Bitterness Quotes

All lives are difficult; what makes some of them fulfilled as well is the manner in which pains have been met. Every pain is an indistinct signal that something is wrong, which may engender either a good or bad result depending on the sagacity and strength of mind of the sufferer. Anxiety may precipitate panic, or an accurate analysis of what is amiss. A sense of injustice may lead to murder, or to a ground-breaking work of economic theory. Envy may lead to bitterness, or to a decision to compete with a rival and the production of a masterpiece. As ~ Alain De Botton

Cast from your heart the bitterness ... ~ Vincent De Paul

Because of Calvary, I'm free to choose. And so I choose. I choose love ... No occasion justifies hatred; no injustice warrants bitterness. ~ Max Lucado

This is an example of what Jung called "the regressive restoration of the persona," namely, the re-identification with a former position, role, ideology because it offers a predictable content, security, and script. In the face of the new and uncertain, we often return to the old place, which is why we so often stop growing. (It has become clear to me, for example, that aging itself does not bring wisdom. It often brings regression to childishness, dependency, and bitterness over lost opportunities. ~ James Hollis

Anything allowed in the heart which is contrary to the will of God, let it seem ever so insignificant, or be ever so deeply hidden, will cause us to fall before our enemies. Any root of bitterness cherished towards another, any self-seeking, any harsh judgments indulged in, any slackness in obeying the voice of the Lord, any doubtful habits or surroundings, any one of these things will effectually cripple and paralyze our spiritual life. I believe our blessed Guide, the indwelling Holy Spirit, is always secretly discovering these things to us by continual little twinges and pangs of conscience, so that we are left without excuse. ~ Hannah Whitall Smith

To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires expanding the soul. These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger, imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics, beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down. These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness, egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating ketchup on cottage cheese. ~ Tom Robbins

All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. ~ Richard Rohr

Every one a drum major leading a parade of hurts, marching with our bitterness. ~ John Steinbeck

He divided the inhabitants of this world into two groups, into those who had loved and those who had not. It was a horrible aristocracy, apparently, for those who had no capacity for love (or rather for suffering in love) could not be said to be alive and certainly would not live again after their death. They were a kind of straw population, filling the world with their meaningless laughter and tears and chatter and disappearing still lovable and vain into thin air. For this distinction he cultivated his own definition of love that was like no other and that had gathered all its bitterness and pride from his odd life. He regarded love as a sort of cruel malady through which the elect are required to pass in their late youth and from which they emerge, pale and wrung, but ready for the business of living. There was (he believed) a great repertory of errors mercifully impossible to human beings who had recovered from this illness. Unfortunately there remained to them a host of failings, but at least (from among many illustrations) they never mistook a protracted amiability for the whole conduct of life, they never again regarded any human being, from a prince to a servant, as a mechanical object. ~ Thornton Wilder

Swallowing back her bitterness, Amelia glanced up at her brother and managed a rueful smile. "Thank you, but at this advanced stage of life, I have no ambitions to marry."
Leo surprised her by bending to brush a light kiss on her forehead. His voice was soft and kind. "Be that as it may, I think someday you'll meet a man worth giving up your independence for." He grinned before adding, "Despite your encroaching old age. ~ Lisa Kleypas

It was the first time that he'd cried in a very long time. All of his emotions poured out now, in a great rush of release: it was sadness tinged with bitterness, but mostly an intensely deep feeling of loss. ~ EXO Books

To refuse to do something because you've already done it, because you've already been there, rapidly leads to the destruction, for yourself as much as for others, of any reason for living, for any possible future, and it plunges you into an oppressive ennui that will eventually transform into atrocious bitterness, accompanied by hatred and rancor toward those who still belong to the land of the living. ~ Michel Houellebecq

if I stay with him any longer, he'll unstitch me, and I really can't fall apart now. Bitterness is the only thing holding me together. Without it, I'm shapeless. ~ Leisa Rayven

The single-minded focus on scoring political points over solving problems, escalating over the last several decades, has reached a level of such intensity and bitterness that the government seems incapable of taking and sustaining public decisions responsive to the existential challenges facing the country. ~ Thomas E. Mann

Nothing mortal is enduring, and there is nothing sweet which does not presently end in bitterness. ~ Petrarch

I've tried to teach what I learned all those years in my mother and father's house, all those things I didn't realize I was learning and that I never knew I'd be so grateful for. When you have love and it's proffered every day in a kind of tender, yet stern insistence and even reckless laughter, when it is given to you and you accept it in life as a thing as natural as rain or snow, or the littler of leaves in fall, you can't help but take it for granted. For a bewildered while you incorrectly understand that the world has given you this becuase it's there in equal measure, everywhere. You never knowuntil it's too late to do anything about it, how seet the effort is: how lasting the human will to love can be in the breast of people who want to make it for you, who want to give it to you, without calculating what's in it fo them, without thinking at all of what it will mean when you grow to full adulthood, see the world as it is, and forget to mention what you have been given.

