Cup of suffering

“ In his depression and despair, the bottle seemed to be his only resource. I have since learned enough of human nature to understand how it was with him. Men in the sunlight of prosperity play with the fiend of the cup. Full of life, full of animal spirits, it is comparatively easy to control the appetite. But when the hour of despondency comes; when depression invades the mind; when earthly possessions elude the grasp—then they flee to the consolations of the cup. ”

“ From my father's anguish and my mother's woe, from the tears of love of all my life, from laughing and weeping, joys and hurts, I furnished the poisoned ingredients of the cup!" He had, more plainly, if we seize the sense of his raving, fed and fostered an inherited emotional nature which made him the cup's easy victim. And recognising it, he adds to his curse upon the dreadful cup, with all the strength of his tortured heart, his curse upon him who brewed it,—and exhausted with his own delirious violence drops back in a swoon. ”

“ She ordered a cup of tea, which proved excessively bad, and this gave her a sense that she was suffering in a romantic cause. ”

“ Sad is it for us who are old enough to have tasted the bitterness of that cup which life sooner or later presents to all lips, and have borne the burden of its toil and fretting, that our vexations and disappointments pursue us even in our slumber, disturbing our sleep with reproachful visions and the sound of voices whose upbraiding robs us of our otherwise peaceful repose. ”

“ But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup. Mankind has done worse. ”

“ Can the worst griefs of wayward youth equal the bitterness of that cup which you drink at such a time of life as forbids all hope of after-assuagement? Can the first disappointment of a strong heart rank with the terrible desolation of a wrecked old age? ”

“ Thus did this unhappy soul struggle in its anguish. Eighteen hundred years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious Being in whom are summed up all the sanctities and all the sufferings of humanity had also long thrust aside with his hand, while the olive-trees quivered in the wild wind of the infinite, the terrible cup which appeared to Him dripping with darkness and overflowing with shadows in the depths all studded with stars. ”

“ There is a mysterious feeling awakened in our hearts,—a feeling of peculiar melancholy, which, combines two opposite emotions,—that of pleasure and that of pain. These seem to embrace each other, and their union in our hearts affords us a strange enjoyment. We enjoy the pain; the agony awakened by the remembrance of those who lie beneath the sod is pleasing to us. It is a bitter cup we love to drink ”

“ We have tossed you the choicest blessings of our lives and shouldered you with the heavy responsibilities that should rightfully have been our load. Your cup has run over with both joy and sorrow but you have drunk of the cup, while we are still thirsty! Our hearts are dry, while yours is green—nourished with the love that should belong to us. ”

“ Thou see'st and knowest all,
Though mortal man, I'm still Thy son;
—This cup is filled with gall.
"Came I for this, to suffer pain
Man's soul to save from loss,
That I as sacrifice once slain,
Should bear his future cross. ”

“ We dare not; it is so awful, so heartrending, so plain spoken, that God, the master and tutor of our hearts must wish us to face it and endure it. Our Father has given us the cup—shall we not drink it? ”

“ Ay, shame to them, indeed! But oh, how sad, how grievous that the young hand, which might have raised to untainted lips none but those pure draughts which neither heat the brain nor warp the sense of right, should ever learn to grasp the cup that gives a passing brightness to the eye and glitter to the tongue, but clouds at length the intellect, fires the brain, and leaves a multitude of wretched victims cast ashore as shattered moral wrecks. To such results, though from the smallest beginnings, does the drink tend in its very nature. Oh, happy they who are altogether free from its toils! ”

“ It seems to me, that sorrow must come some time to everybody, and those who scarcely taste it in their youth, often have a more brimming and bitter cup to drain in after life; whereas, those who exhaust the dregs early, who drink the lees before the wine, may reasonably hope for more palatable draughts to succeed. ”

“ He holds up to the parched and dying creatures surrounding him a cup, while he proclaims, “Ho ye that thirst! buy wine, buy milk, without money and without price!” “Drink, and ye shall not thirst again!” while he himself is dying of thirst—and ever as he raises to his own lips the cup which contains the healing for the nations, his spirit shrinks back from the draught—it will not drink—it is gall and wormwood to him! ”

