Bitter

“ I am at once overwhelmed with love, hatred, rage, and disdain. Can infamy and innocence live together? I feel the weight of the one too strong for the comfort of the other. How bitter, Heaven, how bitter is my portion! ”

“ Where lies thy grief, O, tell me, good Dumain? And, gentle Longaville, where lies thy pain? And where my liege's? All about the breast. A caudle, ho! KING. Too bitter is thy jest. Are we betrayed thus to thy over-view? BEROWNE. Not you by me, but I betrayed to you. I that am honest, I that hold it sin To break the vow I am engaged in; I am betrayed by keeping company With men like you, men of inconstancy. When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme? ”

“ I will recount to thee all my years in the bitterness of my soul.
16 O Lord, if man’s life be such, and the life of my spirit be in such things as these, thou shalt correct me, and make me to live.
17 Behold in peace is my bitterness most bitter: but thou best delivered my soul that it should not perish, thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.
18 For hell shall not confess to thee, neither shall death praise thee: nor shall they that go down into the pit, look for thy truth. ”

“ By dint of suffering, you see, my gall has overflowed, and my heart is like my mouth—bitter, Oh, so bitter!"
"I know that you grumble in spite of yourself sometimes, godmother—Ah, it is so easy to be always cheerful and contented when one is happy; while you have found little happiness in your life." ”

“ Of all the griefs, that harass the distress'd,
Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest;
Fate never wounds more deep the gen'rous heart,
Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart. ”

“ Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; ”

“ And whence is it, that a thing which is most bitter, appears to be sweet? whence is it that righteousness, which is a most sweet thing, becomes bitter? It is the fault of our senses. Thus some have thought honey bitter, and have taken with pleasure other things that were noxious. And the cause is not in the nature of things, but in the perverseness of the sufferers. ”

“ There is nothing so poisonous as a bitter word, an uncharitable remark, an offensive observation. Words such as these have ruined families, have caused murders, have damned souls. How often has a bitter word rankled so deeply in our neighbor's mind and heart that he curses us, refuses to speak to us, and thus is driven by us into mortal sin! ”

“ Is it the same people which applauds to-day the sweet genius and tender malices of the one, and which applauded the bitter genius and slaughterous satire of the other? After all, that is possible—the hatred of vice is only another manifestation of the love of innocence.’ ... ”

“ I paint my cheeks, for they are white, and cheeks of chalk men hate;
Mine eyes with wine I make to shine, that men may seek and sate;
With overhead a lamp of red I sit me down and wait.
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Until they come, the nightly scum, with drunken eyes aflame;
Your sweethearts, sons, ye scornful ones—'tis I who know their shame;
The gods ye see are brutes to me—and so I play my game.
For life is not the thing we thought, and not the thing we plan;
And woman in a bitter world must do the best she can;
Must yield the stroke, and bear the yoke, and serve the will of man ”

“ O why rebuke you him that loves you so?
Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe. ”

“ Bitter rage was his, but never blind rage. In passion to rend and destroy, he never forgot that his enemy was in like passion to rend and destroy. ”

“ Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bitter-sweet, which never surfeits. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal.—Do we not see this principle at work every where? ”

“ I lingered over this examination of my feelings with that species of bitter complaisance, mixed with disgust, that I brought to bear upon the analysis of all the inner manifestations in which I believed I discovered a proof of the natural wickedness of man. ”

“ In disposition he is mild and affable, but when roused to indignation, his keen eyes glitter and flash, the muscles of his large mouth work convulsively, and he looks the very impersonation of the spirit of evil. He is implacable in anger, and bitter in revenge ”

“ Hatred is blind, rage carries you away; and he who pours out vengeance runs the risk of tasting a bitter draught.” ”

“ Stories of the punishments he is wont to inflict upon all who fall beneath his displeasure have passed from mouth to mouth, and bitter is the rage burning in the breasts of those whose helpless kinsfolk have suffered through his tyrant cruelty. ”

“ They feign “pity, indignation, moral approbation, or disgust or contempt, when they neither feel anything of the kind, nor believe the case to be one that justly calls for such feelings; they are led also occasionally to entrap or mislead, to revile, insult, and calumniate persons whom they may, in their heart, believe to be respectable persons and honest witnesses,” and such putting of bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter, must involve a woe. ”

“ Almost in all countries, and in all languages, bitterness is a metaphor to express trouble and affliction. The reason is, there is nothing more disagreeable to the taste than the one; and nothing more distressing to the mind than the other. ”

“ And all the world is bitter as a tear. ”

“ I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse. ”

“ Well, well, the more a human creature has tasted of bitter things the more it hungers after the sweet things of life. And we, wrapped round in the rags of our virtues, and regarding others through the mist of our self-sufficiency, and persuaded of our universal impeccability, do not understand this. ”

“ She sends me bottles of her bitter, and we are so fond of one another, because our ailments are the same; ”

“ A sour temper, bitter expressions, bitter curses, a bitter fate, are terms well and strongly understood by all. And we are altogether as well understood when we say, a sweet disposition, a sweet person, a sweet condition and the like. ”

