Bitter Day Quotes & Sayings

You have waged bitter and undeclared war upon the green, gutting the rain forests, mile after mile, day after day, but know this: the war has come home! It is man's turn to embrace the scythe. — Alan Moore

Today was a very cold and bitter day, as cold and bitter as a cup of hot chocolate, if the cup of hot chocolate had vinegar added to it and were placed in a refrigerator for several hours. — Lemony Snicket

As long as we are alive, we feel fear. It is an intrinsic part of our makeup, as natural as a bitter cold winter day or the winds that rip branches off trees. If we resist it or push it aside, we miss a powerful opportunity for awakening. — Tara Brach

Wherefore is there ice and snow, chilling winds and bitter nights? Is it to mock the earth for its sunshine? No, not so! We forget that sunlight is impossible without shadows; that for every day there is a night; that for every joy there is a pain; that for every laugh there is a sob. Progress is never a straight line upward; always it is down and then around. — W. Waldemar W. Argow

So, we, at this day, when we thought we should have found favor among our own countrymen, for that we preached unto them the gospel of peace, life, and eternal salvation; instead of favor, we have found bitter and cruel hatred. — Martin Luther

Night and day waging war, bitter enemies evermore.
Fierce and loyal, the day is strong.
Broken oaths, so much goes wrong.
Magic speaks to all hearts bound.
Trapped in slumber until she's found.
When two are joined the spell will break.
One by one their souls awake.
Hate takes over, vengeance sworn.
And from the flames new life is born. — Stacie Simpson

I have fought against the people of the North because I believed they were seeking to wrest from the South its dearest rights. But I have never cherished toward them bitter or vindictive feelings, and I have never seen the day when I did not pray for them. — Robert E.Lee

When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it in a summer's day. And so a child could. But with me and such as me it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. It is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to gain.' We think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slave whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be. — Oscar Wilde

Every day is an adventure, or it's just some thing you do. It's your choice. — Barry L. Hughes

Next day on returning I found him dead in the snow with his head on the sill of the door - the door of his puppyhood's days; my dog to the last in his heart of hearts - it was my help he sought, and vainly sought, in the hour of his bitter extremity. — Ernest Thompson Seton

Love is Chocolate The unprocessed kind. Dark. Bitter. But always with the promise of sweet perfection. All it takes is sugar- that certain someone's kiss, flavored with possibility. If Dani has taught me anything, it's that life is brimming with possibilities. Every single day brings choices. — Ellen Hopkins

The way the world is made. The truth is all around you, plain to behold. The night is dark and full of terrors, the day bright and beautiful and full of hope. One is black, the other white. There is ice and there is fire. Hate and love. Bitter and sweet. Male and female. Pain and pleasure. Winter and summer. Evil and good." She took a step toward him. "Death and life. Everywhere, opposites. Everywhere, the war. — George R R Martin

Women, despite the fact that nine out of ten of them go through life with a death-bed air either of snatching-the-last-moment or with martyr-resignation, do not die tomorrow
or the next day. They have to live on to any one of many bitter ends. — Zelda Fitzgerald

For behold, I, God, have asuffered these things for all, that they bmight not suffer if they would crepent; 17 But if they would not repent they must asuffer even as I; 18 Which asuffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit - and would that I might bnot drink the bitter cup, and shrink - 19 Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and afinished my preparations unto the children of men. — The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints

Will you live your very last day,
The same way as you lived
Your first?

Will you cry, smile, laugh, and play -
The same way as you did following
Birth?

Will you still look at the world
Full of wonder, love, curiosity, and excitement?
Or will you be dark, bitter and cold,
Without a single drop
Of enlightenment?

Do you live your current days -
Feeling confused,
Depressed,
And AFRAID?

Or do you share your light
In the company
And service of others,
To synergize
Like we were
Made?

Will you live TODAY
With an unquenchable thirst for
Life?

Or,
Will you wait until your very last day -

Wishing you had just
ONE MORE DAY,

To go out and spend
Your time
RIGHT?



Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (2010) — Suzy Kassem

The argument of Alcidamas: Everyone honours the wise. Thus the Parians have honoured Archilochus, in spite of his bitter tongue; the Chians Homer, though he was not their countryman; the Mytilenaeans Sappho, though she was a woman; the Lacedaemonians actually made Chilon a member of their senate, though they are the least literary of men; the inhabitants of Lampsacus gave public burial to Anaxagoras, though he was an alien, and honour him even to this day. — Aristotle.

You picked that out?" Caine asked. "That pink, plastic toy?"
I turned to look at him. "I happen to have been a little girl, once upon a time, detective. I know what they like. Every little girl wants to be a princess."
A thoughtful frown overcame the angry tension on Caine's rugged face. "And what happens when they grow up?"
I thought of my mother and sisters and all the horrors that had happened the day they'd died. A bitter laugh escaped from my tight lips.
"Then they just want to be little girls again. — Jennifer Estep

It's worth pointing out that [Herman Melville] worked in [the New York Custom House] as a deputy customs inspector between 1866 and 1885. Nineteen years, and he never got a raise - four dollars a day, six days a week. He was by then a washed-up writer, forgotten and poor. I used to find this subject heartbreaking, a waste: the greatest living American author was forced to spend his days writing tariff reports instead of novels. But now, knowing what I know about the sleaze of the New York Custom House, and the honorable if bitter decency with which Melville did his job, I have come to regard literature's loss as the republic's gain. Great writers are a dime a dozen in New York. But an honest customs inspector in the Gilded Age? Unheard of. — Sarah Vowell

I know it. I know I shall make beastly mistakes, Father-"
"The world does not forgive mistakes so quickly, my girl." He sounds bitter and sad.
"If the world will not forgive me," I say softly, "I shall have to learn to forgive myself."
He nods in understanding.
"And how will you marry? Or do you intend to marry?"
I think of Kartik, and tears threaten. "I shall meet someone one day, as Mother found you. — Libba Bray

I'm a chocoholic. I need chocolate every day, like one little piece of Droste. I'm not into milk chocolate. But I don't like it when its super bitter. I need a sweet factor in there. I go for the 75 percent - that's good enough for me. — Debi Mazar

You have to find a way to not become bitter and live within the parameters of the situation and laugh your way through it ... and you hope for a better day for the next generation. — Yvette Nicole Brown

The sun was up, the neighborhood waking. I wiped my face clean with the back of my sleeve, the warming air soft on my wet cheeks. A prayer welled up within me, a new kind of prayer. I was done begging God to forgive me for being too bitter, too needy, too egotistical, too tired. Repenting one day for being too much, the next for not being enough.

Now I clearly understood my real offence against heaven: the stubborn refusal that every failing that I had - from the first - had been forgiven. — Bethany Pierce

The truth is all around you, plain to behold. The night is dark and full of terrors, the day bright and beautiful and full of hope. One is black, the other white. There is ice and there is fire. Hate and love. Bitter and sweet. Male and female. Pain and pleasure. Winter and summer. Evil and good. Death and life. Everywhere, opposites. — George R R Martin

In fact her maturity and blood kinship converted her passion to fever, so it was more affliction than affection. It literally knocked her down at night, and raised her up in the morning, for when she dragged herself off to bed, having spent another day without his presence, her heart beat like a gloved fist against her ribs. And in the morning, long before she was fully awake, she felt a longing so bitter and tight it yanked her out of a sleep swept clean of dreams. — Toni Morrison

Knowledge of my atrocious selfishness, settled on me. All those bitter home truths she had flung at me, right from the beginning ... and still loved me; was so blind that she still loved me. One day she had said: When you love me (and she had not meant "make love to me") it's as if God forgave me for being the mess I am; and I took it as chicanery, another emotional blackmail, to make me feel essential and so give me a sense of responsibility towards her. — John Fowles

Sandwiched between their "once upon a time" and "happily ever after," they all had to experience great adversity. Why must all experience sadness and tragedy? Why could we not simply live in bliss and peace, each day filled with wonder, joy, and love?
The scriptures tell us there must be opposition in all things, for without it we could not discern the sweet from the bitter. 2 Would the marathon runner feel the triumph of finishing the race had she not felt the pain of the hours of pushing against her limits? Would the pianist feel the joy of mastering an intricate sonata without the painstaking hours of practice? — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

