Quotes about bitter (756 quotes, page 5)

“The common people (live in) poverty so great and miserable that the life of the people can be depicted or accurately described only as the home of stark want and dwelling place of bitter woe.”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Reference is to a remark of Francisco Pelsaert, who visited the Mughal court in India in the time of Jahangir. Quoted in The position of Hindus under the Delhi Sultanate, 1206-1526 by Kanhaiya Lall Srivastava, quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2014). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p. 390

Life , People , Home

“Of Clemenceau he spoke in kindly terms. But when the name of Poincaré was mentioned, all the bitterness of his nature burst into a sentence of concentrated hatred. "He is a cheat and a liar," he exclaimed. He repeated the phrase with fierce emphasis. Poincaré disliked and distrusted him and the detestation was mutual.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

David Lloyd George recounting Woodrow Wilson's opinion of Poincaré in 1923, quoted in David Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties. Volume I (London: Victor Gollancz, 1938), p. 241.
About

Nature , Cheating

“As the reflections of our pride upon our defects are bitter, disheartening, and vexatious, so the return of the soul towards God is peaceful and sustained by confidence. You will find by experience how much more your progress will be aided by this simple, peaceful turning towards God, than by all your chagrin and spite at the faults that exist in you.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 566.

God , Peace , Soul , Confidence

“I am feeble, pale and weary,
And my wings are nearly furled;
I have caused a scene so dreary,
I am glad to quit the world!
With bitterness I'm thinking
On the evil I have done,
And to my caverns sinking
From the coming of the sun.”

Hannah Flagg Gould (1788–1865) American writer

"The Dying Storm" in Poems (published 1835), p. 59.

World , Thinking , Evil , Sun

“In bitter despair, some people have come to believe that wars are inevitable. With tragic fatalism, they insist that wars have always been, of necessity, and of necessity wars always will be. To such defeatism, men and women of good will must not and can not yield. The outlook for humanity is not so hopeless.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Address to Congress (1945)

Women , Men , War , People

“Let’s take a look at the 25th variation of the second part. Here Bach meets us in his highest and deepest personal and human form: it’s like in the Art of Fugue in the unfinished fugue No. 20, where Bach confronts us with his personal signature. It was he himself, who, after he had been occupied during his whole life with symbols, with numbers, with the mastering of structural and formal problems and renewals, now he saw himself confronted with a personal view into mirror. He now shows us a human being in his whole conception of life. The composer of “Come, oh sweet death” now is confessing, “Oh sweet death, how bitter is your prickle.””

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

Life , Death , Art , Problem

“I will dispense for now from discussion of the moral character of the president's Charlottesville statements. Whether he intended to or not, what he communicated caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn. His apologists strain to explain that he didn't mean what we heard. But what we heard is now the reality, and unless it is addressed by the president as such, with unprecedented candor and strength, there may commence an unraveling of our national fabric.The leaders of our branches of military service have spoken immediately and forcefully, repudiating the implications of the president's words. Why? In part because the morale and commitment of our forces-made up and sustained by men and women of all races--could be in the balance. Our allies around the world are stunned and our enemies celebrate; America's ability to help secure a peaceful and prosperous world is diminished. And who would want to come to the aid of a country they perceive as racist if ever the need were to arise, as it did after 9/11?In homes across the nation, children are asking their parents what this means. Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims are as much a part of America as whites and Protestants. But today they wonder. Where might this lead? To bitterness and tears, or perhaps to anger and violence?The potential consequences are severe in the extreme. Accordingly, the president must take remedial action in the extreme. He should address the American people, acknowledge that he was wrong, apologize. State forcefully and unequivocally that racists are 100% to blame for the murder and violence in Charlottesville. Testify that there is no conceivable comparison or moral equivalency between the Nazis--who brutally murdered millions of Jews and who hundreds of thousands of Americans gave their lives to defeat--and the counter-protestors who were outraged to see fools parading the Nazi flag, Nazi armband and Nazi salute. And once and for all, he must definitively repudiate the support of David Duke and his ilk and call for every American to banish racists and haters from any and every association.This is a defining moment for President Trump. But much more than that, it is a moment that will define America in the hearts of our children. They are watching, our soldiers are watching, the world is watching. Mr. President, act now for the good of the country.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Facebook statement https://www.facebook.com/mittromney/posts/10154652303536121 (18 August 2017)
2017

Women , Men , Children , People

“Altars are trimmed, and the poor suffer the bitter pangs of hunger.”

Joachim of Fiore (1135–1202) Italian abbot

in Man on His Own (1970), p. 120

Hunger , Suffering

“After years of trial and error Franz [Kafka] has at last found the only diet that suits him, the vegetarian one. For years he suffered from his stomach; now he is as healthy and as fit as I have ever known him. Then along come his parents, of course, and in the name of love try to force him back into eating meat and being ill—it is just the same with his sleeping habits. At last he has found what suits him best, he can sleep, can do his duty in that senseless office, and get on with his literary work. But then his parents… This really makes me bitter.”

Max Brod (1884–1968) author, composer, and journalist

Letter to Felice Bauer (22 November 1912), in Letters to Felice by Franz Kafka, translated by James Stern and Elizabeth Duckworth (New York: Shocken Books, 2016), p. 57 https://books.google.it/books?id=EwVSqTfHdEAC&pg=PA57.

Love , Error , Parent , Sleep

“I have ever remarked, that when Fate has any great misfortune in store, it is always preceded by a brief period of calm and sunshine—as if to add bitterness of contrast to all other misery. It is for the happy to tremble—it is over their heads that the thunderbolt is about to burst.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Fate , Happiness

“You have heard me talk of Logres. It was the old name for this country, thousands of years ago; in the old days when the struggle between good and evil was more bitter and open than it is now. That struggle goes on all round us all the time, like two armies fighting. And sometimes one of them seems to be winning and sometimes the other, but neither has ever triumphed altogether. Nor ever will,” he added softly to himself, “for there is something of each in every man.”

