the desolation and nothingness ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... hard a death; and I actually had it in consideration whether I should not cut my way into the great butt, and in this way end my misery! This was during my moments of despair, when I seriously contemplated self-destruction; but these moments had passed, and I again felt an unaccountable desire that my ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... my knowledge, through what passed between Mrs. Pocket and Drummle while I was attentive to my knife and fork, spoon, glasses, and other instruments of self-destruction, that Drummle, whose Christian name was Bentley, was actually the next heir but one to a baronetcy. It further appeared that the book I had seen Mrs. Pocket reading in the garden was all about titles, and that she knew the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... THE AWAKENING: It would seem at first as though nothing but self-destruction could come to that struggling, praying, throat-cutting population that terrorized Italy during the Mediaeval Period. The people were ignorant, the rulers treacherous, the passions strong, and yet out of the Dark Ages came light. In the thirteenth century the light grew brighter, but the internal ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... extraordinary circumstances, it is probable that we ourselves should never have discovered it,) were under these painful circumstances made aware of my beloved Belinda's partiality for me. Having communicated thus her wish of self-destruction, I thought her example a touching and excellent one, and proposed to all the ladies that they should follow it, and that at the entry of the enemy into the fort, and at a signal given by me, they should one ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for money, for power,—this overthrowing of 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? That's justice—God's justice—and ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... rested his every hope and happiness on the love of his wife. Believing that she had proved faithless, that she had played him false, and was unworthy of trust, he admitted no possibility of peaceful joy, and felt tempted to seek consolation from self-destruction. What had he to live for now, save to mourn over the ashes of ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... and the individual to the worldly interests of Rome, by repressing knowledge and liberty of conscience, preaching immoral and anti-social doctrines, encouraging superstition and emasculating education, for the maintenance of those same worldly interests, were advancing steadily upon the path of self-destruction. The essence of Christianity was neglected in this brutal struggle for supremacy; while truth, virtue and religion, those sacred safe-guards of humanity, which the Church was instituted to preserve, ran no uncertain ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... whole truth. She knew the motivation for their madness of self-destruction. It was not insanity, but the sublime courage of a few human beings sacrificing themselves to save the rest of their civilization. They smashed the Guardian Wheel to keep the Sickness there. And Mryna had already escaped before that happened! She was being ...
— The Guardians • Irving Cox
... front, and, rushing into the water, held up the pontoons while the French and some English troops dashed across. But all their efforts to scale the wall were baffled, and it seemed as if they had only gone to self-destruction. While the battle was thus doubtfully contested, Major Anson, who had shown the greatest intrepidity on several occasions, succeeded in cutting the ropes that held up a drawbridge, and an entrance was soon effected within the body of the works. The Chinese still resisted nobly, and it was computed ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... —might, in fact, end as a slave unless he should prefer to prove his identity and submit to Commodus's executioners. Suicide would be preferable to that; but it seemed almost as if the gods themselves had vetoed self-destruction by providing that roisterer's corpse at the critical moment and putting the plan for its use into ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... 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 ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... came 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 knowing not what ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... believe, for an instant, that Dr. Webb would have committed the crime of self-destruction. But in my then romantic state of mind, what more easily believed than that he had deliberately removed himself out of our lives—and in a way to make it ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... 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; ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... principle of virtue and part of the idea; and that it is a proper motive for man. But the deep bishop, in saying all that, is away back at the creation-scheme and Eden-state of human nature. He has not as yet come down to human nature in its present state of overthrow, dismemberment, and self-destruction. But when he does condescend and comes close to the mind and the heart of man as they now are in all men, even Butler becomes as outspoken, and as eloquent, and as full of passion and pathos as if he were an evangelical Puritan. Self-love, Butler startles his sober-minded reader ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... caught, 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" (whatsoever those may be), similar to those ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... reasons which appear frivolous to the American or Englishman. The loss of a favorite mistress, an unsuccessful love-intrigue, the bursting of a bubble of speculation, and sometimes a mere trifle is enough to induce self-destruction. Sometimes a man and his mistress, or a whole family shut themselves up in a room with burning charcoal, which is a favorite method of committing suicide. A great many bodies are fished out of the Seine, for it ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... 