Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Suicidal   Listen
adjective
Suicidal  adj.  Partaking of, or of the nature of, the crime or suicide.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Suicidal" Quotes from Famous Books



... the carotid 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 some part of the larynx. The ossified condition of the thyroid and cricoid parts ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... early and thoughtless surrender of our present advantages, for fear of hurting the sensibilities of the South by imposing a sense of 'subordination.' With the agony of despair, such men would remonstrate against any such suicidal policy, and entreat the Government of the United States and the people of the North to stand by them in their great distress, through, until the end. While writing, the following newspaper paragraph attracts our attention, and is a fair expression of the truth we ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... cock, and unreflecting pullet! But while they gathered up the nauseous nubbles, Each peck'd itself into a peck of troubles, And brought the hand of Death upon its gullet. They might as well have addled been, or ratted, For long before the night—ah woe betide The Pills! each suicidal Bantam died Unfatted! ...
— English Satires • Various

... 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

... fissure where it was possible to climb up to the level above, by using both hands to cling to certain sharp projections while the feet sought a niche here and there in the wall. Easy enough—if one were but left to climb in peace, but absolutely suicidal ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... the Most High. We forgive them for entertaining such notions, but forbid their practice. It was generally believed that there would be a flurry; that some of the extreme Southern States would go so far as to pass ordinances of secession. But the common impression was that this step was so plainly suicidal for the South, that the movement would not spread over much of the territory and ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... I to say? It seems to me that any more suicidal thing than throwing away the borough never was done. Who will thank you? What additional support will you get? How will it increase your power? It's like King Lear throwing off his clothes in the storm ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... 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 work, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... than any other that has ever been maintained by large masses of men - a system that no one with any consideration can approve or wish to preserve, that is only maintained because we know or believe in nothing better, and that is doomed to disappear because of its suicidal character. A system that can only be declared lasting and necessary by him who thinks that men are not capable of education and development and, with open eyes, shall ever seek their ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... factories, with a faint smell of oil from the machinery, and a fine snow of fluff in the air, and catching to the white-washed walls and the foul window sashes. The tireless machines marched back and forth across the floor, and the men who watched them with suicidal intensity ran after them barefooted when they made off with a broken thread, spliced it, and then escaped from them to their stations again. In other rooms, where there was a stunning whir of spindles, girls and women were at work; they looked ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... are: sudden feeling of deep depression, suicidal tendencies, alternating with sudden inexplicable lightheartedness. Capriciousness and great dissatisfaction with myself and life generally. Horror at my own incompleteness of sex and sudden fits of hatred toward women and a great longing to be loved by men. This condition changes slowly back ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... 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 up, ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... for the safe and conservative conduct of his business; and he was consequently obliged to be adventurous, or else to be left behind in the race. He might well be earning enormous profits one year and skirting bankruptcy the next. Under such a stress conservatism and caution were suicidal. It was the instinct of self-preservation, as well as the spirit of business adventure, which kept him constantly seeking for larger markets, improved methods, or for some peculiar means of getting ahead of his competitors. He had no fortress behind which he could hide and enjoy his ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... the death of the animal which had to give up its life blood to cure the other and therefore this method of cure is not adaptable to human beings. Even though an individual, with suicidal intent, would be willing to give up his life for a stipulated legacy to his relatives, the law would not sanction ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