Susan Cooper (1935) English fantasy writer

Source: The Dark Is Rising (1965-1977), Over Sea, Under Stone (1965), Chapter 6 (p. 74)

Evil , Time , Fight , Country

“I must say that when my Southern Christian Leadership Conference began its work in Birmingham, we encountered numerous Negro church reactions that had to be overcome. Negro ministers were among other Negro leaders who felt they were being pulled into something that they had not helped to organize. This is almost always a problem. Negro community unity was the first requisite if our goals were to be realized. I talked with many groups, including one group of 200 ministers, my theme to them being that a minister cannot preach the glories of heaven while ignoring social conditions in his own community that cause men an earthly hell. I stressed that the Negro minister had particular freedom and independence to provide strong, firm leadership, and I asked how the Negro would ever gain freedom without his minister's guidance, support and inspiration. These ministers finally decided to entrust our movement with their support, and as a result, the role of the Negro church today, by and large, is a glorious example in the history of Christendom. For never in Christian history, within a Christian country, have Christian churches been on the receiving end of such naked brutality and violence as we are witnessing here in America today. Not since the days of the Christians in the catacombs has God's house, as a symbol, weathered such attack as the Negro churches.
I shall never forget the grief and bitterness I felt on that terrible September morning when a bomb blew out the lives of those four little, innocent girls sitting in their Sunday-school class in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. I think of how a woman cried out, crunching through broken glass, "My God, we're not even safe in church!" I think of how that explosion blew the face of Jesus Christ from a stained-glass window. It was symbolic of how sin and evil had blotted out the life of Christ. I can remember thinking that if men were this bestial, was it all worth it? Was there any hope? Was there any way out?… time has healed the wounds -- and buoyed me with the inspiration of another moment which I shall never forget: when I saw with my own eyes over 3000 young Negro boys and girls, totally unarmed, leave Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church to march to a prayer meeting -- ready to pit nothing but the power of their bodies and souls against Bull Connor's police dogs, clubs and fire hoses. When they refused Connor's bellowed order to turn back, he whirled and shouted to his men to turn on the hoses. It was one of the most fantastic events of the Birmingham story that these Negroes, many of them on their knees, stared, unafraid and unmoving, at Connor's men with the hose nozzles in their hands. Then, slowly the Negroes stood up and advanced, and Connor's men fell back as though hypnotized, as the Negroes marched on past to hold their prayer meeting. I saw there, I felt there, for the first time, the pride and the power of nonviolence.
Another time I will never forget was one Saturday night, late, when my brother telephoned me in Atlanta from Birmingham -- that city which some call "Bombingham" -- which I had just left. He told me that a bomb had wrecked his home, and that another bomb, positioned to exert its maximum force upon the motel room in which I had been staying, had injured several people. My brother described the terror in the streets as Negroes, furious at the bombings, fought whites. Then, behind his voice, I heard a rising chorus of beautiful singing: "We shall overcome."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Tears came into my eyes that at such a tragic moment, my race still could sing its hope and faith.
Interview in Playboy (January 1965) https://web.archive.org/web/20080706183244/http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/mlk/04.html
1960s

Life , Men , God , People

“I was born in the Realms of Etiquette;
In early years, unprotected and poor.
Alone, I learnt to distinguish between Evil and Good;
Untutored, I toiled at bitter tasks.
The World's Law honours Learning and Fame;
Scholars prize marriages and Caps.
With these fetters I gyved my own hands;
Truly I became a much-deceived man.
At ten years old I learnt to read books;
At fifteen, I knew how to write prose.
At twenty I was made a Bachelor of Arts;
At thirty I became a Censor at the Court.
Above, the duty I owe to Prince and parents;
Below, the ties that bind me to wife and child.
The support of my family, the service of my country—
For these tasks my nature is not apt.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Chu Ch'ēn Village" (A.D. 811)
Arthur Waley's translations

Marriage , Books , World , Family

“Our adversaries are not demons, witches, fate, or mental illness. We have no enemy whom we can fight, exorcise, or dispel by "cure." What we do have are problems in living — whether these be biologic, economic, political, or sociopsychological. In this essay I was concerned only with problems belonging in the last mentioned category, and within this group mainly with those pertaining to moral values. The field to which modern psychiatry addresses itself is vast, and I made no effort to encompass it all. My argument was limited to the proposition that mental illness is a myth, whose function it is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations.”

Thomas Szasz book The Myth of Mental Illness

"The Myth of Mental Illness" in American Psycholigist, Vol. 15 (1960), p. 115.

Fate , Problem , Effort , Fight

“Sin is the sharpest scourge that any chosen soul may be smitten with: which scourge thoroughly beateth man and woman, and maketh him hateful in his own sight, so far forth that afterwhile he thinketh himself he is not worthy but as to sink in hell, — till when contrition taketh him by touching of the Holy Ghost, and turneth the bitterness into hopes of God’s mercy.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 39

God , Hate , Hope , Soul

“The Baron of Bradwardine being asked what he thought of these recruits, […] answered drily, 'that he could not but have an excellent opinion of them, since they resembled precisely the followers who attached themselves to the good King David at the cave of Adullam, vidilicet, every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, which the Vulgate renders bitter of soul;”

Walter Scott book Waverley

Source: Waverley (1814), Chapter LVII

Soul

“Before my face the picture hangs,
That daily should put me in mind
Of those cold names and bitter pangs,
That shortly I am like to find:
But yet, alas! full little I
Do think hereon that I must die.”

Robert Southwell (1561–1595) English Jesuit

Source: Upon the Image of Death, Line 1; p. 136.

Thinking

“Man has many wishes that he does not really wish to fulfil, and it would be a misunderstanding to suppose the contrary. He wants them to remain wishes, they have value only in his imagination; their fulfilment would be a bitter disappointment to him. Such a desire is the desire for eternal life. If it were fulfilled, man would become thoroughly sick of living eternally, and yearn for death. In reality man wishes merely to avoid a premature, violent or gruesome death. Everything has its measure, says a pagan philosopher; in the end we weary of everything, even of life; a time comes when man desires death. Consequently there is nothing frightening about a normal, natural death, the death of a man who has fulfilled himself and lived out his life.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist

Lecture XXX, Atheism alone a Positive View
Lectures on the Essence of Religion http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/lectures/index.htm (1851)

Life , Death , Disappointment , Imagination

“I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Young India (15 September 1920), reprinted in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 21 (electronic edition), p. 252.
1920s

World , Anger

“Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness toward anyone.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

This is actually a portion of statement by the British nurse Edith Cavell the night before her execution by German forces on charges of espionage.
Misattributed

“[On Las Vegas audiences] Those audiences are wonderful. Talk about the most bitter group of people on the planet Earth! For one brief shining moment, I am Mr. Happy!”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Anticipation (2008)