If you don't take care of the disenfranchised and outcasts of your city, they will come knocking on your door one day with revenge and bitterness — Sunday Adelaja

In this single galaxy of ours there are eighty-seven thousand million suns. [ ... ] In challenging it, you would be like ants attempting to label and classify all the grains of sand in all the deserts of the world. [ ... ] It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man. — Arthur C. Clarke

See, I'm the worst breed of human. Let me explain. Some people are dead inside. They go through life knowing this, and they manage fine enough, because, well, they're dead inside. They aren't bitter because they don't care enough to change. They just try to get by with the things they can control. Others live in the fucking clouds, watch romantic comedies, and dream about everything being perfect one day. These people are always fine because they have an everlasting well of hope inside them, and no matter what happens they'll just romanticize their existence.
But when it comes to me ... I'm someone who's mostly dead inside but still has a little hope for something extraordinary, which, as I said, is the worst breed of human, because it means that I know everything is bullshit, but that I secretly hope for the day when it might not be. The tension makes me wish I were just completely dead inside. It would makes things much easier for me. — Nick Miller

Better than Medicine A glass of bitter beer or pale ale, taken with the principal meal of the day, does more good, and less harm, than any medicine the physician can prescribe. Dr Carpenter in The Scottish Review, (1750) — Hugh Morrison

There is nothing as bitter as this moment when you go out to the morning roll call--in the dark, in the cold, with a hungry belly, to face a whole day of work. You lose your tongue. You lose all desire to speak to anyone. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Sometimes love is nothing more than a sticky web; illusions spun from clever minds and bitter hearts. — Nicole Lyons

If there were no night, we would not appreciate the day, nor could we see the stars and the vastness of the heavens. We must partake of the bitter with the sweet. There is a divine purpose in the adversities we encounter every day. They prepare, they purge, they purify, and thus they bless. — James E. Faust

If you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive your parents for the crime of bringing you into the world, if you are content to get nowhere, just take each day as it comes, if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you've got it half licked. — Arthur Miller

There is nothing that sharpens a man's senses so acutely as to know that bitter and determined enemies are in pursuit of him night and day. — Frederick Russell Burnham

It was a cold blustery day when he walked out of the courthouse for the last time. He walked down the steps and out the back door and got in his truck and sat there. He couldnt name the feeling. It was sadness but it was something else besides. And the something else besides was what had him sitting there instead of starting the truck. He'd felt like this before but not in a long time and when he said that, then he knew what it was. It was defeat. It was being beaten. More bitter to him than death. You need to get over that, he said. Then he started the truck. — Cormac McCarthy

And what if one of the gods does wreck me out on the wine-dark sea? I have a heart that is inured to suffering and I shall steel it to endure that too. For in my day I have had many bitter and painful experiences in war and on the stormy seas. So let this new disaster come. It only makes one more. — Homer

All day long, one continues to suffer sweet or bitter fruits. This life has been attained for the purpose of experiencing! — Dada Bhagwan

I just pray I don't have to work on you some day. Stitching together flesh that has no soul is bitter work. — Raymond E. Feist

Whiles in the early Winter eve We pass amid the gathering night Some homestead that we had to leave Years past; and see its candles bright Shine in the room beside the door Where we were merry years agone But now must never enter more, As still the dark road drives us on. E'en so the world of men may turn At even of some hurried day And see the ancient glimmer burn Across the waste that hath no way; Then with that faint light in its eyes A while I bid it linger near And nurse in wavering memories The bitter-sweet of days that were. — William Morris

Let me tell you what I learned in the Hole. I learned that in suffering, we find the true measure of our strength. I learned that a man can be a coward one day and a hero the next. I learned that I'm not as good a man as I thought I was. But the most important thing is this: I learned that though it costs me dearly, I can change. I learned what has been broken can be made new. Do you know who taught me that? A prostitute. In a bitter woman who made her living in shame, I found honor, courage, and loyalty. She inspired me and she saved me. -Logan — Brent Weeks

Each of us will taste the bitter ashes of life, from sin and neglect to sorrow and disappointment. But the atonement of Christ can lift us up in beauty from our ashes on the wings of a sure promise of immortality and eternal life. He will thus lift us up, not only at the end of life, but in each day of our lives. — Bruce C. Hafen

