A collection of quotes on the topic of bitter, life, people, use.
1950s, The Chance for Peace (1953)
‘Suffering and Speech’ in Catherine A MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin (eds) In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings.
Other
Addressing the dead Hellenes (the Athenean and Thebean Greeks) of the Battle of Chaeronea, as quoted in Historiae Alexandri Magni by Quintus Curtius Rufus
“Life's too short to be bitter, I'm too short to be bitter.”
http://www.last.fm/user/helena_wanje.
“If it's bitter at the start, then it's sweeter in the end.”
Source: The Rubaiyat (1120)
"Still I Rise" - Full text online at poets.org http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15623
And Still I Rise (1978)
My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence
Freedom (1908)
Source: Oeuvres complètes en seize volumes
Speech given during the 1928 gubernatorial election; quoted in Hugh Davis Graham, Huey Long (1970), p. 40.
Variant: Correct." Kekrops sounded bitter, like he regretted his decision. "My people were the original Athenians--the gemini."
"Like your zodiac sign?" Percy asked. "I'm a Leo."
"No, stupid. "I'm a Leo. You're a Percy.
Source: The Blood of Olympus
“I've learned…. That when you harbor bitterness, happiness will dock elsewhere.”
“Immorality and surliness makes the human's life miserable and bitter.”
Ibn Shu’ba al-Harrani, Tuhaf al-'Uqul, p. 392
General Quotes
In a letter to his son, Lucien; as quoted in: Brother Thomas (O.S.B.), Rosemary Williams (1999) Creation Out of Clay: The Ceramic Art and Writings of Brother Thomas. p. 45
undated quotes
"A Matter of the Soul" (1975), pp. 75-76
It All Adds Up (1994)
“Bitter poverty has no harder pang than that it makes men ridiculous.”
Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se,
quam quod ridiculos homines facit.
Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se,
quam quod ridiculos homines facit.
III, line 152-3.
Variant translations:
Of all the Griefs that harrass the Distrest,
Sure the most bitter is a scornful Jest.
As translated by Samuel Johnson
The hardest thing to bear in poverty is the fact that it makes men ridiculous.
Wretched poverty offers nothing harsher than this: it makes men ridiculous.
Satires, Satire III
“There is no worse bitterness than to reach the end of your life and realized you have not lived.”
1860s, Speech to Germans at Cincinnati, Ohio (1861), Commercial version
As quoted in "Rock On Freddie" (1985) http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Freddie_Mercury_-_XX-XX-1985_-_Unknown.
“If every one of you agrees to practise this, bitterness will die out, harmony will arise.”
Revelation
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Context: Any time you are with anyone or think of anyone you must say to yourself: I am dying and this person too is dying, attempting the while to experience the truth of the words you are saying. If every one of you agrees to practise this, bitterness will die out, harmony will arise.
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 32
2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)
2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)
Statement at a San Francisco fundraiser (6 April 2008) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2000404/posts
2008
"Obama asks country to come together right now" in The Boston Globe (16 March 2008) http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/16/obama_asks_country_to_come_together_right_now/
2008
In a video posting, announcing his candidacy for President of the United States (16 January 2007) http://www.barackobama.com/video/from_barack_transcript/
2007
2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)
2008, Election victory speech (November 2008)
2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)
2009, First Inaugural Address (January 2009)
Source: A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems
Introduction, p. 10.
1910s, Proposed Roads To Freedom (1918)
“Wherever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sign of emotional failure”
The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell: Contemplation and Action, 1902-1914, ed. Richard A. Rempel, Andrew Brink and Margaret Moran (Routledge, 1993, : Textual Notes, p. 555; also in Laurence J. Peter Quotations for our time (1978), p. 188
Attributed from posthumous publications
Context: Wherever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sign of emotional failure: a larger heart, and a greater self-restraint, would put a calm autumnal sadness in the place of the instinctive outcry of pain.
1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties
1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: For thirty-five years I have been more or less actively engaged in public life, in the performance of my political duties, now in a public position, now in a private position. I have fought with all the fervor I possessed for the various causes in which with all my heart I believed; and in every fight I thus made I have had with me and against me Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. There have been times when I have had to make the fight for or against some man of each creed on ground of plain public morality, unconnected with questions of public policy. There were other times when I have made such a fight for or against a given man, not on grounds of public morality, for he may have been morally a good man, but on account of his attitude on questions of public policy, of governmental principle. In both cases, I have always found myself 4 fighting beside, and fighting against, men of every creed. The one sure way to have secured the defeat of every good principle worth fighting for would have been to have permitted the fight to be changed into one along sectarian lines and inspired by the spirit of sectarian bitterness, either for the purpose of putting into public life or of keeping out of public life the believers in any given creed. Such conduct represents an assault upon Americanism. The man guilty of it is not a good American. I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be non-sectarian. As a necessary corollary to this, not only the pupils but the members of the teaching force and the school officials of all kinds must be treated exactly on a par, no matter what their creed; and there must be no more discrimination against Jew or Catholic or Protestant than discrimination in favor of Jew, Catholic or Protestant. Whoever makes such discrimination is an enemy of the public schools.
1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), The Strenuous Life
1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: We should meet this situation by on the one hand seeing that these immigrants get all their rights as American citizens, and on the other hand insisting that they live up to their duties as American citizens. Any discrimination against aliens is a wrong, for it tends to put the immigrant at a disadvantage and to cause him to feel bitterness and resentment during the very years when he should be preparing himself for American citizenship. If an immigrant is not fit to become a citizen, he should not be allowed to come here. If he is fit, he should be given all the rights to earn his own livelihood, and to better himself, that any man can have. Take such a matter as the illiteracy test; I entirely agree with those who feel that many very excellent possible citizens would be barred improperly by an illiteracy test. But why do you not admit aliens under a bond to learn to read and write within a certain time? It would then be a duty to see that they were given ample opportunity to learn to read and write and that they were deported if they failed to take advantage of the opportunity.
Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)
Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 152
Context: "Anxiety," Kierkegaard said, "is the dizziness of freedom." This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then — it has to be lived with. For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.
We must all face and unpalatable fact that we have, too often, a tendency to skim over; we proceed on the assumption that all men want freedom. This is not as true as we would like it to be. Many men and women who are far happier when they have relinquish their freedom, when someone else guides them, makes their decisions for them, takes the responsibility for them and their actions. They don't want to make up their minds. They don't want to stand on their own feet.
“Oh why rebuke you him that loves you so? / Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe.”
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream
"Anti-Semitism: Reply to an inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States" (12 January 1931)
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews
Context: National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-Semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism. Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-Semitism is dangerous for the toilers, for it is a false track which diverts them from the proper road and leads them into the jungle. Hence, Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable and bitter enemies of anti-Semitism. In the U. S. S. R., anti-Semitism is strictly prosecuted as a phenomenon hostile to the Soviet system. According to the laws of the U. S. S. R. active anti-Semites are punished with death.
Ch. 13 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-13.html
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)
The Mysterious Stranger (1916)
“The histories of Tiberius, Caius, Claudius, and Nero, while they were in power, were falsified through terror, and after their death were written under the irritation of a recent hatred. Hence my purpose is to relate a few facts about Augustus - more particularly his last acts, then the reign of Tiberius, and all which follows, without either bitterness or partiality, from any motives to which I am far removed.”
Tiberii Gaique et Claudii ac Neronis res florentibus ipsis ob metum falsae, postquam occiderant, recentibus odiis compositae sunt. inde consilium mihi pauca de Augusto et extrema tradere, mox Tiberii principatum et cetera, sine ira et studio, quorum causas procul habeo.
Book I, 1; Church-Brodribb translation
Annals (117)
Ici venu, l'avenir est paresse.
L'insecte net gratte la sécheresse;
Tout est brûlé, défait, reçu dans l'air
A je ne sais quelle sévère essence . . .
La vie est vaste, étant ivre d'absence,
Et l'amertume est douce, et l'esprit clair.
As translated by by C. Day Lewis
Charmes ou poèmes (1922)
Originates in a 2007 blog post by Iain S. Thomas entitled The Fur http://www.iwrotethisforyou.me/2007/08/fur.html
Misattributed
The most surprising circumstance is that this letter, though written by an obscure person, was so happy in its effect as to put a stop to the persecution.
The History of the Quakers (1762)
“"You're a bitter man," said Candide. "That's because I've lived," said Martin.”
Citas, Candide (1759)
Pt. I, st. 7
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Source: The Ballad Of Reading Gaol
“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise”
The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)
In Memory Of Major Robert Gregory, st. 12
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
St. 2
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/
“The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness
That empty the heart.”
In The Seven Woods http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1518/
In The Seven Woods (1904)
Context: I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods
Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees
Hum in the lime-tree flowers; and put away
The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness
That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile
Tara uprooted, and new commonness
Upon the throne and crying about the streets
And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,
Because it is alone of all things happy.
I am contented, for I know that Quiet
Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart
Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer,
Who but awaits His house to shoot, still hands
A cloudy quiver over Pairc-na-lee.
“O conscience, upright and stainless, how bitter a sting to thee is little fault!”
Canto III, lines 8–9 (tr. C. E. Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio
The Valley of the Shadow of Death (1868)
Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)
Alice's Adventures Under Ground (1886), Introduction, p. v
A Lesson in Latin (1888), st. 3
Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)
Variant: He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk
Descending from the bus:
He looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus:
'If this should stay to dine,' he said,
'There won't be much for us!
Source: Sylvie and Bruno (1889), Chapter 5 : A Beggar's Palace
"Heal the Kids" speech at the Oxford Union (2001)
Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 2
1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)
Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. X (p. 292)
“The roots of education … are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
Concepts
Genjūan no Fu ("Prose Poem on the Unreal Dwelling") in Donald Keene, Anthology of Japanese Literature, p. 374 (Translation: Donald Keene)
Statements
Source: 1880s, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), p. 355.
Context: On this inauguration day, while waiting for the opening of the ceremonies, I made a discovery in regard to the vice president — Andrew Johnson. There are moments in the lives of most men, when the doors of their souls are open, and unconsciously to themselves, their true characters may be read by the observant eye. It was at such an instant I caught a glimpse of the real nature of this man, which all subsequent developments proved true. I was standing in the crowd by the side of Mrs. Thomas J. Dorsey, when Mr. Lincoln touched Mr. Johnson, and pointed me out to him. The first expression which came to his face, and which I think was the true index of his heart, was one of bitter contempt and aversion. Seeing that I observed him, he tried to assume a more friendly appearance; but it was too late; it was useless to close the door when all within had been seen. His first glance was the frown of the man, the second was the bland and sickly smile of the demagogue. I turned to Mrs. Dorsey and said, 'Whatever Andrew Johnson may be, he certainly is no friend of our race'.
Bitter Green, Track 4, UNITED ARTISTS
Back Here On Earth (1968)
1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846/may/15/corn-importation-bill-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (15 May 1846).
1840s
Source: Letter to Lady Chesterfield (19 July 1880), quoted in the Marquis of Zetland (ed.), The Letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield. Vol. II, 1876 to 1881 (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929), p. 282.