People , Happiness

“It was a bright September afternoon, and the streets of New York were brilliant with moving men…. He was pushed toward the ticket-office with the others, and felt in his pocket for the new five-dollar bill he had hoarded…. When at last he realized that he had paid five dollars to enter he knew not what, he stood stock-still amazed…. John… sat in a half-maze minding the scene about him; the delicate beauty of the hall, the faint perfume, the moving myriad of men, the rich clothing and low hum of talking seemed all a part of a world so different from his, so strangely more beautiful than anything he had known, that he sat in dreamland, and started when, after a hush, rose high and clear the music of Lohengrin's swan. The infinite beauty of the wail lingered and swept through every muscle of his frame, and put it all a-tune. He closed his eyes and grasped the elbows of the chair, touching unwittingly the lady's arm. And the lady drew away. A deep longing swelled in all his heart to rise with that clear music out of the dirt and dust of that low life that held him prisoned and befouled. If he could only live up in the free air where birds sang and setting suns had no touch of blood! Who had called him to be the slave and butt of all?… If he but had some master-work, some life-service, hard, aye, bitter hard, but without the cringing and sickening servility…. When at last a soft sorrow crept across the violins, there came to him the vision of a far-off home — the great eyes of his sister, and the dark drawn face of his mother…. It left John sitting so silent and rapt that he did not for some time notice the usher tapping him lightly on the shoulder and saying politely, 'will you step this way please sir?'… The manager was sorry, very very sorry — but he explained that some mistake had been made in selling the gentleman a seat already disposed of; he would refund the money, of course… before he had finished John was gone, walking hurriedly across the square… and as he passed the park he buttoned his coat and said, 'John Jones you're a natural-born fool.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Then he went to his lodgings and wrote a letter, and tore it up; he wrote another, and threw it in the fire....
Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XIII: Of the Coming of John

Life , Men , Money , World

“It is bitter to lose a friend to evil, before one loses him to death.”

Mary Renault book The Praise Singer

The Praise Singer (1978)

Death , Evil

“I looked down the long lines of waving black plumes and stern faces beneath them, and sighed to think that within one short hour most, if not all, of those magnificent veteran warriors, not a man of whom was under forty years of age, would be laid dead or dying in the dust. It could not be otherwise; they were being condemned, with that wise recklessness of human life which marks the great general, and often saves his forces and attains his ends, to certain slaughter, in order to give their cause and the remainder of the army a chance of success. They were foredoomed to die, and they knew the truth. It was to be their task to engage regiment after regiment of Twala’s army on the narrow strip of green beneath us, till they were exterminated or till the wings found a favourable opportunity for their onslaught. And yet they never hesitated, nor could I detect a sign of fear upon the face of a single warrior. There they were—going to certain death, about to quit the blessed light of day for ever, and yet able to contemplate their doom without a tremor. Even at that moment I could not help contrasting their state of mind with my own, which was far from comfortable, and breathing a sigh of envy and admiration. Never before had I seen such an absolute devotion to the idea of duty, and such a complete indifference to its bitter fruits.”

H. Rider Haggard book King Solomon's Mines

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 14, "The Last Stand of the Greys"

Life , Death , Truth , Age

“He knew her too well to see her from the distance that pity requires. He loved her because he admired her. For bearing without complaint the burden the queen put on her. For still being gentle and loving when she had ample reason to be bitter.”

Orson Scott Card Hart's Hope

Hart's Hope (1983)

Love

“The fall of France must have been a bitter pill to Calvé. She had a poor opinion of Germans, both as people and as artists. It is sad to imagine what her last days may have been in her "robber-baron's castle" as Peggy Wood calls it. But one thing is certain; when death came, Calvé met it with spirit. No one who knew so well how to greet life could possibly fail to know how to greet death.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Emma Calvé (1942).

Life , Death , People , Sadness

“…[I]n three notable instances the Court has suffered severely from self-inflicted wounds. The first of these was the Dred Scott case. … There the Supreme Court decided that Dred Scott, a negro, not being a citizen could not sue in the United States Courts and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories. … [T]he grave injury that the Court sustained through its decision has been universally recognized. Its action was a public calamity. … [W]idespread and bitter attacks upon the judges who joined in the decision undermined confidence in the Court. … It was many years before the Court, even under new judges, was able to retrieve its reputation.…[The second instance was] the legal tender cases decided in 1870. … From the standpoint of the effect on public opinion there can be no doubt that the reopening of the case was a serious mistake and the overruling in such a short time, and by one vote, of the previous decision shook popular respect for the Court.… [The third instance happened] [t]wenty-five years later, when the Court had recovered its prestige, [and] its action in the income tax cases gave occasion for a bitter assault. … [After questions about the validity of the income tax] had been reserved owing to an equal division of the Court, a reargument was ordered and in the second decision the act was held to be unconstitutional by a majority of one. Justice Jackson was ill at the time of the first argument but took part in the final decision, voting in favor of the validity of the statute. It was evident that the result [holding the statute invalid] was brought about by a change in the vote of one of the judges who had participated in the first decision. … [T]he decision of such an important question by a majority of one after one judge had changed his vote aroused a criticism of the Court which has never been entirely stilled.”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

"The Supreme Court of the United States: Its Foundation, Methods and Achievements," Columbia University Press, p. 50 (1928). ISBN 1-893122-85-9.

Justice , Confidence , Question , Decision

“Now no joy but lacks salt,
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.”

Robert Frost To Earthward

"To Earthward" (1923), st. 5,6
General sources

Love , Pain , Tear , Joy

“The master will not keep His hand under our arms when we go on forbidden ground. Presumptuous Peter needed a sharp lesson, and he got it. That bitter cry at the foot of the stairs bespoke an awful fall. How many such are rising daily into God's listening ears.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 21.

God , Cry

“Imperialist war arises not merely because of bitter economic competition among industrialists and financiers of various nations, but because of the dominance of government by powerful vested interests who use the armed forces of the nation to increase their private gains in other lands. To the degree that the power of these groups is broken by socialization and equalization of economic privilege, the likelihood of war is thereby reduced.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Property (1935)

War

“I grow old on my bitterness.”

