"Bitterness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to be the comrade of his peers, and yet speak to them the truth in love; his task to understand the bitterness and assuage the sorrows of old age. I suppose the greatest influence a preacher ever exercises, and a chief source of the material and insight of his preaching, is found in this intimate contact with living and suffering, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... battle of Agincourt was small, for the English army was too exhausted for pursuit, and it made its way to Calais only to return to England. Through 1416 the war was limited to a contest for the command of the Channel, till the increasing bitterness of the strife between the Burgundians and Armagnacs, and the consent of John of Burgundy to conclude an alliance, encouraged Henry to resume his attempt to recover Normandy. Whatever may have been his aim in this enterprise—whether ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... friendly relations with both the powers striving for domination in the Near East; it was a vital necessity for her, however, to be able to rely upon the effective support of at least one of them in a case of emergency. Russia's conduct had aroused a deep feeling of bitterness and mistrust in Rumania, and every lessening of her influence was a step in Austria's favour. Secondary considerations tended to intensify this: on the one hand lay the fact that through Russia's interposition Rumania had no defendable ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... protection of the treaties and the law, were murdered by a mob, and the still more recent threatened outbreak of the same character in Washington Territory, are fresh in the minds of all, and there is apprehension lest the bitterness of feeling against the Mongolian race on the Pacific Slope may find vent in similar lawless demonstrations. All the power of this Government should be exerted to maintain the amplest good faith toward China in the treatment of these men, and the inflexible ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... more difficult to get them taken away. The soul will after some time, become the less troubled about them, and possibly forget them, and so they will remain; and this may occasion at last a sad distance, and provoke God to hide his face, which will cause more bitterness and sorrow. It were good, then, to keep up a ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... bitterness of slavery. She was set at work in the kitchen with the other slaves. It seemed that Mrs. Preston took especial delight in assigning to the naturally high-spirited and sensitive girl the most menial employments. Patiently trusting in God that He would send deliverance, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... people, and she relates them with a vivacity and piquancy peculiar to her, which render her society very amusing and interesting. The humanity, if not the policy, of the Bourbons may be questioned in their leaving the widow of a brave general in a state of poverty that must remind her, with bitterness, of the altered fortunes entailed on her and ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... A bitterness that she could not control shook Doris's voice. She shrank from touching the exquisite detachment of Sister Angela by the truth, and yet she must have as much sympathy as possible and, ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... to right and left, and now and then showers of bursting shell sprayed over the heads of the tired and gloomy soldiers. Dick, thoughtful and scholarly, was in the depths of a bitterness and despair reached by few of those around him. The Union, the Republic, had appealed to him as the most glorious of experiments. He could not bear to see it broken up for any cause whatever. It had been founded with too much ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... organization of the Catholic Church Galds harbored intense feeling, yet he never displayed the bitterness which clericals are wont to impute to him. In view of his flaming zeal to remedy the backwardness of Spain, a zeal so great as to force him into politics, which he detested, Galds' moderation is noteworthy. The dramas in which the clerical question ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... is golden; to be wise and true rejoices every heart. But evil influences waver the scales of justice and mercy. No personal considerations should allow any root of bitterness to spring up between Christian Scientists, nor cause any misapprehension as to the motives of others. We must love our enemies, and continue to do so unto the end. By the love of God we can cancel error in our own hearts, and blot it out ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... old chronicles. Within the Scottish castle we meet a heroine with an "expression of pensive melancholy" and a "smile softly clouded with sorrow," a noble lord deprived of his rights by a villain "whose life is marked with vice and whose death with the bitterness of remorse." But these grey and ghostly shadows, who flit faintly through our imagination, are less prophetic of coming events than the properties with which the castle is endowed, a secret but accidently discovered panel, a trap-door, subterranean vaults, an unburied corpse, a ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Encyclopedia. If that table were only in the hands of some of our spirit friends of the present day, what brilliant anecdotes might it not rap out—the sparkling wit of Diderot, the good humor of out host, the hospitable and generous D'Holbach, the occasional bitterness of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the cautious expression of opinion by D'Alembert, the agreeable variety of Montesquieu, and the bold enthusiasm of the youthful but hardworking Naigeon! If ever a table were inclined to turn, this table should have been; but perhaps it may be that tables ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... last days, what she had expected, what she had received, came to Peter with the bitterness of what is finished and irrevocable. She had been dead only a few minutes, yet she could never know his grief and remorse; she could never forgive him. She was utterly removed in a few minutes, in a moment in the failing of a breath. The finality of ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... moved his body partly around, and spoke with energetic but gloomy bitterness, "And yet, Captain Wharton, you see it where the setting sun shines full upon you; the air you breathe is clear, and fresh from the hills before you. Every step that you take leaves that hated gallows behind; and every dark hollow, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... continental enemy. It was not because they were adherents of the house of Stuart that Irishmen left their native country to take service abroad, but because life in Ireland was rendered well-nigh intolerable for Catholics, on account of the nature and severity of the laws against them, and the bitterness with which those laws were carried ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... ascent, in order to determine the direction and velocity of the wind. It was a graceful compliment to his rival, and indicated that, although they were both working to the one end, their rivalry was not a matter of bitterness. ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... severe reprehension. To meet with what causes bitterness or thorough repentance as to any course that ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... the pitiful futility of his father's persistence in trying to impose his ways, his beliefs, his will, upon one so rapidly growing into full independence. The only sanction he had was a tradition daily becoming more fragile. He was in for the bitterness of another disappointment. That was what there was ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to live at Primrose Hill I called upon her and found her weary and wasted. It had waned a good deal, the elation caused the year before by Ethel's marriage; the foam on the cup had subsided and there was a bitterness in the draught. ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... The wrath had clean died out of his puckered face; and in place of it there showed a blank despair, mingled with loathing and unspeakable bitterness of soul. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and home. She became aware of a most singular sensation as of bitter resentment herself, and not against the mother and sister who had so treated her own mother, but against her own mother, and then she became aware of a like bitterness extended to her own self. She felt malignant toward her mother as a young girl whom she remembered, though she could not have remembered, and she felt malignant toward her own self, and her sister Amanda, and Flora. Evil suggestions surged in her brain—suggestions which ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... "I've got to study; so there's an end of it." But when Davie came in, a woe begone figure, for Mr. Harrow had kept his promise, then was Joel's hardest time. And he clenched his brown hands to keep the tears back then, for David gave way to such a flood in the bitterness of his grief to go without Joel, that for a time, Joel was in danger of ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... here we shall offer another distinction, of the truth of which much reading and experience have well convinced us, that as in the most absolute governments there is a regular progression of slavery downwards, from the top to the bottom, the mischief of which is seldom felt with any great force and bitterness but by the next immediate degree; so in the most dissolute and anarchical states there is as regular an ascent of what is called rank or condition, which is always laying hold of the head of him who is advanced but ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... who had no family claim on him; and I promised to make the one return in my power by trying to be worthy of the interest he had taken in me. The letter was written without any alloy of mental reserve. My new life as a governess was such a happy one that I had forgotten my paltry bitterness of ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... be unknown of all; to hear no recognized voice; to meet no sympathizing smile or eye; to be silent when all are speaking, and to know that not one of all these multitudes share a thought or wish with you—this is desolation, the bitterness of solitude. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... which swathed the little pale sad countenance, gave additional gloom and harshness to the profound melancholy which clouded its most intellectual expression. Disease and death were stamped upon the grandsire and the boy as they sat side by side with averted eyes, each as if in the bitterness of his own heart refusing to comfort or be comforted. The two who had been wont to regard each other so fondly and so proudly, now seemed averse to hold communion together, while their appearance and style of dress, the black cap of the one and the black bandages of the other, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... and tells me you are young. My dear young fellow, duty is a very fine thing indeed, but believe me, it is too colourless as a motive. There is no delight in duty. You will know that at my age. And besides, I have an infinite capacity for love and sympathy, an infinite bitterness in this solitude of my soul. I infer that you would moralise on my discontent, but I know I have seen a little of men and things from behind this ambuscade—only a truly artistic man would fall into the sympathetic ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... of Adolphe was her Bible, her study, for above all else she would not be an Ellenore. She allowed herself no tears, she avoided all the bitterness so