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Suicidal   /sˌuəsˈaɪdəl/   Listen
Suicidal

adjective
1.
Dangerous to yourself or your interests.  Synonym: self-destructive.  "A suicidal corporate takeover strategy" , "A kamikaze pilot"






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"Suicidal" Quotes from Famous Books



... and wise Dr. Perkins remarked that 'the women of America are suicidal from the cradle to the grave!' I will give you one of his pamphlets, miss, to take away with you, and you will be convinced that slippers are serpents in disguise in winter weather! The wooden shoes of Germany rather! ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... cast themselves headlong into the sea, for if that were the case they could commence their suicide at any moment by rolling down any of the steep sides of the island into the sea. I trusted that my pigs were sweet-tempered beasts, and of a non-suicidal variety, and so they afterwards proved, and toothsome into ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... a miser becomes extravagantly liberal, an affectionate father a very tyrant to his children, without any traceable causes for such transformation. The disease is made more manifest if such a sudden change is preceded by certain physical conditions, such as epilepsy, hereditary taint, suicidal attempts, "the insane temperament," as it is called, and other influences which are ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens

... there was that the Caliphate and the empire would be lost together. He determined to strengthen his empire by restoring the influence of the Caliphate, and rallying the Mohammedan world once more around the throne of Othman. Judged from a European standpoint, this policy is at once reactionary and suicidal. It ignores the fact that the Ottoman empire is dependent for its existence upon the good-will of Europe; that it has measured its strength with a single Christian Power, and been utterly crushed in a year. It ignores ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend. Nor did I, by awaking, feel that I had reascended. This I do not dwell upon; because the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting, at least, to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, cannot be approached by words.' De Quincey's most elaborate dreams are: 'The Daughter of Lebanon,' 'Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow,' 'The Vision of Sudden Death,' and 'Dream Fugue.' The last named is the most perfect in ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... some people in whom any extremity of prolonged anguish, bodily or mental, never produced the smallest desire to quit life; while there were others whose attachment to life was slight, and that a very little pressure of care or calamity developed a suicidal impulse. This is, I suppose, a question of vitality, not necessarily of activity of mind and body, but a deep instinctive desire to live; the thought of deliberate suicide was wholly unintelligible to Johnson, death ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... for a conflict which in no wise interested her prosperous cities and industrious population. Spain, France, Germany, with their Swiss auxiliaries, had been summoned upon various pretexts to partake of the rich prey she offered. Patriots like Machiavelli perceived too late the suicidal self-indulgence which, by substituting mercenary troops for national militia, and by accustoming selfish tyrants to rely on foreign aid, had exposed the Italians defenceless to the inroads of their warlike neighbors. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... it seems to me incredible that the two great Central European Powers should ever fall into sustained conflict again with one another. They, too, will be forced to create some overriding body to prevent so suicidal a possibility. America too, it may be, will develop some Pan-American equivalent. Probably the hundred millions of Latin America may achieve a method of unity, and then deal on equal terms with the present United States. ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... time was such that they had no refuge elsewhere than in the bosom of the Church. But she chose to preach and exact celibacy. The consequence was that these gentle natures had no continuance, and thus by a policy so singularly unwise and suicidal that I am hardly able to speak of it without impatience, the Church brutalised the breed of our forefathers. She acted precisely as if she had aimed at selecting the rudest portion of the community to be alone the parents of future generations. ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... prevailed, and he made all sail on the ship, and bore away for the Cape with a heavy heart. The sea was like a mill-pond, but in that he saw only its well-known treachery, to lead them on to this unparalleled act of madness: each sail he hoisted seemed one more agent of Destruction rising at his own suicidal command. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... not "have their beneficence and protection to the Church of Christ understood as a bribe to her, to betray and deliver up into their hands the powers committed into her charge by Christ." Nor did he fail to point out the suicidal nature of Erastianism. For the church's hold upon men is dependent upon their faith in the independence of her principles. "When they see bishops," he wrote wisely, "made by the Court, they are apt to imagine that they speak to them the court language; ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... it, dear. He's headstrong and means to see this thing through. Had I thought that he would ever dream of contemplating such a suicidal feat as attempting that path, I'd never have let him see the cattle cross last night. My God! it turns me ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... obscurity was not the only one raised against the death of Judas: there was a separate objection—that it was inconsistent with itself. He was represented, in the ordinary modern versions, as dying by a double death—viz., 1st, by a suicidal death: 'he went and hanged himself'—this is the brief account of his death given by St. Matthew; but, 2d, by a death not suicidal: in the Acts of the Apostles, we have a very different account of his ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... had staggered away from his fellows. No sooner had I entered the water than this bird took it into its head to fly away with the most indispensable portion of my apparel. Postponing, therefore, for the present, my suicidal design, I just slipped my nether extremities into the sleeves of my coat, and betook myself to a pursuit of the felon with all the nimbleness which the case required and its circumstances would admit. But my evil destiny attended me still. As I ran at full speed, with my nose up in the atmosphere, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... of the R.S.P.C.A., as Punch informed us last week, dogs do not possess suicidal tendencies. Yet the other day we saw an over-fed poodle deliberately loitering ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various

... companion were both so full of their purpose that they paid no heed to the perpetual danger which they ran as the car tore round propections and down deep cuts at a speed which at other times they would have considered suicidal. And at just under the hour they ran on the level stretch by the "Admiral's Arms" and looking down at the harbour saw the lighted port-holes of some ship which lay against the south quay, and on the quay itself men moving about ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher

... cases where the subjects have dropped out of sight without apparent cause or reason and have left behind them untarnished reputations. Of these a small percentage are found to have met with violence; others have been victims of a suicidal mania ; and sooner or later a clue has come to light, for the dead are often easier to find than the living, Of the remaining small proportion there are on record a number of carefully authenticated cases where the subjects ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... Though he worked hard and long, he still worked judiciously. Bent upon accomplishing what was almost impossible within the limited time remaining, he determined that, with all his labor, Dr. Arten should never charge him with suicidal tendencies again. Therefore he trained himself mentally and morally for his struggle as ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... which the last extract is taken, even the hardihood of assertion is surpassed by the suicidal character of the argument. It is called "The Church before the Flood," and is devoted chiefly to the adjustment of the question between the Bible and Geology. Keeping within the limits we have prescribed to ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... itself to have reached the insupportable stage; and may prepare, with whatever difficulty, reluctance and astonishment, for one of two things, for changing or perishing! With the millions no longer able to live, how can the units keep living? It is too clear the Nation itself is on the way to suicidal death. ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... admiration, could hardly commit the absurd faux pas of establishing in her own house, and having always by her side, a person younger and handsomer than herself? To consent to your proposition concerning Madeleine would therefore be a suicidal act"— ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... potion bland, and wilt not drink: Not sullen, nor in scorn, like haughty man With suicidal hand Putting ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble

... local government. This was in the majesty of revolution. It is profanation to compare with this patience and glory the insurrection begun by South Carolina. She—the first time such an organization ever did it—assumed to be a nation; and then madly led off in a suicidal war on the National Government, although the three branches of it, Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary, recognized every constitutional obligation, and had not attempted an invasion of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... been in the restaurant at any time that evening, but on the contrary that they, the friends of Hassoun, had been there eating Turkish pie—a few might have had mashed beans with taheenak—when Sardi Babu, apparently with suicidal intent, entered alone to take vengeance ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... under the blows, was silenced, Hermon asked, "So your mad thirst for vengeance also caused this suicidal attack?" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... my interior reservoirs, a sufficient Birmingham Horse-pistol, and say, "Be so obliging as retire, Friend (Er ziehe sich zurueck, Freund), and with promptitude!" This logic even the Hyperborean understands; fast enough, with apologetic, petitionary growl, he sidles off; and, except for suicidal as well as homicidal ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... suicidal blindness and remorse, pass sentence upon themselves, and weakly deliver their souls into the keeping of that inexorable jailer, Despair, forgetting the possibilities—nay, certainties—of good that ever dwell in God. If man had no better friend than himself, his prospects ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... insert lead into your system every day of your life; a cumulative poison, and one so deadly and so subtle, that the Sheffield file-cutters die in their prime, from merely hammering on a leaden anvil. And what do you gain by this suicidal habit? No plum has a sweeter bloom or more delicious texture than the skin of your young face; but this mineral filth hides that delicate texture, and substitutes a dry, uniform appearance, more like ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... could help it, she should be spared the desolation and horrors of war within her frontiers. But what course did the Porte adopt? Not recognising the force majeure which had driven Roumania to this decision, she was suicidal enough to declare her an enemy, and to threaten to depose the Prince, thus giving to her bitterest foe an ally who, at a critical period, in self-defence, turned the scale against her, and caused ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... was the crowning triumph of this public opinion. But for the time it seemed a suicidal triumph. At the moment when the national will claimed to be omnipotent, the nation found itself helpless to carry out its will. In making the revolution it had meant to vindicate English freedom and English Protestantism from the attacks of the Crown. But it had never meant to bring about any radical ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green

... appetite, leanness, hollow eyes, groans, griefs, sadness, sighing, sobbing, alternating blushes and pallor, feverish or unequal pulse, suicidal impulses, are other symptoms occurring among such advanced nations as the Greeks and Hindoos and often accepted as evidence of true love; but since, like longing, they also accompany lust and other strong passions or violent emotions, they cannot be accepted as reliable symptoms of romantic ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... so fearful a storm proved irresistible, and, turning up course, they fled in dismay, leaving their dead upon the ground in windrows. Three standard-bearers in succession fell before the fatal aim of the same rifle, and no man dared repeat the suicidal act of again displaying that ensign. We have seen a letter from an officer high in command who witnessed that action, and, after describing it, he remarks,—"There is more chance of credit to your State in the new gun and men than in twenty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... and buried with him. A valuable member of society might have been saved, if the result in his case could have been the same as with a man we knew in Santa Barbara, who, becoming discouraged by continual rheumatism, combined with poverty, took a large dose of strychnine, with suicidal intent, but, to his astonishment, was entirely cured of his rheumatism; and the notoriety he acquired presently procured ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... said. "I thought you were never going to hear me. Another hour and I'd have made a swim for it, though it's suicidal with this current. I'll show you where you can come in so you won't ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... separation rule now, we're absolutely helpless," he concluded. "Gunterson wouldn't have the vaguest idea of what to do—and wouldn't let any one else tell him. I can pretty nearly see the Guardian, under Samuel Gunterson's suicidal direction, setting sail with all flags flying, and heading straight for the ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... Only towards the end, where the facts leave freer play for the poetic impulse, do they rise into sharp vividness of dramatic life and speech. Nothing in the poem equals in intensity the great soliloquy of Miranda before his strange and suicidal leap, and the speech of Clara to the "Cousinry." Here we pass at a bound from chronicling to creation. As a narrative, Red Cotton Night-Cap Country has all the interest of a novel, with the concentration and higher pitch of poetry. Less ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... it not merely grossly offended against justice and humanity, but was also extremely detrimental to the interests of those who thus acted, and of those who approved of the action. As to the government, one would have thought that the insane and suicidal character of its action would long since have been recognised. A blind man could have seen that the government damaged its financial as well as its military strength in proportion as its measures against the lower classes were effective. ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... masonry. These slender suspenders carry a roadway and two footpaths across a span of 700 feet. The bridge stands 245 feet above high-water level, and its altitude seems to furnish an irresistible temptation to people of a suicidal tendency. The prospect from the footway is extraordinarily impressive. Looking down the river, the spectator commands the romantic gorge of the Avon, and turning round he can view the panorama of Bristol shut in on the right by the lofty ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... be sorry to be understood as affirming that a majority of suicidal acts are the result of intemperance;—by no means. My own opinion is, that if there be a single vice more fruitful of this horrid crime than any other, it is gross sensuality. The records of insane hospitals, even in this country will show, that ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... stupid handling of the situation not only spoiled one well-intentioned man's evening, but completely "finished" herself so far as her future chances for success were concerned. Not alone her partner but every brother-stag who stood in the doorway mentally placarded her "Keep off." It is suicidal for a girl to make any man spend an entire evening with her. If at the end of two dances, there is no intimate friend she can signal to, or an older lady she can insist on being left with, she should go home; and if the same thing happens several times, she ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... not at once show the necessary determination in attacking. In civil war, more than in any other, victory can be insured only by a determined and persistent course. There must be no vacillation. To engage in parleys is dangerous; merely to mark time is suicidal. We are dealing here with the masses, who have never held any power in their hands, who are therefore most wanting in political self-confidence. Any hesitation at revolutionary headquarters demoralizes ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky

... thus by his suicidal fury provoking his temporary subjects to rise in arms against him, he was at the same time hard pressed by the Romans in Asia, both by sea and by land. Lucullus, after the failure of his attempt to lead forth the Egyptian fleet against Mithradates, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... becoming better. We used to hear much of the comfort of the old English wayside inn, but the old English wayside inn has gone. The railway hotel has taken its place; and the railway hotel is too frequently gloomy, desolate, comfortless, and almost suicidal. In England, too, since the old days are gone, there are wanting the landlord's bow and the kindly smile of his stout wife. Who now knows the landlord of an inn, or cares to inquire whether or no there be a landlady? The ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... bed. You have appendicitis symptoms in spite of there being no pain, and you might do yourself no end of harm by getting up now. I wouldn't let any man go out of doors after taking that belladonna for the world. It would be suicidal." ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... indeed! but fortunately the swimmers are strong, and able to save the suicidal Ibsenites. For my part,—that is, as one of the audience drawn by curiosity,—I should say that were it not for the excellent acting of all concerned in the piece, and especially of Miss ELIZABETH ROBINS as the Hanwellian heroine, IBSEN's Hedda Gabler would scarcely have been allowed a second night's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various

... temporary or permanent, amnesia or memory loss may and usually is present (e. g., general paresis, tumor, cerebral arteriosclerosis, etc.). As the result of Carbon monoxide poisoning, as after accidental or attempted suicidal gas inhalation, the memory, especially for the most recent events, is impaired and the patient cannot remember the events as they occur; he passes from moment to moment unconnected to the recent past, though ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... of these indisputable facts Von Oettingen, while rejecting the idea that there is any inexorable fatality, as Buckle believed, connected with their recurrence, is obliged to admit that the hot weather exercises a propelling influence on suicidal tendencies, and that the cold weather on the other hand acts in an ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... or immediately dangerous, but septic pneumonia is very apt to follow. Wounds of the throat inflicted by suicides are commonly situated at the upper part, involving the hyoid bone and the thyroid and cricoid cartilages. The larynx is opened, but the large vessels often escape. In most suicidal wounds of the throat the direction is from left to right, the incision being slightly inclined from above downwards. At the termination of a suicidal cut-throat the skin is the last structure divided, ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... career. Too much questioning and too little active responsibility lead, almost as often as too much sensualism does, to the edge of the slope, at the bottom of which lie pessimism and the nightmare or suicidal view of life. But to the diseases which reflection breeds, still further reflection can oppose effective remedies; and it is of the melancholy and Weltschmerz bred of reflection that I now ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... you think that if we have both of us done a foolish thing, suicidal for both our interests, it would only be common sense to set matters right? We ought not to live together in Paris, dear boy, and we must not allow anyone to suspect that we traveled together. Your ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... were subjected to heavy cross machine gun fire from the enemy positions which had not been attacked. It was evident that unless these latter were taken also they could not hold on. In other words, the policy of local attacks was suicidal and was, in fact, playing into the German ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson

... into the field; and a strategy which may be unsound on purely military grounds may be completely justified by political reasons. The diversion of a force from the main field of operations where it is needed to a more distant objective, seems suicidal to the general in command; but if, without provoking disaster on the field it has left, it has the effect of turning the enemy's flank, detaching his actual or deterring his potential allies, and inducing neutrals to intervene, ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... amass wealth for selfish gratification, to give the individual power over others, to blind others, to weave a web of sophistry, to cast a deceitful lustre on vice, to make the worse appear the better cause. But energy of thought so employed, is suicidal. The intellect, in becoming a pander to vice, a tool of the passions, an advocate of lies, becomes not only degraded, but diseased. It loses the capacity of distinguishing truth from falsehood, good from evil, right from wrong; it becomes ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... of the ship's officers and the commander of the gun-crew resulted in a single but definite conclusion. The desperate, even suicidal manner in which the men left the ship signified but one thing: the absolute necessity of flight before an even more sinister peril confronted them. Not a man on board doubted for an instant that they ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.' That is dismally true in regard to any and every life that has shaken off the service of God which is perfect freedom, and has persisted in the service of sin. Such service is suicidal; it rivets an iron yoke on our necks, and there is no locksmith who can undo the shackles and lift it off, so long as we refuse to take service with God. Stubbornly rebellious wills forge their own fetters. Like many a slave-owner, our tyrants have a cruel delight in killing ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... England tell fairy tales to Blondel out of the Austrian tower, and muddle up things about his wicked brother the Count of Mortagne. They will talk of Lemnos and Memphis and other patatis and patatas of the classical dictionary and the Grand Cyrus. In a fashion not perhaps so instantly suicidal, but in a sufficiently annoying fashion, they will invent clumsy "speaking" names, or dog-Latin and cat-Greek ones. And, perhaps worst of all, they prostitute the delicate charms of the fairy tale to clumsy adulation ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... "the man of passion and sentiment." It is impossible to describe here the various experiences and doings of Aurora. Without enlarging on the effects produced upon her by Byron's poetry, Shakespeare's "Hamlet," and Chateaubriand's "Rene"; on her suicidal mania; on the long rides which, clad in male attire, she took with Deschartres; on the death of her grandmother, whose fortune she inherited; on her life in Paris with her extravagantly-capricious mother; on her rupture with her father's family, her aristocratic relations, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... suicidal energy shown in the civil strifes at Paris served still further to depress the fortunes of France. On the very day when the Versailles troops entered the walls of Paris, Thiers and Favre signed the treaty of peace at Frankfurt. The terms were substantially those agreed on ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... object. The Lords really had no intelligible object but to embarrass a Government they could not demolish, and gratify their own spite. If the most violent Radical had been permitted to chalk out the most suicidal course for the House of Lords to follow, he could have devised nothing more ingenious and well contrived than what they have actually done, taking care to keep up their character in the nation for intolerance, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... were many who gave the new rules outward observance, but embraced every opportunity of indulging secretly in those flesh-pots to which they had been accustomed. It was found that animals were continually dying natural deaths under more or less suspicious circumstances. Suicidal mania, again, which had hitherto been confined exclusively to donkeys, became alarmingly prevalent even among such for the most part self-respecting creatures as sheep and cattle. It was astonishing how some of these unfortunate animals would scent out a butcher's ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... timbers, however, were flying through the streets as if they were paper, and it appeared suicidal to attempt a journey through the flying timbers. Just at this time, the anemometer in the Weather Bureau office registered one hundred miles an hour and blew away soon after. In the next hour the wind rose to a velocity of one hundred and twenty miles ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... affected at a coincidence which conveyed a tribute of respect to the memory of the great author of striking significance, while it recorded the painful catastrophe which has broken over upon the American Republic. It was a sad sight to me to see the profane and suicidal antagonisms which have rent it in twain brought to the shrine of this great memory and graven upon its sacred tablet as it were with the murdering dagger's point. New and bad initials! The father and patriot Washington would have wept tears of blood to ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... the Church is the custodian of faith, and the Church, on the platform of religious truth, is absolutely uncompromising and intolerant, just as the State is in regard to treason. She cannot admit error, she cannot approve error; to do so would be suicidal. She cannot lend the approval of her presence, nay even of her silence, to error. She stands aloof from heresy, must always see in it an enemy, condemns it and cannot help condemning it, for she stands for truth, pure and unalloyed truth, which error pollutes ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... so impressive as that which gleams from an apparently yawning and inevitable grave; and none, too, more quickly forgotten, if by any resource of art, and reinvigoration of nature, the tombward progress be arrested, and life pulsate joyously again. I was about to make some remark upon the suicidal folly of persisting in a course which almost necessarily led to misery and ruin, when the but partially-closed doorway was darkened by the burly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various

