Samson crushed himself and his enemies to death beneath the ruins of a building. He can only be excused on the grounds that the Spirit of the Lord, who wrought miracles through him, had bidden him to do so. But, apart from such men excepted by the command of a just law in general or of God, the very Source of justice, in a special case, any one who kills a human being, himself or another, is guilty of murder.
Augustine, City of God, Book 1, Chapter 21, Image Books, Doubleday,1958:
It is significant that in Holy Scripture no passage can be found enjoining or permitting suicide either in order to hasten our entry into immortality or to void or avoid temporal evils. God's command, "thou shalt not kill," is to be taken as forbidding self-destruction, especially as it does not add 'thy neighbor,' as it does when it forbids false witness, 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against they neighbor,' However, no one should think he is guiltless when be bears false witness against himself, since the duty to love one's neighbor is measured by the love of oneself, as it is written, "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." --. Augustine, City of God, Chapter 20
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. - Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1955)
It's the arsehole's way out- Andy McNabb ex-SAS on suicide.
I've always found it fascinating that the suicide rate of handicapped people is far less than of those not handicapped.- Michael Levine
Suicide is belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives.- H.L. Mencken
The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night. -Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) _Beyond Good and Evil_ [1886], "Maxims and Interludes," No. 157
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.
Dorothy Parker
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
William Shakespeare. Hamlet. Act i. Sc.2
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