Anne Sexton book Live or Die

"Two Sons"
Live or Die (1966)

“We are witnessing the end of the late 20th- century progressive welfare democracy. Its fiscal bankruptcy is merely a symptom of a more fundamental bankruptcy: its insufficiency as an animating principle for society. The children and grandchildren of those fascists and republicans who waged a bitter civil war for the future of Spain now shrug when a bunch of foreigners blow up their capital. Too sedated even to sue for terms, they capitulate instantly. Over on the other side of the equation, the modern multicultural state is too watery a concept to bind huge numbers of immigrants to the land of their nominal citizenship. So they look elsewhere and find the jihad. The Western Muslim’s pan-Islamic identity is merely the first great cause in a world where globalized pathologies are taking the place of old-school nationalism.”

Mark Steyn book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It

America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (2006)

War , Children , World , School

“…Hades had opened its gates and vomited forth the basest, most despicable, most horrible demons. In the course of my life I had seen something of untrammeled human insights of horror of panic. I had taken part in a dozen battles in the First World War, had experienced barrages, gassings, going over the top. I had witnessed the turmoil of the postwar era, the crushing uprisings, street battles, meeting hall brawls. I was present among the bystanders during the Hitler Putsch in 1923 in Munich. I saw the early period of Nazi rule in Berlin. But none of this was comparable to those days in Vienna. What was unleashed upon Vienna had nothing to do with [the] seizure of power in Germany. …What was unleashed upon Vienna was a torrent of envy, jealousy, bitterness, blind, malignant craving for revenge. All better instincts were silenced… only the torpid masses had been unchained. …It was the witch's Sabbath of the mob. All that makes for human dignity was buried.”

Carl Zuckmayer (1896–1977) German writer and playwright

As quoted & translated by Eric R. Kandel, In Search of Memory (2006) referencing Als Wärs ein Stück von Mir (1966) see also, A Part of Myself: Portrait of an Epoch Tr. Richard and Clara Winston (1984)

Life , War , World , Jealousy

“There's a reason that we don't go into people's homes and tell them how to live. We may not know their problem, and what it's like, so how can we know the solution? We don't say to someone who is hurting 'I know what's wrong, and it's nothing, so you shouldn't complain or be bitter.'…
And finally, for those who are angry at people who are sad from suffering, and racism, and stereotypes and prejudices — this is their pain. It is ok that they have pain, and that they are dealing with it the way they need to, and the way we need to. If you are thinking of yourself, it won't make much sense, because it doesn't have anything to do with you. Think of them instead. And if you really want to see someone smile, and not suffer, think of a way that you can bring them joy.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"Re: The NAACP is Insane!" (21 February 2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6FX8IMw-uM

Pain , People , Sadness , Smile

“We consider a prisoner unfortunate. He is unfortunate in two ways — because he has done something wrong and because he is deprived of his liberty. Therefore we should treat him kindly, because of his misfortune, for otherwise he would become hard and bitter and would not be sorry he had done wrong. Ozma thinks that one who has committed a fault did so because he was not strong and brave; therefore she puts him in prison to make him strong and brave. When that is accomplished he is no longer a prisoner, but a good and loyal citizen and everyone is glad that he is now strong enough to resist doing wrong. You see, it is kindness that makes one strong and brave; and so we are kind to our prisoners.”

L. Frank Baum book The Patchwork Girl of Oz

The Patchwork Girl of Oz
Later Oz novels

Way , Thinking , Strong

“In the bitter and increasingly exacting conflict which lies before us we are resolved to keep nothing back, and not to be outstripped by any in service to the common cause. Let the great cities of Warsaw, of Prague, of Vienna banish despair even in the midst of their agony. Their liberation is sure. The day will come when the joybells will ring again throughout Europe, and when victorious nations, masters not only of their foes but of themselves, will plan and build in justice, in tradition, and in freedom a house of many mansions where there will be room for all.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (20 January 1940), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 138
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Justice , Freedom , Victory , Housing

“Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit
Of This and That endeavour and dispute;
Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

“We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion — a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the market place while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

This I Believe (1951)

Age , Faith , Courage , Despair

“You may write me down in history
With your bitter twisted lies
You may trod me down in the very dirt
And still like the dust I'll rise.”

Ben Harper (1969) singer-songwriter and musician

I'll Rise, written by Ben Harper and Maya Angelou.
Song lyrics, Welcome to the Cruel World (1994)

History

“Love the world. Otherwise, you will be forced to carry the heaviest load: your own bitter self.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

#1908, Part 20
Ten Thousand Flower Flames Part 1-100 (1979)

Love , World

“The free world knows, out of the bitter wisdom of experience, that vigilance and sacrifice are the price of liberty.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1950s, The Chance for Peace (1953)

Wisdom , World

“As one who fought in all of Israel's wars, and learned from personal experience that without proper force, we do not have a chance of surviving in this region, which does not show mercy towards the weak, I have also learned from experience that the sword alone cannot decide this bitter dispute in this land.”

Ariel Sharon (1928–2014) prime minister of Israel and Israeli general

Ariel Sharon. "Speech at the Knesset, at knesset.gov, October 2004 ( Knesset.gov.il online) http://www.knesset.gov.il/docs/eng/sharonspeech04.htm
2000s

War , Learning , Chance , Personality

“I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

"I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day", lines 9-14
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

God

“The schools, having found the object of their long, blind searching, shall teach directness, simplicity, naturalness: they shall protect the young against palpable illusion. They shall teach that, while man once invented a process called composition, Nature has forever brought forth organisms. They shall encourage the love of Nature that wells up in every childish heart, and shall not suppress, shall not stifle, the teeming imagination of the young.
They shall teach, as the result of their own bitter experience, that conscious mental effort, that conscious emotionality, are poor mates to breed from, and that true parturition comes of a deep, instinctive, subconscious desire. That true art, springing fresh from Nature, must have in it, to live, much of the glance of an eye, much of the sound of a voice, much of the life of a life.
That Nature is strong, generous, comprehensive, fecund, subtile: that in growth and decadence she continually sets forth the drama of man's life.
That, thro' the rotating seasons, thro' the procession of the years, thro' the march of the centuries, permeating all, sustaining all, there murmurs the still, small voice of a power that holds us in the hollow of its hand.”

Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) American architect

Emotional Architecture as Compared to Intellectual (1894)

Love , Life , School , Art

“The gods… the gods may forgive much, to a truly penitent heart."
Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. "The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves."”

Lois McMaster Bujold book Paladin of Souls

Source: Paladin of Souls (2003), p. 61

God , Smile , Forgiveness , Heart

“There's a deeper reason, though, for not striving for excellence,… and it has to do with how we view ourselves and our endeavors in this world. Many of us recognize that not trying is a reasonable excuse for not succeeding. That is, if we don't give something our best effort, we can always point to that fact as the basis for poor results. If, on the other hand, we give… everything we've got and still don't win, well, that's a fairly bitter pill to swallow…. I don't buy this defeatist attitude.”