cleverly described by the critic to whom we owe an analysis of this striking work; whose comments indeed seemed to Dinah almost superior to the book. And she read again and again this fine essay by the only real critic who has written in the Revue des Deux Mondes, an article ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... so great a regard for what the ladies are pleased to call virtue, and had herself maintained such a severity of character, that it was expected, especially by Wilkins, that she would have vented much bitterness on this occasion, and would have voted for sending the child, as a kind of noxious animal, immediately out of the house; but, on the contrary, she rather took the good-natured side of the question, intimated some compassion for the helpless ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... sat alone, brooding over the past, with no work filling the hard hands which were used to be so busy, she no longer thought of Rhoda with the bitterness of wrath. She remembered what a young girl she was, and how full of fancies, which made it easy for people to deceive her. How terrible must have been the girl's misery before she could drown herself in the sea! And there ...
— The Christmas Child • Hesba Stretton
... hers fell. She turned away, and he remounted and rode on up the ditch, angry, as a man can be only with one he might have loved, down to those dregs of bitterness that lurk at the bottom of ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... plans of Divine Providence. It has not the signs of the Lord's blessing. It is a fanaticism which puts forth no good fruit; instead of blessing, it has brought forth cursing; instead of love, hatred, instead of life, death—bitterness and sorrow, and pain; and infidelity and moral degeneracy follow its labours." There is no shirking of the question here. Slavery is proclaimed to be the GOD-appointed means for the regeneration of the African race, and those who seek to bring about the emancipation of the slaves are branded ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... goblet freely press The leaves that give it bitterness, Nor prize the colored waters less, For in thy darkness and distress New light and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... wide ever to be bridged between brethren lately of one faith as of one fatherland. He was unceasing in his prayers and appeals for "mutual toleration on the subject of predestination." Perhaps the bitterness, almost amounting to frenzy, with which abstruse points of casuistry were then debated, and which converted differences of opinion upon metaphysical divinity into deadly hatred and thirst for blood, is already obsolete or ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to have paid little if any attention to the British official statements, which of course should be received as of equal weight with the American. His comments on the actions are generally very fair, the book never being disfigured by bitterness toward the British; but he is certainly wrong, for example, in ascribing the loss of the Chesapeake solely to accident, that of the Argus solely to her inferiority in force, and so on. His disposition to praise all the American commanders may be generous, ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... A certain tinge of bitterness crept into his voice. In health, he knew, a woman of this class would not suffer him ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... as to injure one's nerves or heart, but kindly and equable—has a most wholesome effect upon human character. I believe that the happier a man is, the better and kinder he will be. The greater part of unamiability, ill-temper, impatience, bitterness, and uncharitableness comes out of unhappiness. It is because a man is so miserable that he is such a sour, suspicious, fractious, petted creature. I was amused, this morning, to read in the newspaper an account of a very small incident which befell the new Primate of England on his journey back ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... been so long proceeding. Skulls picked clean by crows and dogs and the dead bodies of the scavenger-dogs themselves dotted the ground; in other places were pathetic wisps of pigtails half covered with rubbish, broken rifles, rusted swords, heaps of brass cartridges—all proclaiming the bitterness with which the warfare had been waged in this small corner alone. Eagerly gazing about us, we slowly pushed on, drinking in all these details with eager eyes. How sweet it is to be an escaped prisoner even for a ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... boy. He has no proper self-respect till past his majority. Of course there are exceptions, but they are mostly windfalls. The good boys die young. We lament the wickedness and thoughtlessness of the young vagabonds at the same time that we know it is mainly the acridity and bitterness of the unripe fruit that we ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... their hour of bitterness, What reek the broken Sokokis, Beside their slaughtered ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... for you what I would have chosen for myself. How could I know that you would have the spirit of my father in you? How could I know that you would love what I hated?