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 power to ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... he held his tongue, and thus gained a reputation for grit which lightened other burdens. Jim Doolan, the big Irishman, was of opinion that Dennis Brown was little better than a denied baby with a soft spot in his head, but he admitted that the cow-puncher was "white," and obviously bent upon self-destruction. By this time the camp knew that the boss was taking an unholy interest in Dennis, although he continued to treat him with derisive civility. The rage he couldn't suppress was vented upon the dog. And Dennis never saw the ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... carrying out of the same thought that, when the bulk of mankind fail to realize the beneficent use of these powers, and persist in using them invertedly, the same Being should again appear to save the race from utter self-destruction, but not by the same method, for ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... a bundle of papers from his breast-pocket. They were all telegraphic messages, and each was a suggestion towards self-destruction in one form or another. "Suicide's corner" at Niagara, poison, the rope—all couched in language of devilish ingenuity in innuendo, and ending in every instance with the expression, "Is life more ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... 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, and ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... of this death?' is a 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 does the Sacrament of the ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... 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 still live a ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... sins that—that avenge your wrongs, old man! that goad me sometimes to the very verge of suicide! Do you know, ha! how could you possibly know? Shall I tell you that only one thought has often stood between me and self-destruction? It was not the fear of death, no, no, no! It was not even the dread of facing an outraged God! but it was the horrible fear of meeting Murray! Not all eternity was wide enough to hold us both! The hate I bore him made me shrink from ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Men. The gods that made him hero had left out The drop of meekness which preserves the rest From self-destruction. ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... Schindler places this letter in the summer of 1826, when his nephew attempted self-destruction in Baden, which reduced Beethoven to the most miserable state of mind, and brought afresh to his recollection those dear friends of his youth, whom he seemed almost to have forgotten in the society of Holz and his colleagues. Schindler states that the more ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... 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
... quarter. Clara, 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 ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... suspected nothing, feared nothing; I simply felt dedicated to my country. What a stupendous joy there was in this unquestioning surrender. Verily had I realized how, in thoroughness of self-destruction, man ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... every thing: those who appear on this world's stage poor and friendless, have a desperate struggle to maintain. According to the quality of their minds they turn to action or to self-destruction. When they have resolution to set to work, as I have done, they often play the winning game. A man must live; he must conquer a position, and make for himself an abiding-place. I have made mine as a cannon-ball ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... republic perished. The battle was fairly and bravely fought on both sides, but victory inclined to the Caesarians, in two distinct actions, after an interval of twenty days, B.C. 42. Both Cassius and Brutus fell on their own swords, and their self-destruction, in utter despair of their cause, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... his 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 ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... efforts since the first attempted corner in stone hatchets, or mastodon tusks, or whatever it may have been. In the language of one of its newspaper critics, the "Trust" had been "founded on misconception and prompted along lines of self-destruction. Its fundamental principles were the restriction of product, the increase of price, and the throttling of competition, a trinity that would wreck any combination, business, political, ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... the end Ma Mandle slammed out of the house, hatless. Her old legs were trembling. Her hands shook. It was a hot June night. She felt as if she were burning up. In her frantic mind there was even thought of self-destruction. There were thousands of motor cars streaming by. The glare of their lamps and the smell of the gasoline blinded and stifled her. Once, at a crossing, she almost stumbled in front of an on-rushing car. The curses ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... neither of "works" nor of what they called "notions," i.e. views, beliefs, or creeds. They are never weary of insisting that a person may go on endless pilgrimages to holy places, he may repeat unnumbered "paternosters," he may mortify his body to the verge of self-destruction, and still be unsaved and unspiritual; so, too, he may "believe" all the dogma of the most orthodox system of faith, he may take on his lips the most sacred words of sound doctrine, and yet