John Vorhaus

Poker Night (2004)

World , Effort

“Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, colour by convention; atoms and Void [alone] exist in reality. (trans. Freeman 1948), p. 92.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void. (trans. Durant 1939), Ch. XVI, §II, p. 353; citing C. Bakewell, Sourcebook in Ancient Philosophy, New York, 1909, "Fragment O" (Diels), p. 60

Reality

“It’s hard to recover. You become not so innocent. You become, in a way, more sophisticated, which I think you shouldn’t. We should all have more simple happiness.... You become bitter.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei: 'Every day I think, this will be the day I get taken in again...', 2011

Way , Thinking , Happiness

“In the strife between the North and the South there was no bitterness in Mr. Lincoln's composition; he seemed to think only that he had an unpleasant duty to perform, and endeavored to perform it as smoothly as possible.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 283

Thinking

“The present assault on capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich—a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness.”

Stephen Johnson Field (1816–1899) American politician

Concurring in Pollock v. Farmers Loan and Trust Co., 157 U. S. 429, 607 (1895).

War

“Christ has given us, not only the ritual of an ordinance, but the pattern for our lives, when He took the cup, and gave thanks. So common joys become sacraments, enjoyment becomes worship, and the cup which holds the bitter or the sweet skillfully mingled for our lives becomes the cup of blessing and salvation drank in remembrance of Him.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 373.

Joy , Christ

“It is a bitter thing that each of us must finally be blown out like a candle, and have the unique ardor of his individual flame choked off, and sucked utterly away like smoke in the dark. Do we ever accept this in our hearts, any of us? The waste of knowledge! It never ceases to be…infuriating.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Prologue, “Shag Margold’s Eulogy of Nifft the Lean, His Dear Friend” (p. 5; ellipsis in the original)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Knowledge , Heart

“As one grows older, one lives more and more off the little signs of whatever community one moves through day to day and less and less off the gifts that fall out of individual relationships. If one does not prepare for this change in youth, than age becomes a bitter time. This is not to disparage the beauty of one’s relationships with lover or friend. It is only to acknowledge what, for so many in the city, is a sad truth. Community can, however awkwardly, replace individual relationships. But individual relationships only grow poisonous and resentful if there is no community to support them.”

Samuel R. Delany book Neveryóna

Source: Neveryóna (1983), Chapter 7, “Of Commerce, Capital, Myths, and Missions” (p. 147)

Truth , Youth , Age , Sadness

“Loss either teaches you to persist in the face of suffering, or hardens you into a bitter cynic. Sometimes, it does a little of both.”

Grace Slick (1939) American musician, writer and painter

Somebody to Love? (1998)

Suffering , Loss

“We start with enthusiasm — out we go each of us to our task in all the brightness of sunrise, and hope beats along our pulses; we believe the world has no blanks except to cowards, and we find, at last, that, as far as we ourselves are concerned, it has no prizes; we sicken over the endless unprofitableness of labour most when we have most succeeded, and when the time comes for us to lay down our tools we cast them from us with the bitter aching sense, that it were better for us if it had been all a dream. We seem to know either too much or too little of ourselves — too much, for we feel that we are better than we can accomplish; too little, for, if we have done any good at all, it has heen as we were servants of a system too vast for us to comprehend. We get along through life happily between clouds and sunshine, forgetting ourselves in our employments or our amusements, and so long as we can lose our consciousness in activity we can struggle on to the end. But when the end comes, when the life is lived and done, and stands there face to face with us; or if the heart is weak, and the spell breaks too soon, as if the strange master-worker has no longer any work to offer us, and turns us off to idleness and to ourselves; in the silence then our hearts lift up their voices, and cry out they can find no rest here, no home. Neither pleasure, nor rank, nor money, nor success in life, as it is called, have satisfied, or can satisfy; and either earth has nothing at all which answers to our cravings, or else it is something different from all these, which we have missed finding — this peace which passes understanding — and from which in the heyday of hope we had turned away, as lacking the meretricious charm which then seemed most alluring.
I am not sermonizing of Religion, or of God, or of Heaven, at least not directly.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Life , Money , God , Pleasure

“I was wise to quit writing for the Sun back in January, 1941, for it was obvious by then that Roosevelt would horn into the war soon or late, and I knew by bitter experience in the last war that I'd be throttled at once. Since then I have thought out many likely articles, but not one of them has been printable. In these days, indeed, my very vocabulary is prohibited. I couldn't so much as mention Roosevelt or Churchill or any of the other frauds without having to face a savage official onslaught, with all blows directed below the belt. The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

April 1, 1945
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

War , Fraud , Sun

“The American people from bitter experience have a rightful fear that great business units might be used to dominate our industrial life and by illegal and unethical practices destroy equality of opportunity…”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover (1928), Campaign speech in New York (22 October 1928)

Life , People , Fear , Business

“Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven
This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven;
The rueful conflict, the heart riven
With vain endeavour,
And memory of earth's bitter leaven
Effaced forever.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Thoughts Suggested on the Banks of the Nith, st. 10.
Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803)

Memory , Heart

“St. Agnes’ Eve — Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold.”

John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes

Stanza 1
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

Grass

“Experience may be a bitter teacher, but She is a good one.”

Avram Davidson book Masters of the Maze

Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 1 (p. 19)

Teachers

“And I won't break and I won't bend,
But someday soon we'll sail away
To innocence and the bitter end.
And I won't break and I won't bend,
And with the last breath we ever take
We're gonna get back to the simple life again.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Simple Life
Song lyrics, The One (1992)

Life

“Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful — struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)

Life , Men , God , World

“Some of you may doubt the truth of what I now say, and argue that the Lord could teach him. This is a mistake. The Lord could not have taught him in any other way than in the way in which He did teach him. You believe Adam was made of the dust of this earth. This I do not believe, though it is supposed that it is so written in the Bible; but it is not, to my understanding. You can write that information to the States, if you please-that I have publicly declared that I do not believe that portion of the Bible as the Christian world do. I never did, and I never want to. What is the reason I do not? Because I have come to understanding, and banished from my mind all the baby stories my mother taught me when I was a child. But suppose Adam was made and fashioned the same as we make adobies; if he had never drunk of the bitter cup; the Lord might have talked to him to this day, and he would have continued as he was to all eternity, never advancing one particle in the school of intelligence. This idea opens up a field of light to the intelligent mind. How can you know truth but by its opposite, or light but by its opposite? The absence of light is darkness. How can sweetness be known but by its opposite, bitter? It is by this means that we obtain all intelligence.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourse 2:6-7 (October 23, 1853)
1850s

Truth , World , School , Way

“The life of the Christian is not all smooth. He has stern conflicts to meet. Severe temptations assail him. ‘The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.’ The nearer we come to the close of this earth’s history, the more delusive and ensnaring will be the attacks of the enemy. His attacks will grow fiercer and more frequent. Those who resist light and truth will become more hardened and unimpressible, and more bitter against those who love God and keep His commandments (MS 33, 1911).”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

The SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 6, p. 1111.

