Truth But Bitter Quotes & Sayings

A beautiful tale is pleasantly interesting, but a tale re-told is not only sweeter but lacks the bitter truth. — Uzoma Nnadi

The practical life of a vast number of people is not, as a matter of fact, worth while at all. It is like an impressive fur coat with no one inside it. One sees many of these coats occupying positions of great responsibility. Hans Andersen's story of the king with no clothes told one bitter and common truth about human nature; but the story of the clothes with no king describes a situation just as common and even more pitiable. — Evelyn Underhill

Dear Lord, We pray for the leaders of this country and every other. May they not be swayed by false politics but listen instead to the spirit of truth. May they not harken to the false and bitter voices of a frightened world, but instead hear the angels who minister unto them. May the world make room for their leadership and resist no more their growth into greatness. — Marianne Williamson

Just because other people think something, that doesn't make it true.
Maybe there's some truth in that, but it's unsatisfying, bitter-tasting truth. — Cynthia Lord

The lamb was to be eaten with bitter herbs, as pointing back to the bitterness of the bondage in Egypt. So when we feed upon Christ, it should be with contrition of heart, because of our sins. The use of unleavened bread also was significant. It was expressly enjoined in the law of the Passover, and as strictly observed by the Jews in their practice, that no leaven should be found in their houses during the feast. In like manner the leaven of sin must be put away from all who would receive life and nourishment from Christ. So Paul writes to the Corinthian church, "Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump ... For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." 1 Corinthians 5:7, 8. — Ellen G. White

I know that the black man's sick attitude toward the white woman is
a revolutionary sickness: it keeps him perpetually out of harmony with the
system that is oppressing him. Many whites flatter themselves with the idea that the Negro male's
lust and desire for the white dream girl is purely an esthetic attraction,
but nothing could be further from the truth. His motivation is often of such
a bloody, hateful, bitter, and malignant nature that whites would really
be hard pressed to find it flattering. — Eldridge Cleaver

It is a curious fact, but a fact it is, that your witty people are the most hard-hearted in the world. The truth is, fancy destroys feeling. The quick eye to the ridiculous turns every thing to the absurd side; and the neat sentence, the lively allusion, and the odd simile, invest what they touch with something of their own buoyant nature. Humor is of the heart, and has its tears; but wit is of the head, and has only smiles - and the majority of those are bitter. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

When love is sweet, the sweetness means its light
And light may keep the truth, when love is pure.
But love is bitter, when it turns to fight.
Lovers in a fight are quite immature.'
From the poem 'A Note on Existentialist Love — Marieta Maglas

Some pious men may find this truth unorthodox and bitter: But Nature, Chance, and Time ensure survival of the fitter! — Robert Charles Wilson

But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such 'wisdom' does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice" (James 3:14 — Craig Groeschel

In the long run - everyone is different, but we are all human. Everyone deserves love no matter what they look like, everyone needs faith in their life, hope in their heart, and love to give for otherwise life will be terrible. Everyone makes mistakes, NO ONE is perfect (yes that means YOU reading this and it means ME as well). I believe we all need to be more accepting, less judgmental, more loving, less bitter, and more willing to look past the flaws at the person inside. — Megan Wilson

We can say the brotherhood of man, and pretend that we include the sisterhood of women, but we know that we don't. Folklore has it that women only congregate to bitch an absent member of their group, and continue to do so because they are to well aware of the consequences if they stay away. It's meant to be a joke, but like jokes about mothers-in-law it is founded in bitter truth. — Germaine Greer

Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus. It would get richer and deeper each year. You kept learning more, getting wiser, having more insight, going further into the truth - " She hesitated. Port laughed abruptly. "And now you know it's not like that. Right? It's more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tastes wonderful, and you don't even think of its ever being used up. Then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize it's nearly burned down to the end. And then's when you're conscious of the bitter taste." "But I'm always conscious of the unpleasant taste and of the end approaching," she said. — Paul Bowles

One swallows the lie that flatters, but sips the bitter truth drop by drop. — Denis Diderot

Therapy when practiced well is a fine but delicately balanced intervention in another person's life. It requires a devotion to truth and a merciless pursuit of right living. Expertise in bringing people out of the darkness of a disappointed or bitter life into the light of a new vitality is hard earned. It is a privilege and a pleasure when it works well. But that level of engagement with clients is also extremely demanding and it can never be achieved by trotting out stereotyped tricks from approved textbooks. — Emmy Van Deurzen