There was a special Nolan idea about the coffee. It was their one great luxury. Mama made a big potful each morning and reheated it for dinner and supper and it got stronger as the day wore on. It was an awful lot of water and very little coffee but mama put a lump of chicory in it which made it taste strong and bitter. Each one was allowed three cups a day with milk. Other times you could help yourself to a cup of black coffee anytime you felt like it. Sometimes when you had nothing at all and it was raining and you were alone in the flat, it was wonderful to know that you could have something even though it was only a cup of black and bitter coffee.
Neeley and Francie loved coffee but seldom drank it. Today, as usual, Neeley let his coffee stand black and ate his condensed milk spread on bread. He sipped a little of the black coffee for the sake of formality. Mama poured out Francie's coffee and put the milk in it even though she knew that the child wouldn't drink it. — Betty Smith

Darling
I love these velvet nights. I've never been able to decide whether the night was a bitter enemie or a "grand patron"
or whether I love you most in the eternal classic half-lights where it blends with day or in the full religious fan-fare of mid-night or perhaps in the lux of noon. Anyway, I love you most and you 'phoned me just because you phoned me tonight
I walked on those telephone wires for two hours after holding your love like a parasol to balance me. My dear
— Zelda Fitzgerald

My mother by then had already begun her own decline, her own transformation, hardening into a bitter rind of a woman who pushed through the stations of her day as though each moment were unpleasant duty; as though the currencies of joy had become so inflated they could no longer purchase anything of worth. — James Sallis

One bitter time of mourning, I remember, When day, and night, my sad heart did complain, My life, I said, was one cold, bleak December, And all its pleasures, were but whited pain ... — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Fine food is poison. It can be as bitter as antimony and bitter almonds and as repulsive as swallowing live toads. Like the poison the emperor took every day to stop himself being poisoned, fine food must be taken daily until the system becomes immune to its ravages and the taste buds beaten and abused to the point where they not only accept but savour every vile concoction under the sun. — Lisa St. Aubin De Teran

Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how far easier it were to die than to live?
The martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror, finds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic. There is a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervor, which may carry through any crisis of suffering that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest.
But to live, to wear on, day after day, of mean, bitter, low, harassing servitude, every nerve dampened and depressed, every power of feeling gradually smothered, this long and wasting heart-martyrdom, this slow, daily bleeding away of the inward life, drop by drop, hour after hour, this is the true searching test of what there may be in man or woman. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Even in winter, the cold isn't always bitter, and not every day is cruel. — Jim Butcher

The healthy attitude, the only reasonable one towards a fault made or a sin committed is surely a vigorous shake of one's moral shoulders, vigorous enough to shake it off and out of remembrance. The sin itself was a sad waste of time and happiness, and absolutely no more should be wasted in lugubriously reflecting on it. Shall we, poor human beings at such a disadvantage from the first in the fight with Fate through the many weaknesses and ailments of our bodies, load our souls as well with an ever-growing burden of regret and penitence? Shall we let a weight of vivid memories break our hearts? How are we to get on with our living if we are continually dropping into sloughs of bitter and often unjust self-reproach? Every morning comes the light, and a fresh chance of doing better. Is it not the sheerest folly and ingratitude to let yesterday spoil the God-given to-day? There — Elizabeth Von Arnim

The summer ended. Day by day, and taking its time, the summer ended. The noises in the street began to change, diminish, voices became fewer, the music sparse. Daily, blocks and blocks of children were spirited away. Grownups retreated from the streets, into the houses. Adolescents moved from the sidewalk to the stoop to the hallway to the stairs, and rooftops were abandoned. Such trees as there were allowed their leaves to fall - they fell unnoticed - seeming to promise, not without bitterness, to endure another year. At night, from a distance, the parks and playgrounds seemed inhabited by fireflies, and the night came sooner, inched in closer, fell with a greater weight. The sound of the alarm clock conquered the sound of the tambourine, the houses put on their winter faces. The houses stared down a bitter landscape, seeming, not without bitterness, to have resolved to endure another year. — James Baldwin