be utterly alien {xlvii} to the kingdom of God, a stranger and a foreigner to the spirit of ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... who had been watching Anna Liisa, is afraid of her curious apathetic behaviour, and looks out of the window, when she sees her setting off in a boat, apparently with the purpose of self-destruction. She and the fianc rush off to save her and bring her home. The girl explains in wild despair how she thought she saw her child under the water, and intended to jump in and rescue him. She raves somewhat like Ophelia in Hamlet, but her ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... my oath; my self-destruction is proof that I am sincere in the belief that I have acted for the good ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... accept the opportunity which is always at hand in "revert to a career of crime," as the saying is. Ex-convicts are often still human enough to be averse from starvation, and even from easier forms of self-destruction; and they yield to the temptation to steal. Like the idiots they are, they may hope to make a big strike and get away with it, and in some remote or foreign place, under another name, live out an unobserved and ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... "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, and presently accepted the conditions with tolerable grace. Before they parted Polly even assured him that if ever there was anyone else she would deal honestly with him and let him know. This being as much as to say that he might still hope, Christopher cast away his thoughts of self-destruction, and went home with an ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... make a mild pass, they'd 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. I'd ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... charm of being ignorant of that fact by forgetting it in a general pensiveness. She approached the gate. To let such a creature touch it even with a tip of her glove was to Fitzpiers almost like letting her proceed to tragical self-destruction. He jumped up and looked for his hat, but was unable to find the right one; glancing again out of the window he saw that he was too late. Having come up, she stopped, looked at the gate, picked up a little stick, and using ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... cowardly disposition, developing a ferocious temper, rejecting medical advice, cursing everybody who came around, so that he lay for months at our charge, until we really got to wish that he would carry out his threat of self-destruction. He did not, but he was crippled for life and did ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... all things in a world of strife, is fighting for existence, using its own weapons, which are reason and love. Obviously it can use no others, without self-destruction; yet it has to meet enemies who fight with the old weapons of force and fraud. Whether it will prevail is more than any prophet can say. Perhaps it is too much to ask that it should succeed—this ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... 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 the balance of his own mind. And when he suddenly ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Early the next morning, still complaining, as it is alleged, of his wound, he went out, declaring he was going out to milk, and not returning in due time, upon search his body was found and his self-destruction discovered. This was nearly twenty years after the deceased received his wound, and there is not a suggestion of any act or word of his in all that time indicating insanity. It seems to me it can hardly ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... was superbly accurate and shattered the periscope. Thereupon the submarine, now a blinded thing, rushed along under water in imminent danger of self-destruction from collision with the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... 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 ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... much of the psychology of self-destruction. It's a sort of subject one has few opportunities to study closely. I knew a man once who came to my rooms one evening, and while smoking a cigar confessed to me moodily that he was trying to discover ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... flattered, at Lizette's account of his conduct at the Taverne de Menut; for, although pleased to think that Le Gardeur loved her to the point of self-destruction, she honestly pitied him, and felt, or thought she felt, that she could sacrifice anything ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to ride through the zone controlled and swept by effective Infantry fire may be looked on as synonymous with self-destruction, only such moments must be chosen for a charge during which the enemy is prevented from bringing his full fire power to bear against the assailants. These, however, only occur—except always where the nature of the ground allows ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... Shandean method.[44] 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 und ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... once more, has many a dark page recording how despairing love has ended in self-destruction. At the beginning of the present century, a sad catastrophe befell the Shuckburghs of Shuckburgh Hall. It appears the Bedfordshire Militia were stationed near Upper Shuckburgh, and the officers were in the habit of visiting the Hall, whose hospitable owner, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... of some sort. Vincent 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, 'you fool! This is the way you keep your appointment, is it? ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... gloomy, miserable, desperate, he seemed an object of pity. His friends, Speed among the number, fearing a tragic termination, watched him closely in their rooms day and night. 