Self-destruction

“ I cannot say I wished to kill myself. The power which drew me away from life was stronger, fuller, and more widespread than any mere wish. It was a force similar to the former striving to live, only in a contrary direction. All my strength drew me away from life. The thought of self-destruction now came to me as naturally as thoughts of how to improve my life had come formerly. ”

“ He had felt himself dimly to be on the threshold of that fearful world where the body lives and the mind is held by demons. Then he had looked about him with feverish and sick desire for a weapon with which to escape. Anything sooner than the horrible chains of madness—death a thousand times rather, if by any means he could compass, his own self-destruction. ”

“ The poor lunatic had come in sight of the dangling rope, and the temptation to suicide was irresistible. To people in a deranged state of mind the mere sight of the means of self-destruction is often a temptation impossible to withstand. But at that moment he must have heard the steps—probably the voices—of the brothers behind him on the winding path. ”

“ This perpetual fight for self will end in self-destruction. It always does. It's the law of creation. The thing that strikes rebounds upon the striker. The man who deliberately injures another injures himself tenfold more seriously. ”

“ Many a time have I read, in the newspapers, instances of self-destruction on the part of gentlemen whose pecuniary, social, or domestic circumstances afforded not the least appearance of any possible motive for such a deed;—and then I have thought within myself that those poor victims had been hunted to death by extortioners of the class which I have described! The man who has a character to lose, or who has the peace of his family to consider, knows not how fearfully both are compromised, both endangered, when he so far forgets himself as to set foot in a house of infamy. ”

“ But however deep it is, self-destruction is a great sin. Never be guilty of such an act. To kill one's self is as sinful as to kill another."
"I have not tried to kill myself; death has approached voluntarily, therefore I hoped; but even in dying I have no joy." Saying these words, Surja Mukhi's voice broke, and she began to weep.
The Brahmachari said: "Whenever you speak of dying I see you weep; you wish to die. ”

“ Gracedieu’s daughter being one of those criminal creatures on whom it was once your terrible duty to turn the key! Why didn’t she commit suicide?”
“My dear lady, no thoroughly wicked creature ever yet committed suicide. Self-destruction, when it is not an act of madness, implies some acuteness of feeling—sensibility to remorse or to shame, or perhaps a distorted idea of making atonement. There is no such thing as remorse or shame, or hope of making atonement, in Helena’s nature.” ”

“ Life for such as us is better ended. Defeated, desperate, what is there left for us but death? Let us then die together; but not your way—no, that’s too primitive. I have another, more fascinating, more original. Ah! even in self-destruction, behold in me the artist. ”

“ The exalted representation will not stand before the annals of suicide. They bear daily witness that self-destruction is the refuge of diseased, weak, pusillanimous, conscience-stricken minds. [536] The want of fortitude is proportioned to the slightness of the disaster which prompts the deed. ”

“ To the threat of self-destruction, often tried with effect in these cases, he is said to have added the still more unmanly menace of ruining, at least, her reputation, if he could not undermine her virtue. ”

“ Under these conditions life was a misery to the larger part of the human race, and to end it by self-destruction was taught by their religion to be a crime punishable with eternal torment by quenchless fire. ”

“ I have never for more than the briefest space of time contemplated self-destruction as I have hinted at several times. The thought has crossed my mind in my darkest moods, but I am not a- 38 - coward and to-day must go a step further and say that I’ll fight to the finish against all outside difficulties, as well as ill health and natural defects of temperament and heredity. From now on any departures from a certain standard until I have changed that standard by thought and experience, I will consider in their proper light of weaknesses to be overcome. ”

“ The symptoms of this self-destruction of the botched and the bungled: self-vivisection, poisoning, intoxication, romanticism, and, above all, the instinctive constraint to acts whereby the powerful are made into mortal enemies (training, so to speak, one s own hangmen) , the will to destruction as the will of a still deeper instinct of the instinct of self-destruction, of the will to nonentity. ”

