Bitterest Quotes & Sayings

A man can die. He is glorious when he calmly accepts death; but when he fights like a tiger, when he stands at bay his back to the wall, a broken weapon in his hand, bloody, defiant, game to the end, then he is sublime. Then he wrings respect from the souls of even his bitterest foes. Then he is avenged even in his death. — Zane Grey

When the inhabitants of some sequestered island first descry the "big canoe" of the European rolling through the blue waters towards their shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open arms stand ready to embrace the strangers. Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosoms the vipers whose sting is destined to poison all their joys; and the instinctive feeling of love within their breasts is soon converted into the bitterest hate. — Herman Melville

The bitterest of ironies is that the people who make us feel the most accepted, secure, and whole are the same people who make us feel the most rejected, unstable, and heart broken. — Gume Laurel III

We rode in silence for a while and I wondered if men were the world's leaves. If as we aged the world filled us with its poisons so as old men, filled to the brim with the bitterest gall, we could fall into hell and take it all with us. Perhaps without death the world would choke on its own evils. — Mark Lawrence

The age of recording is necessarily an age of nostalgia
when was the past so hauntingly accessible?
but its bitterest insight is the incapacity of even the most perfectly captured sound to restore the moment of its first inscribing. That world is no longer there. — Geoffrey O'Brien

The Witch's knife like nails drummed the crystal of the windowsill, chipping and scoring it. They sounded like death beatles clicking in the walls.'Taste it,' the pearl was telling her, 'That I may know my daughter's heart.' Almost without a thought, Ariel touched a few grains of the Witch's dust to her tongue, and a sharp sensation went through her like a pinprick. It was the bitterest thing she has ever known. it tasted like despair. — Meredith Ann Pierce

For the first time in his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune beyond remedy, misfortune his own fault. — Leo Tolstoy

The greatest of human actions will appear to be insignificant when we come to die, and especially those upon which men most pride themselves
these will yield them the bitterest humiliation. We shall then say what madmen we must have been to have wasted so much time and energy upon such paltry things. When we shall discover that they were not real, that they were but mere bubbles, mere pretences, we shall then look upon ourselves as demented to have spent the whole of our life and of our energy upon them. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The bitterest truth is better than the sweetest lie. — Michael Stuhlbarg

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest. — Confucius

Your own malice is the bitterest of all evils. Is it then possible to correct malice by means of evil? Having a beam in your own eye, can you pull out the mote from the eye of another? — John Of Kronstadt

But neither Europe nor Africa can show any such desolation as America. The proudest, stubbornest, bitterest peasant of deserted Spain, the most primitive and superstitious Arab of the remotest oases, are a little more than kin and never less than kind at their worst; whereas in the United States one is almost always conscious of an instinctive lack of sympathy and understanding with even the most charming and cultured people. — Aleister Crowley

What you'll always get from me is a variety of emotions. Whenever you listen to my CD, whether you're the hardest dude or the bitterest cat, I'll give you a real story to think about. — Drake

I like poisons, the slowest

and drinks, the stronges

and coffee, the bitterest

and the craziest hallucinations.

You can even throw me off a cliff, I'll say:

So what? I love to fly — Bruna Lombardi

A common danger unites even the bitterest enemies. — Aristotle.

In every kind of adversity, the bitterest part of a man's affliction is to remember that he once was happy. — Boethius

For those ashamed of him Cupid reserves the bitterest passions. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Genius, apart from natural sensitiveness, is prone equally to unreasoning joy and to bitterest morbidness. — Mary MacLane

...that secret hostility natural between brothers, the roots of which --little nursery rivalries--sometimes toughen and deepen as life goes on, and, all hidden, support a plant capable of producing in season the bitterest fruits. — John Galsworthy

That's why; he's worried about how his life is turning out, and he's lonely, and lonely people are the bitterest of them all — Nick Hornby

I was a switchboard operator on the first season of 'Mad Men.' I was the oldest and bitterest. — Stephanie Courtney

No tyrant, however evil, has yet lacked ready hands to execute his most abominable will. To read how eagerly men have rushed to serve the despot is the bitterest, the saddest matter of history; it is the saddest sight in our own day. — Richard Jefferies

The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life. — Pablo Neruda

Happy slaves are the bitterest enemies of freedom. — Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough. — Maurice Maeterlinck

O God, protect me from my friends, that they have not power over me.
Thou hast giv'n me power to protect myself from thy bitterest enemies. — William Blake

People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in order to console me for the wretchedness of blacks. But an itemized account of the American failure does not console me and it should not console anyone else. That hundreds of thousands of white people are living, in effect, no better than the "niggers" is not a fact to be regarded with complacency. The social and moral bankruptcy suggested by this fact is of the bitterest, most terrifying kind. — James Baldwin

