And one of his partners asked ''Has he vertigo?'' and the other glanced out and down and said ''Oh no, only about ten feet more.''
At great periods you have always felt, deep within you, the temptation to commit suicide. You gave yourself to it, breached your own defenses. You were a child. The idea of suicide was a protest against life; by dying, you would escape this longing for death.
Each victim of suicide gives his act a personal stamp which expresses his temperament, the special conditions in which he is involved, and which, consequently, cannot be explained by the social and general causes of the phenomenon.
He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself.
Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me.
However great a man's fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance — so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamor to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.
Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or ''broken heart,'' is excuse for cutting off one's life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.
I am just going outside and may be some time.
I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown.
If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.
If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.
If you must commit suicide… always contrive to do it as decorously as possible; the decencies, whether of life or of death, should never be lost sight of.
If you want to commit suicide you can use my razor; it's electric, but you can hang yourself with the cord.
It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.
It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
It is the part of cowardliness, and not of virtue, to seek to squat itself in some hollow lurking hole, or to hide herself under some massive tomb, thereby to shun the strokes of fortune.
No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.
No one is promiscuous in his way of dying. A man who has decided to hang himself will never jump in front of a train.
One said of suicide, ''As long as one has brains one should not blow them out.'' And another answered, ''But when one has ceased to have them, too often one cannot.''
Razors pain you; rivers are damp; acids stain you; and drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful; you might as well live.