Bitter Words Quotes & Sayings

I go now to my long rest in the timeless halls beyond the seas and the Mountains of Aman. It will be long ere I am seen among the Noldor again; and it may be that we shall not meet a second time in death or life, for the fates of our kindreds are apart. Farewell! — J.R.R. Tolkien

Those words tasted bitter.
But the worst part was that those words were living inside me. And they were leaking out of me. Words were not things you could control. Not always. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

Very few people know loyalty anymore." "Do you?" I asked, needing for my own piece of mind to know. "Did I maybe start flirting with Shelly when I was still dating Meg in high school? Yeah, I did. I was sixteen and stupid as fuck. But I grew up. I watched countless families get torn apart by infidelity. I have had to comfort dozens of crying women in my office when I handed them the pictures they paid me to take. And I've gotten to witness the awful thing that happens when they stop crying." "What's that?" "They make up their minds to never let themselves get hurt like that again. See, cheating doesn't just screw up that one relationship, it tends to screw up every single one later because the person gets bitter or scared or distrusting. It's a sad fucking thing to see. And it's not something I am ever willing to do to a woman." He paused and I let those words sink in. — Jessica Gadziala

The tongue is the most remarkable. For we use it both to taste out sweet wine and bitter poison, thus also do we utter words both sweet and sout with the same tongue. — Neil Gaiman

Trade your bitterness with gratefulness. You will find joy of life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

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

You don't have to be bitter in life. Focus on the beauty of life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

This is going to seem bitter but I don't mean it that way, V., I'm just stating a fact here: you'll only ever call me if I call you first. Have you noticed that? If I call and leave a message you'll call me back, but you will never call me first. And I think that's kind of a horrible thing, V., when you're supposed to be someone's friend. I always come to you. You always say you're my friend but you'll never come to me and I think I have to stop listening to your words, V., and take stock instead in your actions. My friend C. thinks my expectations of friendship are too high but I don't think he's right. — Emily St. John Mandel

There are beautiful places inside him, where laughter comes easy, where sweet words appear like surprises. But I also know his bitter valleys. The dark caves where he hides his fears, his hurts, and his disillusionments. — Lia Riley

He tells me he can't believe how bitter he has become, how sour, that all his life he had been one of the most fun, one of the happiest, one of the most joyous people anyone knew, and now he was like a crumpled piece of steel covered in rust. The way he describes himself, a 'crumpled piece of steel covered in rust,' I don't think I'll ever forget those precise words or his voice as he said them. — Jacob Wren

Bitter words normally evaporate with the moisture of breath, after a quarrel. In order to become permanent, they require transcribers, reporters, complicit black hearts. — Barbara Kingsolver

I like the fact that it [social media] is unfiltered. In other words it's not Geraldo of Fox News or Geraldo of WABC Radio, it's Geraldo. And you know it's raw, unedited, what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, or, you know, some mistakes I'm making in real time. And I see that as a way to go out kicking and screaming. People will be hearing from me 'til the bitter end now. — Geraldo Rivera

Be like sugarcane sweet yet silent
don't get mixed up with bitter words — Rumi

Soon, the pain will be over! — Israelmore Ayivor

Spoken words are like seeds that we plant which will eventually grow into something sweet or bitter. Our actions in this life are seeds we're planning for the other life promised by Allah. — Shems Friedlander

The glass bottle does not know its own contents. It has no idea whether it is a vessel for the most delicious apple cider, a lovingly crafted wine, or a bitter poison. — Lang Leav

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

That was how we spoke, my mother and I: in puns and games and rhymes. In, you might say, lyrics. This was our tragedy. We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny. We were tinpan alleycats, but the gift of music had been withheld. We could not sing along, though we always knew the words. Still, defiantly, we roared our tuneless roars, we fell off the high notes and were trampled by the low ones. And if bitter ices were the consequence, well, there were worse fates in the world than that. — Salman Rushdie