“ How true and how strange it is that our deepest sorrows, spring from our sweetest affections; that as we love much, we suffer much. What instruments of torture our hearts are! The passage you quote is all true but people are apt to be impatient in affliction, eager to drink the bitter cup at a draught rather than drop by drop, and fain to dig up the seed as soon as it is planted, to see if it has germinated. ”

“ The thoughtless are here the wise; A cup to the dead already— Hurrah for the next that dies!
There's many a hand that's shaking, There's many a cheek that's sunk; But soon, though our hearts are breaking, They'll burn with the wine we've drunk. So stand to your glasses, steady! 'T is here the revival lies; A cup to the dead already— Hurrah for the next that dies! ”

“ But the groove, and the circumstances that surround it, bear a stigma which the honesty or kind-heartedness of one good man, or a thousand, cannot wipe away—cannot obliterate. The wine cup has done such damage—has broken so many hearts, ruined so many fortunes, and destroyed so many lives that no light can fall on it but what is the most fearful, lurid and repulsive to any well-ordered mind. ”

“ He offers them to drink of His cup. They call for sovereignty: He asks for sacrifice. They crave sweetness: He offers them bitterness. They seek a life of “getting”: He demands a life of “giving.” Who has a cup of bitterness to drink? ”

“ Is there no cup but this wherefrom have sipped
Sad men and earthy since the morning's sun?
Must we then taste their sorrow where they lipped
The edge of lust and take our passion up
Bitter already from the common cup? ”

“ You never wound your arms about her in the silent night, drenching brow, cheek and lip with your tears, as you prayed God, in your wild despair, dearly as you loved her, to take her to himself; for, living, she, too, must drink of the cup that might not pass away from your sorrow-steeped lips. ”

“ I shared all her sorrow, and our hearts bled for each other. Her situation was terrible, and awakened anew my still fresh grief. We frequently talked together of our revered parents; and we were only roused from our stunned condition by misfortunes more recent than our own, which urged us to comfort those who were suffering from them. The indispensable duty of preparing food is a real, though wretched, distraction when the heart is aching. ”

“ Instead of getting oneself crucified or crucifying others, one can solemnly drink wine out of a cup, thinking the while on the mystery of sacrifice. One can, without such actions, treat one’s impulses and one’s so-called temptations with esteem and love. ”

“ With my heart's blood he filled this cup of mine!
381
To drain the cup, to hover round the fair,
Can hypocritic arts with these compare?
⁠If all who love and drink are going wrong,
There's many a wight of heaven may well despair!
382
'Tis wrong with gloomy thoughts your mirth to drown---
To let grief's millstone weigh your spirits down;
⁠Since none can tell what is to be, 'tis best
With wine and love your heart's desires to crown.
383
'Tis well in reputation to abide,
'Tis shameful against heaven to rail and chide ”

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

“ True, each heart may have its own peculiar history—its secret sorrows, trials, failures, and temptations, unknown to all around; but these are not the objects to be contemplated at the supper: to bring them into view is to dishonor the Lord of the feast, and make the cup of blessing a cup of sorrow. ”

“ I bow my head and find a moment's relief from the anguish of soul in the hot scalding tears which stream down my fevered cheeks. O God of sure mercy, save other young men from the dark and desolate tortures which gnaw at my heart, and press down upon my weary soul! They are all, all, all the work of alcohol. Oh, how true it is--how true few can understand until their lives are a burden of distress and agony to them--that the cup which inebriates stingeth like an adder. When you see it, turn from it as from a viper. Say to yourself as you turn to fly, "It stingeth like an adder!" ”

“ Every care vanishes when the cup-bearer presents the delicious chalice. It will circulate freely through thy veins and will not rankle there. If thou doubtest this, contemplate the youth and beauty of those who drink it. Grief cannot exist where it grows; sorrow humbles itself in obedience before its powers. ”