It was the bitterest irony; I came to Washington to fight for "the family" and destroyed mine in the process. — David Kuo

Nobody will ever know I existed. Nothing to leave behind me. Nothing to pass on. Nobody to mourn me. That's the bitterest blow of all. — Tony Hancock

Deep the waves may be and cold,
But Jehovah is our refuge,
And His promise is our hold;
For the Lord Himself hath said it,
He, the faithful God and true:
"When thou comest to the waters
Thou shalt not go down, BUT THROUGH."
Seas of sorrow, seas of trial,
Bitterest anguish, fiercest pain,
Rolling surges of temptation
Sweeping over heart and brain
They shall never overflow us
For we know His word is true;
All His waves and all His billows
He will lead us safely through.
Threatening breakers of destruction,
Doubt's insidious undertow,
Shall not sink us, shall not drag us
Out to ocean depths of woe;
For His promise shall sustain us,
Praise the Lord, whose Word is true!
We shall not go down, or under,
For He saith, "Thou passest THROUGH — Annie Johnson Flint

Thankfully, our disappointments matter to God, and He has a way of taking even some of the bitterest moments we go through and making them into something of great significance in our life. It's hard to understand it at the time. Not one of us wants that thread when it is being woven in. Not one of us says, 'I can hardly wait to see where this is going to fit.' We all say at that moment, 'This is not the pattern I want. — Ravi Zacharias

Every morning, even in the bitterest winter, she stood before the chapel door until it opened at four and remained there until after the last Mass. Out from her Caughnawaga cabin at dawn and straight-way to chapel to adore the Blessed Sacrament, hear every Mass; back again during the day to hear instruction, and at night for a last prayer or Benediction. — Kateri Tekakwitha

It seemed as if I were born to bring sorrow on all who befriended me, and that was the bitterest drop in the bitter cup of my life. — Harriet Jacobs

I have lost my friends," D'Artagnan said ruefully, burying his head in his hands. "I have nothing left but the bitterest of recollections ... "
Two large tears rolled down his cheeks.
"You are young," Athos answered. "Your bitter recollections have the time requisite to change into the happiest of memories. — Alexandre Dumas

Obligation is the bitterest thraldom. — Suzanne Curchod

How mercifully can our Creator treat His creatures, even in those conditions in which they seemed to be overwhelmed in destruction! How can He sweeten the bitterest providences, and give us cause to praise Him for dungeons and prisons! What a table was here spread for me in a wilderness where I saw nothing at first but to perish for hunger! — Daniel Defoe

I think the satirist is always basically optimistic. The satirist's complaint about society is always that it doesn't measure up to a fairly high ideal he has. I think that even the bitterest satirist, even a man like Swift, was probably rather an optimist at heart. — John Dos Passos

Morpheus stops in his tracks. I have his full attention. "So, you manipulated us both with one vow." His long black lashes tremble, and admiration shimmers behind his wounded gaze - the same look I've received throughout my life each time I please him. Although the dark, angry crimson of his blinking jewels belies any true pleasure. "Bitterest irony. It would appear I trained you too well - " — A.G. Howard

The sweetest memory is that which involves something which one should not have done; the bitterest, that which involves something which one should not have done, and which one did not do. — George Jean Nathan

It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting. — Lemony Snicket

One of the bitterest ironies of life is that one truly appreciates a blessing only after having been deprived of it or imagining that. — Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi

Sad; so sad, those smoky-rose, smoky-mauve evenings of late autumn, sad enough to pierce the heart. The sun departs the sky in winding sheets of gaudy cloud; anguish enters the city, a sense of the bitterest regret, a nostalgia for things we never knew, anguish of the turn of the year, the time of impotent yearning, the inconsolable season. — Angela Carter

That is the bitterest of all,
to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing. — George Eliot

Love is real
the most real, the most lasting, the sweetest and yet the bitterest thing we know. — Charlotte Bronte

Of all the passions, jealousy is that which exacts the hardest service, and pays the bitterest wages. Its service is to watch the success of one's enemy; its wages to be sure of it. — Charles Caleb Colton

Polluted by crimes, and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death? — Mary Shelley

The author determines that the bitterest struggles are for one side of the truth to the suppression of the other side. — Edith Hamilton

It is a fact that the bitterest contradictions and the deadliest conflicts of the world are carried on in every individual breast capable of feeling and passion. [An anarchist] — Joseph Conrad

Friends provoked become the bitterest of enemies. — Baltasar Gracian

Friends now fast sworn,
Whose double bosoms seems to wear one heart,
Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal and exercise
Are still together, who twin, as 'twere, in love,
Unseparable, shall within this hour,
On a dissension of a doit, break out
To bitterest enmity; so fellest foes,
Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep
To take the one the other, by some chance,
Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends
And interjoin their issues. — William Shakespeare