I would never condone the burning of a Dan Brown novel, much though I loathe and detest his work. Well, I say work, you know, words, randomly arranged to form millions of dollars ... I'm not bitter at all ... — Bill Bailey

Life was not easy, nor was it happy, but she did not expect life to be easy, and, if it was not happy, that was woman's lot. It was a man's world, and she accepted it as such. The man owned the property, and the woman managed it. The man took credit for the management, and the woman praised his cleverness. The man roared like a bull when a splinter was in his finger, and the woman muffled the moans of childbirth, lest she disturb him. Men were rough of speech and often drunk. Women ignored the lapses of speech and put the drunkards to bed without bitter words. Men were rude and outspoken, women were always kind, gracious and forgiving. — Margaret Mitchell

Man doesn't realize his real purpose on earth so long as he rolls in comforts. It is absolutely true that adversity teaches a man a bitter lesson, toughens his fiber and moulds his character. In other words, an altogether new man is born out of adversity which helpfully destroys one's ego and makes one humble and selfless. Prolonged suffering opens the eyes to hate the things for which one craved before unduly, leading eventually even to a state of resignation. It then dawns on us that continued yearnings brings us intense agony. But the stoic mind is least perturbed by the vicissitudes of life. It is well within our efforts to conquer grief. It's simple. Develop an attitude of detachment even while remaining in the thick of terrestrial pleasures. — V.S. Naipaul

If words had flavors, hers would be bitter almonds and coffee grounds. — Jodi Picoult

Bertie opened the vial and drank the traded words down, tasting sour cherry syrup over shaved ice, bitter lemon peel, and spices that recalled a nameless sorrow. — Lisa Mantchev

I had this thought a while ago,
"My darling cannot understand
What I have done, or what would do
In this blind bitter land.'
And I grew weary of the sun
Until my thoughts cleared up again,
Remembering that the best I have done
Was done to make it plain;
That every year I have cried, "At length
My darling understands it all,
Because I have come into my strength,
And words obey my call';
That had she done so who can say
What would have shaken from the sieve?
I might have thrown poor words away
And been content to live. — W.B.Yeats

What, in fact, is a novel but a universe in which action is endowed with form, where final words are
pronounced, where people possess one another completely,
and where life assumes the aspect of destiny? 3 The world of the novel is only a rectification of the world
we live in, in pursuance of man's deepest wishes. For the world is undoubtedly the same one we know.
The suffering, the illusion, the love are the same. The heroes speak our language, have our weaknesses
and our strength. Their universe is neither more beautiful nor more enlightening than ours. But they, at
least, pursue their destinies to the bitter end and there are no more fascinating heroes than those who
indulge their passions to the fullest, Kirilov and Stavrogin, Mme Graslin, Julien Sorel, or the Prince de
Cleves. It is here that we can no longer keep pace with them, for they complete things that we can never
consummate — Albert Camus

He loops his arm over my shoulder and we watch the waves in silence. We've had so many silences between us these last few months, bitter ones, loaded ones, empty ones, and hurtful ones. This one is perfect. It says things that words can't. — Lindsey Leavitt

Words. I had always loved them. I collected them, like I had collected pretty stones as a child. I liked to roll words over my tongue like a lump of molten honeycomb, savouring the sweetness, the crackle, the crunch. — Kate Forsyth

Honey from the devil's fingers tastes bitter. — Matshona Dhliwayo

O, when the heart is, full, when bitter thoughts come crowding thickly up for utterance, and the poor common words of courtesy are such a very mockery, how much the bursting heart may pour itself in prayer! — Nathaniel Parker Willis

The problem is not in the sugar when it tastes bitter, the problem is with the tongue. — Munia Khan

Strange sometimes how easy bitter words came, how hard the kind ones. — Winston Graham

Everyone's life is a poetry rhymed with sweet and bitter words, rhythmed with moments. — Robert Ahaness