'Knives and razors, and every instrument that could be used for self-destruction, were removed from his reach.' Mrs. Edwards did not hesitate to regard him as insane, and of course her sister Mary shared ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... it would have been unlawful for him to use without that permission; for, by the very constitution of his being, he was made to be sustained by that food which was most congenial to his animal economy; and this it must have been lawful for him to employ, unless self-destruction had been his duty. The true import of the phrase, therefore, doubtless is, that God had appointed, constituted, ordained this, as the staple article of man's diet. He had formed him with a nature to which a vegetable aliment was better suited than ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... true, to whom she owed much, and whom she felt it a kind of murder to desert. It was one of those fallacious chivalries of feeling which are the danger of sensitive and imaginative minds. Religion strengthened it, as it is so apt to strengthen any form of self-destruction, short of technical suicide. There was but a month to their marriage when we met. For us it was a month of rapture and agonies, of heaven shot through with hell. I saw further than she. I begged her at least to wait a year; but the force of my appeal was weakened by scruples similar to her own. To ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... her a good talking to about that. Her early training had been in a church which regarded self-destruction as a cardinal sin. Then business ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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 ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... neighbourhood; and on the day after the body was deposited in the grave, which was made at the outside of the church-yard, a number of school-boys ventured thither, to view the resting-place of one who had at times been the subject of village wonder, and whose recent act of self-destruction was invested with additional interest. At first, no one was brave enough to venture near; but at last, the appearance of a hole in the side of the grave irresistibly attracted their attention. Having been minutely examined, it was at ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... seeing how 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 on," ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... blood. My mental sufferings, from these conflicts between my natural turn of mind and its morbid state, became so great, that life grew a burden more than I could long endure. Still, I shrunk from self-destruction; or, more properly speaking, the thought never occurred to me; for, had it come with half the force of the others by which I was enslaved, I would have, in a moment, obeyed the impulse. I had no idea of any crime, or a wish to witness the sufferings of the individual. I felt ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... reanimated Savior came forth; no one witnessed it, and the only persons of whom we are told that they might have been able to see it with their bodily eyes were smitten with blindness. And in like manner, neither do we know how the soul, lying, so to speak, in the tomb of self-destruction, is wrought upon by the angel of the Lord in order to call forth the life of God in it. It arises unseen in that grave-like silence, and can not be perceived until it is actually present; what is properly the beginning of it is hidden, as every beginning usually is, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... public, but had even 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 dreading the consequences of her father's temper, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... devotes a chapter of his interesting 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
... nothingness. While nature and society conspire to mock him, Nirvana invites him to its peace. The religious course of his life consists in the use of such means as can win him this end. From the stand-point of the universe he has the sympathy only of that wisdom whose essence is self-destruction. And this truth is mediated by the imagination of divine sympathy, for the Blessed One remains as the perpetual ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... Jacobinism, enthroned in Buonaparte, should resist both the pressure of foreign attack, and its own inherent tendencies to self-destruction, whether it must not derive such power of resistance from the use of such revolutionary and convulsive efforts, as involve, and almost imply a consequent state of feebleness? And whether therefore, if any unexpected reverse of fortune should ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... 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 are of ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Brahmana and that of my own, I would prefer the latter. The killing of a Brahmana is the highest sin, and there is no expiation for it. I think a reluctant sacrifice of one's own self is better than the reluctant sacrifice of a Brahmana. O blessed lady, in sacrificing myself I do not become guilty of self-destruction. No sin can attach to me when another will take my life. But if I deliberately consent to the death of a Brahmana, it would be a cruel and sinful act, from the consequence of which there is no escape. The learned have said that the abandonment of one who hath come to thy ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... accused me has recommended the torture to be 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 ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... I am going! Your daughter will not drive you to self-destruction! Soon I shall be the wife of that man, or—God! No! I do not go begging for happiness—it is misery, the deepest misery that I beg for! You will give me my misery!