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

... not shut that door?" he said. "Bon Dieu! what a suicidal note that strikes—that hopeless rain—a northern autumn evening! There was a chill in the air as I drove down the Faubourg. If I were a woman I should have tea, or a cry. Being a man, I curse the weather and drive in a hired carriage to the ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... the old Wieck, his bitterness must have been almost suicidal. He did not forgive his daughter even after the birth of her first child, on September 1, 1841, the year also of Schumann's first symphony. It was only after a second child was born, in April, 1843, that Schumann could ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... which you received those proposals is fair criterion," Number One resumed, "there can be little doubt as to our decision. Speaking for myself, I think it would be suicidal to reject the overtures of the Soviet Government in Russia. Let me ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... 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 ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... nothing to him. Strikes and bribery were his great subjects; the beauty of the one and the ugliness of the other. The right of the labourer to combine with his brother labourers to make his own terms for his labour, was the great lesson he taught. The suicidal iniquity of the labourer in selling that political power which he should use to protect his labour was the source of his burning indignation. That labour was the salt of the earth he told the men of Percycross very often;—and he told them as often that manliness ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... of my mind and my inability at that time to appreciate the enormity of such an end as I half contemplated, my suicidal purpose was not entirely selfish. That I had never seriously contemplated suicide is proved by the fact that I had not provided myself with the means of accomplishing it, despite my habit, has long been remarked by my friends, of preparing even ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... force of spirit went down in the suicidal wars. . . . In Rome, Marius and Cinna slew the aristocrats by hundreds and thousands. Sulla destroyed the democrats, and not less thoroughly. Whatever of strong blood survived, fell as an offering to the proscription ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... 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 cutting down my ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... was when Peter took a very miscellaneous collection of rubbish out of a little sachet, meant for handkerchiefs, which he now carried in his breast-pocket, and touched the various articles to his lips. Then for a time he would look a little less suicidal. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... 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, ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... of railways. In these iron highways more than three hundred million dollars have been invested—a sum equal to ten times the original cost of all the land in the state. To make war upon the railroads is a short-sighted and suicidal policy. They should be treated fairly and should be taxed by the same standard that farms are taxed, and in no other way. If we wish to prosper we must act together, and we must see to it that every ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... according to the laws of nature, it cannot avoid offering us the actual events for which we were waiting. To be sure, even on the stage the hero may talk, the revolver in his hand, until it is fully suggested to us that the suicidal shot will end his life in the next instant; and yet just then the curtain may fall, and only the suggestion of his death may work in our mind. But this is evidently a very exceptional case as a fall of the curtain means the ending of the scene. In the act itself every series ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... 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 had to wait ten years (1755); at Kingswood, twelve ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... regret that I 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 ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... 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 or ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

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

... bend in the river directly above the camp hid them from her sight. They were gone! She was alone, and they had left a canoe in which lay a paddle! She could scarce believe the good fortune that had come to her. To delay now would be suicidal to her hopes. Quickly she ran from her hiding place and dropped to the ground. A dozen yards lay between her and ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the surface was suicidal, and we kept hydrophone patrol, twice hearing the motors of the enemy submarine. At the moment we are on the bottom waiting to come up and charge to-night, and lay our ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... epidemic citation from Weininger, whose book is obviously rich in characters that make it attractive to the ignorant and the many; and it is high time that we should concern ourselves less with the product of a suicidal and much-to-be-pitied boy, and more with the sober and scientific work for which daily verification is always ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

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

... Sir Abel keeps an eye on him. And then as to this war, of course you have studied it all more deeply than I have the power to do; still I cannot help thinking you distress yourself unnecessarily. As I said to the wife when I first heard of it, it's suicidal. One can only feel pity for such poor ignorant creatures, rushing headlong on their ruin. Depend upon it, they will very soon come to their senses and deplore their own rash action. A very few weeks will see the finish of it all. I only hope there will not be much bloodshed first, for of course they ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... sufficiently intelligent 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

... suffrage in all the States of the Union, the Republican party has been guilty of three successive arbitrary acts, three retrogressive steps in legislation, alike invidious and insulting to women and suicidal to the nation. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... 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

... which was drawn up beside the curb. The coster was dressed in the soiled khaki of a man recently released from the Army; his barrow was piled high with narcissi and daffodils, and a drowsy donkey drooped between the shafts. In avoiding a suicidal pedestrian, Tabs misjudged the room that he had to spare. He felt a jolt, guessed what had happened, and jammed on his brakes. A policeman in front of him was holding up a magisterial hand. Behind him a stream of familiar trench profanity was gathering in volume; under other ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... weaknesses of contemporaneous Ireland, its love of talk; its lack of hold-together; its refusal to see things as they are; its incapacity in practical matters; the reckless temper of this faction of its people, the subjection to clerical influence of that, the suicidal patriotism of a third; in short, the Celts' willful rebellion against the despotism of fact. It was not pleasant listening to, or seeing, "The Piper," to many groups of Irishmen, for it cut alike at the Parliamentary Nationalists, the Sein Feiner, and the shoneen. ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... But the last suicidal push did not avail. With screams as of a thousand devils and deafening rending roars, the whole side of the Glacier seemed to lean over and fall in a great earth-shattering crescendo ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