He acted like he didn't hear me. "He will let you down, because that's what he does. That's who he is."
For the rest of my life, I was going to remember those words. Everything Jeremiah said to me that day, our wedding day, I would remember. I would remember the words Jeremiah said and the way he looked at me with them. With pity, and with bitterness. I hated myself for being the one who made him bitter, because that was one thing he'd never been.
I reached up and laid my palm on his cheek. He could have pushed my hand away, he could have recoiled at my touch. He didn't. Just that one tiny thing told me what I needed to know - that Jere was still Jere and nothing could ever change that. — Jenny Han

I cannot here withhold the statement that optimism, where it is not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbor nothing but words under their shallow foreheads, seems to me to be not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the most unspeakable sufferings of mankind. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Farewell's a bitter word to say. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Bittersweet? No, just bitter, the taste of your tongue.
Words you can't have back, so they linger. — Coco J. Ginger

It is trite to speak of a broken heart. Hearts are not broken; they continue to beat, the blood still courses, even in the bitter after-days of betrayal. but something is broken when pain beyond words is suffered; some connection that formerly existed with light and hope and bright mornings is severed, and can never be restored. — Michael Cox

Though sometimes you need to explain yourself with bitter or better words, he who knows how to speak how matured he is with silence in his most tempting moment is truly a matured person. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly, shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay beneath him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus' song : I sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. her door was open : she wanted to hear my music. silent with aw and pity i went to her bedside. she was crying in her wretched bed for these words, Stephen : love's bitter mystery. — James Joyce

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

"Rachel ... you need help."
I laugh and it's the same bitter laugh I remember him giving when we met so many weeks ago. "So do you."
"I love you." Isaiah says it so simply that my heart soars and sinks at the same time.
"I love you," I whisper. "Did you ever think that loving someone could hurt so bad?"
Isaiah shakes his head and stares out the window.
"What's going to happen to us?" I ask. Because I don't know how the two of us can continue forward. Isaiah refuses to let me in. It's sort of cruel. He's brought me close with his stories of his childhood and with his words of love, but he can't relinquish control. I refuse to be with someone who won't treat me as an equal. — Katie McGarry

Nature in darkness groans and men are bound to sullen contemplation in the night: restless they turn on beds of sorrow; in their inmost brain feeling the crushing wheels, they rise, they write the bitter words of stern philosophy and knead the bread of knowledge with tears and groans. — William Blake

A little bit of hatred can spoil a score of years
And blur the eyes that ought to smile with many needless tears.
A little bit of thoughtlessness and anger for a day
Can rob a home of all its joy and drive delight away..
A little bit of shouting in a sharp and vicious tone
Can leave a sting that will be felt when many years have flown.
And just one hasty moment of ill temper can offend
And leave an inner injury the years may never mend.
It takes no mental fiber to say harsh and bitter things;
It doesn't call for courage to employ a lash that stings.
And cruel words and bitter any fool can think to say,
But the hurt they leave behind them takes years to wipe away.
Just a little bit of hatred robs a home of all delight,
And leaves a winding trail of wrong that time may never right.
For only those are happy and keep their peace of mind,
Who guard themselves from hatred and words that are unkind! — Edgar A. Guest

Liars have no noble tongues and their words tasted bitter. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment. — W. Somerset Maugham

Man, that's a killer strategy, that is, an awesome way to persuade the incognoscenti that we're not crazed hokum junkies, high on hackwork, trying to pimp our addled euphoria to anyone who passes. Yeah, vehement denial that we've got anything to do with the crack-whore pump-daddy beast of a thousand cocks locked in the closet. Bitter accusations of snootcocking snipewankery when they point out that crack-whore pimp-daddy beast of a thousand cocks in the closet. Offended outrage when they assume the mindfuck we're touting is a cheap handjob, just because we're, like, standing on a street corner dressed to sell our arses. And because our first words to a prospective customer just happens to be, 'Hey, big boy. — Hal Duncan

you clutter my mind
thoughts of you, thoughts of me with you
thoughts that keep me from rest
that ull me to sleep at night
your words are like butter
they're smooth and they're rich
and they make the bitter bits better — Madisen Kuhn