Of all men's miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing. — Herodotus

Women always find their bitterest foes among their own sex. — Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

I have no idea whether parents can be of help, and I do not blame mine. It was my own affair to come to terms with myself and to find my own way, and like most well-brought-up children, I managed it badly.
Everyone goes through this crisis. For the average person this is the point when the demands of his own life come into the sharpest conflict with his environment, when the way forward has to be sought with the bitterest means at his command. Many people experience the dying and rebirth - which is our fate - only this once during their entire life. Their childhood becomes hollow and gradually collapses, everything they love abandons them and they suddenly feel surrounded by the loneliness and mortal cold of the universe. Very many are caught forever in this impasse, and for the rest of their lives cling painfully to an irrevocable past, the dream of the lost paradise - which is the worst and most ruthless of dreams. — Hermann Hesse

One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; - hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; - hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; - hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin - a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it - if such a thing were possible - even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God. — Edgar Allan Poe

Perhaps it would have been possible to see in him a new Prometheus ... the hero who for the good of mankind exposes himself to the agonies of the damned ... undaunted by failure, by an unceasing effort of courage holding despair at bay, doggedly persistent in the face of self-doubt, which is the artist's bitterest enemy ... — W. Somerset Maugham

For two extraordinary years I have been working on it - learning to write - but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are "like" everybody - that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough - beauty ... — Louise Brooks

Peace does not dwell in outward things but within the soul; we may preserve it in the midst of the bitterest pain, if our will remains firm and submissive. Peace in this life springs from acquiescence to, not an exemption from, suffering. — Francois Fenelon

Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history. — A.J.P. Taylor

It's said that the reason the elves and demons began their war is because of a broken alliance," he said, the world-weary damage to his face making him look wise. "I've always found it to be true - that the best of friends make the bitterest of enemies. Elves and demons, forever fighting. Who is to say that demons weren't the slaves of elves first? — Kim Harrison

We have always goodly stock in us of that which we condemn: as only similars can be profitably contrasted, so only similar people quarrel, and the bitterest wars are over the slightest variations of purpose or belief. — Will Durant

I asked God "Why, why, why?" I turned my face away and wished that I were imagining it all. I had tasted the bitterest essence of war, the sight of helpless comrades being slaughtered, and it filled me with disgust. — Eugene B. Sledge

Cheat me not with time,
with the dull ache of flesh,
for all flesh turns,
even the loveliest
ankle and frail thigh,
to bitterest dust. — Hilda Doolittle

Up from behind a sand dune close beside her rose the form of her enemy Bitterness. He did not come any nearer, having learned a little more prudence, and was not going to make her call for the Shepherd if he could avoid it, but simply stood and looked at her and laughed and laughed again, the bitterest sound that Much-Afraid had heard in all her life. — Hannah Hurnard

To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet. — Charles Caleb Colton

Without the bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance to the whole world? — Matsuo Basho

Success is the sweetest thing to taste,
the bitterest thing to lose,
and the hardest thing to earn. — Matshona Dhliwayo

It seemed to Niels that he understood everything: the hardness in her, the dreary humility, and her coarseness, which was the bitterest drop in the whole goblet. By degrees he came to see also that his delicacy and deferential homage must oppress and irritate her, because a woman who has been hurled from the purple couch of her dreams to the pavement below will quickly resent any attempt to spread carpets over the stones which she longs to feel in all their hardness. In her first despair she is not satisfied to tread the path with her feet: she is determined to crawl it on her knees, choosing the way that is steepest and roughest. She desires no helping hand and will not lift her head--let it sink down with its own heaviness, so that she may put her face to the ground and taste the dust with her tongue! — Jens Peter Jacobsen

The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband's bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool. — Pearl S. Buck

In any theological struggle, the first thousand years are always the bitterest. — Philip Jenkins

Of earth's goods, the best is a good wife; a bad, the bitterest curse of human life. — Simonides Of Ceos

The bitterest satires and noblest eulogies on married life have come from poets. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Bound for your distant home"

Bound for your distant home
you were leaving alien lands.
In an hour as sad as I've known
I wept over your hands.
My hands were numb and cold,
still trying to restrain
you, whom my hurt told
never to end this pain.

But you snatched your lips away
from our bitterest kiss.
You invoked another place
than the dismal exile of this.
You said, 'When we meet again,
in the shadow of olive-trees,
we shall kiss, in a love without pain,
under cloudless infinities.'