Soeur Seraphina gently removed my lace fontanges. It was named for the King's mistress Angelique de Fontanges, who had lost her hat while hunting one day and had hastily tied up her curls with her garter. The King had admired the effect, and the next day all the court ladies had appeared with their curls tied back with lace — Kate Forsyth

Her veins and arteries ran with a bitter fluid, not blood, Adinath exclaimed in fury one day. — Neel Mukherjee

The collective sign of relief heaved on V-J Day ought to have inspired Hollywood to release a flood of "happily ever after" films. But some victors didn't feel too good about their spoils. They'd seen too much by then. Too much warfare, too much poverty, too much greed, all in the service of rapacious progress. A bundle of unfinished business lingered from the Depression - nagging questions about ingrained venality, mean human nature, and the way unchecked urban growth threw society dangerously out of whack. Writers and directors responded by delivering gritty, bitter dramas that slapped our romantic illusions in the face and put the boot to the throat of the smug bourgeoisie. Still, plenty of us took it - and liked it. — Eddie Muller

Let's say you have an ax. Just a cheap one, from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don't worry, the man was already dead. Or maybe you should worry, because you're the one who shot him. — David Wong

The wickedness of the world was a part of creation, I knew this, and the Angel of Death had been created on that day when life first appeared, yet i was embittered, I wept for what i had lost and what the world had lost and would yet lose again. — Alice Hoffman

But we must not (as we do every day) give the name of duty to an inward bitter harshness born of self-interested passion, nor that of courage to malicious and treacherous dealings. What they call zeal is their propensity to wickedness and violence: it is not the cause which sets them ablaze but self-interest: they stoke up war not because it is just but because it is war. — Michel De Montaigne

Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world; now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. — William Shakespeare

Defeat I shall not know. It shall not touch me. I will meet it with true thinking. Resisting it will be my strengthening. But if, perchance, the day shall give to me the bitter cup, it shall sweeten in the drinking. — Walter Russell

I went away, after trying once more to rouse up Bashan by renewed calls and
encouragement. In vain. He cared as little for my going as for my coming. He seemed weighed down by bitter loathing and despair. He had the air of saying: "Since you were capable of having me put in this cage, I expect nothing more from you." And, actually,
had he not enough ground to despair of reason and justice?
[ ... ]
How could I explain to him we were treating him with great distinction, in shutting him up like a jaguar, without sun, air, or exercise, and plaguing him every day with a
thermometer? — Thomas Mann

Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March.
...
I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world ... I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.
I wanted to swallow the bitter seeds of forgetfulness ... Somehow, I dragged myself out of the dark and asked for help.
I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape.
There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.
I am thawing. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Well, the Story Girl was right. There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way — L.M. Montgomery

Kashayam [was] a drink the vanaras had morning, noon and night, and a few times in between. It was a kind of brew with all kinds of herbs thrown in: the thick, sharp-tasting furry karpuravalli, the strong spicy tulsi, the slightly bitter bark of the coconut tree, pungent pepper roots, the breathcatching nellikai, the cool root of vetriver, and just about anything else that was considered edible. And some things that weren't. In their craze for novelty, vanaras sometimes flung in new kinds of leaves or berries just because they smelt interesting; whole families had been known to fall ill, or even die. Gind's family were not a very adventurous lot, and stuck to things they knew not to be poisonous. Still, every day's kashayam was different, and this was a great topic of conversation among the vanaras. — Harini Gopalswami Srinivasan

He knew that, from now on, every day would be alike, that they would all bring the same sufferings. And he saw the weeks, the months, the years that awaited him, gloomy and implacable, coming one after the other, falling on him and suffocating him bit by bit. When the future is without hope, the present takes on a vile, bitter taste. — Emile Zola

I have tried to show why I believe that the biologist is the most romantic figure on earth at the present day. At first sight he seems to be just a poor little scrubby underpaid man, groping blindly amid the mazes of the ultra-microscopic, engaging in bitter and lifelong quarrels over the nephridia of flatworms, waking perhaps one morning to find that someone whose name he has never heard has demolished by a few crucial experiments the work which he had hoped would render him immortal. — John B. S. Haldane