Better choose silence than bitter words which shall leave nothing but bitter footprints — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

We don't think of ourselves as 'unforgiving' or 'bitter'- those words imply that we are somehow personally responsible. We prefer to talk about how deeply we have been 'hurt', implying that we are merely helpless victims. Are those who have been deeply wounded destined to live damaged lives? Or is there real healing for deep hurt? I say there is ... We've also deceived ourselves into believing that we can love and serve God and be 'good Christians,' while failing to forgive. When are we going to get honest? — Byron Paulus

If you do not feel the bitter cold inside you when you look at the poor trembling out of cold, it means you are lack of compassion; in other words, you are lack of everything! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Oftentimes we call Life bitter names, but only when we ourselves are bitter and dark. And we deem her empty and unprofitable, but only when the soul goes wandering in desolate places, and the heart is drunken with overmindfulness of self.
Life is deep and high and distant; and though only your vast vision can reach even her feet, yet she is near; and though only the breath of your breath reaches her heart, the shadow of your shadow crosses her face, and the echo of your faintest cry becomes a spring and an autumn in her breast.
And life is veiled and hidden, even as your greater self is hidden and veiled. Yet when Life speaks, all the winds become words; and when she speaks again, the smiles upon your lips and the tears in your eyes turn also into words. When she sings, the deaf hear and are held; and when she comes walking, the sightless behold her and are amazed and follow her in wonder and astonishment. — Kahlil Gibran

For the moment they wanted to live with the least expenditure, economize words, gestures, thoughts, float: they had only one day in which to smooth out their wrinkles, their crow's feet, the bitter lines made by a hard week's work. One day only. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Good medicine is bitter to the mouth, but has an effect on the disease. Faithful words hurt one's ears, but have value for one's conduct. — Takeda Nobushige

here are beautiful places inside him, where laughter comes easy, where sweet words appear like surprises. But I also know his bitter valleys. The dark caves where he hides his fears, his hurts, and his disillusionments. And he knows mine. — Lia Riley

Love me only for my actions, and I will grow stressed.
Love me only for my body, and I will grow paranoid.
Love me only for my words, and I will grow bitter.
Love me only for my soul, and I will grow. — Vironika Tugaleva

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause. — Victor Hugo

Dogs needed no words to console you. Dogs were the ultimate practitioners of the therapy of touch. Dogs knew and accepted the hard realities of life that human beings could not acknowledge until those obvious truths were exhaustively described with words, and even then there was often more bitter acknowledgment than humble acceptance. — Dean Koontz

As drops of bitter medicine, though minute, may have a salutary force, so words, though few and painful, uttered seasonably, may rouse the prostrate energies of those who meet misfortune with despondency. — J. K. Bharavi

You will especially not find anyone who speaks bitterly to you. All the 'diseases' [worldly suffering] remains due to the sweetness. Bitterness will remove the disease, sweetness will increase it. Your life should be such that you will not have to listen to bitter words. If however, you have to listen to bitter words, then you should listen to it. It is always beneficial. — Dada Bhagwan

Your childhood, said Yackle coaxingly, as if she could smell his thoughts. As if she could sniff out those passages he hadn't chosen to retail at drink parties.
Her words lulled him. The past, even a bitter past, is usually more pungent than the present, or at least better organized in the mind. — Gregory Maguire

It's a fact that men of all nations are convinced that men of any other nation are no good for women. I'm sure a statistically significant number of women would be able to vouch for this.
And listen how you talk. You are bitter already. When I hear a woman use words like statistics, I know she is bitter. — Doris Lessing

A friend's bitter words seem to us more poisonous than a serpent's tooth. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