But there, alas, where the sky
shines with blue radiance,
where olive-tree shadows lie
on the waters glittering dance,
your beauty, your suffering,
are lost in eternity.
But the sweet kiss of our meeting ......
I wait for it: you owe it me ....... — Alexander Pushkin

Of all the bitter and heavy things in this sorry old world, the not being necessary is the bitterest and heaviest. — Margaret Deland

We have three ways to act wisely. First by thinking. That's the noblest. Second by imitating. That's the easiest. And third by experience. This is the bitterest. — Anonymous

The rising in life of our familiar friends is, perhaps, the bitterest morsel of the bitter bread which we are called upon to eat in life. — Anthony Trollope

Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft and tender female, who had been all weakness and dependence, and alive to every trivial roughness while treading the prosperous paths of life, suddenly rising in mental force to be the comforter and supporter of her husband under misfortune, and abiding with unshrinking firmness the bitterest blast of adversity. — Washington Irving

He is my most beloved friend and my bitterest rival, my confidant and my betrayer, my sustainer and my dependent, and scariest of all, my equal. — Gregg Levoy

An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof. — Walter Savage Landor

Only those who have tasted the bitterest of the bitter can become people who stand out among others. -Guanchang Xianxing Ji — Matthew Polly

The bitterest truth was always better than the sweetest lie. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

An injured friend is the bitterest of foes. — Thomas Jefferson

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. — Confucius

If the Soul sees, after death , what passes on this earth , and watches over the welfare of those it loves, then must its greatest happiness consist in seeing the current of its beneficent influences widening out from age to age, as rivulets widen into rivers, and aiding to shape the destinies of individuals, families, States, the World; and its bitterest punishment, in seeing its evil influences causing mischief and misery , and cursing and afflicting men, long after the frame it dwelt in has become dust, and when both name and memory are forgotten. — Albert Pike

The bitterest hardships, the most daunting trials; none of these are burdens if it means being with you. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Jesus makes the bitterest mouthful taste sweet. — Therese Of Lisieux

Man's passion for truth is such that he will welcome the bitterest of all postulates so long as it strikes him as true. — Antonio Machado

But Robin: their dear little Robs. More than ten years later, his death remained an agony; there was no glossing any detail; its horror was not subject to repair or permutation by any of the narrative devices that the Cleves knew. And - since this willful amnesia had kept Robin's death from being translated into that sweet old family vernacular which smoothed even the bitterest mysteries into comfortable, comprehensible form - the memory of that day's events had a chaotic, fragmented quality, bright mirrorshards of nightmare which flared at the smell of wisteria, the creaking of a clothes-line, a certain stormy cast of spring light. — Donna Tartt

Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him, for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low, could still be saved; the bitterest enemy and also he who was your friend could again be your friend; love that has grown cold can kindle. — Soren Kierkegaard

That President Mohammad Khatami's policies have been blocked is the bitterest incident in the contemporary Iranian history. This means that the wishes of millions of people who voted for Khatami and called for freedom and justice have been ignored ... Why should cultural activities and journalism be so risky in Iran? — Abdolkarim Soroush

As a functional Aspergian adult, one thing troubles me deeply about those kids who end up behind the second door. Many descriptions of autism and Asperger's describe people like me as "not wanting contact with others" or "preferring to play alone." I can't speak for other kids, but I'd like to be very clear about my own feelings: I did not ever want to be alone. And all those child psychologists who said "John prefers to play by himself" were dead wrong. I played by myself because I was a failure at playing with others. I was alone as a result of my own limitations, and being alone was one of the bitterest disappointments of my young life. — John Elder Robison

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Bloomsbury lost Fry, in 1934, and Lytton Strachey before him, in January 1932, to early deaths. The loss of Strachey
was compounded by Carrington's suicide just two months after, in March. Another old friend, Ka Cox, died of a heart attack in 1938. But the death, in 1937, of Woolf 's nephew Julian, in the Spanish Civil War, was perhaps the
bitterest blow. Vanessa found her sister her only comfort: 'I couldn't get on at all if it weren't for you' (VWB2 203). Julian, a radical thinker and aspiring writer, campaigned all his life against war, but he had to be dissuaded by his
family from joining the International Brigade to fight Franco. Instead he worked as an ambulance driver, a role that did not prevent his death from shrapnel wounds. Woolf 's Three Guineas, she wrote to his mother, was
written 'as an argument with him — Jane Goldman

Death is the only monastery; the tomb is the only cell, and the grave that adjoins the convent is the bitterest mock of its futility. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Everybody says they want artists to make money and then when they do, everybody hates them for it. The word sellout is spit out by the bitterest, smallest parts of ourselves. Don't be one of those horrible fans who stops listening to your favorite band just because they have a hit single. Don't write off your friends because they've had a little bit of success. Don't be jealous when the people you like do well - celebrate their victory as if it's your own. — Austin Kleon