Ever day of my grown-up life, I have wanted to do what my parents did. I have wanted to widen the province of love and weaken hate and bitterness in the hearts of my children. And I've done these things because of what I got from my family, all those lovely years when I was growing up, being loved and cherished and, unbeknown to me, and in the best way, honored, for myself. ~ Marian Wright Edelman

The wind god Favonius had warned him in Croatia: If you let your anger rule you … your fate will be even sadder than mine. But how could his fate be anything but sad? Even if he lived through this quest, he would have to leave both camps forever. That was the only way he would find peace. He wished there was another option – a choice that didn't hurt like the waters of the Phlegethon – but he couldn't see one. ~ Rick Riordan

[...] he would see that birth and death were only two tremendous moments in an eternal waking, and his face would glow with amazement as he understood this; he would feel - gently he grasped the copper handle of the door - the warmth of the mountains, woods, rivers and valleys, would discover the hidden depths of human existence, would finally understand that the unbreakable ties that bound him to the world were not imprisoning chains and condemnation but a kind of clinging to an indestructible sense that he had a home; and he would discover the enormous joys of mutuality which embraced and animated everything: rain, wind, sun and snow, the flight of a bird, the taste of fruit, the scent of grass; and he would suspect that his anxieties and bitterness were merely cumbersome ballast required by the live roots of his past and the rising airship of his certain future, and, then - he started opening the door - he would finally know that our every moment is passed in a procession across dawns and day's-ends of the orbiting earth, across successive waves of winter and summer, threading the planets and the stars. Suitcase in hand, he stepped into the room and stood there blinking in the half-light. ~ Laszlo Krasznahorkai

It wasn't supposed to. It was just supposed to stop you from hurting yourself." "It helps - " "No it doesn't. It just pushes it away temporarily. Just like the booze." "But I need - " "You need to let yourself feel. Feel it, own it. Then move on." "You make it sound so easy." Bitterness drips from each syllable. "It's not. It's the fucking hardest thing a person can do." I smooth a damp strand out of her face and away from my mouth. "It's the hardest fucking thing. It's why we drink and do drugs and fight. It's why I play music and build engines. ~ Jasinda Wilder

Let me sing you a waltz / Out of nowhere, out of my thoughts / Let me sing you a waltz / About this one night stand / You were, for me, that night / Everything I always dreamt of in life / But now you're gone / You are far gone / All the way to your island of rain / It was for you just a one night thing / But you were much more to me, just so you know / I don't care what they say / I know what you meant for me that day / I just want another try, I just want another night / Even if it doesn't seem quite right / You meant for me much more than anyone I've met before / One single night with you, little Jesse, is worth a thousand with anybody / I have no bitterness, my sweet / I'll never forget this one night thing / Even tomorrow in other arms, my heart will stay yours until I die / Let me sing you a waltz / Out of nowhere, out of my blues / Let me sing you a waltz / About this lovely one night stand ~ Julie Delpy

The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at my Crevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knew all a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the antique bronze gods and goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beauty and without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book was bound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefully chosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger, Milton in the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of human passions without their bitterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all gods because I believed in none, and experienced every pleasure because I gave myself to none, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of polished steel: I looked in the triumph of this imagination at the birds of Hera, glowing in the firelight as though they were wrought of jewels; and to my mind, for which symbolism wa ~ W.B. Yeats

Slowly, slowly, his soul was filled with bitterness at the fact that he had stood a step away from enlightenment, from the most real enlightenment, but he hadn't been resolute, he hadn't dare give himself to the flow of the tunnel's ether, and now he would be left to wander in the darkness for his whole life because he was once too afraid of the light of authentic knowledge. ~ Dmitry Glukhovsky

From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers. ~ Lucretius

Hatred may keep a body warm, but it takes a lot to keep the fire stoked, so unless a person is extraordinary in some way, some people are not worth hating, just like they're not worth loving. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