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

... and even tragic about the thought of the thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders, embracing Chinamen, and clasping Patagonians to his heart in Hampstead or Surbiton, but for his blind and suicidal impulse to go and see what they looked like. This is not meant for nonsense; still less is it meant for the silliest sort of nonsense, which is cynicism. The human bond that he feels at home is not an illusion. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... established his Catholic colony, which he called "Maryland." The early history of this colony is interesting because it affords probably the first example of full religious liberty. It would doubtless have been suicidal for the Catholics, situated as they were, to attempt anything like persecution, but Baltimore and the Catholics of Maryland for many generations deserve none the less honour for the consistency with which they pursued ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... 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 ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... 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

... an official 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various

... so far in my writing to you, I do not know but I shall gain heart, and write more letters over sea. You will think my sloth suicidal enough. So many men as I learned to value in your country,—so many as offered me opportunities of intercourse,— and I lose them all by silence. Arthur Helps is a chief benefactor of mine. I wrote him a letter by Ward,—who brought the letter back. ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... thirty and forty feet into the air. The rocky coast appeared to descend sheer to the sea. Our need of water and rest was well-nigh desperate, but to have attempted a landing at that time would have been suicidal. Night was drawing near, and the weather indications were not favourable. There was nothing for it but to haul off till the following morning, so we stood away on the starboard tack until we had made what appeared to be a safe offing. Then we hove to in the high westerly swell. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... rush will usually decrease as the enemy's position is approached. If the firing line is stopped, if fire superiority is lost and cannot be regained, the firing line intrenches and holds on until darkness or until a favorable turn in the situation develops. It is suicidal to turn back. During the advance, supports move up as close to the firing line as cover will permit, adopting those formations best suited to keep down losses. They may be as close as fifty yards ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey

... inspired the Court with strong hope that a suicidal feud had commenced at Kamakura, and when the Fujiwara baby, Yoritsune, was sent thither, peace-loving politicians entertained an idea that the civil and the military administration would soon be found co-operating. But neither event made any change in the situation. The lady Masa and her brother ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... followed a "spotted" train to a near-by station, swooped down as the German High Command left the train and opened on them with his machine gun. It was Mac who landed over ten times near Karlsruhe at night and returned with invaluable information. But it is not because of the innumerable suicidal adventures of which Mac is the hero that every Bedouin, no matter in what part of the world he may be, always drinks a silent toast to Mac whenever possible; it is because every Bedouin realizes that a great man carried out a small man's ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece

... evil fortune to behold The labours of his painful life destroyed; His flock which he had brought within the fold Dispers'd; the work of ages render'd void, And all of good that Paraguay enjoy'd By blind and suicidal power o'erthrown. So he the years of his old age employ'd, A faithful chronicler, in handing down Names which he lov'd, and things well worthy to ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... destined to have considerable influence on her future life. On the 5th August, the Godolphin, twenty-one days from Mocha, approached Bombay, but being unable to make the harbour before nightfall, anchored outside; a proceeding that would appear, even to a landsman, absolutely suicidal in the middle of the monsoon, but was probably ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph

... authority of the Church before they know what the Church is, or feel the need of any power outside (so to speak) their own minds to guide them, does seem to me in a place like this (humanly speaking) suicidal. I cannot, of course, tell how much preparatory teaching they have received, but I must judge from what I see and hear, and deal accordingly in each cottage. Some few there are to whom I can speak, as to Church people in the real sense of the word, but ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... complied with, it will be impossible to insure that the whole energy of the Arm will be directed to the carrying out of its reconnoitring functions in conformity with the views entertained at Headquarters. It must be characterized as one of the most suicidal errors when the superior Command conceals its purposes from its executive organs. Diffused activity, waste of energy, misunderstandings, and confusion would be the inevitable consequences, and military history—not the least that of 1870-1871—gives ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi

... you not 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 of ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... "Is not the creation of righteousness the creation of a natural order and government of one another in the parts of the soul, and the creation of unrighteousness the opposite?" and (352): "Is not unrighteousness equally suicidal when existing in an individual [as it is when it exists in the State], rendering him incapable of action because he is not at unity with himself, making him an enemy to himself?" and (443): "The righteous man does not permit the several elements within him to meddle with one ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... short, short twilight of the tropics fell, and Bell went racing across the jungle, never twenty feet above the tree top and with the boughs behind him showing all the agitation of a miniature hurricane. As darkness deepened, the race became more suicidal still, and there were no lighted fields nearby to mark a landing place. But as darkness grew more intense, Bell could dare to rise to fifty, then a hundred feet above the tops, and the dangers of diving to his level remained undiminished. And ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

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

... life for a life. Besides, every social law aims at the amelioration of man's life. What way, then, can the annihilation of the life of some men ameliorate men's life? Annihilation of life cannot be a means of the amelioration of life; it is a suicidal act. ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... campaign had to be laid out, for dawn was not many hours away. I think it was about two-thirty, and before light I had to be out of those environs, if ever I was to get out. But at the moment it would have been suicidal to move. The night had become so quiet that I hardly dared raise my head for fear the edge of the helmet would scrape against something. Once, when my head dropped from sleepiness, the helmet brought up against ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... her with much comfort to himself, felt an insane desire to tell her how much she had been missed by one person at least in Sunwich. Saved from this suicidal folly by the little common sense which had survived the shock of her sudden appearance, he gave ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... her brother, the madcap Roquairol, who in his thirteenth year had shot at himself with suicidal intent because the little Countess Linda de Romeiro, Albano's father's ward, had turned her back upon him, could our hero's admiration be withheld from a youth of his own age who already possessed all the accomplishments and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... GENTLEMAN. Naturally we are not absolutely insane and suicidal. Nevertheless we impose on ourselves abstinences and disciplines and studies that are meant to prepare us for living three centuries. And we seldom live one. My childhood was made unnecessarily painful, my boyhood unnecessarily ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... wrong were all that we had to charge ourselves with, it would be because there was nothing but law that we were answerable to. We do unkind things, and if unkindness and inhumanity were all that we had to charge ourselves with, it would be because we were only answerable to one another. We do suicidal things, and if self-inflicted injury were all our definition of evil, it would be because we were only answerable to our conscience and ourselves. But we sin, and that means that every wrong thing, big or little, which we do, whether we think about God in the doing of it or no, is, in its deepest ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... and disorder, 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 ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... Nat struck a most tragic attitude. "Tavia will ever be the queen of my heart!" and he made a thump toward that organ, with seeming suicidal intent. ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose

... report of the Confederate Secretary of War showed a total in the army of 340,250 men. This was an inadequate force with which to meet the great hosts which were being organized against it in the North. To permit the slightest reduction of the army at that moment seemed to the Southern President suicidal. ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... come under the protectorate or control of the United States, is a result which seems to me, in the remote future, certain. It waits as the consequence upon intellectual vigor, upon physical energy, upon the capacity to govern, and can only be defeated by a suicidal madness, of which it does not belong to the occasion ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis

... small-clothes. Neal, it is true, undeceived him with some trouble, but candidly admitted that he was not able to carry home the money. It was difficult, indeed, for the poor tailor to bear what he felt; it is true he bore it as long as he could; but at length he became suicidal, and often had thoughts of "making his own quietus with his bare bodkin." After many deliberations and afflictions, he ultimately made the attempt; but, alas! he found that the blood of the Malones refused to flow upon so ignominious ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various

