Suicide quotes
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside suicide — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"It was not death or dying that frightened him, but the unexpectedness of both. In sorting it all out, he hit on the notion that if one day a year were devoted to it, everybody could get it out of the way and the rest of the year would be safe and free. In this manner he instituted National Suicide Day."
"To wish to be well is a part of becoming well."
"I think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz."
"Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life. He does not die with deliberation but from deliberation."
"I am so sick of reading about another car bomb, another suicide bomber, another 10, 20, 30, 70, 100 people dead in a day, both Americans and Iraqis."
"But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it."
"No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts. It's for heroes and martyrs, truly vainglorious men. Archie was none of these. He was a man whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things could be figured along familiar ratios: Pebble : Beach Raindrop : Ocean Needle : Haystack"
"In cases in which the related previous personality had committed suicide, the subject has shown an inclination to contemplate and threaten suicide."
"When you go apartment-hunting in the South, you encounter little old ladies who ask you if you use strong drink. In New York you encounter paranoids who wonder if you will commit suicide--not that they care; what they worry about is blood on their fresh paint, a dubious smell in the hallway, or a hole in the awning as you pass through on your way to the sidewalk. The Southerner who moves to any part of the country has problems, but the culture shock that attacks the Southerner who moves North is almost indescribable."
"It's just I might get distracted, and I get lost kind of easily, and sometimes I have really bad days...when, you know, I just want to hide or scream or bleed or something, and...all that..."
"You get to the point where you decide that you don't want to be a victim anymore and that you're not going to live your life like that."
"The independents are the ones who tend to commit suicide. I'm not against this way of being in the world. Individuals have brought us many treasures. You can't just say that's a bad way of being in the world - it's not. But it's not everyone's way of being in the world."
"Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick."
"Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and the hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide."
"Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, & those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied with drink."
"In New York City, one suicide in ten is attributed to a lack of storage space."
"In America, the traditional routes to black identity have hardly been normal. Suicide (disappearance by imitation, or willed extinction), violence (hysterical religiosity, crime, armed revolt), and exemplary moral courage; none of these is normal."
"But alas! Science cannot now rescue us, for even the scientist is lost in the terrible midnight of our age. Indeed, science gave us the very instruments that threaten to bring universal suicide."
"The devil is not only a liar, but also a murderer, he constantly seeks our life, and wreaks his anger whenever he can afflict our bodies with misfortune and harm. Hence it comes that he often breaks men's necks or drives them to insanity, drowns some, and incites many to commit suicide, and to many other terrible calamities. Therefore there is nothing for us to do upon earth but to pray against this arch enemy without ceasing. For unless God preserved us, we would not be safe from him even for an hour."
"Why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain."
