Bitter Pill Quotes & Sayings

Anecdote: The East End seemed to be in the grip of yet another economic crisis ... By the winter of 1933, an army of the unemployed gathered daily outside the dock gates, desperate for a day or 2 paid work ... There was no cushion, no disaster fund, no stashed savings, no government handouts no syrup that could sweeten the bitter pill of poverty. — Melanie McGrath

Ho. What's so surprising? Asach aahe. It is what it is. Bambai is a bitter pill. Take large gulps of water and swallow it, or its bitterness will quickly begin to sphraidd in your mouth, making it impossible for you to gulp it down," said Laxmi. — Aditya Kripalani

The worst thing about pills was that they worked. Without them, you might just adapt; medical optimism suspended you in a maintenance reality. He'd never known how sick he was until he'd gotten health insurance. The pill that really wanted inventing was the bitter one that cured you of optimism and made time go faster. — Tony Tulathimutte

We are in the process of instituting a reign of terror on earth, and there's only one word that justifies that as far as these savages are concerned: the word of this or that god. In name of a divine entity we can do whatever the hell we like and most of those fools down there will swallow it like a bitter pill. — Salman Rushdie

Many people are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed; they chew the bitter pill which they would not even know to be bitter if they had the sense to swallow it whole in a cup of patience and water. — Charles Spurgeon

To swallow a bitter pill, a child is made to play hopscotch for a horehound, Dr. Praxton had said. — Dew Platt

The sting of her abandonment had not lessened through the years, and I suspected it would never go away. Occasionally, I could see agony in her eyes, the shadows that flickered in the background. If I could, I'd take her pain and make it my own. I'd swallow it like a bitter pill and live with the consequences. — T.J. Forrester

Every morning I sit at the kitchen table over a tall glass of water swallowing pills. (So my hands won't shake.) (So my heart won't race.) (So my face won't thaw.) (So my blood won't mold.) (So the voices won't scream.) (So I don't reach for knives.) (So I keep out of the oven.) (So I eat every morsel.) (So the wine goes bitter.) (So I remember the laundry.) (So I remember to call.) (So I remember the name of each pill.) (So I remember the name of each sickness.) (So I keep my hands inside my hands.) (So the city won't rattle.) (So I don't weep on the bus.) (So I don't wander the guardrail.) (So the flashbacks go quiet.) (So the insomnia sleeps.) (So I don't jump at car horns.) (So I don't jump at cat-calls.) (So I don't jump a bridge.) (So I don't twitch.) (So I don't riot.) (So I don't slit a strange man's throat.) — Jeanann Verlee

On a personal level, one of the main reasons I had wanted to cross Antarctica alone was to find out where my limits lay. If I failed because I had found those limits by being unable to continue for mental or physical reasons I would, at least, be returning home with some kind of answer. To fail because I had run out of time was a failure by logistics and as such, answered nothing. I would be left with the same question I had arrived with and that would be the bitter pill, the true failure. I couldn't imagine ever wanting to repeat this journey and so the question would likely always remain unanswered. This was my one and only opportunity and it would be wasted. — Felicity Aston

For to love, loveless, is a bitter pill:But to be loved, unloving, bitterer still. — Jan Struther

During that long terrible ride to Munich, I finally swallowed the bitter pill of my lover's rejection and poisoned myself with it. I murdered the personality I was born with and transformed myself from a butterfly back in into a caterpillar. That night I learned to seek the shadows, to prefer silence — Edith Hahn Beer

I firmly believe that unless one has tasted the bitter pill of failure, one cannot aspire enough for success. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

I tumbled about New York City never really forming friendships for fear they'd just disappoint me further than I already was. I was afraid that a loss like that would be the bitter pill that would kill the little spirit I had left. - Callum Tate in Callum & Harper — Fisher Amelie

There's an appetite for vigour in films. The camera loves a bit of movement. Movement is usually attached to younger people and men, and that's just the way it is. I think that it's a bitter pill to swallow, but it's a fact that there aren't going to be masses and masses of roles for older women because there isn't the audience for it. — Joanna Lumley

It is a remarkable irony that many of the best shows in London - Chicago, Oklahoma! - and even such harmless diversions as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast - are imports from the colonies, while the homegrown productions include such luxurious twaddle as Mamma Mia!, Bombay Dreams, and Starlight Express. Brits who view' American culture with disdain are the ones who must pay the freight here, being careful not to throw stones from inside their glass houses. Though it is doubtless a bitter pill to swallow, not everything that is idiotic, pandering, or unsophisticated originated in the land of the free and the home of Kenny G. Americans did not invent Cats. — Joe Queenan