If there are differences and divisions, let them be healed by counsel, by careful words of loving confrontation that bring repentance in the heart. May none of God's people have to know what it is like to have someone they worship with turn on them with wounding words. If you have a complaint against anyone, you must, for the sake of your soul and the sake of gospel unity and the sake of Christ, go to them. May there be no gossip, no hidden anger or bitterness. "May our lives be all covered with that harvest of righteousness that Jesus Christ produces to the glory of God." (Philippians 1:11) (Moffatt 1922). ~ Russ Kennedy

From the heart of this fountain of delights wells up some bitter taste to choke them even amid the flowers. ~ Lucretius

Few things are more bitter than to feel bitter. ~ Charles Buxton

Right. But do you think I could face my children otherwise? You know what's going to happen as well as I do, Jack, and I hope and pray I can get Jem and Scout through it without bitterness, and most of all, without catching Maycomb's usual disease. Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand... I just hope that Jem and Scout come to me for their answers instead of listening to the town. I hope they trust me enough... Jean Louise?" My scalp jumped. I stuck my head around the corner. "Sir?" "Go to bed. ~ Harper Lee

Bitterness is captivity. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Jealousy is an unjust and stifling thing. ~ Zane Grey

And yet he was happier in his unused room simply because it was his, his possession. I thought with bitterness and envy, if one possesses a thing securely, one need never use it. ~ Graham Greene

I must dedicate my life to teaching my people, for only education would make their lot less bitter, their latent power more strong. ~ Y. C. James Yen

When you're a child the world forbears you, allows you your flights of imagination, your feelings of specialness. But sooner or later the privileges are withdrawn, and all you're left with is a stunned bitterness at the realisation that you're just the same as everybody else. ~ Michael Marshall Smith

What? I ask. I try not to get snappy with her. She hasn't really done anything wrong. Falling in love with Turner isn't a sin, but hey, bitterness coasts the tongue, right? I try to breath past it? ~ C.M. Stunich

I grow old on my bitterness. ~ Anne Sexton

As we pour out our bitterness, God pours in his peace. ~ F.B. Meyer

When she called to mind all this utter and crushing misery that had come upon my aunts' old music-master, she was moved to very real grief, and shuddered to think of that other grief, so different in its bitterness, which Mlle. Vinteuil must now be feeling, tinged with remorse at having virtually killed her father. ~ Marcel Proust

The truth is alchemical. It transmutes the bitterness of pain and dishonesty and shame into something else, something we can actually live in and stand on. ~ Laura McKowen

Ho. What's so surprising? Asach aahe. It is what it is. Bambai is a bitter pill. Take large gulps of water and swallow it, or its bitterness will quickly begin to sphraidd in your mouth, making it impossible for you to gulp it down," said Laxmi. ~ Aditya Kripalani

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. ~ George Eliot

I have a pretty large experience of boys, and you're a bad set of fellows. Now mind! ~ Charles Dickens

Society ... is nothing more than the war of a thousand petty opposed interests, an eternal strife of all the vanities, which, turn in turn wounded and humiliated one by the other, intercross, come into collision, and on the morrow expiate the triumph of the eve in the bitterness of defeat. To live alone, to remain unjostled in this miserable struggle, where for a moment one draws the eyes of the spectators, to be crushed a moment later
this is what is called being a nonentity, having no existence. Poor humanity! ~ Nicolas Chamfort

If I thought about it, I could be bitter, but I don't feel like being bitter. Being bitter makes you immobile, and there's too much that I still want to do. ~ Richard Pryor

For a moment, I lived in the center of the sun, warmed and cleansed, and the smell and sight of sickness fell away; the bitterness lifted from my heart. I ~ Diana Gabaldon

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

When Jesus gives us new life, He strips away all that binds us ... all that holds us captive ... and frees us so we can be fully alive to enter into a new life with Him. Do you live in this freedom, or do you live bound up in grave clothes, held captive by bitterness, unforgiveness, anger, fear, doubt, sickness, or something else? Friend, Jesus wants you to live and walk in the freedom of the cross. ~ Wendy Blight

Whatever you do, Alditha, wherever you go, trust God, and never stop smiling. Your life will be hard, and bitterness will be the easiest thing for you to feel. Remember that you serve a God who knew that this would happen before you were born. ~ Sarah Holman

They were all there.And all of them,these days,were as if drunk with bitterness,from desire for vengeance and longed to punish and to kill whomsoever they could,since they could not punish or kill those whom they wished. ~ Ivo Andric

Must you continue to be your own cross? No matter which way God leads you, you change everything into bitterness by constantly brooding over everything. For the love of God, replace all this self-scrutiny with a pure and simple glance at God's goodness. ~ Jane Frances De Chantal