“ Therefore, I think any idea of murder may be dismissed. Motive, of course, must always equally precede self-destruction, but there motive need not be that outside motive which must be looked for, and for which logical explanation must be found, where another person is concerned to compass the death of a victim. ”

“ Destruction is no arbitrary punishment for self-indulgence; nor is life an arbitrary reward for self-discipline and surrender to the will of God. The path of self-indulgence "leadeth to destruction," by a law which cannot be annulled or set aside. ”

“ The question of what can be done to lessen the suicide tendency and check this great waste of human power and energy brings me to the only important cause of self-destruction which seems to me removable, and that is newspaper publicity. ”

“ This will be more clearly seen when I recall the fact that moral insanity in its worse form—the suicidal—often exists with such intellectual clearness that there is the greatest ingenuity displayed in carrying out self-destruction. ”

“ It is true that parents took pains to familiarise their children of both sexes from very tender years with the idea of self-destruction at any time. The little boy was taught how the sword should be directed against his bosom; the little girl how the dagger must be held so as to pierce the throat; both grew up in constant fellowship with the conviction that suicide must be reckoned among the natural incidents of every-day existence. ”

“ But self-destruction therefore saught, refutes
That excellence thought in thee, and implies,
Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret
For loss of life and pleasure overlov'd.
1020Or if thou covet death, as utmost end
Of miserie, so thinking to evade
The penaltie pronounc't, doubt not but God
Hath wiselier arm'd his vengeful ire then so
To be forestall'd; much more I fear least Death
1025So snatcht will not exempt us from the paine
We are by doom to pay ”

“ Hundreds of instances have come down to us in which death has been self-sought and inflicted from an idea or conviction that such self-destruction was to be of obvious advantage to the state, or to the sufferer’s family; or again, the fatal act was frequently committed as a point of honour to obviate the2 disgrace and ignominy of falling into the hands of a conqueror ”

“ These are some of the inferences against the hypothesis of self-destruction, which are fairly to be drawn from the statements made at the inquest; inferences, however, equally unfavourable to the verdict that she died by an incautious use of the poison, to which she is supposed to have resorted for relief, on a return of the spasmodic affection of the night before, when she had wished to take it. ”

“ In spite of these considerations, most Western readers, whatever may be their views on the ethics of suicide, will probably confess themselves utterly unable to understand how a young betrothed girl can work herself into the state of intense emotional excitement which the act of self-destruction implies, merely as the result of the untimely death of the man to whom she happened to be engaged. ”

“ Without doubt he was a hardened and depraved wretch; but it is in man's nature to revolt at self-destruction. When a person is predetermined upon the commission of this crime, the seasonable admonitions of a discreet and respected friend would probably tend to overthrow his determination. On the other hand, the counsel of an unprincipled wretch, stating the heroism and courage the self-murderer displays, might induce, encourage, and fix the intention, and ultimately procure the perpetration of the dreadful deed ”

“ We do not all agree on the particular cases which will justify self-destruction: but we all feel and involuntarily acknowledge (implicitly acknowledge in our admiration, though not explicitly in our words or in our principles) , that there are such cases. ”

“ Indeed, it would seem that the wider the range of personal liberty, and the more extended the opportunities for intellectual expansion and experiment, the incentive to self-destruction is intensified. ”

“ But whatever the effect of these may be, the intensifying struggle for life these last few years, and what appears to many minds a darkening outlook for the future, must be acknowledged as powerful agents in increasing the rate of self-destruction. ”

“ Nor is this all: the creatures that are armed with these weapons of destruction are animated by the deadliest instincts to use them; in fact, they are driven to it by the very law of self-preservation. "Kill, that you may live," is the mandate of universal necessity. ”

“ He gives also many very interesting examples of accidental self-destruction, such as the strangling of horses by their halters, when endeavouring to escape from a stable; that monkeys have cut their throats from imitating a man shaving ”