What are you doing?" Damen's breath
was shaky.
"What am I doing? You are not very
observant."
"You're not yourself," said Damen. "And
even if you were, you don't do anything
without a dozen motives."
Laurent went very still, the soft words
half bitter. "Don't I? I must want
something. — C.S. Pacat

Gripped with bitter cold, ice-locked, Petersburg burned in delirium. One knew: out there, invisible behind the curtain of fog, the red and yellow columns, spires, and hoary gates and fences crept on tiptoe, creaking and shuffling. A fevered, impossible, icy sun hung in the fog - to the left, to the right, above, below - a dove over a house on fire. From the delirium-born, misty world, dragon men dived up into the earthly world, belched fog - heard in the misty world as words, but here becoming nothing - round white puffs of smoke. The dragon men dived up and disappeared again into the fog. And trolleys rushed screeching out of the earthly world into the unknown. ("The Dragon") — Yevgeny Zamyatin

Optimism, where it is not just the thoughtless talk of someone with only words in his flat head, strikes me as not only absurd, but even a truly wicked way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of humanity. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Little Words
When you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf,
Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds;
And I can only stare, and shape my grief
In little words.
I cannot conjure loveliness, to drown
The bitter woe that racks my cords apart.
The weary pen that sets my sorrow down
Feeds at my heart.
There is no mercy in the shifting year,
No beauty wraps me tenderly about.
I turn to little words- so you, my dear,
Can spell them out. — Dorothy Parker

Of all the organs, ' said Nehemiah Trot, 'the tongue is the most remarkable. For we use it both to taste our sweet wine and bitter poison, thus also do we utter words both sweet and sour with the same tongue. Go to her! Talk to her! — Neil Gaiman

Because most people are stupid." Laila's words were harsh and her gaze bitter. "They don't want to see or know the truth. And so they willingly believe all the lies they are told. — Katja Michael

About 90 percent of the things in our lives are right, and about 10 percent are wrong. If we want to be happy, all we have to do is to concentrate on the 90 percent that are right, and ignore the 10 percent that are wrong. If we want to be worried and bitter and have stomach ulcers, all we have to do is to concentrate on the 10 percent that are wrong and ignore the 90 percent that are glorious. The words Think and Thank — Og Mandino

You will soon regret the bitter words you fumed when you were angry. — Israelmore Ayivor

Socrates dies with honor, surrounded by his disciples listening to the most tender words -the easiest death that one could wish to die. Jesus dies in pain, dishonor, mockery, the object of universal cursing - the most horrible death that one could fear. At the receipt of the cup of poison, Socrates blesses him who could not give it to him without tears; Jesus, while suffering the sharpest pains, prays for His most bitter enemies. If Socrates lived and died like a philosopher, Jesus lived and died like a god. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

She was aware of the movement of his lips as he pressed soundless words in her palm. He released her, and the look he gave her seemed to reveal the depths of his lustful, longing, bitter soul. "Good-bye, Miss Fielding," he said hoarsely. — Lisa Kleypas

nothing but a testament of his ownership of me. A daily reminder of the golden cage I'd be trapped in for the rest of my life. Until death do us part wasn't an empty promise as with so many other couples that entered the holy bond of marriage. There was no way out of this union for me. I was Luca's until the bitter end. The last few words of the oath that men swore when they were inducted into the mafia could just as well have been the closing of my wedding vow: "I enter alive and I will have to get out dead." I should have run when I still had the chance. — Cora Reilly

I wanted to feel those words in my mouth as I spoke them aloud. Words could be like food - they felt like something in your mouth. They tasted like something. "My brother is in prison." Those words tasted bitter. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

When she can't sleep, she writes. All she remembers is his words. It will soon be dawn, with fire-stoked horses thundering to the humming sky of crickets. I will see you run. And I will run with you. That morning, while Ata ate a dripping mango over the sink, she felt him come up behind her and touch the small of her back, light as a current of air. He kissed the side of her neck, inhaled the steam of bitter cocoa, boiling with bay leaves, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and said it reminded him of his childhood. "You are from the islands," she said. But then he was gone. — Oonya Kempadoo