We must be willing to accept the bitter truth that, in the end, we may have to become a burden to those who love us. But it is necessary that we face this also. The full acceptance of our abjection and uselessness is the virtue that can make us and others rich in the grace of God. It takes heroic charity and humility to let others sustain us when we are absolutely incapable of sustaining ourselves. We cannot suffer well unless we see Christ everywhere, both in suffering and in the charity of those who come to the aid of our affliction. — Thomas Merton

By convention sweet is sweet, by convention bitter is bitter, by convention hot is hot, by convention cold is cold, by convention colour is colour. But in reality there are atoms and the void. That is, the objects of sense are supposed to be real and it is customary to regard them as such, but in truth they are not. Only the atoms and the void are real. — Democritus

It is a damned sight easier to start wars than to end them. This truth has been stated for as long and as often as it has been ignored. High time and thank God, we are at least moving toward de-escalation in Vietnam. The road to extrication will be long, painful, bitter. But it must be trod. We are so bogged down in Vietnam that we cannot respond effectively anywhere else in the world to a military power play except through atomic bombardment. — Malcolm Forbes

Is it treason to say the truth? A bitter truth, but no less true for that. — George R R Martin

Some bitter boys reading this might accuse me of "friend-zoning," but I'd like to say that even if a girl has misinterpreted a situation that someone else thinks was obvious, she does not owe her male friends anything. — Anna Kendrick

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 light which lives on what the flames devour,
a grey landscape surrounding me with scorch,
a crucifixion by a single wound,
a sky and earth that darken by each hour,
a sob of blood whose red ribbon adorns
a lyre without a pulse, and oils the torch,
a tide which stuns and strands me on the reef,
a scorpion scrambling, stinging in my chest--
this is the wreath of love, this bed of thorns
is where I dream of you stealing my rest,
haunting these sunken ribs cargoed with grief.
I sought the peak of prudence, but I found
the hemlock-brimming valley of your heart,
and my own thirst for bitter truth and art.

- Stigmata of Love — Federico Garcia Lorca

As the distinguished British philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote as he reflected on the bitter lessons of the twentieth century, 'Few things have done more harm than the belief on the part of individuals or groups (or tribes or states or nations or churches) that he or she or they are in sole possession of the truth, especially about how to live, what to be and do - that those who differ from them are not merely mistaken, but wicked or mad: and need restraining or suppressing. It is terrible and dangerous arrogance to believe that you alone are right, have a magical eye which sees the truth, and that others cannot be right if they disagree. — Thomas Gilovich

Yea I may come across as blunt, but I will say the truth even if its bitter, that's just me. You either hate me for it or respect me for it. — Tilicia Haridat

I've learned of life this bitter truth
Hope not between the crumbling walls Of mankind's gratitude to find repose,
But rather,
Build within thy own soul
Fortresses! — Georgia Douglas Johnson

With two lovers there is always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved; it is bitter truth to which most of us have to resign ourselves; but now and then there are two who love and two who let themselves be loved. — W. Somerset Maugham

Truth is the most bitter to accept, swallow and digest it. The moment you speak truth, you lose your popularity. But I don't care. — Bikram Choudhury

For my own part, my constant prayer is that I may know the worst of my case, whatever the knowledge may cost me. I know that an accurate estimate of my own heart can never be otherwise than lowering to my self-esteem; but God forbid that I should be spared the humiliation which springs from the truth! The sweet red apples of self-esteem are deadly poison; who would wish to be destroyed thereby? The bitter fruits of self-knowledge are always healthful, especially if washed down with the waters of repentance, and sweetened with a draught from the wells of salvation; he who loves his own soul will not despise them. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I don't know how I know that, but I do. I can feel the beat of that truth inside me. Taste it bitter on my tongue.
Sometimes, like now, I didn't think I want to know who I really am. — Elizabeth Scott

Without living, there will be no learning. Without learning, there will be no growth. Without growth, there will be no change. The only way you learn is by trying. You may make mistakes but you have to remember that doing so will lead to change. Be willing to learn from experiences, grow and live to become better not bitter. — Kemi Sogunle

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter. — Denis Diderot

Stigmata of Love
A light which lives on what the flames devour,
a grey landscape surrounding me with scorch,
a crucifixion by a single wound,
a sky and earth that darken by each hour,
a sob of blood whose red ribbon adorns
a lyre without a pulse, and oils the torch,
a tide which stuns and strands me on the reef,
a scorpion scrambling, stinging in my chest
this is the wreath of love, this bed of thorns
is where I dream of you stealing my rest,
haunting these sunken ribs cargoed with grief.
I sought the peak of prudence, but I found
the hemlock-brimming valley of your heart,
and my own thirst for bitter truth and art. — Federico Garcia Lorca