Two things that annoy me, are; people who are positive out of ignorance, and people who are negative out of bitterness, People who are neither usually get along with me and agree with most of what I say. But People who are one of the two think I'm the other and at the end get confused totally. ~ Auliq Ice

If you're afraid of death, I would say, either fight for your life or come to grips with the fact you may not make it. And in doing that there shouldn't be bitterness. There should be a celebration. There should be an understanding of how lucky you are. That's how I feel. ~ Robby Benson

I think you have to pay for love with bitter tears. ~ Edith Piaf

Let me reason with the supporters of this opinion, who have any knowledge of human nature, do they imagine that marriage can eradicate the habitude of life? The woman who has only been taught to please, will soon find that her charms are oblique sun-beams, and that they cannot have much effect on her husband's heart when they are seen every day, when the summer is past and gone. Will she then have sufficient native energy to look into herself for comfort, and cultivate her dormant faculties? or, is it not more rational to expect, that she will try to please other men; and, in the emotions raised by the expectation of new conquests, endeavour to forget the mortification her love or pride has received? When the husband ceases to be a lover - and the time will inevitably come, her desire of pleasing will then grow languid, or become a spring of bitterness; and love, perhaps, the most evanescent of all passions, gives place to jealousy or vanity. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

There was no sugar! That was better for our health; no need to taste such a boring thing. Sugar is one of these decorative ingredients; those ingredients that deceive you by changing the bitterness of reality into some dazzling bites of sweetness. ~ Noha Alaa El-Din

When 'Dirty Mack' salts your flow, get beyond feelings of hurt, anger, bitterness, and especially vengeance. Be glad, and take refuge in knowing light has been cast on the shadow of hatred, envy or jealousy that has mocked your shine. And press forward with your purpose - allowing time and space to clear the way for karmic justice on your behalf. ~ T.F. Hodge

A little surge of bitterness goes through me like someone's shot it right into my veins with a syringe. But I know how to get over the feeling: remember that it doesn't do any good. ~ Ally Condie

There is enough heartache and sorrow in this life without our adding to it through our own stubbornness, bitterness, and resentment. ~ Dieter F. Uchdorf

Please don't. Don't oversimplify everything you've been through like that. You had to feel those awful feelings. You had to face them down
confront your bitterness and pessimism
and decide that you didn't want to be that way anymore. ~ Rainbow Rowell

I saw the error I was making. I had been thinking of the disaster as a horrible mistake, as an unscripted deviation from the happy story of the life I had been promised. But now I began to understand that my ordeal in the Andes was not an interruption of my true destiny, or a perversion of what my life was supposed to be. It simply was my life, and the future that lay ahead was the only future available to me. To hide from this fact, or to live in bitterness and anger, would only keep me from living any genuine life at all. ~ Nando Parrado

From the heart of the fountain of delight rises a jet of bitterness that tortures us among the very flowers. ~ Lucretius

Some of the dumbest things we do are done out of anger and bitterness when someone has wronged us. ~ Chip Ingram

That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be
generous. ~ George Gissing

What I have told you is not completely true. You should beware, for often in this story, my words will be spoken out of bitterness, out of hate. The scream of the poor is not always just; but if you do not listen to it, then you will never understand justice. ~ Erik Christian Haugaard

Could you not portray the good sides of life and proclaim love as a principle, instead of endless bitterness?"

There is only one expression for truth: the thought which repudiates injustice. If insistence on the good sides of life is not sublated in the negative whole, it transfigures its own opposite: violence. ~ Theodor W. Adorno

Many people mess up every new day with what happened yesterday. They insist on bringing into today the failures of yesterday, and in so doing pollute a potentially wonderful day. When bitterness, resentment, and revenge are allowed to live in the human heart, words of affirmation will be impossible to speak. The best thing we can do with past failures is to let them be history. ~ Gary Chapman

It is not wholly surprising, however, that, when India began to reassert herself, two nations should have replaced the single British Raj; but all impartial students must regret that the unity of the Indian sub-continent has been once more lost, and trust that the two great nations of India and Pakistan may soon forget the bitterness born of centuries of strife, in cooperation for the common welfare of their peoples. ~ Arthur Llewellyn Basham

Dexter had been led to believe, by TV, by films, that the only up-side of sickness was that it brought people closer, that there would be an opening-up, an effortless understanding between them. But they have always been close, always been open, and their habitual understanding has instead been replaced by bitterness, resentment, a rage on both their parts at what is happening. ~ David Nicholls