The evil, Sir, is enormous; the inevitable suffering incalculable. Do not stain the fair fame of the country ... Nations of dependent Indians, against their will, under color of law, are driven from their homes into the wilderness. You cannot explain it; you cannot reason it away ... Our friends will view this measure with sorrow, and our enemies alone with joy. And we ourselves, Sir, when the interests and passions of the day are past, shall look back upon it, I fear, with self-reproach, and a regret as bitter as unavailing. — Edward Everett

Places: a cold, bleak, lonely day on the rim at Muley Point, Utah. And the heart-cracking loveliness of the blood-smeared, bitter, incomprehensible slaughterhouse of a world ... — Edward Abbey

To know ourselves we must live our lives to the bitter end, until the moment we drop into the grave. And even then, there must be someone to gather us up, revive us, and tell of us to ourselves and to others as in a last judgment. It is this that I have done these past years; that I wish I had not done yet will continue to do. Because it is no longer a question of others' destinies, but of my own.
Salvatore Satta
The Day of Judgment — Salvatore Satta

Someday we're going to live in St. Leonard's and get away from all this."


"Oh, sure," said Alan easily. The chili was simmering and he was leaning beside the sink, arms crossed over his thin chest, watching Nick work. "When I win the lottery. Or when we start selling your body to rich old ladies."


"If we start selling my body to rich old ladies now," Nick said, "can I quit school?"


"No," Alan answered with a sidelong smile, warm as a whispered secret. "You'll be glad you finished school one day. Aristotle said education is bitter, but its fruits are sweet."


Nick rolled his eyes. "Aristotle can bite me. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Now listen to me. I will not walk on one-way streets any longer. Your wound is my wound, (though you don't know that mine is yours), and I do what I can, but the well will run dry. You will use us up. There are women whose first stretching across borders was into your lives. When they discover how you make use of their compassion, they will turn away heartsick, stricken, withering in the freshness of their hope. There are women who were leaders, who worked night and day, defeated not by foreign policy, but by the sexual politics of solidarity, bitter now, unable to work anywhere near you. How dare you speak of the New Woman! We are your richest resource besides your endurance, and you use us like rags to wrap around your pain. — Aurora Levins Morales

What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statutes the next. — Alexander Hamilton

Man doeth this and doeth that from the good or evil of his heart; but he knows not to what end his sense doth prompt him; for when he strikes he is blind to where the blow shall fall, nor can he count the airy threads that weave the web of circumstance. Good and evil, love and hate, night and day, sweet and bitter, man and woman, heaven above and the earth beneath
all those things are needful, one to the other, and who knows the end of each? — H. Rider Haggard

So what do you think?' He asked, holding up the book.
'I think Salinger is a closet paedophile,' I replied placidly and was surprised and comforted by this minuscule, acidic, bitter Sylvia Plath like mocking, sniping tone that had crept into my voice. 'The main character Seymour is a fully grown man and a pervert who befriends young girls with his storytelling and swimming, just to get close enough to groom them in preparation for the inevitable sexual assault he lusts after. You might have noticed for example in A Perfect Day For Bananafish he grabs the young girls-'
'Sybil.'
'He grabs Sybil's ankles while lying on the beach and again when he pushes her in the water,' I continued. 'He goes too far when he kisses the bottom of her foot which makes even a four-year-old yell out in fear, knowing a line had been crossed. Frustrated Seymour walks away and goes back to his hotel where he kills himself in shame. — J.D. Gallagher

Your Very Last Days"


Will you live your very last day,
The same way as you lived
Your first?

Will you cry, smile, laugh, and play -
The same way as you did following
Birth?

Will you still look at the world
Full of wonder, love, curiosity, and excitement?
Or will you be dark, bitter and cold,
Without a single drop
Of enlightenment?

Do you live your current days -
Feeling confused,
Depressed,
And AFRAID?

Or do you share your light
In the company
And service of others,
To synergize
Like we were
Made?

Will you live TODAY
With an unquenchable thirst for
Life?

