Bitter Experience Quotes & Sayings

Solzhenitsyn writes: 'Shalamov's experience in the camps was longer and more bitter than my own, and I respectfully confess that to him and not me was it given to touch those depths of bestiality and despair toward which life in the camps dragged us all. — Anonymous

Pain from problems and disappointments, etc., is inevitable in life, but suffering is a choice determined by whether you choose to compare your experience and pain to something better and therefore feel unlucky and bitter or to something worse and therefore feel lucky and grateful! — Viktor E. Frankl

To pass its threshold was to return to stagnation; to cross the silent hall, to ascend the darksome staircase, to seek my own lonely little room, and then to meet tranquil Mrs. Fairfax, and spend the long winter evening with her, and her only, was to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my walk, - to slip again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and too still existence; of an existence whose very privileges of security and ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating. What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling life, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now repined! Yes, just as much good as it would do a man tired of sitting still in a "too easy chair" to take a long walk: and just as natural was the wish to stir, under my circumstances, as it would be under his. — Charlotte Bronte

A bitter experience makes us a better person. — Saru Singhal

We learn from the hard taskmaster of experience. We discern between good and evil. We differentiate as to the bitter and the sweet. We discover that decisions determine destiny. — Thomas S. Monson

Nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. — Neil Gaiman

I laughed under my breath, and it sounded bitter. "Listen to me. What am I talking about, worth it? Is any experience or bit of beauty worth the cost of my life? I know nothing but safety and self-preservation at all costs."
"And yet," he said softly, "you're risking everything to help me. — Kate Avery Ellison

After that bitter and blessed experience I think the words "my" and "mine" never had again the same meaning for Abraham. The sense of possession which they connote was gone from his heart. Things had been cast out forever. They had now become external to the man. His inner heart was free from them. The world said, "Abraham is rich," but the aged patriarch only smiled. He could not explain it to them, but he knew that he owned nothing, that his real treasures were inward and eternal. — A.W. Tozer

The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience. — W.E.B. Du Bois

We cannot rely on ourselves, for we have learned by bitter experience the folly of self-confidence. We are compelled to look to the Lord alone. Blessed is the wind that drives the ship into the harbor. Blessed is the distress that forces us to rest in our God. — Charles Spurgeon

Not far around the corner from every ugly experience is something really beautiful. And if you stop at every bitter comment you will never reach that beauty.
Soledad O'Brien — Katie Couric

I wish we may learn from all our changes, to be sober and watchful, not to rest in grace received, in experience or comforts, but still to be pressing forward, and never think ourselves either safe or happy, but when we are beholding the glory of Christ by the light of faith in the glass of the Gospel. To view him as God manifest in the flesh, as all in all in himself, and all in all for us; this is cheering, this is strengthening, this makes hard things easy, and bitter things sweet. This includes all I can wish for my dear friends, that you may grow in grace, and in the knowledge of Jesus. To know him, is the shortest description of true grace; to know him better, is the surest mark of growth in grace; to know him perfectly, is eternal life. This is the prize of our high calling; the sum and substance of all we can desire or hope for is, to see him as he is, and to be like him: and to this honor and happiness he will surely bring all that love his name.81 — Tony Reinke

Are the grapes bitter or sweet? You have to taste. — Marty Rubin

I have learned from bitter experience how misleading appearances often are, and that a snake sometimes lies hidden under flowers. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new
Hedonism that was to recreate life and to save it from that harsh
uncomely puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious
revival. It was to have its service of the intellect, certainly,
yet it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve
the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim,
indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of
experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of the asceticism
that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls
them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to
concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a
moment. — Oscar Wilde

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. — Francois Fenelon

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

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

Sweet or bitter, I am now convinced that all experience is enriching and rewarding. Above all, instructive. — Henry Miller

It was the mutual study of the Spear and the significance of its legend and their strikingly opposite views about it which finally parted these inseperable friends
the master musician (Wagner) and the cynnical philosopher (Nietzsche). A parting which led them both to experience a bitter and pathetic lonliness, and later a growing hatred and contempt for one another which spilled over into a stormy controversy to shatter the emerging Pan-Germanic mystic-pagan idealism to its very foundations. — Trevor Ravenscroft