The more we hold on to our hurts, anger and bitterness, the more we become slaves to unforgiveness. ~ Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Unforgiveness is a shadow of the past; it is behind you, but you always know it is there. Sorrow and bitterness covers your heart like the darkness covers the night. ~ Deborah Brodie

Everybody wants to get into the act! ~ Jimmy Durante

We can only diffuse kindness, to the souls filled with bitterness. This is the greatest deeds to awaken their good spirit. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Live fully, love deeply, let go with no bitterness. ~ Paulo Coelho

When I lived in New York and went to Chinatown, I learned that these flavors and their meanings were actually a foundation of ancient Chinese medicine.
Salty translated to fear and the frantic energy that tries to compensate for or hide it.
Sweet was the first flavor we recognized from our mother's milk, and to which we turned when we were worried and unsure or depressed.
Sour usually meant anger and frustration.
Bitter signified matters of the heart, from simply feeling unloved to the almost overwhelming loss of a great love. Most spices, along with coffee and chocolate, had some bitterness in their flavor profile. Even sugar, when it cooked too long, turned bitter. But to me, spice was for grief, because it lingered longest. ~ Judith Fertig

Love, love, love, love is all you can do, even in the face of bitterness, pain, anger, confusion, it's the only thing to keep you steady and stop you biting back. ~ Jay Woodman

You wouldn't believe
the sun had ever shone on this heart. ~ Antonio Cisneros

The disappointments she'd experienced hadn't hardened into either anger or bitterness, but rather acceptance that life seldom turns out the way that one imagines it will. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Such women as you a hundred men always convet - your eyes will only bewitch scores on scores into the unvailing fancy for you - you can only marry one of that many. Out of these say twenty will will endeavour to drown the bitterness of despised love in drink; twenty more will mope away their lives without a wish or attempt to make a mark in the world, because they have no ambition apart from their attachment to you; twenty more - the suspectible person myself possibly among them - will be always draggling after you, getting where they may just see you, doing desperate things. Men are such constant fools! The rest may try to get over their passion with more or less success. But all of these men will be saddened. And not only those ninety-nine men, but the ninety-nine women they might have married are saddened with them. There's my tale. That's why I say that a woman so charming as yourself, Miss Everdene, is hardly a blessing to her race (Ch. 26) ~ Thomas Hardy

I think of the snarling, cruel exchange back on the hovercraft. The bitterness that followed. But all I say is "I can't believe you didn't rescue Peeta."
"I know," he replies.
There's a sense of incompleteness. And not because he hasn't apologized. But because we were a team. We had a deal to keep Peeta safe. A drunken, unrealistic deal made in the dark of night, but a deal just the same. And in my heart of hearts, I know we both failed.
"Now you say it," I tell him.
"I can't believe you let him out of your sight that night," says Haymitch. ~ Suzanne Collins

Somedays, if bitterness were a whetstone, I could be sharp as grief. ~ Audre Lorde

Like that's the only reason anyone would ever buy a first-aid kit? Don't take this the wrong way, Professor McGonagall, but what sort of crazy children are you used to dealing with?"
"Gryffindors," spat Professor McGonagall, the word carrying a freight of bitterness and despair that fell like an eternal curse on all youthful heroism and high spirits. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

He searched for words to poison the shaft of his disdain. ~ Margaret Landon

In the next economic downturn there will be an outbreak of bitterness and contempt for the supercorporate chieftains who pay themselves millions. In every major economic downturn in US history the villains have been the heroes during the preceding boom. ~ Peter Drucker

And whenever they came back to his lips, these exquisite, funereal laments conjured up, in his mind, a place on the outskirts of a city, a mean and voiceless place where silently, in the distance, lines of men and women, wearied and bowed down by life, were disappearing into the twilight, while he himself, surfeited with bitterness and replete with disgust, felt himself alone, utterly alone, in the midst of a tearful Nature, overwhelmed by an inexpressible melancholy, by a relentless anguish, the mysterious intensity of which precluded all consolation, all pity, all repose. ~ Joris-Karl Huysmans

For a cup brimful of sweet water cannot spill even one drop of bitter water, however suddenly jolted. ~ Amy Carmichael

What is it that keeps us in motion?
Not seldom, the fear that the bitterness of the past will catch up with us. The bitterness over all missed opportunities. Bitterness at being who you are, and still not more like yourself. ~ Lars Gustafsson

Dramatic things always have a bitterness for some one. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery

I know many souls that toss and whirl and pass, but none there are that intrigue me more than the Souls of White Folk. Of them I am singularly clairvoyant. I see in and through them. I view them from unusual points of vantage. Not as a foreigner do I come, for I am native, not foreign, bone of their thought and flesh of their language. Mine is not the knowledge of the traveler or the colonial composite of dear memories, words and wonder. Nor yet is my knowledge that which servants have of masters, or mass of class, or capitalist of artisan. Rather I see these souls undressed and from the back and side. I see the working of their entrails. I know their thoughts and they know that I know. This knowledge makes them now embarrassed, now furious. They deny my right to live and be and call me misbirth! My word is to them mere bitterness and my soul, pessimism. And yet as they preach and strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they clutch at rags of facts and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go twisting, flying by my tired eyes and I see them ever stripped, - ugly, human. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this conventional world of ours - watery or otherwise; that when a person placed in command over his fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly his superior in general pride of manhood, straightway against that man he conceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness; and if he had a chance he will pull down and pulverize that subaltern's tower, and make a little heap of dust of it. ~ Herman Melville

Because after having overcome the defeats - and we always overcome them - we feel much more euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know we are worthy of the miracle of life. Each day, each hour, is part of the Good Combat. We begin to live with enthusiasm and pleasure. Very intense and unexpected suffering begins passing faster than apparently tolerable suffering: that drags on for years, eroding our soul without us noticing what is happening - until one day we can no longer free ourselves of the bitterness, and it accompanies us for the rest of our lives. ~ Paulo Coelho

Beware of those around you who subtly sow the seeds of doubt. ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

SONNET 57
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill. ~ William Shakespeare

Eid Crescent
I feed on bitterness and satiety never comes.
Today sadness has renewed itself.
Let me narrate the story of two souls,
Whose love was struck by the evil eye,
In a twist which Fate had hidden.
Luck won't smile and Time will scorch.
Only the stars know what is wrong with me.
I almost sense them craning to wipe my tears away. ~ Leila Aboulela

Laughter exists to teach us to be stronger than pain.
Tolerance exists to teach us to be stronger than injustice.
Conviction exists to teach us to be stronger than doubt.
Compassion exists to teach us to be stronger than anger.
Mercy exists to teach us to be stronger than vengance.
Reason exists to teach us to be stronger than ignorance.
Need exists to teach us to be stronger than want.
Confidence exists to teach us to be stronger than hesitation.
Fate exists to teach us to be stronger than chance.
Destiny exists to teach us to be stronger than luck.
Courage exists to teach us to be stronger than danger.
Contentment exists to teach us to be stronger than desire.
Patience exists to teach us to be stronger than bitterness.
Understanding exists to teach us to be stronger than resentment.
Hope exists to teach us to be stronger than grief.
Life exists to teach us to be stronger than death.
Love exists to teach us to be stronger than fear.
Virtue exists to teach us to be stronger than temptation.
God exists to teach us to be stronger than evil.
Light exists to teach us to be stronger than darkness. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

You don't even know me. (Adron)
Yes, I do. You try to hide what you are, but I see it. It shines through your bitterness with a brightness not even you can extinguish. (Livia) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

One of the heaviest load so many people are carrying today is neither thoughts about things they lack nor things they wish to have, nor how to manage what they already have, but toxic words that have taken a greater portion of their thoughts and such words not just occupying a great part of their hearts, but also draining their very joy in life! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

One can't measure the life with its bitterness but with it's sweetness and sweetness is what one must find in Jesus Words ~ Aftab Alam

In comparison with all this, our little stories of achievement seem pitiful; Too well we know what bitterness of failure, loss, disillusionment, and ironic unfulfillment galls the blood of even the envied of the world! ~ Joseph Campbell

The modern writers who have suggested, in a more or less open manner, that the family is a bad institution, have generally confined themselves to suggesting, with much sharpness, bitterness, or pathos, that perhaps the family is not always very congenial. Of course the family is a good institution because it is uncongenial. It is wholesome precisely because it contains so many divergencies and varieties. It is, as the sentimentalists say, like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy. ~ G.K. Chesterton

When we try to understand something, more often than not, we kill it, and now I can feel the dangers of this encroaching on me: cynicism, bitterness, and infinite sadness...It's impossible to live if you're too aware, too thoughtful. Take nature for example: everything that lives happily and too a ripe old age is not very intelligent. Tortoises live for centuries, water's immortal, and Milton Friedman's still alive. ~ Martin Page

Fill your heart with kindness and forgiveness,
there will be no stress, anger, or bitterness. ~ Debasish Mridha