... that suicidal talk of marrying," replied John, "and all that harangue of incoherency about your growing old. Why, my dear fellow, you're at least a dozen years my junior, and look at me!" and John glanced at himself in the glass ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley

... instances are very rare in which a female is required, for the gratification of an importunate lover, to do what she feels must be suicidal to her own peace. As a Christian, she is bound to love others as herself, if you please, even as much as herself; but not more. If she offer up all her self-love, and take a course intended exclusively ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... us be as we were,' replied she, frankly placing her hand in mine; and while I held it there, I had much difficulty to refrain from pressing it to my lips;—but that would be suicidal madness: I had been bold enough already, and this premature offering had well-nigh given the death-blow ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... an almost universally-received creed that behind the suicidal prejudices and laughable superstitions of the Chinese there is a mysterious fund of solid learning hidden away in the uttermost recesses—far beyond the ken of occidentals—of that terra incognita, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... have no gloomy and savage father to offer to the public gaze as the true cause of all my tragic heritage; no pale-faced and partially poisoned mother whose suicidal instincts have cursed me with the temptations of the artistic temperament. I regret that there was nothing in the range of our family much more racy than a remote and mildly impecunious uncle; and that I cannot do my duty as a true modern, by cursing everybody who ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... at the first because it showed so unusual a susceptibility; at the second, because it showed so unreasonable a blindness. All sin is a wonder to eyes that see into the realities of things and read the end; for it is all utterly unreasonable (though it is, alas! not unaccountable) and suicidal. 'Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this.' Unbelief in Christ is, by Himself, declared to be the very climax of sin, and its most flagrant evidence (John xvi. 9); and of all the instances of unbelief which saddened His heart, none struck more chill than that of these Nazarenes. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... we should rejoice that the American people, untaught by past misfortunes, have resolved to continue the war to the end, and hail the probable continuance of the power of Mr. Lincoln as the event most calculated to pledge the nation to a steady continuance in its suicidal policy. But we are persuaded that the people of this country view the prospect of another four years of war in America with very different feelings. They are not able to divest themselves of sympathy for a people of their own ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... this case is that you, the pioneer, should drop, and say to each of these converts: "Yes, you may manage. I grant your knowledge, judgment, taste, culture, are all superior to mine. I resign the good old craft to you altogether." To my mind there never was such suicidal letting go as has been yours these ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... murder and attempts to disguise the body, and the nature of the crime, by substituting the head of a guillotined criminal for that of the victim. In another story we have the picture of a cheerful teetotaller who suffers from drink and suicidal mania. There is also a doctor who kills a mad poet, and a mad priest who drops a hammer from the top of his church-tower upon his brother. Another story is about the loathsome treachery of an English general. It is, of course, difficult to write about crime ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... punishment he dealt out to the revolted districts was so remorseless that the new Procurator, Julius Classicianus, sent a formal complaint to Rome on the suicidal impolicy of his superior's measures. Nero, however, did not mend matters by sending (like Claudius) a freed-man favourite as Royal Commissioner to supersede Suetonius. Polycletus was received with derision both by Roman and Briton, and Suetonius remained acting Governor till the wreck of some ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... ruin and death, cannot last forever. They are by their own nature exceptional and suicidal, and spend themselves with what they feed on. And then the true laws of God's universe, peace and order, usefulness and life, will reassert themselves, as they have been waiting all along to do, hid in God's presence from ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... sadly, "Few men do think or inquire very far on sacred subjects! Listen,—for what I have to say to you will but strengthen you in your faith,—and you will need more than all the strength of the Four Evangelists to bear you stiffly up against the suicidal Negation of this present disastrous epoch. Ages ago,—ay, more than six or seven thousand years ago, there were certain communities of men in the East,— scholars, sages, poets, astronomers, and scientists, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... excited mind, I hastily summoned the stewardess, and asked what was the matter to cause such a commotion overhead. I learnt from her that an unusual and almost fatal event had just occurred. The man at the wheel, suddenly seized with a suicidal mania, had rushed from his post, possessed himself of two mops, which were lying on the deck, and putting one under each arm, with a wild and fiendish shriek had jumped overboard. The captain immediately stopped the ship and ordered a boat ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... This suicidal policy had its effect. Cut off from all markets, the farmer planted only for family use. At the close of the war the people of Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas had to be fed by the government. The farmers in 1864 refused to feed the Southern army. Seventy thousand men deserted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... a pack of small demons! For what do you take me? No, I have been wretched. What on earth are you doing down there? You have been hours about it already. Surely, whatever it is, it must be done now. If you don't come out shortly you will have murder on your soul, as I feel suicidal." ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... is a blight of the gravest character upon the local industry of the inhabitants, and it is a suicidal and unstatesmanlike policy that crushes and extinguishes all enterprise. What Englishman would submit to such a prying and humiliating position? And still it is expected that the resources of the island will be developed by British capital! The great want for the supply of the principal towns is ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... already shown us the uselessness of conciliatory measures as well as the utter worthlessness of their guarantees for the safety of those who submit," said the burgomaster. "It would be suicidal madness to trust them; let us put faith in God, who defends the right, in our own resolute courage and power of endurance, in our strong walls, and in the assistance which the Prince of Orange will ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston

... was awful. I thought of Hope, and hugged a few and carried them around in my arms and felt much better. Today for the first time, I quit work and went to see an American film at the cinema to cheer me. But when I saw the streetcars, and "ready to wear" clothes, and the policemen I got suicidal. I went back and told the others and they all rushed off to see "home" things, and are there now. This is a yell of a letter, but it's the only kind I can write. My stories and cables are rotten, too. I have seen nothing—just traveled and waited for something to happen. ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... times, drunken with the nearness of her, with the delicate odor from her hair, as a stray wisp fluttered into his face, he had come very near to catching her in his arms. But he had grimly mastered the feeling, telling himself that he was not a savage, and that such an action would be suicidal to his hopes. It cost him an effort, though, to restrain himself, as his flushed face, his burning eyes ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... interest in Godfrey's death? Three parties had an interest, first, the Catholics (IF Godfrey knew their secrets); next, the managers of the great Whig conspiracy in favour of the authenticity of Oates's Popish Plot; last, Godfrey himself, who was of an hereditary melancholy (his father had suicidal tendencies), and who was involved in a quandary whence he could scarcely hope to extricate ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... it depends. In a word, when the forests fail, the daily life of the average citizen will inevitably feel the pinch on every side. And the forests have already begun to fail, as the direct result of the suicidal policy of forest destruction which the people of the United States have allowed themselves ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot

... appeared a little excited when he came home, but he confessed that the alteration in his manner was very slight, hardly noticeable, indeed. It seemed hopeless to seek for any clue, and the suggestion that Lord Argentine had been suddenly attacked by acute suicidal mania was ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... misunderstanding which called only for diplomatic adjustment, he suddenly declared war against Germany and rashly put his armies into the field to cope with that powerful rival. Never had there been a more unwise or suicidal proceeding. In shameful ignorance of the real condition of the army, which he was made to believe was "five times ready," "ready to the last gaiter button," he marshalled against the thoroughly prepared military power of Germany an army ill-organized, ill-supplied, without proper reserves, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... the sea, swimming lakes and rivers that lie in their way. When the coast is reached, they enter the water and continue on their course. Ship captains report sailing for hours through waters literally alive with them. This suicidal act of the lemmings strikes one as a kind of insanity. It is one of the most puzzling phenomena I know of in animal life. But the migration of all animals on a large scale shows the same unity of purpose. The whole tribe shares in a single impulse. The annual migration of the caribou in the ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... such cases is in suicidal monomania, delusional insanity, etc. In that variety of the cerebral form in which a decided predisposition must be admitted to exist, to disorder of the intellectual faculties, there are found various forms of mental alienation. The chronic form is the most ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... within five miles of their spring; aye, and rapidly add to it. At every turn they gather aid, from ash-clad dingle and aldered meadow, mossy rock and ferny wall, hedge-trough roofed with bramble netting, where the baby water lurks, and lanes that coming down to ford bring suicidal tribute. Arrogant, all-engrossing river, now it has claimed a great valley of its own; and whatever falls within the hill scoop, sooner or later belongs to itself. Even the crystal "shutt" that crosses the farmyard by the woodrick, and glides down an aqueduct of last year's bark ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... them—when, no other nation having entered the lists with us, we were without competitors, and absolute masters of the commerce of the world, this make-all save-all principle was undoubtedly the most effective. But now, when our manufacturers meet with the keenest competition in every market; when a suicidal export of machinery enables the foreigner immediately to benefit by every mechanical discovery, or improvement in machinery, that is made by our engineers, the case is wholly altered, and the English ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... and a mighty change passes over his spirit. In a burst of magnificent poetry, he proclaims woe to the unjust Chaldean conqueror. All his greatness is a bubble which will burst; a suicidal mistake, which will work out its own punishment, and make him a taunt and a mockery to all nations round. 'Woe to him who increaseth that which is not his, and ladeth himself with thick clay! Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... outlook upon mankind and affairs. From that to the sentiment I have called anti-British was no more than a step. Many thoroughly good, honourable, benevolent people took that step unwittingly, and all unconsciously became permeated with the vicious, suicidal sentiment, while really seeking only good. Such people were saved by their natural goodness and sense from becoming actual and purposeful enemies of their country. But as "Little Englanders"—so they were ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... kill each other by means of particular poisons; that other poisons are used for suicidal purposes; that the photographer takes cyanide of potassium, the medical man and chemist prussic acid or morphia, the poor man vermin-killer or oxalic acid, or carbolic acid, or some such agonising destroyer of life. And thus, though all poisons lead to the same end—stoppage ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... Luckily for Mollie's suicidal stubbornness, the great tree had been halted for a moment in its downward plunge by some particularly heavy foliage and branches, but the girls could see that it was only a matter of seconds until the giant should tear itself loose and come plunging ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope

... earnestly protested. With the capitulation of the Emperor the dynastic question was closed. There was no longer pretension or pretext, nor was there occasion for war. The two parties should have come to an understanding. Why continue this terrible homicidal, fratricidal, suicidal combat, fraught with mutual death and sacrifice? Why march on Paris? Why beleaguer Paris? Why bombard Paris? To what end? If for the humiliation of France, ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner

... throughout an extreme caution in regard to mental application, reducing it at best within narrow and precarious limits, and often precluding it. Indeed, for two periods, each of several years, any attempt at bookish occupation would have been merely suicidal. A condition of sight arising from kindred sources has also retarded the work, since it has never permitted reading or writing continuously for much more than five minutes, and often has not permitted them at all. A previous ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... I would say that the absolute absence of any training given to a boy in the right use and value of money, which has obtained till lately in our English schools, is surely suicidal and must lend itself to every form of abuse. I do not know whether it is the same with you, but many of our boys know money only in the form of pocket-money, when it becomes to him a metal token mostly signifying so much "tuck"; becoming, ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... glorious edict which Henry IV. had granted, and which even Richelieu and Mazarin had respected, was repealed. There was no political necessity for the crime. It sprang from unalloyed religious intolerance; and it was as suicidal as it was uncalled for and cruel. It was an immense political blunder, which no enlightened monarch would ever have committed, and which none but a cold and narrow woman would ever have encouraged. There was no excuse or palliation for this abominable persecution any more than there ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... poor people far more than they pitied themselves; and though I fumed and stormed in their presence when they were disposed to lie down and give up, never was a man further from doing them injury. I was too proud of them; but under the circumstances it was dangerous—nay, suicidal—to appear doubtful or dubious of the road. The mere fact that I still held on my way according to the Doctor's little pearly monitor (the compass) had a grand moral effect on them, and though they demurred in plaintive terms and with pinched faces, they followed my footsteps ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... found himself on the edge of a rolling strip of open country sloping gradually down in what he imagined to be the direction of the British line; but to attempt to cross it would have been suicidal, for a rain of German shells burst furiously among ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... anything up there, Smith?... A dragon, or... sea serpent, or..." Madden stared dumbfounded at his friend, marveling what manner of sight had put suicidal thoughts into ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... try to commit suicide. The crystals triggered it. I'll explain how in a minute, but since Sam Atkins was an ethical being he felt the responsibility for what had happened to me. He had to reveal himself to the extent of saving my life—and helping me to change so that the suicidal drive would not appear again. He did this, but it revealed too much of himself and destroyed the chance of completing his program. When he gets back home, he's really going to catch hell for lousing up the works. ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones

... comparative rest, to scratch her head with her hind foot and devise fresh gymnastics. But, all through the day, Fanny never forgets Sutton, nor his shower of fish, and half her evolutions include a glance at the door whence he is wont to emerge, and a sort of suicidal fling back into the pond in case of his non-appearance, all which proceedings the solemn turkeys regard ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... before the fireplace upstairs. He had taken one of the framed photographs from the chimney-piece, and was scanning it at suicidal length through the eye-holes in the hideous mask which he still wore. He would need it after all. The lady had left the room below, opening and shutting the door for herself; the man was filling his glass once more. I would have shrieked my warning to Raffles, so fatally engrossed overhead, ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... housebreakers allow themselves to perish stupidly in the prison of a paper bag, which they could have torn open with one stroke of their mandibles! They are capable of tearing it, but they do not dream of doing so! There can be only one explanation of this suicidal inaction. The insect is well-endowed with tools and instinctive faculties for accomplishing the final act of its metamorphosis, namely, the act of emerging from the cocoon and from the cell. Its mandibles provide it with scissors, file, pick-axe and lever wherewith to cut, gnaw through and demolish ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... narrow policy, saying that if British interests demanded it he would not permit the colonists to make so much as a "horseshoe nail." Adam Smith, an eminent English political economist of that day, vehemently condemned the British Government's colonial mercantile system as suicidal; but his condemnation came too late to have any effect. The fact was that the world was not ready then—if indeed it is yet—to receive the gospel of ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... Hamlet goes mad in a revulsion of rage and nausea. Yet the women-murderers only represent some ultimate judgement in his own soul. At the bottom of his own soul Hamlet has decided that the Self in its supremacy, Father and King, must die. It is a suicidal decision for his involuntary soul to have arrived at. Yet it is inevitable. The great religious, philosophic tide, which has been swelling all through the Middle Ages, had ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... artery protects the vessel, in some degree, against the suicidal act, as generally attempted. The depth of the incision necessary to reach the main blood-vessels from the fore part of the neck is so considerable that the wound seldom effects more than the opening of ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... from without, so for days the officers and men of the United States blockading fleet outside were ignorant whether Cervera's entire fleet was cooped up within. To send in a boat to make a reconnoissance would have been suicidal, for the channel, difficult at all times, was blocked by mines and torpedoes. For this reason, too, there could be no repetition of Dewey's exploit ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... "Honour where honour is due, Miss Howe, and the Stanhope Company has given me some very enjoyable evenings. And you'll hardly believe me, but it is a fact, I assure you, I seldom get a free hand with those notices. Suicidal to the interests of the paper as it is, the editor insists as often as not on ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... To avoid suicidal exposure, the engineer was compelled to veer off to the right in his ascent. He reached the ridge crest without a shot having been fired at him. Leaping suddenly to his feet, he scrambled up to the flat top of a high crag, from which he could peer down upon the others. ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... hatred, jealousy, are suicidal emotions. We cannot for our own sakes afford to indulge in them, while from selfish reasons alone we should be incited to kindness, generosity, sympathy, ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... and the fires grew dimmer behind them as they streaked down the valley at a suicidal pace, hissing, rattling and crashing over the bumps. Jason clung to the tiller and shouted for Mikah to come relieve him, since if he let go of the thing they would turn and crash in an instant, and as long as he held it he couldn't cut down the steam. Some of this finally penetrated to Mikah ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... and arranged confessions of less admirable poets. Yes, in these few evasive, immaterial snatches of song, I find, implied for the most part, hidden away like a secret, all the fever and turmoil and the unattained dreams of a life which had itself so much of the swift, disastrous, and suicidal impetus of genius. ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al

... Augustine, to whom it is said: "Whatsoever thou shalt bless, let it be blessed; whatsoever thou shalt sanctify, let it be sanctified."(365) Their hands were lifted up with authority and clothed with supernatural power; but the hands of the Episcopal Bishops are spiritually paralyzed by the suicidal act of the Reformers, and they expressly disclaim any sacramental efficacy in the rite ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... Her suicidal plunge had been arrested, at only a few feet from the top of the shaft, by a cross-stay of timber, upon which she lay prone. There was no reason why the affair should be made public, and it was not. It was suppressed into one of those secrets which embed themselves in the history of families, and ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... answered. "Then you must have thought me of a suicidal tendency. Why, he would pound me up in a mortar if I disagreed with him. You have ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... The suicidal policy of the Stuarts had, for a time, driven all the upholders of civil liberty into the ranks of sectarianism. The advocates of the extremes of religious and political opinion flocked to America, the furthest point from kings and prelates that they ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... and refined to appreciate the wit and sentiment of the people. But his wit is so truly French in its lightness and sparkling, feathering vivacity, that one like me, accustomed to the bitterness of English tonics, suicidal November melancholy, and Byronic wrath of satire, cannot appreciate him at once. But when used to the gentler stimuli, we like them best, and we also would live awhile in the atmosphere of music and mirth, content if we have "bread for ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Brethren had now been desirous of Church extension, they would, of course, have turned Cennick's societies into Moravian congregations. But the policy they now pursued in the West was a repetition of their suicidal policy in Yorkshire. Instead of forming a number of independent congregations, they centralized the work at Tytherton, and compelled the other societies to wait in patience. At Bristol, then the second town in the kingdom, the good people ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... Government the producers of India, while they have everything to fear, can have nothing to hope. Our sole hope depends upon its being turned out, and replaced by an Unionist administration which will either annul the suicidal policy that has been adopted, or at least suspend its action till a full and searching investigation has been made into all the immediate and all the consequential results that must arise from the measure in question, should the Government be able to force up ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... men, and, in truth, the Jesuits had shown that a good deal could be done in this direction. The new enthusiasts failed to see that the genius of Protestantism is the genius of freedom, and that man refuses to be manufactured except on suicidal terms. He must first sacrifice that which is his distinctive title to manhood—his individuality and will. That the prophets of educational realism should have failed to see this is not to be laid at their door as a fault; it merely shows that they ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... oldish man, who came accompanied by his tall, black-bearded son, to report on his continued good health since his recovery, eight years previously, from neurasthenia and insanity. He had had the illusion of being persecuted, with suicidal tendencies; he had been told he could not travel twenty miles, and he had travelled over eight hundred kilometres, after four years' isolation. He had stayed a few months in Lourdes, bathing in the piscines, and the obsession had left him. His statements ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson

... to pull out anyhow," Jerry replied, "but I kicked on that, and some of the villagers also warned him it would be suicidal—yes, that's the exact word they used, Bluff, and you know it. What if I'd given in to you, and we had been caught all of a sudden by that hurricane? Well, I'll bet deep down in your heart you're just as glad as anything I kept you from ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen

... to close their last avenue of escape. He saw clearly the force of their meaning. It had, indeed, now become a battle for life between him and Bud and their two accusers. Their testimony, once they were free, would turn suspicion directly upon Quinley and Ugger. It would be suicidal for the two men now to attempt to do anything to free them. Thure raised his eyes and looked wildly around, at the face of the alcalde, the faces of the jury, and the faces of the surrounding crowd. On all was a look of ominous sadness and sternness ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil

... whom you can persuade to learn them," they will have the closed eyes opened according to Loyola or to Laud, or not opened at all! Do they not provoke us to say that their insisting on an impossible, a suicidal condition, is but a cloak, a blind, a fetch, and that their real object is to keep the multitude in darkness? I am thankful that we have few clergymen in America who manifest a spirit akin to that which to this day deprives half the children of these Kingdoms ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... generation. According to Morel there may be merely what is recognized as a nervous temperament often associated with moral depravity and various excesses in the first generation; in the second, severe neuroses, a tendency to apoplexy and alcoholism; in the third, psychic disturbances, suicidal tendencies and intellectual incapacity; and in the fourth, congenital idiocy, malformations and arrests of development. There are some very definite data with regard to inheritance in the nervous disease known as epilepsy. The essential condition in this consists in attacks of unconsciousness, ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... seems to have washed news away or got it under water." That was in April. In June he wrote: "I finished my readings on Friday night to an enormous hall—nearly L200. The success has been throughout complete. It seems almost suicidal to leave off with the town so full, but I don't like to depart from my public pledge. A man from Australia is in London ready to pay L10,000 for eight months there. If——" It was an If that troubled him ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... that it is better to wear out than rust out, but if a man has a wife and children he has no right to risk his life in this way. It might not hurt a younger man to rise from his bed night after night in the depths of winter, but for my husband it is simply suicidal. When he gets well he must and shall have a partner. What is the use of waiting until Wilfred is ready to come into the practice," for Wilfred Bevan, the eldest son, was at that time walking the hospitals. ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... that it continue to the end to accomplish to the fullest that for which so many financial sacrifices had been made - to take any other course, to discontinue, to fall down, or to break faith with those who had given us their confidence would be suicidal. In this deduction proof was given of the sound judgment and business acumen of those who bore the brunt of the burden in those hot days of battle. They took the position that the reputation which the company ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks

... point, Alice tells of having suddenly risen and stepped with suicidal intent toward the bank. "There was nothing any longer in life for me. Oswald must have perceived my impulse, as he sprang ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... I understand that this is a chimera,—a dream that you have got. I know well that no duty can require you to do this mad—this suicidal thing. I know you love Eleanor Harding with all your heart, and I tell you now that she loves you as well. If there was a plain, a positive duty before you, I would be the last to bid you neglect ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... tell me where you are going after the marriage? I could be at the wedding if I liked, and learn in that way," said Lydia, not shrinking from the one suicidal form ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... the ancient and reverend mystery of the inviolability of his person. The Count d'Artois, the King's second brother, one of the most worthless of human beings, as incurably addicted to sinister and suicidal counsels in 1789 as he was when he overthrew his own throne forty years later, had run away from peril and from duty after the insurrection of July. After the insurrection of October, a troop of the nobles of the court followed him. The personal ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... know, Mr. Earnshaw should have been at the funeral. He kept himself sober for the purpose—tolerably sober: not going to bed mad at six o'clock and getting up drunk at twelve. Consequently, he rose, in suicidal low spirits, as fit for the church as for a dance; and instead, he sat down by the fire and swallowed gin ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... known as Smithy dared not think what it meant. Nor had he time to follow the thought; he was too busily engaged in running at suicidal speed across the hot sand toward barren mountains where a ribbon of road ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... air here isn't healthy," said Wolska, taking Janina by the arm, for she read in her dimmed eyes a suicidal intent. ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... is most touching. When he goes to Berlin in 1844, he sees everywhere how unpopular the King is, how even his best intentions are misunderstood and misrepresented. Yet he goes on working and hoping, and he sacrifices his own popularity rather than oppose openly the suicidal policy that might have ruined Prussia, if Prussia could have been ruined. Thus ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... if losing him wasn't enough I must go and lose my looks. I know crying's simply suicidal at my age, yet I keep on at it. I'm doing for myself. I'm digging my own grave, Roly. A ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... "It is no suicidal mania, Miss Dent," he reassured her. "I like the rush and excitement of it all; but I had a summer on a ranch, and I learned the trick of sitting tight until the beast tires itself out. Broncho-busting is only a concrete form of ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... increases ten-fold when lying, hour after hour, with nothing to do but gaze at it. Under this trial the jolliest faces grow long and dismal; quiet men become dreadfully blue and the saturnine look actually suicidal. Even the negro hands talk under their breath, and the broad Yah! Yah! comes less ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... a survey until we have a space vehicle able to make the round trip. One-way trips would tell us nothing, even if volunteers offered to make such suicidal journeys. ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... Actually, such Dark Ages are the transition stages between two periods of experiments with the building of civilizations. In view of this oft-repeated experience, modern man must look upon an epoch of civilization not as a way of life, but an adventure of suicidal self-degradation ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... female. Into those eyes she would call up her soul, and there make it sit, flashing light, in gleams and sparkles, shoots and coruscations—not from great, black pupils alone—to whose size there were who said the suicidal belladonna lent its aid—but from great, dark irids as well—nay, from eyeballs, eyelashes, and eyelids, as from spiritual catapult or culverin, would she dart the lightnings of her present soul, invading with influence as irresistible as subtile the ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... has an obscurer history than the book trade. It seems to lie choked in mountains of dust which it would be suicidal to disturb. Men have lived from time to time of literary skill—Dr. Johnson was one of them—who had knowledge, extensive and peculiar, of the traditions and practices of 'the trade,' as it is proudly styled by its votaries; ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... discoloration should be carefully noted. When due to throttling, the marks of the fingers may be recognisable, and nail-prints may be present. In cases of strangling, the mark of the cord passes straight round the neck, while in suicidal hanging it is more or less oblique and is higher behind than in front. When due to a direct blow, for example by a fist, the discoloration is limited, while it is usually diffused over the neck when due to the passage of a ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... nursery for seamen for our merchant ships in time of peace, the fishing business has proved of immense advantage to the country, and that policy may justly be regarded as suicidal on the part of the national government which would throw barriers in the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... were running, the unwavering line of thirty men, but with a difference which the outlaws might not mistake. And as they ran they held their fire for a little, knowing how useless and suicidal it would be to pause half-way. But presently they were answering shot with shot, pausing, going down upon one knee, taking a moment's advantage of a friendly rock, pouring lead into the agitated groups among the boulders, springing ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... friends become, whether married or unmarried, the more scrupulously should they strive to repress in themselves everything annoying, and to cherish both in themselves and each other everything pleasing. While each should draw on his love to neutralize the faults of his friend, it is suicidal to draw on his friend's love to neutralize his own faults. Love should be cumulative, since it can not be stationary. If it does not increase, it decreases. Love, like confidence, is a plant of slow growth, and of most exotic fragility. It must be constantly and tenderly cherished. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... met the charge of his antagonist after the same fashion of fighting that he had been accustomed to employing in previous encounters with Numa and Sheeta. To have attempted to meet the full shock of a lion's charge would have been suicidal even for the giant Tarmangani. Instead he resorted to methods of agility and cunning, for quick as are the great cats, even quicker is Tarzan of ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... of age lingered; he felt lonely and apprehensive. He noticed a number of empty flower vases about the room. Yvonne used to keep them always freshly filled. He wondered when she had ceased to do so and why. "You have rescued me from a mood that was almost suicidal, Thessaly. A horrible recognition of the futility of striving oppresses me this morning. I seem to be awaiting a blow which I know myself powerless to avert. If we were at your place I should prescribe a double 'Fra Diavolo' but, failing ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... patent to all. Landlords do not deny that they are anxious to see the people leave the country. They give them every assistance to do so. Their object is to get more land into their own hands, but the policy will eventually prove suicidal. A revolutionary spirit is spreading fast through Europe. Already the standing subject of public addresses to the people in England, is the injustice of certain individuals being allowed to hold such immense tracts of country ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... should be delivered for ever from the burden of thought and will. Then I abandoned myself to an insurmountable torpor, like those unfortunate wretches, who, surprised by a snow-storm, yield to a suicidal repose. Thus I awaited the fatal moment. At last, according to the rule of discipline, choking with the death rattle,(17) I hastened the moment of accomplishing the final act of my expiring will—the vow ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... generals had handled their commands, and pointed out to my readers how defeat could have been turned into victory, if the generals had done as I would have done in their places. It seemed to me the officers of my regiment were taking a suicidal course in barring me out of their consultations. A soldier had told me that we were lost in the woods, and as I had studied geography when at school, and was well posted about Alabama, it seemed as though a little advice ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck

... you came by that little girl over there. She is, by the way, one of our most interesting cases. Came here for hip disease. She is an orphan,—nothing known about her parents,—probably alcoholic from the mental symptoms. She has hysteria and undeveloped suicidal mania." ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... the proposed move. The king was too much unnerved by fear to listen to Isaiah's arguments and so the latter dropped into prophecy. He prophesied, after the manner of the Oriental seer, that the land would be laid waste and misery entailed upon Israel, should the suicidal policy be adopted. But he held out a hope for a brighter future after the clouds of adversity had rolled by. A new and wise prince would arise who would bring Israel to her former glory. That prince would be born of a young mother and his name would be Immanuel, which means "God with us." All ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... other hand, a good many persons, not suicidal in their tendencies, get more of life than they want. One of our wealthy citizens said, on hearing that a friend had dropped off from apoplexy, that it made his mouth water to hear of such a case. It was an odd expression, but ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... willing to do. But war to the knife cannot be confined to one of the combatants; the alternative, Weltmacht oder Niedergang, was thrust by Germany upon the Allies when she chose that motto for herself. If the modern man were as much dominated by economic motives as is sometimes supposed, the suicidal results of such a conflict would have been apparent to all; but the poetry and idealism of human nature, no longer centred, as formerly, in religion, had gathered round a romantic patriotism, for which the belligerents were willing to sacrifice ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... for suicidal purposes with nitrate of silver are in most cases prevented from the fact that this salt has such a disagreeable metallic taste as to be repulsive; cases therefore of poisoning are only liable to occur by accident or by the willful administration of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... after-thought. The effect produced upon his mental condition by the statements and actings of the "afflicted children" in 1692 was unconsciously transferred to 1687. The delusion, in which he was then fully participating, led him to put a different interpretation upon the suicidal wounds and horrible end of the wretched maniac, five or six ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... a dungeon where it is said a Chinaman committed suicide after six days' incarceration: self-slaughter among Celestials being their favourite mode of killing care. An equally suicidal Chow-chow is confined there now; but they have bound him hand and foot, and he lies muttering in falsetto like a maniac. He would doubtless give something ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... my curves are cardioidal; I confuse my x and ys, Which they say is suicidal; And my ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson

... came to his death from a pistol bullet through the brain, fired from a pistol in his own hand, with suicidal intent, while laboring under a fit of temporary insanity, caused by morbid sensitiveness of wasted opportunities and constantly brooding over imaginary troubles ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... a small whetstone, a small hammer, matches, and some volatile oil, like citronella, lavender, wintergreen, or other black fly and mosquito repellant. It is almost suicidal to slap a mosquito on the back of your neck with a keen grafting knife in your hand. A supply of parowax and alcohol for the lantern's ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various



Words linked to "Suicidal" :   suicide, dangerous, unsafe, self-destructive



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