Love , Life , God , Truth

“I try to forget about the bitter past as I [also] recommend for my fellow countrymen. I do not live in the past, I live in the present, always hoping for a brighter future. This is my message to all my countrymen.”

Farah Pahlavi (1938) Empress of Iran

Interview: Farah Pahlavi Recalls 30 Years In Exile http://www.rferl.org/content/Interview_Farah_Pahlavi_Recalls_30_Years_In_Exile/2111354.html, Radio Free Europe, (July 27, 2010).
Interviews

Hope , Past , Future , Forgetting

“Lettuce is like conversation: it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that you scarcely notice the bitter in it.”

Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) American writer

Ninth Week.
My Summer in a Garden (1870)

“God, how pointless and empty the world is! Days filled with cheap and tarnished moments succeed each other, restless and haunted nights follow in bitter routine: the sun shines without brightness, and the moon rises without light.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. XII (p. 346)

God , World , Light , Sun

“!-- Recipe for greatness — --> To bear up under loss — to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief — to be victor over anger — to smile when tears are close — to resist evil men and base instincts — to hate hate and to love love — to go on when it would seem good to die — to seek ever after the glory and the dream — to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be — that is what any man can do, and so be great.”

Zane Grey (1872–1939) American novelist

As quoted in The North American Almanac (1931), p. 54, this sometimes published with a prefix "Recipe for greatness —" but this does not appear in the earliest versions of it yet located.

Love , Men , Hate , Faith

“This pursuit of security in the past, this attempt to find a haven in a fixed dogma and an organizational hierarchy as substitutes for creative thought and praxis is bitter evidence of how little many revolutionaries are capable of 'revolutionizing themselves and things,' much less of revolutionizing society as a whole. The deep-rooted conservatism of the People's Labor Party 'revolutionaries' is almost painfully evident; the authoritarian leader and hierarchy replace the patriarch and the school bureaucracy; the discipline of the Movement replaces the discipline of bourgeois society; the authoritarian code of political obedience replaces the state; the credo of 'proletarian morality' replaces the mores of puritanism and the work ethic. The old substance of exploitative society reappears in new forms, draped in a red flag, decorated by portraits of Mao (or Castro or Che) and adorned with the little 'Red Book' and other sacred litanies.”

Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher

"Listen, Marxist!" (May 1969); also available in Post Scarcity Anarchism (1971).
Listen, Marxist!

People , Books , School , Past

“Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy’s hatred, the greater his need of love. Be his enmity political or religious, he has nothing to expect from a follower of Jesus but unqualified love. In such love there is no inner discord between private person and official capacity. In both we are disciples of Christ, or we are not Christians at all.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), The Enemy, the "Extraordinary", p. 148.

Love , Christ , Drawing , Personality

“Why in this world of ours there should be so much suffering no one knows. But this we know; that, evil existing, the world being such as it is, we can win from evil, if we choose, an inestimable good, namely — the conviction that there is in us a power not of the senses, the conviction that spirit exists, and exists in us.
A sceptic may say that in a world ideally conceivable we might have secured this precious conviction without the necessity of undergoing the ordeal of pain. To which the reply is: that in a world ideally conceivable what he says may be true; but in the world as it is, with which alone we are concerned, we have ample cause for gratitude that we can turn suffering to such far-reaching account, that we can distil from the bitter root this divine elixir; that by manfully bearing the pains of the senses, inexplicable though they be, we are able to gain the certainty that a power not born of the senses exists in us, operates in us. It is this effect of pain that accounts for the serenity and peace of many patient sufferers, a peace and a serenity which surround their bed of misery with a kind of halo.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 7 : Spiritual Progress
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)

Pain , World , Peace , Sense

“When I attempted, a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends or as the landscape loses the celestial light. What we feel then has been well described by Keats as “the journey homeward to habitual self.” You know what I mean. For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can: “Nobody marks us.” A scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate, it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

The Weight of Glory (1949)

God , Pain , Secret , World

“Christ is not sweet till sin be made bitter to us.”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 398.

Christ

“99,9% of men are convinced that they have to live silently, with a bitter irony of the twist of fate, that means, nobody knows they're really a spy. And an amazing guitarist. Men give serious time and thought on "How would I deal with, if the rocket came down of that alley right now? Yeah, I'd handle that situation pretty well!" A spy who plays guitar at night! I basically think, you know, I'm what would have happened if James Dean had lived and discovered carbohydrates and orthopaedic shoes. You have to tell yourself this bullshit just to keep going! Cause you're constantly being reminded how redundant you are!”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On men.
What It Is (2009)

Men , Fate , Shoe , Thinking

“I know what love is. There was a happy time when I didn't, but bitter experience has taught me.”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

Patience (1881)

Love , Time , Happiness

“They have all been very kind to me here. But this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone.”