“ Dealing with the subject as a branch of social science, it considers the increase of suicide in different countries, and the comparison of nations, races, and periods in its manifestation. The influences of age, sex, constitution, climate, season, occupation, religion, prevailing ideas, the elements of character, and the tendencies of civilization, are comprehensively analyzed in their bearing upon the propensity to self-destruction. ”

“ Yes, against whom we arm for the avowed purpose of his destruction. From the moment that we make the destruction of an enemy (be he who he may) the indispensable condition of our safety, our destruction from that moment becomes necessary to his", and an act of self-defence. ”

“ My revenge is of no moment to you; yet, while I allow it to be a vice, I confess that it is the devouring and only passion of my soul. My rage is unspeakable when I reflect that the murderer, whom I have turned loose upon society, still exists. You refuse my just demand; I have but one resource, and I devote myself, either in my life or death, to his destruction. ”

“ In my opinion, no man ever answered in his own mind (except in the agonies of conscience or of repentance, in which latter case he throws the imputation from himself in another way) to the abstract idea of a murderer. He may have killed a man in self-defence, or ‘in the trade of war,’ or to save himself from starving, or in revenge for an injury, but always ‘so as with a difference,’ or from mixed and questionable motives. ”

“ The impulse to hit back after a bitter wound is not of vengeance. It is instinct—a ‘first law.’ But Murder is self-accusingly cowardly and sneakingly human. I can’t get away from that. To take away a person’s life is like setting fire to his house—an officiously stooping act. It’s for me to live my life in aloof self-sufficience. ”

“ I, who have such a horror of bloodshed, consider even killing in self-defense murder, who cannot wish them the slightest evil, whose only prayer is to have them sent back in peace to their own country,—I talk of killing them! ”

“ But to fail in a case where Providence has suddenly thrown into your hands the final interests of another—of a fellow-creature shuddering between the gates of life and death; this, to a man of apprehensive conscience, would mingle the misery of an atrocious criminality with the misery of a bloody calamity. The man is called upon, too probably, to die; but to die at the very moment when, by any momentary collapse, he is self-denounced as a murderer. ”

“ Why should a man, surrounded by flames, in the midst of a burning building, from which there is no escape, hesitate to put a bullet through his brain or a dagger in his heart? Would it give "God" pleasure to see him burn? When did the man lose the right of self-defense?
So, when a man has committed some awful crime, why should he stay and ruin his family and friends? Why should he add to the injury? Why should he live, filling his days and nights, and the days and nights of others, with grief and pain, with agony and tears? ”

“ Self-defence, yes; for sooner or later the dead man’s exactions would have culminated in his own ruin and suicide. Even from the physical side of it the other had drawn a weapon upon him. And, in sum, what more loathsome and poisonous animal exists in the world than a blackmailer? ”

“ So we must open all the ulcers of life, and drown you in the stream of abomination that will flow from them, in the vomit of the people you have poisoned. A curse on you! The time of your execution and destruction has come. All those who have been mutilated by you are rising against you, and they'll choke you, crush you, you understand? ”

“ I don't speak of such trifles as tears, heartaches, sleepless nights, fevers of jealousy and despair, sacrifices, or discomforts, but of real genuine self-torment and mental torture which only this passion is capable of inflicting on its victims. ”

“ A hundred deaths from this cause, occurring under the most painful and revolting circumstances, fail to impress him with a sense of his own danger. His understanding will be clear as to the cases before him, and he will even condemn the self-destructive acts which he sees in others, but will pass, as it were, over the very bodies of these victims, without a thought of warning or a sense of fear, in order to gratify his own ungovernable propensity. ”

“ He beats himself, burns himself, wounds himself or else he falls upon others to beat, burn and wound them. Thus it became the custom to give one's self up to the veritable orgies of tortures during mourning. It seems very probable that blood-revenge and head-hunting have their origin in this. If every death is attributed to some magic charm, and for this reason it is believed that the dead man ought to be avenged, it is because men must find a victim at any price, upon whom the collective pain and anger may be discharged. ”