These attributes, in spite of poverty and the strict integrity which shut him out from the more worldly successes, attracted to him many admirable persons, as naturally as sweet herbs draw bees, and as naturally he gave them the honey into which fifty years of hard experience had distilled no bitter drop. — Louisa May Alcott

When uncultured minds, confined to a narrow range of personal experience, are under the pressure of continued misfortune, their inward life is apt to become a perpetually repeated round of sad and bitter thoughts: the same words, the same scenes are revolved over and over again, the same mood accompanies them - the end of the year finds them as much what they were at the beginning as if they were machines set to a recurrent series of movements. — George Eliot

Love is not only pure joy, and delight, but also great and deep heaviness of heart and sorrow. But love too is full of joy and sweetness even in bitter sorrow, because it regards the misery and injury of others as its own. So also Christ was glowing with burning love in His last and greatest agony. According to St. Hilary, it was Christ's greatest joy that He endured the greatest woe. Thus God "giveth strength and power unto His people" (Ps. 68:15). While they experience the greatest sorrow, their hearts overflow with joy. — Martin Luther

The diet is a twisted, noxious thing, all tortured abstinence and short-term fraud. I speak from bitter experience. As a restaurant critic, I eat to live and live to eat. And having a toxic aversion to exercise, there is little to prevent the inevitable bulging of my gut. Hence the need for the occasional diet. — Tom Parker Bowles

It would be a very sharp & trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity. — Charles Spurgeon

It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us. — Andrew Greeley

The more bitter the desert experience, the sweeter the water of the oasis.
The more I understand myself, the more effectively I can work with others. — Zig Ziglar

There are three ways of learning golf: by study, which is the most wearisome; by imitation, which is the most fallacious; and by experience, which is the most bitter. — Robert Browning

They've given Harry the attributes of pistachio nuts and crack cocaine without the health risks (opening thousands of pistachio nuts can cause severe thumb-bruising, I can tell you from bitter experience of my life on the edge). — David Mitchell

Millions of people have wrecked their lives in angry turmoil, because they refused to accept the worst; refused to try to improve upon it; refused to salvage what they could from the wreck. Instead of trying to reconstruct their fortunes, they engaged in a bitter and "violent contest with experience"- and ended up victims of that brooding fixation known as melancholia. — Dale Carnegie

Down to the closest friend every man is a potential murderer. Often it wasn't necessary to bring out the gun or the lasso or the branding iron
they had found subtler and more devilish ways of torturing and killing their own. For me the most excruciating agony was to have the word annihilated before it even left my mouth. I learned, by bitter experience, to hold my tongue; I learned to sit in silence, and even smile, when actually I was foaming at the mouth. I learned to shake hands and say how do you do to all this innocent-looking fiends who were only waiting for me to sit down in order to suck my blood. — Henry Miller

Oh, had I, weak and faint of speech, words to teach my fellow-creatures the beauty and capabilities of man's mind; could I, or could one more fortunate, breathe the magic word which would reveal to all the power, which we all possess, to turn evil to good, foul to fair; then vice and pain would desert the new-born world!

It is not thus: the wise have taught, the good suffered for us; we are still the same; and still our own bitter experience and heart-breaking regrets teach us to sympathize too feelingly with a tale like this. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Moses cried out to God, and God showed him a tree, Moses "threw it into the waters, and the waters became sweet" (v. 25). In one swift move of vulnerability and obedience, Moses found God ready to act, relieving both the peoples' thirst and their tired emotions. That which was bitter had been made sweet. Are you bitter because of the hand you've been dealt? Sometimes He'll allow us to come face-to-face with an experience that could potentially breed bitterness, just so we can see His ability to work miracles in the way we feel. — Priscilla Shirer

Do we behave out of fear of punishment, or out of the demands of our heart? For me, it is the latter, as I would hope is true for all adults, thought I know from bitter experience that such is not often the case. To act in a manner designed to catapult you into heaven would seem transparent to a god, any god,for if ones heart is not in allignment with the creator of that heaven, then ... what is the point? — R.A. Salvatore