Edith Cavell (1865–1915) British nurse

Though said the night before her execution this statement has often been presented as having been her last. Variants of these words have sometimes been misattributed to Florence Nightingale. "Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone." is inscribed beneath her statue at St. Martin's Place in London.
Last statements (1915)

God

“A wise man once said that next to losing its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose its father. And though I would never subscribe to such a statement wholeheartedly, I would be the last person to reject it out of hand. For my own part, I would express such a doctrine without any suggestion of bitterness against the world, or rather without the hurt which the mere sound of the words implies.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

World , Parting , Hurt , Personality

“But Rizvi has summarized them in the following words from Waliullah’s magnum opus in Arabic, Hujjat-Allah al-Baligha: “According to Shah Wali-Allah the mark of the perfect implementation of the Sharia was the performance of jihad. There were people, said the Shah, who indulged in their lower nature by following their ancestral religion, ignoring the advice and commands of the Prophet Mohammed. If one chose to explain Islam to people like this it was to do them a disservice. Force, said the Shah, was the better course - Islam should be forced down their throats like bitter medicine to a child. This, however, was possible only if the leaders of the non-Muslim communities who failed to accept Islam were killed, the strength of the community was reduced, their property confiscated and a situation was created which led to their followers and descendants willingly accepting Islam. Another means of ensuring conversions was to prevent other religious communities from worshipping their own gods. Moreover, unfavourable discriminating laws should be imposed on non-Muslims in matters of rule of retaliation, compensation for manslaughter, and marriage and political matters. However, the proselytization programme of Shah Wali-Allah only included the leaders of the Hindu community. The low class of the infidels, according to him, were to be left alone to work in the fields and for paying jiziya. They like beasts of burden and agricultural livestock were to be kept in abject misery and despair.””

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

S.A.A. Rizvi, Shah Wali-Allah and His Times, Canberra. 1980, p.285-6 Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

God , Marriage , People , Religion

“Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (1973)

Pain , Way , Wolf , Past

“Abu Hurayra reported the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Race to good actions as fast as you can. What are you waiting for except delayed poverty, oppressive wealth, debilitating illness, dottering senility, a swift death or the Dajjal? Or are you waiting for an unseen evil, or the Last Hour? The Last Hour will be most bitter and terrible."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 578
Sunni Hadith

Death , Peace , Evil , Waiting

“What, then, is to be done? We have to begin with the state: as the incarnation of collective interests, collective purposes, and collective goods. If we cannot learn to “think the state” once again, we shall not get very far. But what precisely should the state do? Minimally, it should not duplicate unnecessarily: as Keynes wrote, “The important thing for Government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all.” And we know from the bitter experience of the past century that there are some things that states should most certainly not be doing.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

" What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy? http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/12/17/what-is-living-and-what-is-dead-in-social-democrac/" (2009)

Thinking , Learning , Past

“In the heat of our pursuit for fundamental human rights, Black people have been continually cautioned to be patient. We are advised that as long as we remain faithful to the existing democratic order, the glorious moment will eventually arrive when we will come into our own as full-fledged human beings. But having been taught by bitter experience, we know that there is a glaring incongruity between democracy and the capitalist economy which is the source of our ills. Regardless of all rhetoric to the contrary, the people are not the ultimate matrix of the laws and the system which govern them—certainly not Black people and other nationally oppressed people, but not even the mass of whites. The people do not exercise decisive control over the determining factors of their lives.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

If They Come in The Morning (1971)

People , Faith , Law , Exercises

“But there was sufficient spirit of toleration and candor amongst the Italian ecclesiastics to allow the subject to be canvassed with much freedom They entered warmly themselves into the controversy often favoring different sides of the question and however much we may deplore the loss of time and labor devoted to the defense of untenable positions it must be conceded that they displayed far less polemic bitterness than certain writers who followed them beyond the Alps two centuries and a half later”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 28
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Question , Freedom , Loss , Time

“In this situation, any feeling of gee-wiz exhilaration would be out of place. Consternation and fear would be closer to the mark; but the most appropriate attitude may be a bitter determination to be as competent as we can, much as if we were preparing for a difficult exam that will either realize our dreams or obliterate them.”

Nick Bostrom book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Source: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), Ch. 15

Fear , Dreams , Feeling

“His real wife, his houri, his paramour was everywhere waiting, genie-like, in a bottle. The hymeneal gouging-off of the bottle-top, the kiss of the brown bitter yeasty flow, the euphoria far beyond the release of detumescence.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Time for a Tiger (1956)

Kiss , Waiting

“What is the use of speech? Silence were fitter:
Lest we should still be wishing things unsaid.
Though all the words we ever spake were bitter,
Shall I reproach you, dead?”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

You Would Have Understood Me

Silence , Dead

“The food that memory gives to eat is bitter to the taste, and it is only with the teeth of hope that we can bear to bite it.”

H. Rider Haggard book She: A History of Adventure

She (1887), CHAPTER XVII, THE BALANCE TURNS

Food , Hope , Memory

“As my own father was sick, and miserably tied to his invalid's chair, he would have been abandoned had not an old servant performed for him a so-called service of love. My mother gave parties while he was perishing in solitude, and amused herself while he was suffering bitter agonies”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy by Rüdiger Safranski (trans. Ewald Osers)
Other

Love , Solitude , Suffering

“We live not in our moments or our years:
The present we fling from us like the rind
Of some sweet future, which we after find
Bitter to taste.”

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886) Irish bishop

To.——, The Story of Justin Martyr and Other Poems; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 455.

Future

“It were better to be of no Church, than to be bitter for any.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

535
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I

“…engaged themselves in mainly exposing the policies and programmes of the bourgeois leaders including Gandhi without participating in these struggles and sharing their bitter experience. The result was that the bourgeois leadership and the people were getting closer to each other.”

E. M. S. Namboodiripad (1909–1998) Indian politician

On the early communist sectarianism of the 1920s quoted in "The Mahatma and the Ism" in page=9.

People

“It would be difficult, perhaps, to find the annals of a nation less stained with crimes than those of the Armenians, whose virtues have been those of peace, and their vices those of compulsion. But whatever may have been their destiny — and it has been bitter — whatever it may be in future, their country must ever be one of the most interesting on the globe.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

From the Letters of Lord Byron (2 January 1817), p. 6.
Lord Byron's Armenian Exercises and Poetry (1870)

Peace , Future , Country

“Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia (the whole peninsula of Indochina) present a puzzling picture, enigmatic to most foreigners and especially so to Americans. The very name Vietnam evokes deep emotions and bitter memories in our countrymen. But the tendency to blame Vietnam for our domestic ills has no foundation in fact. The problems of urban decay, racial disharmony, drug abuse, and all the rest were bound to plague us, whether or not we became involved in Vietnam. Indeed, one can argue that in the 1950s, well before we became heavily involved in Vietnam, a sense of national direction and purpose appeared to be lacking in the United States. This book looks at the Vietnam War from the perspective of a senior military professional who held important positions of responsibility during the conflict. Among other things, I will seek to bring out the lessons we have learned or should have learned from the war, and their implications for the future. The severe impact of the war on our armed forces and its almost disastrous effect on the U. S. Army will receive special treatment.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. vii-viii