Or,
Will you wait until your very last day -

Wishing you had just
ONE MORE DAY,

To go out and spend
Your time
RIGHT? — Suzy Kassem

How you brew your life is how it's gonna taste on your tongue. You have the choice to make it bitter or sweeter. It all depend on the actions that you take day in day out. — Israelmore Ayivor

Let no one persuade you of a single thing. Study your hunger and how to feed it. Trust in whatever sounds twist your viscera. Write in the cadences of first love, of second chances, of air raids, of outrage, of the hideous and the hilarious, of headlong acceptance or curt refusal. Make the bitter music of bumdom, the sad shanties of landlessness, cool at the equator and fluid at the pole. Set the sounds that angels make after an all-night orgy. Whatever lengthens the day, whatever gets you through the night. Make the music that you need, for need will be over, soon enough. Let your progressions predict time's end and recollect the dead as if they're all still her. Because they are. — Richard Powers

The hardest thing about being an outcast isn't the love you don't receive. It's the love you long to give that nobody wants. After a while, it backs up into your system like stagnant water and turns toxic, poisoning your spirit. When this happens, you don't have many choices available. You can become a bitter loner who goes through life being pissed off at the world; you can fester with rage until one day you murder your classmates. Or, you can find another outlet for your love, where it will be appreciated and maybe even returned. — Jodee Blanco

Under the desert sun, in the dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical philosophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean, the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises to your nostrils, bitter and sharp. Whirlwinds dance across the salt flats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. Therefore, sublime. — Edward Abbey

Then, out of the blue, Aaron Winer saved the day. He took her to some movie and made out with her in the back row. The next day, at school, they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Bam! Problem solved. I pretended to be bitter about this, but in fact I was so relieved that I started laughing hysterically in history class and had to be excused to go the nurse. — Jesse Andrews

She knew how to hit to a hair's breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty ... At times her whimsical fancy would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part of her own story. Rather they became a part of it; for the world is only a psychological phenomenon, and what they seemed, they were. The midnight airs and gusts, moaning amongst the tightly wrapped buds and bark of the winter twigs, were formulae of bitter reproach. A wet day was the expression of irremediable grief at her weakness in the mind of some vague ethical being whom she could not class definitely as the God of her childhood, and could not comprehend as any other. — Thomas Hardy

In Sweden they have a very different approach. There, preschool children are encouraged to play and relax without any structured learning for the first six years of their lives. They go for nature walks every day, even in the bitter Scandinavian winter. They are not taught to read until they are seven years of age, yet by the age of ten, Swedish children consistently lead European literacy rankings. — Goldie Hawn

[Hermes addresses Prometheus :] To you, the clever and crafty, bitter beyond all bitterness, who has sinned against the gods in bestowing honors upon creatures of a day
to you, thief of fire, I speak. — Aeschylus

There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland. — L.M. Montgomery

The day was grey and bitter cold, and the dogs would not take the scent. — George R R Martin

There is a story concerning the Buddha, who is in the company of a fellow traveler who tests this great teacher with derogatory, insulting, disparaging, and bitter responses to anything the Buddha says. Every day, for three days when the Buddha spoke, the traveler responded by calling him a fool, and ridiculing the Buddha in some arrogant fashion. Finally, at the end of the third day, the traveler could stand it no more. He asked, "How is it that you are able to be so loving and kind when all I've done for the past three days is dishonor and offend you? Each time I am disobliging to you, you respond in a loving manner. How is this possible?" The Buddha responded with a question of his own for the traveler. "If someone offers you a gift, and you do not accept that gift, to whom does the gift belong? — Wayne W. Dyer

The most valuable thing [Anton LaVey] did that day was to help me understand and come to terms with the deadness, hardness and apathy I was feeling about myself and the world around me, explaining that it was all necessary, a middle step in an evolution from an innocent child to an intelligent, powerful being capable of making a mark on the world. — Marilyn Manson

In many respects men may be better-outwardly better-but the heart within is still the same. The human heart of to-day dissected, would be just like the human heart a thousand years ago: the gall of bitterness within that breast of yours, is just as bitter as the gall of bitterness in that of Simon of old. We — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The very next day, we were told that Abigail had had a massive stroke. She was alive, but the woman we had known had vanished. She did not know where she was or who she was. The alarm clock had gone off. The very old languish and die. We know that, buy the very old know it far better than the rest of us. They live in a world of continual loss and this, as my mother had said, is bitter. [p. 172] — Siri Hustvedt