According to the thesaurus... and according to me... there are over thirty different meanings and substitutions for
the word
mean.
(I quickly yell the following words; the entire class flinches- including Will)
Jackass, jerk, cruel, dickhead, unkind, harsh, wicked,
hateful, heartless, vicious, virulent, unrelenting, tyrannical, malevolent, atrocious, bastard, barbarous, bitter, brutal, callous, degenerate, brutish, depraved, evil, fierce, hard, implacable, rancorous, pernicious, inhumane, monstrous, merciless, inexorable.
And my personal favorite - asshole. — Colleen Hoover

yes,' said Frodo. 'But do you remember Gandalf's words: Even Gollum may have something yet to do? But for him, Sam, I could not have destroyed the Ring. The quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end. So let us forgive him! — J.R.R. Tolkien

To use bitter words, when kind words are at hand,Is like picking unripe fruit when the ripe fruit is there. — Thiruvalluvar

Lamentations' testimony is bitter, raw, and largely unhealed. Its poems use 'wounded words' to illumine pain and resist God's acts in the world. — Kathleen M. O'Connor

Contrary to popular belief, the helpful words that open the way to great, dramatic dialogues are, in general, modest, ordinary, banal, no one would think that Would you like a cup of coffee could serve as an introduction to a bitter debate about feelings that have died or to the sweetness of a reconciliation that neither person knows how to bring about. — Jose Saramago

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

There was a song i heard when i was in los angeles by a local group. the song was called "los angeles" and the words and images were so harsh and bitter that the song would reverberate in my mind for days. the images, i later found out, were personal and no one i knew shared them. the images i had were of people being driven mad by living in the city. images of parents who were so hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children. images of people, teenagers my own age, looking up from the asphalt and being blinded by the sun. these images stayed with me even after i left the city. images so violent and malicious that they seemed to be my only point of reference for a long time afterwards. after i left. — Bret Easton Ellis

Bread baked without love is a bitter bread that feeds but half a man's hunger, - those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around. If you are a writer who would secretly prefer to be a lawyer or a doctor, your written words will feed but half the hunger of your readers; if you are a teacher who would rather be a businessman, your instructions will meet but half the need for knowledge of your students; if you are a scientist who hates science, your performance will satisfy but half the needs of your mission. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

If I go out of public life with one feeling, with one conviction, it is this : a deep regret for many bitter words I have used in my life, deep sincere repentance for my violence of language. But I hope they will be forgiven me by God and man, because not once in all my life have I attacked anybody unjustly from my point of view, and without believing it was my duty to do so. — Henri Bourassa

Mark my words: Being dead isn't all sitting around in remorseful reflection and bitter self-recrimination. Death, like life, is what you make of it. — Chuck Palahniuk

My God, Sweetness beyond words, make bitter all the carnal comfort that draws me from love of the eternal and lures me to its evil self by the sight of some delightful good in the present. Let it not overcome me, my God. Let not flesh and blood conquer me. Let not the world and its brief glory deceive me, nor the devil trip me by his craftiness. Give me courage to resist, patience to endure, and constancy to persevere. Give me the soothing unction of Your spirit rather than all the consolations of the world, and in place of carnal love, infuse into me the love of Your name. — Thomas A Kempis

Tonight all the hells of young grief have opened again; the mad words, the bitter resentment, the fluttering in the stomach, the nightmare unreality, the wallowed-in tears. For in grief nothing 'stays put.' One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often - will it be for always? - how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, 'I never realized my loss till this moment'? The same leg is cut off time after time. The first plunge of the knife into the flesh is felt again and again. They — C.S. Lewis