Colombia's advance to first rank among the criminal states in "our little region" is in part the result of the decline in US-managed state terror in Central America, which achieved its primary aims as in Turkey 10 years later, leaving in its wake a "culture of terror" that "domesticat[es] the expectations of the majority" and undermines aspirations towards "alternatives different to those of the powerful," in the words of Salvadoran Jesuits, who learned the lessons from bitter experience; those who survived the US assault, that is. — Noam Chomsky

Sometimes our Biggest Nightmare turns out to be our Biggest Gift. And it all comes down to our attitude. Life will throw us curve balls and disappointments, even heartbreak. But ultimately we can choose if we're going to be Bitter or Better for the experience. — Kathryn Orford

Experience is bitter, but its teachings we retain; It has taught me this
who once has loved, loves never on earth again! — George Arnold

In Psalm 32:1 David reminded us that the blessed person is the one "whose transgressions are forgiven, / whose sins are covered." How sad that he learned the lesson through such bitter experience. The word covered in the Hebrew is kasah, and it means "to cover, conceal, hide; to clothe; ... to forgive; to keep secret; to hide oneself, wrap oneself up."14 When we try desperately to cover up our sinful ways, we are bound for disaster as sin perpetuates. Only through repentance will God "cover" us and "clothe" us with His loving forgiveness. Only when we run to Him in the nakedness of our sin will He wrap us up with "garments of salvation" and a "robe of righteousness" (Isa. 61:10). — Beth Moore

Don't be so bitter about a bad experience from your past that you miss the opportunities in front of you. — Robert Kiyosaki

And wrapped in this risk and danger are God's embrace and promise to work all things (even evil ones) to the good of those who love him. When we read in the book of Romans, "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose" (8:28), we are not to be Pollyanna about this. Many of the "things" we will face come with the razor edges of a fallen and broken world. You can't play poker with God's mercy - if you want the sweet mercy then you must also swallow the bitter mercy. And what is the difference between sweet and bitter? Only this: your critical perspective, your worldview. One of God's greatest gifts is the ability to see and appreciate the world from points of view foreign to your own, points of view that exceed your personal experience. That is what it means to me to grow in Christ - to exceed myself as I stretch to him. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

As for the bitter herbs ... To see everyone with tears coursing down their faces, laughing and gasping at the same time, is fun and also makes the point - bitter herbs must be really bitter to experience the suffering ... — Julia Neuberger, Baroness Neuberger

I have learned that a bitter experience can make you stronger. I now boastfully say that I have a hide like a rhinoceros ... and I'm smiling. It's an interesting thing. — Mel Gibson

Her excitement grew as she tried to cut the rope that fastened Leonard to the earth. Woven of bitter experience, it resisted her. — E. M. Forster

Maybe you are beginning to sense that if your experience of sin is not all that bitter, and your experience of marriage not all that sweet, maybe your theology is not all that it should be. — Dave Harvey

Life is only precious if you wish it to be.' I look at it like the last bite of a wonderful meal - do you enjoy it, or does the knowledge that there is no more to follow make it so bitter that you would ruin the experience? — Michael J. Sullivan

Rich and bitter depth of their experience, the — W.E.B. Du Bois

But even though Ruth's only a hair thinner than I am, she's way on the other side of the fat girl spectrum, looking at me from the safe, slightly smug distance of her own control and conviction. — Mona Awad

A wealth of experience and wisdom doesn't have to be a dead giveaway to your increasing years. The spin you put on it is what will keep you young. Don't let it make you bitter. Learn from it, and let it make you better. — Jayleigh Cape

A woman is not a whole woman without the experience of marriage. In the case of a bad marriage, you win if you lose. Of the two alternatives - bad marriage or none - I believe bad marriage would be better. It is a bitter experience and a high price to pay for fulfillment, but it is the better alternative. — Fannie Hurst

Experience often repeated, truly bitter experience, had taught him long ago that with decent people, especially Moscow people
always slow to move and irresolute
every intimacy, which at first so agreeably diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure, inevitably grows into a regular problem of extreme intricacy, and in the long run the situation becomes unbearable. But at every fresh meeting with an interesting woman this experience seemed to slip out of his memory, and he was eager for life, and everything seemed simple and amusing. — Anton Chekhov

Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous. — David Ogilvy

Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people as may be noticed of most young children does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

