Bittern

“ There was bound to be that feeling, that grudge, inside you . . . oh, I knew how it rankled! People are always like that: they never understand each other as long as there is no love; and, when there is no love and no understanding, there is bitterness . . . oh, and often hatred! . . . No, it was not hatred yet, it was bitterness: I knew it. Don't cry: the bitterness couldn't be helped. We did not reach each other across that bitterness. . . . Also you were young still, dear, and it was I who had to go to you on Henri's birthday . ”

“ 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. ”

“ He drew back slowly from under the hazels, and, crawling through the gorse and underwood, reached the place where he had left his horse. A dead tree lay there that had fallen in a winter gale, and Bertrand sat down on the trunk with his drawn sword across his knees. He was humbled, but the struggle was not over with him yet. His heart was still full of the bitterness of the man who covets what he imagines another man to possess. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But believe in his innocence she must and should: injustice from her was the last bitterness, the crowning wrong, the one intolerable misery which absorbed all that had gone before.
Something of this he showed her in his bitter, proud, inexorable look; then suddenly he retreated to the open French windows.
“You are going?” she cried. “I might have known; you were always—generous!” ”

“ To be able to look back through centuries and know of one's blood that sometimes it had been shed in the doing of great deeds, must be a thing to remember. To realise that the courage and honour had been lost in ignoble modern vices, which no sense of dignity and reverence for race and name had restrained—must be bitter—bitter! And in the role of a servant to lead a stranger about among the ruins of what had been—that must have been bitter, too. For a moment Betty felt the bitterness of it herself and her red mouth took upon itself a grim line. ”

“ During those periods in which our bitterness of spirit, though steadily diminishing, still persists, a distinction must be drawn between the bitterness which comes to us from our constantly thinking of the person herself and that which is revived by certain memories, some cutting speech, some word in a letter that we have had from her. ”

“ It was true that this purely sentimental pleasure was sometimes dashed with bitterness at the thought of his rival; but one in love must take the bitter with the sweet, and who would say that a spice of jealousy does not add a certain zest to love? ”

“ And then once more thinking of the joys of the world I exclaimed, How bitter and pernicious they are which lead to perpetual perdition and its horrors; how can a man not regard as sweet the little bitterness which is succeeded by sweet that endures and how can a man not regard as bitter a bit of sweet that ends in greater and abiding bitterness? ”

“ She had never dared to hope that he could love her, but the truth from his own lips was bitter. And for a time the realisation of that bitterness deadened all other feeling. Overwrought with the emotion of the last few hours, her nerves strained to breaking point, she was unable to check the tide of grief that shook her to the very depths of her being. With her face hidden in the soft rug, her outflung hands clenching convulsively, she wept in an abandonment of sorrow. ”

“ Britling. "If there was nothing else in all the world but our kindness for each other, or the love that made you weep in this kind October sunshine, or the love I bear Hugh—if there was nothing else at all—if everything else was cruelty and mockery and filthiness and bitterness, it would still be certain that there was a God of love and righteousness. If there were no signs of God in all the world but the godliness we have seen in those two boys of ours; if we had no other light but the love we have between us.... ”

“ Above all, never do anything in bitterness, or because you feel as if you'd like to take revenge on yourself for other people's backslidings. All that has been said or done atween us, this night, is your secret, and shall never be talked of by me, even with the Sarpent, and you may be sartain if he can't get it out of me no man can. ”

“ A state of feud, even though a temporary one, often embitters the life, and leaves its mark on the heart. Desolated homes and lonely lives are witnesses of the folly of any such policy. From the root of bitterness there cannot possibly blossom any of the fair flowers of love. The surface truth of the poets' sentiment we have acknowledged and accounted for, but it is only a surface truth. ”

“ All vices sink into our whole being, if we do not crush them before they gain a footing; and in like manner these sad, pitiable, and discordant feelings end by feeding upon their own bitterness, until the unhappy mind takes a sort of morbid delight in grief. ”

“ I wonder what you're going to do?"
"To cultivate my imagination," she answered, with the first outbreak of bitterness that had escaped her yet.
His face hardened. "There seems to be something like bearing malice in this," he said. "Are you treating me, for the first time, to an exhibition of enmity? ”

“ There was no complaint, no dispirited lament in these words, only the bitterness of a man who finds himself at length borne to the very verge of that precipice to avoid which he has in vain been straining every nerve. ”

“ And though my faith does not enable me fully now to feel, in unison with my soul’s judgment, on my heavenly Father’s dealings toward me, when time has removed the bitter cup farther distant, it may not possess all its present intensity of bitterness, to which also so many circumstances have tended to add additional pungency—not a friend near, not a communication from any of those far away. ”

“ The chronic bitterness resulting from an unfortunate hereditary disposition in their character, as much as from their outraged feelings, makes them take a dislike to the world and renders them incapable of seeing anything but the worst side of people. ”

“ These doubts, anxieties, suspicions, are the least part of their torments; they break many times from passions to actions, speak fair, and flatter, now most obsequious and willing, by and by they are averse, wrangle, fight, swear, quarrel, laugh, weep: and he that doth not so by fits, [5304] Lucian holds, is not thoroughly touched with this loadstone of love. So their actions and passions are intermixed, but of all other passions, sorrow hath the greatest share; [5305] love to many is bitterness itself; rem amaram Plato calls it, a bitter potion, an agony, a plague. ”

