Bitterness

“Between the uprightness of my conscience and the hardness of my lot, I know not how either to show respect to my feelings or to the times. The bitterness of my mind urges me at all hazards to speak what I think, whereas the necessity of the times prompts me, however unbecomingly, to keep silence. Good God! Which way shall I turn myself?”

“We all colour devotion according to our own likings and dispositions. One man sets great value on fasting, and believes himself to be leading a very devout life, so long as he fasts rigorously, although the while his heart is full of bitterness;–and while he will not moisten his lips with wine, perhaps not even with water, in his great abstinence, he does not scruple to steep them in his neighbour’s blood, through slander and detraction.”

“Sing of disappointments more repeated than the batter of the sea, of lives embittered by resentments so ubiquitous the ocean’s salt seems thinly shaken, of letdowns local as the sofa where I copped my freshman’s feel, of failures as frequent as first love, first nights, last stands; do not warble of arms or adventurous deeds or shepherds playing on their private fifes, or of civil war or monarchies at swords; consider rather the slightly squinkered clerk, the soul which has become as shabby and soiled in its seat as worn-out underwear, a life lit like a lonely room and run like a laddered stocking.”

“It is very normal for one ugly weed to not want to stand alone.”

“Certainly, we are all on the shoulders of those who fought for our country. But the first peoples of this land justifiably might feel bitterness.”

“In life you'll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it's because they're stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance... Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself.”

“God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness and he understood the reasons, and accepted his destiny; but when he awoke there was only a dark resignation, a valiant ignorance, for the machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of a wild beast.Years later, Dante was dying in Ravenna, as unjustified and as lonely as any other man. In a dream, God declared to him the secret purpose of his life and work; Dante, in wonderment, knew at last who and what he was and blessed the bitterness of his life....upon waking, he felt that he had received and lost an infinite thing, something that he would not be able to recuperate or even glimpse, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of a man.”

“Do not worry when situations get bitter. A bitter situation is a better teacher. The greatest lessons in life can least be found in comfort and much more in uncomfortable situations of life.”

“I want to say somewhere: I've tried to be forgiving. And yet. There were times in my life, whole years, when anger got the better of me. Ugliness turned me inside out. There was a certain satisfaction in bitterness. I courted it. It was standing outside, and I invited it in.”

“Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.”

“Anger dulls the sharpness of mind, hardens the softness of feelings, and replaces the sweetness of the world with bitterness.”

“For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say? --some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, without the old bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for people; they came back in the middle of St. James's Park on a fine morning--indeed they did.”

“I believe you did not have a happy life.I believe you were cheated.I believe your best friends were loneliness and misery.I believe your busiest enemies were anger and depression.I believe joy was a game you could never play without stumbling.I believe comfort, though you craved it, was forever a stranger.I believe music had to be melancholy or not at all.I believe no trinket, no precious metal, shone so bright as your bitterness.I believe you lay down at last in your coffin none the wiser and unassuaged.Oh, cold and dreamless under the wild, amoral, reckless, peaceful flowers of the hillsides.”

“I don't hold grudges or bitterness about the past.”

“My father always tells me to be forgiving, as it purges you of pent-up negativity. I harbour no bitterness and malice towards anyone.”

“It is a simple but sometimes forgotten truth that the greatest enemy to present joy and high hopes is the cultivation of retrospective bitterness.”

“We can only diffuse kindness, to the souls filled with bitterness. This is the greatest deeds to awaken their good spirit.”

“Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”

“Never allow any bitterness to take root in your heart.”

“Characters carrying the playwright's disapproval is a un-Shakespearian burden.”