You never said you used to play Dungeon and Dragons, Lesley had said when I explained my reasoning. I'd been tempted to tell her that I was thirteen at the time, and anyway it was Call of Cthulhu, but I've learned from bitter experience that such remarks generally only make things worse. — Ben Aaronovitch

And while faith based on theological reasoning is today universally engaged in a bitter struggle with doubt and resistance from the prevailing brand of rationalism, it does seem that the naked fundamental experience itself, that primal seizure of mystic insight, stripped of religious concepts, perhaps no longer to be regarded as a religious experience at all, has undergone an immense expansion and now forms the soul of that complex irrationalism that haunts our era like a night bird lost in the dawn. — Robert Musil

People have learned by bitter experience that the "European fraternal union of peoples" cannot be achieved by mere phrases and pious wishes, but only by profound revolutions and bloody struggles; they have learned that the question is not that of a fraternal union of all European peoples under a single republican flag, but of an alliance of the revolutionary peoples against the counter-revolutionary peoples, an alliance which comes into being not on paper, but only on the battlefield. — Friedrich Engels

We have to use the experience. We can become either bitter or better. — Debbie Macomber

So never give in," continued the girl, and restated again and again the vague yet convincing plea that the Invisible lodges against the Visible. Her excitement grew as she tried to cut the rope that fastened Leonard to the earth. Woven of bitter experience, it resisted her. Presently the waitress entered and gave her a letter from Margaret. Another note, addressed to Leonard, was inside. They read them, listening to the murmurings of the river. — E. M. Forster

Power. It is what we of the working class preach. We know, and well we know by bitter experience, that no appeal for the right, for justice, for humanity, can ever touch you. Your hearts are hard as your heels with which you tread upon the faces of the poor. So we have preached power. By the power of our ballots on election day will we take your government away from you - " "What — Jack London

Damn it, it wasn't right. When she lay abed at night, she shouldn't see charging boars and violent tussles. She should dream of the scent of night-blooming jasmine and the texture of organdy and the distant strains of an orchestra playing a stately sarabande. As he had, all those freezing, damp nights.
As he would, in all the bitter years to come.
What had she called him, last night? An insufferable, arrogant cad. Yes, he was.
He wanted Cecily pining for him forever, dreaming she could tame him, yearning for the tender love he could never, ever give.
He wanted her to remember the old Luke, not fantasize about some uncivilized beast.
And if this "werestag" had eclipsed the memory of their kiss with his gory midnight rescue . . .
Luke just would have to do it one better, and give Cecily a new memory to occupy her thoughts. An experience she could never forget. — Tessa Dare

Bitter experience has taught me that you don't engage with intellectually superior wankers who make long speeches about moral relativism. — Alexis Hall

To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light is, doubtless, the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest? Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of like to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers? Oh, reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts
this whispering "Peace, peace," when there is no peace, there would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience. — Anne Bronte

What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse. — Henry Miller

Every uncomfortable experience in life gives you the choice of growing bitter or better. — Orrin Woodward

You can love a bad book for its haplessness or pomposity or gall, if you have that starveling appetite for things human which I devoutly hope you never will have. "The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet." There are pleasures to be found where you would never look for them. That's a bit of fatherly wisdom, but it's also the Lord's truth, and a thing I know from my own long experience — Marilynne Robinson

When I joined Labour in 1982, I didn't feel I belonged to a party born to power. My repeated experience was of bitter and repeated defeats. — Douglas Alexander

This whole, crazy fucking business can be reduced to one little word, one word explains it all. I'm going to give you the benefit of my experience and share that word with you, buck. It's revenge.... Them studio execs, agents, producers, they're all sweaty, unpopular, bitter little fucks, and now it's their turn. They get to make all of us golden boys and girls jump through hoops. They decide who's popular and who isn't, who's pretty and who isn't, who gets their phone calls returned and who doesn't. They make us grovel, submit, suck up to them. They're getting back at us, man. It means more to them than the money, the fame, the glamor, having power over guys like me.... It's what they live for. — David Handler

The experience of life is very bitter. it is sweet only in imagination. In its reality it is very bitter. He escaped from the palace and the women and the riches and the luxury and everything. — Rajneesh