War , Books , Problem , Sense

“The past is dead; let it bury its dead. Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling. Make your place in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished – a reunited country.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

In the 1880s, as quoted on an inscription at Vicksburg National Military Park http://jeffreyevanbrooks.blogspot.com/2015/09/sadness-and-hope-along-siege-lines-of.html.
1880s

Feeling , Past , Dead , Country

“Now it was all behind him — but by God, he did not, he would not regret it. He had taken the only way, and if it had pleased Fate to sport cruelly with him, that was no fault of his. He had sacrificed one loyalty to a more urgent, and with the thought bitterness went out of his soul. […] Tragedy had ensued, but the endeavour had been honest. He saw the ironic pattern of life spread out beneath him, as a man views a campaign from a mountain, and he came near to laughter — laughter with an undertone of tears.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Source: Midwinter (1923), Ch. XVIII

Life , God , Fate , Way

“Dialogue in Hell:
Fourth Dialogue
There are tremendous populations riveted to labor by poverty, as they were in other times by slavery. What difference, I ask you, do your fictions make to their happiness? Your great political movement has after all only ended in the triumph of a minority privileged by chance as the ancient nobility was by birth. What difference does it make to the proletariat bent over in its labor, weighted down by the heaviness of its destiny, that some orators have the right to speak, that some journalists have the right to write? You have created rights which will be purely academic for the mass of the people, since it cannot make use of them. These rights, of which the law permits him the ideal enjoyment and necessity refuses him the actual exercise, are the people only a bitter irony of defeat.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

People , Law , Exercises , Birth

“When you remember how few Jews there are in Italy and how relatively few there are in Germany, one must wonder at the violence and the bitterness of this perse cution. The number of Jews in Italy is only a small fraction of those in the city of New York, while there are in the city of New York six times as many Jews as there were in the German Reich when the last war ended and possibly more than four times as many as there are there now. Yet the persecution, personal, physical, family, financial, goes on, openly and secretly, in a way that is perfectly appalling. To my great astonishment, this anti-Semitic persecution has been violently and publicly revived in this country within the last few weeks or months, and it is as discreditable to us that this should have happened as anything that we can imagine.'
Jews differ among themselves just as do Spaniards or Italians or Canadians or Americans. There are some who belong to one party, some who belong to another some whp hold one point of view, some who hold a point of view that is contradictory. The notion that all who belong to that race or profess that faith are of one mind in everything that relates to their public relationships is a grotesque departure from fact. But if you can play upon an excited public emotion by the use of these terms and by the insinuation that the entire Hebrew population is engaged, let us say as we have been told from the platform recently in trying to get this nation into war, such statements, although absolutely contradictory to every well-known fact, will, if repeated long enough, be believed and acted upon by a certain number of our unthinking population.
We cannot protest too vigorously and too strongly against that sort of thing. It may be the Ku Klux Klan persecuting the Catholics, it may be the anti-Semites persecuting the Jews: but persecution on racial or religious ground has absolutely no place in a nation given over to liberty and which calls itself a democracy.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

War , Family , Faith , Way

“Had she only realized that it is only hypocrites who cannot forgive hypocrisy, whereas those who search for truth are too conscious of the maze to be hard on others – than the bitter flow of her thoughts might have been stopped and the catastrophe averted. But it was not conceivable to her that he should forgive – or that she should accept forgiveness, for to her forgiveness meant a triumph of one person over another.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Albergo Empedocle
The Life to Come and other stories (1972)

Truth , Search , Forgiveness , Personality

“Sour Grapes is a comedy about things that aren't funny. It reminded me of Crash, an erotic thriller about things no one finds erotic. The big difference is that David Cronenberg, who made Crash, knew that people were not turned on by auto accidents. Larry David, who wrote and directed Sour Grapes, apparently thinks people are amused by cancer, accidental castration, racial stereotypes and bitter family feuds… The more I think of it, the more Sour Grapes really does resemble Crash (except that Crash was not a bad film). Both movies are like watching automobile accidents. Only one was intended to be.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sour-grapes-1998 of Sour Grapes (17 April 1998)
Reviews, Zero star reviews

People , Family , Thinking

“The nation has been, and is still being, eroded and hollowed out from within by the implantation of large unassimilated and unassimiliable populations—what Lord Radcliffe once in a memorable phrase called "alien wedges"—in the heartland of the state…The disruption of the homogeneous "we", which forms the essential basis of parliamentary democracy and therefore of our liberties, is now approaching the point at which the political mechanics of a "divided community"…take charge and begin to operate autonomously. Let me illustrate this pathology of a society that is being eaten alive…The two active ingredients are grievance and violence. Where a community is divided, grievance is for practical purposes inexhaustible. When violence is injected—and quite a little will suffice for a start—there begins an escalating competition to discover grievance and to remove it. The materials lie ready to hand in a multiplicity of agencies with a vested interest, more or less benevolent, in the process of discovering grievances and demanding their removal. The spiral is easily maintained in upward movement by the repetitions and escalation of violence. At each stage alienation between the various elements of society is increased, and the constant disappointment that the imagined remedies yield a reverse result leads to growing bitterness and despair. Hand in hand with the exploitation of grievance goes the equally counterproductive process which will no doubt, as usual, be called the "search for a political solution"…Indeed, attention has already been drawn publicly to the potentially critical factor of the so-called immigrant vote in an increasing number of worthwhile constituencies. The result is that the political parties of the indigenous population vie with one another for votes by promising remedy of the grievances which are being uncovered and exploited in the context of actual or threatened violence. Thus the legislature finds itself in effect manipulated by minorities instead of responding to majorities, and is watched by the public at large with a bewildering and frustration, not to say cynicism, of which the experience of legislation hitherto in the field of immigration and race relations afford some pale idea…I need not follow the analysis further in order to demonstrate how parliamentary democracy disintegrates when the national homogeneity of the electorate is broken by a large and sharp alteration in the composition of the population. While the institutions and liberties on which British liberty depends are being progressively surrendered to the European superstate, the forces which will sap and destroy them from within are allowed to accumulate unchecked. And all the time we are invited to direct towards Angola or Siberia the anxious attention that the real danger within our power and our borders imperatively demand.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech the Hampshire Monday Club in Southampton (9 April 1976), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), pp. 165-166
1970s

Lie , Disappointment , Democracy , Imagination

Quotes about bitter page 5

Quotes about bitter
page 5