... undertake—that was, dragging her by the wrist to the rails of some altar, and peremptorily marrying her. Decisive action is seen by appreciative minds to be frequently objectless, and sometimes fatal; but decision, however suicidal, has more charm for a woman than the most unequivocal ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... plunged into its deepest depths. Its tortures were more than she could endure. For her there were, indeed, worse things waiting at the gate of life than death, and she resolved by suicide to escape from them. This part of her story is very obscure. But it is certain that her suicidal intentions were so nearly carried into effect, that she had written several letters containing her, as she thought, last wishes, and which were to be opened after all was over. There is no exact account of the manner in which she proposed to kill herself, nor of the ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... time when he said with suicidal conviction that he could not live without her, she burst into tears of pity and yielded. And instantly, amazingly, with the famished swiftness of a springing panther he caught her body into his arms and kissed her ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... COMPLAINTS.—If the readers of NOTES AND QUERIES, who suffer from depression of spirits, confusion, headache, blushing, groundless fears, unfitness for business or society, blood to the head, failure of memory, delusions, suicidal thoughts, fear of insanity, &c., will call on, or correspond with, REV. DR. WILLIS MOSELEY, who, out of above 22,000 applicants, knows not fifty uncured who have followed his advice, he will instruct them how to get well, without a fee, and will render ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various

... beautiful poem) the sunshine fleets along the plain, revealing towers, and floods, and trees, in a gleam of watery light, and leaving them once more in shadow. The melancholy mist creeps over the city, the damp soaks into the heart of everything, and such suicidal weather ensues as has been described, once for all, by the author of John-a-Dreams. How different Oxford looks when the road to Cowley Marsh is dumb with dust, when the heat seems almost tropical, and by the drowsy banks of the Cherwell ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang

... "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 ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... soup and fish In solemn silence swallowed, The sobs that ushered in each dish, And its departure followed, Nor yet my suicidal wish To ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll

... men; and hence mutinies (as Sir Richard Hawkins tells us) were all but unknown in the English ships, while in the Spanish they broke out on every slight occasion. For the Spaniards, by some suicidal pedantry, had allowed their navy to be crippled by the same despotism, etiquette, and official routine, by which the whole nation was gradually frozen to death in the course of the next century or two; forgetting that, fifty years before, Cortez, Pizarro, and the early Conquistadores ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... Britain, which had been a feature of our policy during his early career. But when Lord Beaconsfield would have plunged into a war with Russia in 1878, without an ally or a friend, he opposed that policy as suicidal. Of that policy he said at that time: 'English Radicals of the present day do not bound their sympathies by the Channel ... a Europe without England is as incomplete, and as badly balanced, and as heavily weighted against freedom, as that which I, two years ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... vigorous health of "the Little Giant" succumbed to these assaults. For a fortnight he was confined to his bed, rising only by sheer force of will to make a final plea for sanity, before his party took its suicidal plunge. He spoke on the 22d of March under exceptional conditions. In the expectation that he would speak in the forenoon, people thronged the galleries at an early hour, and refused to give up their seats, even when it was announced that the Senator from Illinois would not address the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... slightest idea of doing anything that would put Texas in jeopardy. In northern Texas sympathy for the Federal cause, or "rottenness" as the Confederates described it, was rife.[824] It would be suicidal to take the home force too far away. Moreover, it was Bankhead's firm conviction that Steele would never be able to maintain himself so near to Fort Gibson, so he would continue where he was and decide what to do when time for real ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... opinion upon hom[oe]opathy, the opinion is that it is a "humbug." This line of treatment was bad enough when hom[oe]opathy was young, but now when we stand on equal footing before the law, and nearly equal before the public, it is suicidal. ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller

... self-criticism shows itself in the fact of his actually reprinting in full an article of Veuillot's (by no means uncomplimentary) on himself, as a prelude in the book last mentioned, and adding a long reply. The proceeding was honest, but rather suicidal. One may not wholly admire the famous editor of the Univers.[441] But nothing could better throw up his clear, vigorous, classical French and trenchant logic, than the verbose and ambaginous preciousness, and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... not die by his own act. It was not the way in his family. There may have been other, perhaps better reasons, but this was enough; he did not come of suicidal stock. He must live for this child's sake, at any rate; and yet,—oh, yet, who could tell with what thoughts he looked upon her? Sometimes her little features would look placid, and something like a smile would steal over them; then all his tender feelings would rush up, into his eyes, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... which we are passing the capitalist makes his investments in the Government cut stocks with the most assured confidence of ultimate reimbursement; and whatever may be said of a period of great financial prosperity, such as existed for some years after 1833, I should regard it as suicidal in a season of financial embarrassment either to alienate the lands themselves or the proceeds arising from their sales. The first and paramount duty of those to whom may be intrusted the administration of public affairs is to guard the public credit. In reestablishing the credit of this central ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... be suicidal," Olive objected. "My father, even, says it is taking it out of you rather badly, and he insists that they must hurry about the curate. Seven hours a day is enough for any man, he says; and he declares that you are working twenty. In fact," Olive looked up at him to carry home her admonition; ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... unconsciously imprisoned in the commonplace, though one took it comically, and the other seriously. They were both men, nevertheless, in whom sentiment had never died. But Mr. Moses Gould had an equal contempt for their suicidal athletics and their subconscious transcendentalism, and he stood and laughed at the thing with the shameless ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... Attempts at poisoning 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... with society, is her policy judged suicidal by a world that is in love with its own kind of life. It is suicidal, cries that world, to relinquish in France all on which the temporal life of the Church depends; for how can that society survive which renounces the very means of ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... incised wounds are those made by the surgeon in the course of an operation, wounds accidentally inflicted by cutting instruments, and suicidal cut-throat wounds. It should be borne in mind in connection with medico-legal inquiries, that wounds of soft parts that closely overlie a bone, such as the skull, the tibia, or the patella, although, inflicted by a blunt instrument, may have all the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... roer, the hunters returned to their beds. One might suppose they would have dragged the suicidal hyena away from the spot, lest his carcass should serve as a warning to his comrades, and keep them away from the trap. But Swartboy knew better than that. Instead of being scared by the dead body of one of their kind, the hyenas only regard it as proper prey, and will ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... abnormal manifestations of instinct—and they are often incapable of being distinguished—spring from a single source, then the objection that the modification is due to conscious knowledge will be found to be a suicidal one later on, so far as it is directed against instinct generally. It may be sufficient here to point out, in anticipation of remarks that will be found in later chapters, that instinct and the power of organic development involve the same essential principle, though ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... tendencies of things in our own and other lands, it is more than ever needful that Christian people should close their ranks, and stand shoulder to shoulder. For men who believe in a supernatural revelation, in the Divine Christ, in an atoning Sacrifice, in an indwelling Spirit, are guilty of suicidal folly if they let the comparative trivialities that part them, separate God's army into isolated groups, in the face of the ordered battalions that are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... that it resembled the "illuminations" of St. Paul and of Constantine merely by its being a sudden spiritual impulse. It was in no sense a conversion to any belief in person or creed, it was but the assertion of a strong manhood against an almost suicidal mood of despair; a condition set forth with superabundant paraphernalia of eloquence easily condensed. Doubt in the mind of Teufelsdroeckh had darkened into disbelief in divine or human justice, freedom, or himself. If there be a God, He ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... is this Bodahl business. "Shocking Outrage upon a British Commissioner on the Indian Frontier. Revolt of the Entire Bodahl Tribe. Russian Intrigue in Central Asia. Dangerous Position of the Viceroy at Simla." Oh, dear me, no; not to have a leader upon THAT, my dear sir, would be simply suicidal!' ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... seen a precipice in the pathway of the terrified animal, but not in season to stop the maddened creature or turn it aside, though he did make a frantic effort to do so. As if bent upon its own destruction, the pony made a suicidal leap ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood

... to look forward to, we must have, or we perish,—even of suicidal rest. If we find it not here in the world about us, it must be sought for in another; to which, as we conceive, that secret ruler of the soul, the inscrutable, ever-present spirit of Harmony, for ever ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... 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. ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... great and wise Dr. Perkins remarked that 'the women of America are suicidal from the cradle to the grave!' I will give you one of his pamphlets, miss, to take away with you, and you will be convinced that slippers are serpents in disguise in winter weather! The wooden shoes of Germany rather! Ay, or even the sabot of France! You must not stir ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... still a large number of recorded cases where the subjects have dropped out of sight without apparent cause or reason and have left behind them untarnished reputations and solvent back accounts. Of these, a small percentage are found to have met with violence; others have been victims of suicidal mania, and sooner or later a clue has come to light which has established the fact. The dead are often easier to find ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve



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



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com