What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling like, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now repined! — Charlotte Bronte

The free world knows, out of the bitter wisdom of experience, that vigilance and sacrifice are the price of liberty. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

True wisdom ... is the product of hard-won, often bitter experience. — David Halberstam

The apple was meant to take away the bitter taste, perhaps," he said.
"I imagine that Mr. Turing wasn't exactly looking for a taste experience," said Corell.
"Man always tries to limit his suffering. — David Lagercrantz

Clearly, one primary purpose of our existence upon the earth is to obtain a body of flesh and bones. We have also been given the gift of agency. In a thousand ways we are privileged to choose for ourselves. Here we learn from the hard taskmaster of experience. We discern between good and evil. We differentiate as to the bitter and the sweet. We discover that there are consequences attached to our actions. — Thomas S. Monson

Bitter experience has taught us how fundamental our values are and how great the mission they represent. — Jan Peter Balkenende

If it were possible for any nation to fathom another people's bitter experience through a book, how much easier its future fate would become and how many calamities and mistakes it could avoid. But it is very difficult. There always is this fallacious belief: 'It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.'

Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance. — Adrienne Rich

The essence of life is that it's challenging. Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you feel 100 percent healthy. From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally get it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride. — Pema Chodron

Neither drink [coffee or tea] was known in Frankish lands, but seated in the coffeehouses, I drank of each at various times, twirling my moustache and listening with attention to that headier draught, the wine of the intellect, that sweet and bitter juice distilled from the vine of thought and the tree of man's experience. — Louis L'Amour

With no navigational skills, her travels became aimless, and after several days she began to experience excruciating hunger, as she had not the foresight to pack food before she set out. She drifted through tiny villages and saw juicy fruits and vegetables growing in the gardens of the peasants, but could not bring herself to beg for food or attempt to steal it. She ate small beetles and grasshoppers, since she had no hunting skills. She chewed on the bitter roots of sassafras trees, which turned her stomach sour but provided a small amount of nourishment. How — Brian Edwards

May you listen to the voice within the beat even when you are tired. When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead. May every experience in life be a door that opens your heart, expands your understanding, and leads you to freedom. If you are weary, may you be aroused by passion and purpose. If you are blameful and bitter, may you be sweetened by hope and humor. If you are frightened, may you be emboldened by a big consciousness far wiser than your fear. If you are lonely, may you find love, may you find friendship. If you are lost, may you understand that we are all lost, and still we are guided - by Strange Angels and Sleeping Giants, by our better and kinder natures, by the vibrant voice within the beat. May you follow that voice, for This is the way - the hero's journey, the life worth living, the reason we are here. — Elizabeth Lesser

The problem is, hope is the thing that can't be reined in by rules or pinned down by bitter experience. It's a blessing and curse. — Cinda Williams Chima

The only way of learning the method of science is the long and bitter way of personal experience. — John Desmond Bernal

Because being a fan is not all about the good times when victory makes life better. Dealing with defeat helps mold you as a fan. If you didn't experience the bitter taste of losing, then you wouldn't have any humility. You wouldn't have a heart. You'd be a New York Yankees fan. — Mark Tye Turner

Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. — James A. Baldwin

No matter what challenges or obstacles we experience, we must make a CHOICE to become better or bitter because of it. Will and pray your way through it. In my opinion, the difference between those who are considered strong and those who are seen as weak are what they DECIDE to focus on. But, having down moments don't make someone weak, it makes them human. We wouldn't be human if we don't "feel", but at some point we MUCH force ourselves to get up! — Yvonne Pierre

In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all and it often comes with bitter agony. Perfect relief is not possible except with time. You cannot now believe that you will ever feel better. But this is not true. You are sure to be happy again. Knowing this, truly believing it will make you less miserable now. I have had enough experience to make this statement. — Abraham Lincoln

Experience life in all possible ways
good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light,
summer-winter. Experience all the dualities.
Don't be afraid of experience, because
the more experience you have, the more
mature you become. — Osho