This cry for mercy is possible only when we are willing to confess that somehow, somewhere, we ourselves have something to do with our losses. Crying for mercy is a recognition that blaming God, the world, or others for our losses does not do full justice to the truth of who we are. At the moment we are willing to take responsibility, even for the pain we didn't cause directly, blaming is connected into an acknowledgement of our own role in human brokenness. The prayer for God's mercy comes from a heart that knows that this human brokenness is not a fatal condition of which we have become the sad victims, but the bitter fruit of the human choice to say "No" to love. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Many of you have already found out, and others will find out in the course of their lives, that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate our attention totally on it's pursuit. But even while it eludes us, the illusion of knowing it still lingers and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

The truth may make you bitter; but it must make you better. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

Children come running to the truth But you've got to peel the skin to get the fruit And while one's living high another's grieving But what's sweet by morning is bitter by the evening Oh - What's sweet by morning is bitter by the evening. — Ben Harper

But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. — Ed Catmull

Things external to her may have their own weight and dimension: but within inside us she gives them such measures as she wills: death is terrifying to Cicero, desirable to Cato, indifferent to Socrates. Health, consciousness, authority, knowledge, beauty and their opposites doff their garments as they enter the soul and receive new vestments, coloured with qualities of her own choosing: brown or green; light or dark; bitter or sweet, deep or shallow, as it pleases each of the individual souls, who have not agreed together on the truth of their practices, rules or ideas. Each soul is Queen in her own state. So let us no longer seek excuses from the external qualities of anything, the responsibility lies within ourselves. Our good or our bad depends on us alone. So let us make our offertories and our vows to ourselves not to Fortune: she has no power over our behaviour, on the contrary our souls drag Fortune in their train and mould her to their own idea. — Michel De Montaigne

Democritus sometimes does away with what appears to the senses, and says that none of these appears according to truth but only according to opinion: the truth in real things is that there are atoms and void. 'By convention sweet', he says, 'by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour: but in reality atoms and void.' — Sextus Empiricus

I am a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting (WWI) to those who want the war to go on forever. Feeble, inarticulate will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth and may it burn their lousy souls. — Paul Nash

People can choose between the sweet lie or the bitter truth. I say the bitter truth, but many people don't want to hear it. — Avigdor Lieberman

Death had to take her little by little, bit by bit, dragging her along to the bitter end of the miserable existence she'd made for herself. They never even knew what she did die of. Some spoke of a chill. But the truth was that she died from poverty, from the filth and the weariness of her wretched life. — Emile Zola

I have to believe he will do as he promised. Yet the truth is that I trust him because of the way he snared my fingers in his. That is the worst reason of all to trust, but my bitter heart will not stop singing its recklessly giddy song. — Kate Elliott

But for fear of disheartening them, we also spoke to them of disappointments and the bitter taste that rest has after a useless action. And seeing the eldest of them lost in a reverie that pained us, we added that perhaps the only truth is the peace to be found in books ... — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Much of what I say might sound bitter, but it's the truth. Much of what I say might sound like it's stirring up trouble, but it's the truth. Much of what I say might sound like its hate, but it's the truth — Malcolm X

It's a bitter truth but we humans are the only creature in this universe who not only fed up with things but also by other human beings. — M.H. Rakib

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. ~ Anton Ego, Ratatouille — Walt Disney Company

If the difference between guys and men is still unclear, here are a few examples that apply to dating:
A guy uses women to build his self-esteem. A man already has it.
A guy likes to "hang out" with a woman he's interested in. A man asks her out.
A guy doesn't make a move until he's sure there's no risk. A man is bold and clear with his intentions.
A guy plays games with a woman. A man has no time for games because they keep him from getting to know the woman.
A guy will become bitter and angry with a woman when she denies him. A man accepts that dating involves risk.
A guy fears and worships women. A man respects and adores them but fears and worships only God.
Guys are cool and indifferent. Men are hot and passionate. — Stephen W. Simpson

It began to occur to me that the whole story of love might be nothing more than a wicked lie; that simply sleeping beside another body night after night gives no express right of entry to the interior world of their thoughts or dreams;that we are separate in the end whatever contrary illusions we may cherish; and that this miserable truth might as well be faced, since it will be dinned into one, like it or not by the failings of those we hold dear. I wasn't so bitter now. I'd begun to emerge into a sense of satisfaction with my not, but it would be a long time before I trusted someone, for I'd seen how essentially unknowable even the best loved might prove to be. — Olivia Laing