There are souls beneath that water. Fixed in slime
they speak their piece, end it, and start again:
'Sullen were we in the air made sweet by the Sun;
in the glory of his shining our hearts poured
a bitter smoke. Sullen were we begun;
sullen we lie forever in this ditch.'
This litany they gargle in their throats
as if they sand, but lacked the words and pitch. — Dante Alighieri

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

Senseless is the breast and cold
Which relenting love would fold;
Bloodless are the veins and chill
Which the pulse of pain did fill;
Every little living nerve
That from bitter words did swerve
Round the tortur'd lips and brow,
Are like sapless leaflets now
Frozen upon December's bough. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I understand that if you focus on what is wrong in your life, that is all you will see." Marian put her hands on Alditha's shoulders. "But if you open your eyes, you will see all the good gifts God has given you. If you continue to see only the bad, you will become bitter and angry. If you decide to see what is good, you will go back to being the smiling girl I grew up with and loved." Alditha swallowed hard. The words of the priest came to her. "This life, though hard, is a gift. Sometimes even I do not understand all of His ways, but I will tell you this; he loves you, and everything he does or does not do is for your good. You simply have to have faith to see it that way. — Sarah Holman

Cold words freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful. Kind words also produce their own image on men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They smooth, and quiet, and comfort the hearer. — Blaise Pascal

And even when you're ready to let go. When you're ready to break free. When you're ready to be brand-new. Loneliness is an old friend standing beside you in the mirror, looking you in the eye, challenging you to live your life without it. You can't find the words to fight yourself, to fight the words screaming that you're not enough never enough never ever enough. Loneliness is a bitter, wretched companion. Sometimes — Tahereh Mafi

Words are like Spices
Some are mellow
Some are sweet
Some are spicy
And some are bitter

Don't let the bitter ones ruin your palate for the wonderful tastes
in life that are coming your way! — Leeza Donatella

I have been writing my heart out all my life, but only getting a living out of it now, and the attacks are coming in thick. A lot of people are mad and jealous and bitter and I only hope they also can be heard by an expanding publishing program the size of Russia's. Because it's not a question of the merit of art, but a question of spontaneity and sincerity and joy I say. I would like everybody in the world to tell his full life confession and tell it HIS OWN WAY and then we'd have something to read in our old age, instead of the hesitations and cavilings of 'men of letters' with blear faces who only alter words that the Angel brought them. — Jack Kerouac

Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged in the long close embrace between the orphans, be sacred. A father, sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in that one moment. Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain. — Charles Dickens

I pushed his hair away from his eyes and took a closer look at his cheek. Maybe there really had been a boy in the street, but I also wouldn't put it past Cole to make one appear,if he had that power.
Jack's eyes opened fully,and he looked at me with half a grin. "You remember the first time I told you I loved you?" His words slurred together.
"Shhhhh.Don't talk.The paramedics are on their way."
"Do you?"
I touched his cheek and he winced. I could almost taste his pain,as if it were a tangible element in the air.I could feel my body hungering for the hurt.It was the first time since I'd Returned that I craved someone else's energy.Even at my lowest point,those last moments in the Everneath,I'd never felt a need for it.Until now.Until I was faced with emotions this strong.
He tilted his head toward me,and I jerked back. The taste in the air became bitter and sweet,a mixture of pain and longing.
"Tell me you remember," he said. "Please. — Brodi Ashton

Tis solace making baubles, ay, and sport.
Himself peeped late, eyed Prosper at his books
Careless and lofty, lord now of the isle:
Vexed, 'stitched a book of broad leaves, arrow-shaped,
Wrote thereon, he knows what, prodigious words;
Has peeled a wand and called it by a name;
Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe
The eyed skin of a supple oncelot;
And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole,
A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch,
Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye,
And saith she is Miranda and my wife:
'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane
He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge;
Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared,
Blinded the eyes of, and brought somewhat tame,
And split its toe-webs, and now pens the drudge
In a hole o' the rock and calls him Caliban;
A bitter heart that bides its time and bites. — Robert Browning