A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it. — O. Henry

The bleakness of what faces us is difficult to swallow. As long as we engage in happy platitudes and a false kind of vision of the possible, it may empower you over the short term, but it is eventually, because of the reality in front of us, going to lead to despair and cynicism and apathy. It's better to swallow hard the bitter pill of what we're up against. — Chris Hedges

What signifies, says some one, giving halfpence to beggars? they only lay it out in gin or tobacco. "And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence (says Johnson)? it is surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to shew even visible displeasure, if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths." — Hester Lynch Piozzi

Mental illness is a myth, whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations. — Thomas Szasz

Honesty is a quality Patrick likes. Give him a bitter pill if the situation demands it, but don't tell him it's chocolate. — Leta Blake

Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a brere;
Sweet is the juniper, but sharp his bough;
Sweet is the eglantine, but stiketh nere;
Sweet is the firbloome, but its braunches rough;
Sweet is the cypress, but its rynd is tough;
Sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill;
Sweet is the broome-flowre, but yet sowre enough;
And sweet is moly, but his root is ill. — Edmund Spenser

Privatization is a bitter pill but it is a pill that will cure. — Frederick Chiluba

You should protest about the views of people you disagree with over major moral issues, and argue them down, but you should not try to silence them, however repugnant you find them. That is the bitter pill free speech requires us to swallow. — Julian Baggini

I'll be the judge of that! I command you to speak at once!" "Permit me to land us first," he said. And not waiting for her permission, he turned onto the base leg, brought the wings into optimum lift, settled gently onto the bright orange pad atop the roof. "Now," Alia said. "Speak." "I told him that to endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe." She shook her head. "That's . . . that's . . ." "A bitter pill," he said, watching the guards run toward them across the roof, taking up their escort positions. — Frank Herbert

Raise from your bed of languor
Raise from your bed of dismay
Your friends will not come tomorrow
As they did not come today
You must rely on yourself, they said,
You must rely on yourself,
Oh but I find this pill so bitter said the poor man
As he took it from the shelf
Crying, O sweet Death come to me
Come to me for company,
Sweet Death it is only you I can
Constrain for company. — Stevie Smith

At the expense of Gregor's sacrifice, the sister, at the end of the story, stretches her arrogant body and gets the liberation Gregor longed for. Under Gregor's care first, and then her parents', the sister enjoys a healthy childhood, one leading to physical and mental development, and one in which she isn't trapped. Yet our loyalty to Gregor extends even beyond death, and his sister's cheery success story offers but a bitter pill — Franz Kafka

It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace ... To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order. — Walter Cronkite

The rest I omit, for many a bitter Pill can be swallowed under a golden Cover: I make no Mencion that in each of my Churches I put a Signe so that he who sees the Fabrick may see also the Shaddowe of the Reality of which it is the Pattern or Figure. Thus, in the church of Lime-house, the nineteen Pillars in the Aisles will represent the Names of Baal-Berith, the seven Pillars of the Chappell will signify the Chapters of his Covenant. All those who wish to know more of this may take up Clavis Salomonis, Niceron's Thaumaturgus Opticus where he speaks of Line and Distance, Cornelius Agrippa his De occuItia philosophia and Giordano Bruno his De magia and De vinculis in genere where he speaks of Hieroglyphs and the Raising of the Devilles. — Peter Ackroyd

Normal is a bitter pill that we rail against. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

How ironic! After decades of grub, deluges of wine and alcohol of every sort, after a life spent in butter, cream, rich sauces, and oil in constant, knowingly orchestrated and meticulously cajoled excess, my trustiest right-hand men, Sir Liver and his associate Stomach, are doing marvelously well and it is my heart that is giving out. I am dying of cardiac insufficiency. What a bitter pill to swallow. — Muriel Barbery

Not many people are willing to give failure a second opportunity. They fail once and it is all over. The bitter pill of failure is often more than most people can handle. If you are willing to accept failure and learn from it, if you are willing to consider failure as a blessing in disguise and bounce back, you have got the essential of harnessing one of the most powerful success forces. — Joseph Sugarman