When trees shall fall and starless night devour the sunless day; When wind is in the deadly East, then in the bitter rain I'll look for thee, and call to thee; I'll come to thee again! ENTWIFE. When Winter comes, and singing ends; when darkness falls at last; When broken is the barren bough, and light and labour past; I'll look for thee, and wait for thee, until we meet again: Together we will take the road beneath the bitter rain! BOTH. Together we will take the road that leads — J.R.R. Tolkien

You shall love beyond yourselves some day! So first, learn to love. And for that you have to drink the bitter cup of your love. — Friedrich Nietzsche

He wept only as children weep when they suffer injustice at the hands of those stronger than themselves. It is the most bitter weeping in the world. That was what happened to his [only] book; it was taken from him and burned. And he was left standing naked and without a book on the first day of summer. — Halldor Laxness

Trees shall fall and starless night devour the sunless day; When wind is in the deadly East, then in the bitter rain I'll look for thee, and call to thee; I'll come to thee again! ENTWIFE. When Winter comes, and — J.R.R. Tolkien

Once there was a moose, a very poor, thin, lonely moose who lived on a rocky hill where only bitter leaves grew and bushes with spiky branches. One day a red motor car drove past. In the backseat was
a grey gypsy dog wearing a gold earring. — Annie Proulx

Have a shower, Si," George urged. "Start the day refreshed. Maybe style your hair a little. It wouldn't kill you."
Simon shook his head. "There's a dead rat in the bathroom, George. I am not going in the bathroom, George."
"He's not dead," George said. "He's sleeping. I'm certain of it."
"Senseless optimism is how plagues get started," Simon said. "Ask the medieval peasants of Europe. Oh, wait, you can't."
"Were they a jolly bunch?" George asked skeptically.
"I'm sure they were much jollier before all the plague," said Simon. — Cassandra Clare

Indifference

This hate has blossomed like a living love,
grieving, watching its own exhaustion.
It seeks a face, it seeks flesh, as though it were love.

The worldly flesh and the voices that spoke
are dead, all has shuddered away,
all life hangs on a voice.
Days pass in bitter ecstasy to the sad
caress of the voice that returns
and drains the blood from our faces. Not without sweetness
that voice returns to the mind exhausted
and trembling: once it trembled for me.

But the flesh does not tremble. Only love
could set it alight, this hate seeks it out.
All the possessions, all the flesh and all the voices
in the world cannot equal the burning caress
of that body and those eyes. In the bitter ecstasy
that kills itself, this hate still finds
each day a glance, a broken word,
and grasps them, hungrily, like love. — Cesare Pavese

Perhaps I have too much anger of my own to tell. If a
man is steeped in bitter anger every day of his life, how then
would he notice a small additional fi re? Particularly when the
fi re comes in the presence of . . . — Tina Connolly

The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and smiles; and though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone.
Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night's heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but angels of God. — Jerome K. Jerome

There are many kinds of betrayals. There are the small ones: the unkind word, the laughter behind someone's back, the petty lies. And there are the betrayals that break hearts, destroy worlds, and turn the strong, sweet light of day into bitter dust. — Gillian Shields

I was beginning to taste it. Something bitter, but warm.
A flavor that woke me up and let me see things clearly. A flavor that made me feel safe, so I could let those things go. A flavor that held my hand and walked me across to the other side of loss, and assured me that one day, I would be just fine. A flavor for a change of heart- part grief, part hope.
Suddenly, I knew what that flavor would be. I padded down to the kitchen and cut a slice of sour cream coffee cake with a spicy underground river coursing through its center, left over from an order that had not been picked up today.
One bite and I was sure. A familiar flavor that now seemed utterly fresh and custom-made for me.
Cinnamon.
The comfort of sweet cinnamon. It always worked. I felt better. Lighter. Not quite "everything is going to be all right," but getting there. One step at a time. — Judith Fertig

Mother I had a beautiful house in Shingdi a vegetable garden Vines of bitter gourd lettuce English spinach and tousled coconut trees Coconuts fell on my darling husbands head One day we made love under the tree Now I was pregnant just like my orchard full of fruits with the love child Oh I ran as hard as I could from the shadow These were shadows of time shadows of the past ... — Mehreen Ahmed