“ Oh! for a comforter who will help us to drink the bitter cup—who will give us faith to say, with Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him”—who will give us the firm reason to look steadily at our grief, and learn the lesson it is meant to teach—who will give us the temperate will to keep sober and calm amid the shocks and changes of mortal life! ”

“ When wine is a curse, it is not so because of itself, but because of excess in its use. The cup was made for purposes of pleasure, but to quarrel over it,—leave that to barbarians! Take warning by the Thracians, and the Centaurs and Lapiths, never to overstep the bounds of moderation. Pleasure with after-taste of bitterness is not real pleasure. Pleasure purchased with pain is an evil. ”

“ And our pitiful hopes and ambitions and poor pathetic little plans for happiness shrivel and die, and strew their stinking corpses along the road that was going to be so gorgeous. The time to spill the cup is when the lip begins to tremble and water for it—not sooner—the gods know! ”

“ The same man would be tempted by the wine of the consecrated cup. When the disease of inebriety has gone thus far she cannot save him, but she can look to it that her hand does not give the final touch, which is death. ”

“ Three or four months later a strange woman brought a cup of coffee to my room. Suddenly I felt a sting in my heart. I wanted to cry out from pain. I shivered, my whole being trembling in stark agony.—For a man's heart is a just judge; a man's heart does not concern itself with paragraphs in statute books or trifles. ”

“ To impress this more and more upon our minds, it has pleased God to give certain holy persons a small share in the pains of expiation, like a drop of the bitter cup which the poor souls have to drink, a spark of the fire which consumes them. ”

“ The misery and woe of home prompts to the pursuit of relief and excitement abroad; and the gay and light assembly, the oblivion of drink, the impure and licentious association, these are but too likely to attract those whose wretched dwellings furnish only for the eye cheerless desolation and squalid forms, and for the ear the sigh and bitter plaint of hunger. The heart is closed by deep and desperate suffering. The finer affections of our nature may be softened and refined by certain measures of grief, but if it be too intense and lasting, they are overwhelmed. ”

“ His cup is gall, his meat is tears, His passion lasts a thousand years. ”

“ She drank to the very dregs the cup of human misery. To have one's desires within one's reach, to have one's whole being driving one to stretch out one's hand and satisfy the eternal instincts within, and to force one's self to an abnegation that one's heart revolts from, that indeed was Pain to her. ”

“ Life seems like a cup of glory held to my lips just now. But there must be some bitterness in it—there is in every cup. I shall taste mine some day. Well, I hope I shall be strong and brave to meet it. ”

“ Already has it rent the veil of
night. Arise, then, and empty the morning cup. Why
this sadness? Drink, O my heart! drink, for these dawns
will succeed each other with face turned towards us,
when we shall have ours turned towards the earth.
256.
All that this world contains are but images and flourishes
of fiction. Ill-advised is he who does not comprehend
his place in the number of these images. Repose,
thou, friend, drink a cup of wine, give thyself up to joy
and thus be delivered from all these vain figures, from
these impossible reflections [which come to assail thy
mind] . ”

“ Aye, it is true that there, where no feast of a material nature was needed, where, indeed, it would only serve to lower the time and place into a scene of sensual festivity, the wine-cup passed from hand to hand, brilliant toasts were given and repeated, and I, in company with others, again tasted the perfumed draught that ever tends to degrade humanity. ”

“ Every man has the cup of his fashioning, and most often the cup he has learned to desire. When we murmur at fate, let our grievance be only that she grafted not in our heart the wish for, or thought of, a cup more ample and perfect. ”

“ Since no one has ever been able to answer thee from
one day to the next, hasten to glad thy heart filled with
sadness. Drink, O adorable Moon! drink from thy silver
cup, for long shalt thou turn in the firmament without
finding us here again.
281 9.
Would that the lover [the true believer] were intoxicated
the whole year, mad, absorbed with wine, covered
with dishonor! For, when we have sound reason, chagrin
assails us on all sides; but when we are in wine, well,
let come what will! ”

“ But the cup of the passion was love’s highest gift, and the offense is not against the cup but against love in its sublimest display. Therefore forever death is the penalty that overhangs those who outrage this finest gem of angels and mortals. ”