quotations about suicide
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest -- whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories -- comes afterward. These are games; one must first answer.
ALBERT CAMUS
An Absurd Reasoning
As soon as suicide is taken as a serious alternative, a curious thing happens. To be or not to be becomes a true choice, where before you were stuck with to be.
WALKER PERCY
Lost in the Cosmos
No man should put an end to this life to obtain that better life we look for after death, for those who die by their own hand have no better life after death.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
You realize that suicide's a criminal offense -- In less enlightened times they'd have hung you for it.
PETER COOK
Bedazzled
If suicide is allowed then everything is allowed. If anything is not allowed then suicide is not allowed. This throws a light on the nature of ethics, for suicide is, so to speak, the elementary sin. And when one investigates it it is like investigating mercury vapour in order to comprehend the nature of vapours.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Notebooks
High-profile suicides are sobering and unnerving, in the extreme. If successful people who have achieved all we imagine they could ever want to achieve don't seem happy, what does it mean for ordinary folk?
GRANT HILARY BRENNER
"Trapped by Success: Spade, Bourdain, and Celebrity Suicide", Psychology Today, June 29, 2018
I've been thinking about drinking Drano,
A nice big glass to make all my pain go
Somewhere else, somewhere I can't find it,
And I've been thinking about eating bullets,
The sweet, sweet feel of the trigger as I pull it,
And bury a bullet somewhere, deep inside
GET SET GO
"Suicide"
So you wanna die, commit suicide
Dial 1-800-Cyanide line
Far as life, yo it ain't worth it
Put a rope around your neck and jerk it
The trick didn't work
GRAVEDIGGAZ
"1-800 Suicide"
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't, ah, fie, 'tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
A little death
Without mourning
No call
And no warning
Baby ... a dangerous idea
That almost makes sense
U2
"Love Is Blindness"
From the perspective of the one committing suicide, his or her act can be one of the most perverse forms of moral manipulation, as it abandons those left behind to their shame, guilt, and grief. Suicide is something like a metaphysical "I gotcha!" It is often an attempt to kill or wound others.
STANLEY HAUERWAS
The Hauerwas Reader
A lot of you cared, just not enough.
JAY ASHER
Thirteen Reasons Why
The suicide bomber is an explosion of a contradiction in its paradox, victim and victimizer, yin and yang, two sides of the coin, fire bomb and fire extinguisher, prosecutor and defendant, hangman and hanged.
GIANNINA BRASCHI
"United States of Banana"
Suicide--the only offence against the Laws for which men cannot devise a punishment.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
One needs a certain degree of insight into the human condition's wretchedness and futility to get depressed enough that you consider killing yourself, but it is precisely this insight that means you have more than dead meat resting above your shoulders and therefore shouldn't kill yourself. In other words, if you want to kill yourself, that's the first sign that you shouldn't. So no--don't kill yourself.
JIM GOAD
"17 Poignant Quotes From Real-Life Suicide Notes", Thought Catalog
If a person with multiple personalities threatens suicide, is that considered a hostage situation?
STEVEN WRIGHT
stand-up routine
The only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is press coverage.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Survivor
Suicide is treated as one of those things that sort of, you know, kind of happens, like rheumatism or bad teeth.
LLOYD EVANS
"Royal Court's Anatomy of a Suicide deserves a prize -- for most obtuse script of the year", The Spectator, June 21, 2017
You are certainly wrong to compare suicide ... with great accomplishments, since it cannot be considered as anything but a weakness. After all, it is easier to die than to endure a harrowing life with fortitude.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Sorrows of Young Werther
To begin with, we don't understand mental illness, which can be just as a real and just as death-producing as any physical illness. We don't blame someone for dying from cancer, a stroke, or a physical accident, but we invariably cast moral shadows on someone who dies as a result of various mental illnesses which play a deadly role in many suicides. Happily, God is still in charge and our flawed understanding, while generally permanently tainting the way someone is remembered in this world, doesn't affect salvation on the other side.
RON ROLHEISER
"On suicide and despair", Superior Catholic Herald, June 14, 2018