“ Wait till you have lived years with them as I have done and know them as I do, then give me your opinion," they are accustomed to say in their bitterness—the feeling which cannot but make a man unjust. ”

“ But in particular, shun those evils, that make a man seem vile in the eyes of those that are round about him. The first of these is bitterness: sharp, tart carriage, reviling, passionate, provoking language, are fitly so called; being as offensive to the mind, as gall and worm-wood to the palate. This bitterness shews folly, and works hatred, and therefore must needs be a great underminer of authority. ”

“ That good man has often quieted my conscience with an emetick, has dissipated troublesome thoughts with a cordial or exhilarating drops, has cured me of a love fit by breathing a vein, and removed anger and revenge by the prescription of a draught, thence called bitter ”

“ We look too much at the consequences of vice,—too little at the vice itself. It is vice which is the chief weight of what we call its consequences,—vice, which is the bitterness in the cup of human woe. ”

“ In the immediate weeks that came upon him he tasted a bitterness worse than in all his life before, and learned also how deep the woman, when once she begins, can sink beneath the man in baseness. That was a knowledge of which he had lived innocent until this time. ”

“ Words are not life: I cannot give you back that which I destroyed. And there is where bitterness grips the heart in a man when he sees what manner of ruin he has made. What are regrets, despair, protestations? ”

“ So, even in this life nothing keeps its sweetness which is wrong, and nothing which is sweet and wrong avoids a tang of intensest bitterness 'afterwards.' And all that bitterness will be increased in another world, if there is another, when God gives us to read the book of our lives which we ourselves have written. ”

“ Not the blunt and harsh sincerity sometimes met with, which is made the cloak of self-esteem and bitterness; for that is an evil of the same nature as the malice and hatred that show themselves in active, outward injury towards the neighbor. When excited by pride or anger, the tongue needs a bridle no less than the hand ”

“ Bowed down by shame and remorse, the unhappy man slunk back to his hermitage, miserable and degraded, bitterly lamenting his folly and infatuation, but resolved to atone for it by deep repentance and severe penance. ”

“ Here is another caution against wrath and anger, with further advice to mutual love and kindly dispositions towards each other, v. 31, 32. By bitterness, wrath, and anger, are meant violent inward resentment and displeasure against others: and, by clamour, big words, loud threatenings, and other intemperate speeches, by which bitterness, wrath, and anger, vent themselves. Christians should not entertain these vile passions in their hearts not be clamorous with their tongues. Evil speaking signifies all railing, reviling, and reproachful speeches, against such as we are angry with. ”

“ Yes! it is secret evil in our hearts, which produces this habit of speaking harshly, uncharitably, ill of our neighbor; and if we watch ourselves closely, we shall find it to be so. Let us observe our feelings, note our thoughts carefully, when we are saying or about to say something to the prejudice of another. Let us observe if we do not discover a hidden feeling of dislike, or, envy, rivalry, bitterness, or petty revenge, which prompts us to speak. ”

“ Error succeeds error—outrage follows upon outrage—and bitterness increases like a torrent whose embankments have given way. Who can define the termination of these ravages? Will not the tender and affectionate woman, whose love man may endeavour to stifle by coldness or neglect, perish in the ruin? ”

“ The feelings that stir the meekest of men, as he stands among the smouldering embers of his homestead and gazes upon the mangled bodies of wife and children, are feelings that he shares with the most bloodthirsty savage, and the primary effect of his higher intelligence and greater sensitiveness is only to increase their bitterness. ”

“ My heart was still a pool of bitterness,
Would yield nought else, nought else confess.
I spoke (although no form was there
To see, I knew an ear was there to hear) ,
“Well, let them fight; they can whose flesh is fair.” ”

“ The bitterness of affliction (even where cunning is wanting) may animate the poorest spirit with desperate resolutions; and when once the fury of revenge is thoroughly awakened, we know not what she may effect before she is lulled to rest again. ”

“ To this speech, which sounded like another rebuke, I made no reply.
"Oh, this is bitterness indeed—a bitterness you cannot know," she resumed after a while. "For you and for others there is always the refuge of death from continued sufferings: the brief pang of dissolution, bravely met, is nothing in comparison with a lingering agony like mine, with its long days and longer nights, extending to years, and that great blackness of the end ever before the mind. ”

“ And most assuredly, if any deed of wrong or word of bitterness led me into an act of disrespect towards that enlightened and excellent class of men who make it their calling to teach goodness and their duty to practise it, I should feel that I had done myself an injury rather than them. ”

“ How composedly some of them walk amidst the sharpest perils and adversities, as "having the spirit to do any thing that is not foul in the truth of their spirit." Full of bitterness their cup sometimes is indeed; yet they do not mind it,—not they!—save as the welfare and happiness of others are involved in what pinches them. ”

“ Few of them have any aptitude for any other calling, and even if they had, what chance have they, in this overstocked world, of finding vacant places? The contemplation of their misery must wring every heart, and the more so as, from a certain fierté they all possess, they feel it with peculiar bitterness. ”