“Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves poison the fountain.”
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John Locke144
English philosopher and physician 1632–1704Related quotes
Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist
Veronika Decides to Die (1998)
Context: The great problem with poisoning by Bitterness was that the passions — hatred, love, despair, enthusiasm, curiosity — also ceased to manifest themselves. After a while, the embittered person felt no desire at all. They lacked the will either to live or to die, that was the problem.
“What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.”
Ut quod ali cibus est aliis fuat acre venenum.
Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher
Book IV, line 637 (reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations)
Compare: "What's one man's poison, signor, / Is another's meat or drink", Beaumont and Fletcher, Love's Cure (1647), Act III, scene 2
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
“In the midst of the fountain of wit there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers.”
Medio de fonte leporum
surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat.
Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher
Book IV, lines 1133–1134 (reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations)
Variant translation: From the midst of the fountain of delights rises something bitter that chokes them all amongst the flowers.
Compare: "Still from the fount of joy's delicious springs / Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings", Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto I, stanza 82
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist
1896
September
The Degraded Status of Woman in the Bible
Free Thought Magazine
Chicago
14
542
http://books.google.com/books?id=TfOfAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA542&dq=%22for+fifty+years+the+women%22
James Montgomery (1771–1854) British editor, hymn writer, and poet
The Little Cloud.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Why use bitter soup for healing
when sweet water is everywhere?”
Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet
Source: The Essential Rumi (1995), Ch. 19 : Jesus Poems, p. 204
Context: Christ is the population of the world,
and every object as well. There is no room
for hypocrisy. Why use bitter soup for healing
when sweet water is everywhere?
“I give you bitter pills, in a sugar coating. The pills are harmless - the poison's in the sugar”
James St. James (1966) American writer
Source: Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland
Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road
Source: On the Jellicoe Road
Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi
Freedom (1908)
Source: Oeuvres complètes en seize volumes