Bitterness

Bitterness is the quality of something to have a bitter taste or the emotion of feeling bitter; acrimony, resentment. It is the opposite to Sweetness.

Quotes

• Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
  • The Bible, Book of Isaiah 5:12-21.

• νόμωι (γάρ φησι) γλυκὺ καὶ νόμωι πικρόν, νόμωι θερμόν, νόμωι ψυχρόν, νόμωι χροιή, ἐτεῆι δὲ ἄτομα καὶ κενόν (Tetralogies of Thrasyllus, 9; Sext. Emp. adv. math. VII 135)
  • Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, colour by convention; atoms and Void [alone] exist in reality. (trans. Freeman 1948), p. 92.
  • By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void. (trans. Durant 1939), Ch. XVI, §II, p. 353; citing C. Bakewell, Sourcebook in Ancient Philosophy, New York, 1909, "Fragment O" (Diels), p. 60

• Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eyes.
  • Harry Emerson Fosdick, Riverside Sermons (1958), p. 100.

• Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se,
  quam quod ridiculos homines facit.
  • Bitter poverty has no harder pang than that it makes men ridiculous.
  • Juvenal, Satire III, line 152-3.
  • Variant translations:
    • Of all the Griefs that harrass the Distrest,
      Sure the most bitter is a scornful Jest.
      • As translated by Samuel Johnson

• One would think that an unsuccessful volume was like a degree in the school of reviewing. One unread work makes the judge bitter enough; but a second failure, and he is quite desperate in his damnation.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Romance and Reality (1831), Vol I Chapter 14

• Failure makes people bitter and cruel.
  • W. Somerset Maugham, in The Summing Up (1938)

• We may avoid much disappointment and bitterness of soul by learning to understand how little necessary to our joy and peace are the things the multitude most desire and seek.
  • John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 129-130

• Asperæ facetiæ, ubi nimis ex vero traxere,
  Acram sui memoriam relinquunt.
  • A bitter jest, when it comes too near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind it.
  • Tacitus, Annales (AD 117), XV. 68.

• That loss is common would not make
  My own less bitter, rather more.
  
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part VI, Stanza 2.

• When streams of unkindness, as bitter as gall,
  Bubble up from the heart to the tongue.
  • Martin Farquhar Tupper, Forgive and Forget, lines 1-8.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).

• World's use is cold, world's love is vain,
  World's cruelty is bitter bane;
  But pain is not the fruit of pain.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Vision of Poets, Stanza 146.

• Sed ut acerbum est, pro benefactis quom malis messem metas!
  • It is a bitter disappointment when you have sown benefits, to reap injuries.
  • Plautus, Epidicus, V, 2, 52.

• There is a snake in thy smile, my dear,
  And bitter poison within thy tear.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Beatrice Cenci.

See also

• Sweetness
• Taste
• Senses