“ Absurd as the bare idea of bitterness must appear in connection with such a nature as his, to those who really knew him, the reason why strangers so often and so ridiculously misunderstood him, is not difficult to discover. ”

“ His former gentleness has given way to rough harshness. You have seen how he treats me. It may be his best, as he says; if so, his best is far from good. His bitterness used to be, if I may say so, in the abstract, and leveled against abstractions; now it seems to have a painfully concrete character and aim. His estrangement from the scheme of things, or from his kind at least, was purely intellectual, leaving his heart no more affected than the heart usually is by brain-disorders; now it is moral. He is like a man tormented by remorse, or regrets as savage. ”

“ Sometimes more bitterness is sown in five minutes than can be got rid of in a whole life; ”

“ And when neither riches, sensuality, nor vanity have a rag wherewith to cover the cancerous sore, the naked and dreadful spectre of an unsuccessful speculation, of unsuccessful business—then bitterness is added to [Pg 34] bitterness, and the domestic warfare which has become permanent, angry, and poisonous, developes into a chronic despair, the most heart-rending form of human pain. ”

“ I'd rather keep it as a beautiful memory—tucked away in my heart.
AMORY: Yes, women can do that—but not men. I'd remember always, not the beauty of it while it lasted, but just the bitterness, the long bitterness. ”

“ Her shrewdness had a streak of satiric bitterness continually renewed and never carried utterly out of sight, except by a strong current of gratitude towards those who, instead of telling her that she ought to be contented, did something to make her so. ”

“ When a chain or rope is paid out to the bitter end no more remains to let go." The popular expression, therefore, that we are considering implies a determination to carry a thing through to a finish, but no bitterness of feeling is a necessary element in the process. ”

“ What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness? ”

“ It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries—to be reconciled and clasp hands in amity. ”

“ But hushed be every thought that springs
From out the bitterness of things; ”

“ Dames of elevated rank, likewise, whose doors she entered in the way of her occupation, were accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart; sometimes through that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles; and sometimes, also, by a coarser expression, that fell upon the sufferer's defenceless breast like a rough blow upon an ulcerated wound. ”

“ That is the way with us when we have any uneasy jealousy in our disposition: if our talents are chiefly of the burrowing kind, our honey-sipping cousin (whom we have grave reasons for objecting to) is likely to have a secret contempt for us, and any one who admires him passes an oblique criticism on ourselves. Having the scruples of rectitude in our souls, we are above the meanness of injuring him—rather we meet all his claims on us by active benefits; and the drawing of cheques for him, being a superiority which he must recognize, gives our bitterness a milder infusion. ”

“ It was the Marchesa Aphrodite—the adoration of all Venice—the gayest of the gay—the most lovely where all were beautiful—but still the young wife of the old and intriguing Mentoni, and the mother of that fair child, her first and only one, who now, deep beneath the murky water, was thinking in bitterness of heart upon her sweet caresses, and exhausting its little life in struggles to call upon her name.
She stood alone. Her small, bare and silvery feet gleamed in the black mirror of marble beneath her. ”

“ Three of the stanzas are translated below as a specimen of the work :–
“Bitter is (life) to those who do not worship the feet of the three-eyed god (Siva) . Bitter is it not to pray to the fair god (Baladeva) whose flag bears the device in gold of a palmyra palm. Bitter is it to forget the god (Vishnu) who wields the Chakra. Even so is (life) bitter to those who do not adore the god who is armed with the lance (Muruga) — (Stanza I.)
“Bitter is it to witness the distress of a friend. Bitter is it to see the pride of a foe. Bitter is it to reside in a town which is not fortified. ”

“ It is bitter to leave our fathers hearth for the first time; bitter is the eve of our return, when a thousand fears rise in our haunted souls. Bitter are hope deferred, and self-reproach, and power unrecognised. Bitter is poverty; bitterer still is debt. It is bitter to be neglected; it is more bitter to be misunderstood. It is bitter to lose an only child. It is bitter to look upon the land which once was ours. Bitter is a sister’s woe, a brother’s scrape; bitter a mother’s tear, and bitterer still a father’s curse. Bitter are a briefless bag, a curate’s bread, a diploma that brings no fee. ”

“ Lest he to Conrad rather should betray
Some secret thought—than drag that chief's to day.
There was a laughing Devil in his sneer,
That raised emotions both of rage and fear;
And where his frown of hatred darkly fell,
Hope withering fled—and Mercy sighed farewell!
X.
Slight are the outward signs of evil thought,
Within—within—'twas there the spirit wrought!⁠230
Love shows all changes—Hate, Ambition, Guile,
Betray no further than the bitter smile ”

“ Life is so very bitter to me, Mr. Harris.”
“Life bitter at seventeen!” said the lawyer, with an indulgent smile. “You have money, youth, beauty, and will have hosts of friends. You will learn, as we all do, sooner or later, Miss Wroat, to take the bitter with the sweet, and to thank God for all his goodness, instead of repining because one or two blessings are withheld out of so many given. ”

“ For each fleet stride he was making towards Brook Bourne Spring was taking him further and further away from Bittermeads just as before each step to Bittermeads had been taking him further from Ottam's Wood.
He began to run again, even faster than before, and it was towards Ottam's Wood that he ran, each step taking him further from Bittermeads and further from the woman he loved in her bitter need and peril, who looked to him for the help he could not give. With pain and anguish he ran on, ran as men have seldom run—as seldom so much was hung upon their running. ”