—Away! Where is ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... mists that prevented her safely leaving the hovel. A sudden, dire, revolution in her religious impressions was wrought, or rather completed, in that dismal scene. David had more than once wrung her very soul by dark hints of self-destruction in the event of her ever forsaking him. He had thus been led into discussions on suicide, and had even argued for the moral right of man to end his own being under circumstances. Persuasion hangs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... kill 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 he were dead, he could ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... 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 who snatched the loaf from a hungry thief, threw it back ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... might steal and commit adultery when he could. Unnatural crimes were vindicated. The last dread crime—suicide—was pleaded for by Cicero and Seneca as the mark of a hero; and Demosthenes, Cato, Brutus, and Cassius, carried the means of self-destruction about them, that they might not fall alive into ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... 11. l. 8. —the vile noose will I endure. Hanging was not considered by the Hindus an undignified mode of self-destruction. See Hindu Theatre, ii. 237 ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... of political forces in Europe, conscious above all of the strength of those ties which still bound Napoleon to the clerical cause, knew that there were limits which Italy could not at present pass without ruin. The centre of Mazzini's hopes, an advance upon Rome itself, he knew to be an act of self-destruction for Italy, and this advance he was resolved at all costs to prevent. Cavour had not hindered the expedition to Sicily; he had not considered it likely to embroil Italy with its ally; but neither had he been the author of this enterprise. The ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... come to the interesting part of the story. Seven years of being a good little boy got you nothing but the promise of present and future frustration. Seven seconds of madness, of attempted self-destruction, brought you here. And as a reward for bucking the system, the system itself has provided you with a life of luxury and leisure—full permission to come and go as you please, live in spacious ease, indulge in the gratification of every appetite, free of responsibility ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... 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 ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... doctors at my Inn (in the intervals of their abuse of their professional brethren) discourse upon this topic—on that overdose of chloral which poor B. took, and on that injudicious self-application of chloroform which carried off poor C. With the law in such a barbarous state in relation to self-destruction, and taking into account the feelings of relatives, there was, of course, only one way of wording the certificate, but—and then they shake their heads as only doctors can, and help themselves to port, though they know it ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... found in the passion of self-pity and that spirit of obstinate resistance which it engenders. In certain natures the extreme of self-pity is intolerable, and leads to self-destruction; but there are less fortunate beings whom the vehemence of their revolt against fate strengthens to endure in suffering. These latter are rather imaginative than passionate; the stages of their woe impress them as the acts of a drama, which they cannot bring themselves to cut short, ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... the night. The fire had gone out, but Reardon still sat in the cold room. Thoughts of self-destruction were again haunting him, as they had done during the black months of last year. If he had lost Amy's love, and all through the mental impotence which would make it hard for him even to earn bread, why should he still live? Affection for his child had no weight with him; it was Amy's ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... the raving Ajax. "Ajax was not represented at the moment when, raging among the herds he captures and slays goats and oxen, mistaking them for men. The master showed him sitting weary after these crazy deeds of heroism, and meditating self-destruction. That was really the raving Ajax, not because he is raving at the moment, but because we see he has been raving and with what violence his present reaction of shame and despair vividly portrays. We see the force of the tempest in the wrecks and ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... question still remains unsettled. It was abandoned, or rather, it merged into another during the later stages of the debate, this other being concerned with which of the debaters had the least "sense." Each made the plain statement that if he were more deficient than his opponent in that regard, self-destruction would be his only refuge. Each declared that he would "rather die than be talked to death"; and then, as the two approached a point bluntly recriminative, Whitey coughed again, whereupon they were miraculously silent, and went into the passageway in ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... 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
... bereaved mother, who had refused to be consoled for the death of her only child, was found drowned at the bottom of the well in the harem garden. The household was plunged in lamentation over her pitiful act of self-destruction, and now I became vaguely conscious that friends and neighbours, as well as servants, were looking at me askance, and were beginning to shun my presence as if a curse had fallen upon ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... 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 |