In the struggle to remain a complete person and to love from her fullness instead of her inadequacy a woman may appear hard. She may feel her early conditioning tugging her in the direction of surrender, but she ought to remember that she was originally loved for herself; she ought to hang on to herself and not find herself nagging, helpless, irritable and trapped. Perhaps I am not old enough yet to promise that the self-reliant woman is always loved, but she cannot be lonely as long as there are people in the world who need her joy and her strength, but certainly in my experience it has always been so. Lovers who are free to go when they are restless always come back; lovers who are free to change remain interesting. The bitter animosity and obscenity of divorce is unknown where individuals have not become Siamese twins. A lover who comes to your bed of his own accord is more likely to sleep with his arms around you all night than a lover who has nowhere else to sleep. — Germaine Greer

Life is sweet or bitter depending on where your attention is, at that moment. — George Alexiou

If things are tough, remember that every flower had to go through a whole lot of dirt to get there. So do not grieve about a bitter experience. The present is slipping by while you are regretting the past and worrying about the future. Regret will not prevent tomorrow's sorrows; it will only rob today of its strength. — Barbara Johnson

Remember Stephen King's First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal experience: You don't need one until you're making enough for someone to steal ... and if you're making that much, you'll be able to take your pick of good agents. — Stephen King

It takes a major unhappiness, a prolonged and bitter experience, to drive us away from loyalties once formed. And sometimes no amount of punishment can make us repudiate our loyalty. — Gordon W. Allport

What's the advantage of fear or the benefit of regret or the bonus of granting misery a foothold even if death is embracing you? My old abbot used to say, "Life is only precious if you wish it to be." I look at it like the last bite of a wonderful meal. Do you enjoy it, or does the knowledge that there is no more to follow make it so bitter that you would ruin the experience? - Myron on facing death — Michael J. Sullivan

Unhappily we have to pay in life for everything worthwhile. If we want experience, depth and an understanding of life's infinite phases we have to suffer shock and sorrow and then, if we are strong enough to rise above them, life is a curious bittersweet affair. Too much of its bitter aspect is of course terrible, but too much of unalloyed sweetness can also be bad enough. — Pamela Hicks

[T]hrough bitter experience I have learned that it is best to promise little and then to reward hard work with generosity. — Tahir Shah

Churches that are filled with self-righteous, exclusive, insecure, angry, moralistic people are extremely unattractive. Their public pronouncements are often highly judgmental, while internally such churches experience many bitter conflicts, splits, and divisions. When one of their leaders has a moral lapse, the churches either rationalize it and denounce the leader's critics, or else they scapegoat him. Millions of people raised in or near these kinds of churches reject Christianity at an early age or in college largely because of their experience. For the rest of their lives, then, they are inoculated against Christianity. If you are a person who has been disillusioned by such churches, anytime anyone recommends Christianity to you, you assume they are calling you to adopt "religion." Pharisees and their unattractive lives leave many people confused about the real nature of Christianity. — Timothy Keller

Contrast is important in life. We understand what light is because we can compare it with what we know is dark. Sweet is made sweeter after we eat something bitter. It's the very same with sadness. And it's important to experience sadness, to embrace it in order to truly know happiness. I was just a flat line until he came along. And maybe now I'm hurting. But isn't that what love is supposed to do? Make you feel, make you brave, make you look at yourself more carefully? — Tarryn Fisher

You learn out of bitter experience, trial and error. Life teaches you that. As sincere as you all are, you can't learn it all in school. — George Cukor

Among those dazzled by the Administration team was Vice-President Lyndon Johnson. After attending his first Cabinet meeting he went back to his mentor Sam Rayburn and told him with great enthusiasm how extraordinary they were, each brighter than the next, and that the smartest of them all was that fellow with the Stacomb on his hair from the Ford Motor Company, McNamara. "Well, Lyndon," Mister Sam answered, "you may be right and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I'd feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once." It is my favorite story in the book, for it underlines the weakness of the Kennedy team, the difference between intelligence and wisdom, between the abstract quickness and verbal fluency which the team exuded, and the true wisdom, which is the product of hard-won, often bitter experience. Wisdom for a few of them came after Vietnam. — David Halberstam

Experience is bitter. But it fruits is sweet like honey. — Lailah Gifty Akita

As an adult, I know about life and death. I know that good people can die too soon and bad ones can live too long. I know that life's not fair, and you take the bitter with the sweet and balance it all as best you can. — Elsie Hillman-Gordon