Bitterness

“ 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? ”

“ 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 have had misfortunes is the only distinction some can claim. How much that can distinguish one man from another, judge, oh Humanity. But the heart that knows its own bitterness, too often forgets that there is more bitterness in the world than that.
Widdles would cock his magnificent head and whiskers on one side, and wink with one eye, as much as to say, "I believe you, old girl." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Supports the falling rage. Close envy bites
With venom'd tooth; while weak, unmanly fear,
Full of frail fancies, loosens every power.
Even love itself is bitterness of soul,
A pleasing anguish pining at the heart. ”

“ How many a soul have they stirred to evil impulses; how many a prayer have they stifled; how many an emotion of true affection have they turned to bitterness! How hard they sometimes make all duties! How painful they make all daily life! ”

“ We do the same with any great despair, we shroud it in a glittering atmosphere of smiles and jests; but the smiles are sneers, and the jests are sarcasms. There is always a vein of bitterness runs through these feverish spirits, they are the very delirium of sorrow seeking to escape from itself, and which cannot. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I say bitterness, yet my life has not been a bitter one, for I have learned to find joy and sweetness in all that is bitter." A slow and thoughtful reading of her autobiography, letters, and poems will fully convince one of the truth of these words—yes, even of that seemingly incredible and exaggerated cry of her anguished soul: "I could never have believed it was possible to suffer so intensely!" ”

“ What but to scrape or scramble for useless pelf, to hunt after empty shows and shadows of honour, or the vain fancies or dreams of men? What but to wallow or bask in sordid pleasures, the which soon degenerate into remorse and bitterness? ”

“ Yet it hurt him to leave the man there in his hourly torment, in his hopeless misery, and who could tell, if he were left thus, growing more and more brutish and desperate every day, how he might not in sheer despair call upon his daughter to drink his cup of bitterness with him? ”

“ Quite unconsciously we exhibit our temper of mind. There may be the determination not to allow our feelings to rise to the surface, but nevertheless before we know it we have done the mischief; and somehow the bitterness we entertain has been let loose, not by a word or a look, perhaps, but by some subtle telepathic or psychic influence which opens the secret of our soul to our companion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am! ”

“ all feelings of bitterness and estrangement, have their root in nothing but pride, that ever seeks itself, and his eyes will be opened to see how a dark, shall I not say a devilish pride, creeps in almost everywhere, the assemblies of the saints not excepted. ”

“ The bread of bitterness is the food on which men grow to their fullest stature; the waters of bitterness are the debatable ford through which they reach the shores of wisdom; the ashes boldly grasped and eaten without faltering are the price that must be paid for the golden fruit of knowledge. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ CHAPTER VIII THE PORTRAIT INTO the mind of every thoughtful man must come at times with bitterness the reflection of how utterly we are at the mercy of Fate, the victims of her every whim and caprice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It happens frequently that something insignificant as a little thorn pricks the feelings of people, and in time either heals or festers more and more, and brings bitterness and pain, even to the greatest love. ”

“ Much bitterness has the inquiring spirit to swallow, but the bitterest of all is in the knowledge that his moral qualities, his readiness to fulfil his duty ungrudgingly, gives him no preference over other men. ”

“ Their bitterness and everlasting complaints are quite incomprehensible to me. What is it they complain of? What is it they want? They take life from the wrong side; hence it is only natural that they should be unhappy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Surrounded by all that can render life happy and agreeable, still to me the faculty of enjoyment and of feeling is wanting—both have become physical impossibilities. In everything, even in the most tender caresses of my children, I find only bitterness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No other person would have experienced the feelings you speak of for such a cause. It is right to repent your faults, and to bear the burden of them quietly; but it is a sign of an undisciplined spirit to feel bitterness, and to wish to cast the blame of your suffering on another. ”

“ That extreme bitterness and acrimony, which is sometimes indulged against persons who are unhappily seduced from the way of virtue, may operate as a discouragement to all designs and endeavors to regain it; whereas, the soothing voice of forgiveness, and the consequent prospect of being restored to reputation and usefulness, might rouse the attention, and call forth the exertions of some, at least, who through despair of retrieving their characters, abandon themselves to vice, and adopt a course, alike disgraceful to their sex, and to human nature. ”

“ The sense of wrong, of hardship, of bitterness, of personal injustice, seems by degrees to melt away from it, and therefore it can be better faced. At least it is well that we should tell ourselves so. ”

“ High and low, wise and simple, all busily hoard up the moments of life. How greatly they err!
Therefore I have to the uttermost exposed the bitterness both of Substance and Shadow, and have made Spirit show how, by following Nature, we may dissolve this bitterness. ”

“ Malice is badness of disposition, the aptness to envy and hatred, which apart from any special occasion is always ready to break out in bitterness and wrath. Bitterness is malice sharpened to a point and directed against the exasperating object. ”