—if you really love to be a Jew." The last words had such bitterness in them that any one overhearing might have supposed some hatred had arisen between ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... happened; his mind, in which forces so evenly balanced had fought so strenuously, had become utterly wearied out and could work no longer. A flash of old intuition illumined it at last,— it was not wise to strive with such bitterness over life,—therefore he said to me in memory of this intuition, "I am going to let things take their course." A larger tribunal would decide; he had appealed unto Caesar. I sent him up to his room and tried to quiet his fever by magnetization with some success. He fell asleep, and as ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... established by careful comparison of facsimiles; the likeness of the style of Sir Philip's speeches in Parliament to that of Junius—biting, pithy, full of antithesis and invective; the tenderness and bitterness displayed by Junius towards persons to whom Sir Philip stood well or ill affected; the correspondence of the dates of the letters with those of certain movements of Sir Philip; and the evidence of Junius' close acquaintance with the War Office, where Sir Philip held a ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... your eyes, down the back of your neck, and the ball is no forwarder. If you strike her quite clean, she goes like a bullet against the face of the bunker, soars in the air, falls on your head, and you lose the hole! Oh, Golf is full of bitterness! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... said Putney, who had completed the affair on the part of Suzette, and was afterwards talking it over with his crony, Dr. Morrell, in something of the bitterness of defeat, "that their first duty was to care for the interests of their stockholders, who seemed to turn out all widows and orphans, as nearly as I could understand. It appears as if nobody but innocents of that kind live on the Ponkwasset dividends, and it would have been inhuman ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... bitterness You presently shall rue. Had I known you outlawed, shelterless, Hunted the country through— Trust me, the day that brought you here Would have seemed the fairest of many a year; And a feast I had counted it indeed When you turned to ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... of Harpur in the meantime had been removed by his companions, who it was evident felt as much, if not more bitterness at their own defeat, than they did by the fatal accident which ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... and many other instances I could produce, the bitterness of the answer sufficiently testifies the uneasiness of mind the person ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... the master,' answered Stephen; but there was a tone of bitterness in his voice, and his face ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... novelist, and regardless of the sweetness of Dante. To him, Concordia is fourteen, since he considers 1289 as the date of the tragedy, and, with his details from Boccaccio's commentary, he has coarsened Francesca, making her bitterness full of the spleen that could only accompany maturity. A striking point is to be noted in the strong vein of Catholicism that ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... feeling of superiority (for he was a man of physical and mental power, who longed to be a master of great affairs) he took orders in the Anglican Church; but the only appointment he could obtain was in a village buried, as he said, in a forsaken district of Ireland. There his bitterness overflowed in A Tale of a Tub and a few pamphlets of such satiric power that certain political leaders recognized Swift's value and summoned him to ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... to both of them most painful; and although Lady Annabel herself was in some degree prepared for an arrangement, which sooner or later she considered inevitable, she was herself scarcely less distressed. The good Doctor, in some degree to break the bitterness of parting, proposed accompanying Plantagenet to London, and himself personally delivering the charge, in whose welfare they were so much interested, to his guardian. Nevertheless, it was a very sad affair, and the week which was to intervene ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... round cheeks, That always finds, and never seeks, Makes such a vision to the sight As fills a father's eyes with light; And pleasures flow in so thick and fast Upon his heart, that he at last Must needs express his love's excess With words of unmeant bitterness. Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm. Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty At each wild word to feel within A sweet recoil of love and pity. ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... but brimful of the bitterness of a soul to whom the whole world has become but ashes in the death of love, is the following ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... truth may come without exciting any feeling of irritation or opposition from one who speaks with a tone of voice expressive of the benevolent affections, and produce much good; while the very same words, uttered in a tone of asperity or bitterness, may exasperate the hearer, and be productive only of harm. It has already been said, that Manners bear the same relation to life that tone bears to conversation; and a good life loses great portion of the power it might exert over those who come within the influence of its sphere if it ultimate ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... of the war now raging, with its untold misery and horror, as well as the burning of houses, the devastation of the country, the extermination of a white nationality, and the treatment to which women and children are subjected, which was bound to leave a lasting legacy of bitterness and hatred, while seriously endangering the future relationship between the forces of civilisation and barbarism in South Africa; and (2) the retention by the Republics of their independence, whereby alone the peace of South Africa ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... a Fortune-teller, I cannot better Fortunes; you have 'em from me as they are revealed to me: I would they were to your tempers, and fellows with your bloods, that's all the bitterness I would you. ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... were stoicism and bitterness in this answer, there was not deliberate cruelty. Raoul loved his lugger, next to Ghita, before all things on earth; and, in his eyes, the fault of wrecking her in a calm was to be classed among the unpardonable sins. Still, it was by no means a rare occurrence. Ships, like ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... memories of the past two and a half years. Every line of his lean, strong figure showed some trace of the responsibilities he had borne. In the greatest crisis of modern times he had steadfastly pursued an ideal, regardless of the bitterness of criticism and the sting of ridicule. The difficulties had been tremendous. Every kind of influence had been brought upon him to do certain things, none of which he had done. A scholar, a dreamer, a lifelong student of history, he had ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... manufacturers of paper. A panic was on the land and there was no business. What he was to do Clemens did not know. He spent most of his days in his room, trying to write, and succeeded in finishing several magazine articles. Outwardly cheerful, he hid the bitterness ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... rushed a flood of confused memories. Sight of his familiar face filled her with fear. The haunting past came back to her in all its evil hideousness—the past which she had put behind her for ever now arose in all its cruel reality and naked bitterness. ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... leaving all other cares, was ever at her bedside, and who came to that place at a sacrifice of feeling, after a wrestling with pride, bringing a bitterness of memory, and a patient courage of heart, that the girl could not ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the Roman with the Parthian empire, and the affairs of Armenia became, in 114, the occasion of war. Trajan's campaigns in the East ended in complete though brilliant failure. In the retreat from Ctesiphon (117), the old emperor tasted for almost the first time the bitterness of defeat in the field. He attacked the desert city of Hatra, westward of the Tigris, whose importance is still attested by grand ruins. The want of water made it impossible to maintain a large force near the city, and the brave Arabs routed the Roman cavalry. Trajan, who narrowly escaped being ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... for herself and us. That very affection was his greatest torment: it was for our sakes he had so ardently longed to increase his fortune—it was our interest that had lent such brightness to his hopes, and that imparted such bitterness to his present distress. He now tormented himself with remorse at having neglected my mother's advice; which would at least have saved him from the additional burden of debt—he vainly reproached himself for having brought her from the dignity, the ease, the luxury of her ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... running with great rapidity and with elevated crest over the ground, and preferring the shady rocks along the sandy bed of the river. I tried several methods to render the potatoes, which we had found in the camps of the natives, eatable; but neither roasting nor boiling destroyed their sickening bitterness. At last, I pounded and washed them, and procured their starch, which was entirely tasteless, but thickened rapidly in hot water, like arrow-root; and was very agreeable to eat, wanting only the addition of sugar to make it delicious; at least ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... it had not been the least of the bitterness in M. De Jussac's cup of calamity that his mere pride of name must adjust itself to its altered conditions. That the Vicomte De Jussac should have been expatriated because he declined when called upon to contribute his heart's blood to the red conduit in the Faubourg St. Antoine was ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... penitence, and sighs almost of despair before it closes. But this which he puts first is the note of the whole. So it is in our histories. They will run through many a dark and desert place. We shall have bitterness and trials in abundance, there will be many an hour of sadness caused by my own evil, and many a hard struggle with it. But high above all these mists and clouds will rise the hope that seeks the skies, and deep beneath all the surface agitations ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to be educated at our great military school. When the greatest railroad of the world, binding together the continent and uniting the two great seas which wash our shores, was finished, I have seen our national triumph and exultation turned to bitterness and shame by the unanimous reports of three committees of Congress—two of the House and one here—that every step of that mighty enterprise had been taken in fraud. I have heard in highest places the shameless doctrine avowed by men grown ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... man humble to be chosen so, Samuel. So humble that no man but would say "No" to such bidding if he dare. To be President of this people, and trouble gathering everywhere in men's hearts. That's a searching thing. Bitterness, and scorn, and wrestling often with men I shall despise, and perhaps nothing truly done at the end. But I must go. Yes. Thank you, Samuel; thank you, Timothy. Just a glass of that ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater
... call myself an Englishman, and my wife there is an Englishwoman—when I am gone oh, gentlemen, what is to become of her? If I were but sure that she would be cared for, and enabled to return to her friends, the bitterness of death would be past." Here the poor woman threw herself round her husband's neck, and gave a shrill sharp cry, and relaxing her hold, fell down across his knees, with her head hanging back, and her face towards the roof, in a dead faint. For ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... prevent him from escaping; and, thus compelled, Denham passed the monitory lamp-post, to which, in passing, he breathed an excuse, for how could he break away when Rodney's arm was actually linked in his? "You must not think that I have any bitterness against her—far from it. It's not altogether her fault, poor girl. She lives, you know, one of those odious, self-centered lives—at least, I think them odious for a woman—feeding her wits upon everything, having control ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... with thyself, as to bring forth Love, so mighty a bane to all,—cruel and heartless Love, whose spirit is all unlike his beauty? And wherefore didst thou furnish him with wings, and give him skill to shoot so far, that, child as he is, we never may escape the bitterness of Love. ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... believed me. You've gone on believing I'm above that sort of thing. You're shallow. What should YOU know of the feelings of a man like me? You imagine that a great artist's faith in himself and in the verdict of posterity is enough to keep him happy. You've never guessed at the bitterness and loneliness, the"—his voice broke; but presently he resumed, speaking with a force that I had never known in him. "Posterity! What use is it to ME? A dead man doesn't know that people are visiting his grave, visiting his birthplace, ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... inside and outside the works) upon all those who started to increase their output that they were finally compelled to do about as the rest did, or else quit. No one who has not had this experience can have an idea of the bitterness which is gradually developed in such a struggle. In a war of this kind the workmen have one expedient which is usually effective. They use their ingenuity to contrive various ways in which the machines which they are ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... result of Mrs. Banks' nocturnal ramble with Mr. William Green, was a feeling of great bitterness against her old friend, Captain John Barber. Mr. Green, despite her protests, was still a member of the crew of the Foam, and walked about Seabridge in broad daylight, while she crept forth only after sundown, and saw a hidden ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... but seriously consider how much more insupportable and painful an immortal life would be to man than what I have already given him. If you had not death, you would eternally curse me for having deprived you of it; I have mixed a little bitterness with it, to the end, that seeing of what convenience it is, you might not too greedily and indiscreetly seek and embrace it: and that you might be so established in this moderation, as neither to nauseate life, nor have any antipathy for dying, which I have ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the thing sounds bravely. There is the later point of view. We are no longer boys; we have come to review the situation, and take a definite stand in life. We have had years of experience, keen struggles, not a little bitterness, and we are steadied. We feel a heart-beat for deeper things. It is no longer sufficient that they sound bravely; they must ring true. The schoolboy's dream is more of a Roman triumph—tramping armies, shouting multitudes, waving banners—all good enough in their way. But the dream ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... the culmination of long years of bitterness, of suffering and of struggle. We are performing a great deed, which holds in its magic not only the stirring present, it embraces the ages yet to come. I am content with what has been done to-day. I shall be content with it to-morrow. We have lowered the body of the old ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... reader", he says with bitterness, "who I am, and what my name is?—Well, then, I am a living being, not a Job who has never existed. Nor am I one of the dead in the valley of bones brought back to life by the prophet Ezekiel, which is only a tale that is told. But I am one of the living dead of the Babylonian Talmud, ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... York and Lancaster—if you will excuse me, gentlemen—that I should suffer this for a mere rose? The day only just begun too! And why, sirs, was I seeking a rose? Ay, there's the rub." He folded his arms dramatically and nodded at the woman. "There's the gall and bitterness, the worm in the fruit, the peculiar irony—if you'll allow me to say so—of this distressing affair. Listen, madam! If I wanted a rose of you, 'twas for your whole sex's sake: your sex's, madam—every one of whom was, up to five ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... of her flying from him into the street, and the little bowed head on the street-car; and the old pity for her, the old bitterness toward him, returned upon me. I wondered how he could speak to her in this nonchalant way; what they were saying to each other; whether they would ever refer to that night at Auriccio's; what Alice would think of him if she ever found it out; whether he was a villain, or ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... murder," Brand replied, without any bitterness whatever; "they call it a punishment, a warning to the evil-doers of Europe. And no doubt this man is a great scoundrel, and cannot be reached by the law; and then, besides, one of the members of the Society, who is ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... course purposely to the ruined priory. It was a long walk; but Eleanor courted long walks. And when she got there, musing, it must be confessed, had a good time. She stepped slowly down the grass-grown nave of the old church, recalling with much bitterness the day of her betrothal there; blaming herself, and blaming her mother more. Yet at any rate that day she had set seal to her own fate; would she be able, and had she a right,—that was the worst question,—to break it now? She wandered on, out of the church, ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... Betty felt a thrill of foreboding. The strange silence, followed by the hopeless bitterness in the stranger's voice, seemed to bespeak some trouble of overwhelming magnitude, and, viewed in that light, his last words admitted of only one conclusion. Life had become unbearable, and therefore he had decided to end it. ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... then, so little, Gian Maria," said he, not without bitterness, "that you think I hunger for so empty a thing as this ducal pomp you clutch so fearfully? I tell you, man, that I prefer my liberty to an imperial throne. But I waste breath with you. Yet, some day, when your crown shall have passed from you and your power have been engulfed in the ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... the same high windows we catch without any stretching of the neck a still more indispensable note in the picture, a famous pretender eating the bread of bitterness. This repast is served in the open air, on a neat little terrace, by attendants in livery, and there is no indiscretion in our seeing that the pretender dines. Ever since the table d'hote in "Candide" Venice has been the refuge ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... of these occasions that Hal first noticed Mike Sikoria, a grizzle-haired old Slovak, who had spent twenty years in the mines of these regions. All the bitterness of all the wrongs of all these years welled up in Old Mike, as he shouted his score aloud: "Nineteen, twenty-two, twenty-four, twenty! Is that my weight, Mister? You want me to believe ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... quiet lives: we come back to them from the struggle, and find that while they too are full of all fine aspiration for right, and thrill with a divine indignation against wrong, their aspiration is without restlessness, their indignation has no root of bitterness in it; they are not unduly elated by successes which have turned our heads, nor daunted by failures which have utterly cast us down; their faith is, as ours should be, far more in God than in any of His human instruments. ...
— Beside the Still Waters - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... inflicted upon us by rash and violent declaimers like Macer. There are others like him; he is by no means alone, though he is far the most conspicuous. Together they help to kindle the flame of active hostility, and infuse fresh bitterness into the Pagan heart. Should the Emperor carry into effect the purposes now ascribed to him, these men will be sure victims, and ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... all—the end of his ambition, of his struggle to raise himself, of his battle for a little learning that she might not be ashamed. Lifting his head he could see dimly the one great pine that towered on the hill over its fellows, and he resolved, in the bitterness of his defeat, that he would sell the whole wood to-morrow in Applegate. He tried to think clearly—to tell himself that he had never believed in her—that he had always known she would throw him over at the last—but the agony in his heart ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... of information; the Count discussed (apropos of a book at which he had been glancing) the question of the Temporal Power of the Papacy with learning and some heat: he was, it appeared, strongly opposed to these ecclesiastical claims, and spoke of them with marked bitterness. Dieppe, very little interested, escaped for a walk early in the afternoon. It was five o'clock when he regained the garden and stood for a few moments looking down towards the river. It was just ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... in the dismal rainy season, when all the life of the region was at the lowest ebb of the year, and when comfort was hardly to be found. The extreme bitterness of Eastern winters was wanting; but the bracing tonic effect of honest cold was also denied them. Through many months they were to suffer from an uninterrupted downpour of rain, driven before the raw sea-winds, ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... steer his vessel. He dare not leave the helm to look after his wife and children. He hoped the sea had not broken into the cabin and drowned all that were left to him on earth. He had often been called to drink the cup of bitterness, had he been called to drink it to its dregs? Had his sorrow at last reached its destined depths. He burst into tears, almost stupified, and calling upon Him who is able to guide the storm in its course and hush it to a calm; ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... mystery lay still unrevealed; and what he had discovered was certainly important, yet not of such a kind as could excite any thing like a feeling of triumph. He went to her now because he could not help it, and went in bitterness and humiliation. That he should go at all under such circumstances only showed how complete and utter had been his discomfiture. But yet, in spite of this, there had been no cowardice of which he could ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... my father hates me; you must also know that, when I refused to marry you, he drove me out of his house forever . . . he almost cursed me and drove me out . . ." she repeated with bitterness. "I left because I had to, but I will never return. I will not exchange the freedom of the theater for slavery at home. Things happened as they did because they had to. My father told me at that time that he had no longer a daughter, and I now answer that I have no longer a father. ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... guess till she lifted that little frail child she had left upon the shore seven years back, that the secret people of the sea or those who call across running water could have the hardness and coldness to give her again the unsmiling dumb thing she had mothered with so much bitterness ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... be turned into darkness; let not God regard it from above; and let not the light shine upon it. Let darkness and the shadow of death cover it; let a mist overspread it, and let it be wrapped up in bitterness. Let a darksome whirlwind seize upon that night. . . . Let them curse it who curse the clay, who are ready to raise ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... for woe the damsel bound With iron and with anguish round, That none to help her grief was found Or loose the inextricably inwound Grim curse that girt her life with grief And made a burden of her breath, Harsh as the bitterness of death. Then spake the king as one that saith Words bitterer ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the bitterness of utter defeat and hatred in the shaking voice. The tree-toads, beginning their nightly chorus from the wet places below the cottonwoods, emphasized the dreariness of the recital, the ancient hopelessness of the weak beneath ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... alive, and we take great interest in the changing of our jails. But no man knows where his neighbor's prison lies. How bravely and cheerily most eyes look up! This is one of the sweetest mercies of life, that "the heart knoweth its own bitterness," and, knowing it, can hide it. Hence, we can all be friends for other prisoners, standing separated from them by the impassable iron gratings and the fixed gulf of space, which are not inappropriate emblems of the unseen barriers between all human souls. We can show kindly ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... not believe that it is suited for elephants. It lacks energy, it lacks force of character, it lacks bitterness. These things all show in the meekness and resignation of its expression. It would not attack an elephant, I am sure of it. It might not run if it saw one coming, but it looked to me like a dog that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... (This is interesting, being evidently the record of personal experience.) "Thirdly, without resistance or means, when the will is quite subdued." "What is given through means is tasteless; it is seen through a veil, and split up into fragments, and bears with it a certain sting of bitterness." There are other passages in which he is obviously under the influence of Dionysius; as when he speaks of "dying to all distinctions"; in fact, he at times preaches "simplification" in an unqualified form. But, on the other hand, no Christian teachers ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... scorns me!" he said, and laughed again, and flung them all back and shut the drawer upon them. And presently he knew that he held her all the higher because she did scorn him; because her life was such that she could scorn him; and the bitterness dropped out of him, his eyes softened, and though he still laughed, it was for an utterly different reason, and ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... know. Did he not really understand that an adoring wife could not be fitted into their friendship? His innocent unconsciousness of inevitable change made Helen's heart, in its deeper knowledge of human character, sink to a bitterness that felt like a hatred of him, and she wondered, looking forward, whether Gerald would ever miss anything, or ever know that ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... that they have what they list; but how long, thinkest thou, will it last? Behold, like the smoke those who are rich in this world will pass away, and no record shall remain of their past joys. Yea, even while they yet live, they rest not without bitterness and weariness and fear. For from the very same thing wherein they find delight, thence they oftentimes have the punishment of sorrow. Justly it befalleth them, that because out of measure they seek out and pursue pleasures, they enjoy them not without confusion and bitterness. ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... Entering the forest, I sought a secluded spot, sat down on an old log, and read and re-read that heart-breaking piece of intelligence. There was no mistaking the words; they were plain, laconic, and nothing ambiguous about them. And, to intensify the bitterness of the draught, it may be set down here that the groom was a dudish young squirt, a clerk in a country store, who lacked the pluck to go for a soldier, but had stayed at home to count eggs and measure calico. In my opinion, he was not worthy of the girl, and I was amazed ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray Gone from the path direct: and e'en to tell It were no easy task, how savage wild That forest, how robust and rough its growth, Which to remember only, my dismay Renews, in bitterness not far from death. Yet to discourse of what there good befell, All else will I relate discover'd there. How first I enter'd it I scarce can say, Such sleepy dullness in that instant weigh'd My senses down, when the true path I left, But ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... she stared for a moment with dilating eyes at the woman who could be capable of such cruelty. Then, of a sudden, a protest of such bitterness sprang to her lips that even Mercy ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... bitterness, "You're too good to him. I wish you weren't quite so—" He hesitated. "They're beginning ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... in a geranium-bed in an attitude of unstudied ease. On her fat body was a white dress, round her waist was a wide, blue sash, perched on one side of her head was a flaunting blue bow, and in her heart was bitterness. It was dimly comforting to lie down in all this finery, but it did not really help much. She brooded darkly upon her wrongs. They were numerous, and her cherubic little face took on additional gloom as she summed them up. First, she had been ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... this Sunday evening, "Nearer, My God, to Thee," "Lead, Kindly Light," "Tell Me the Old, Old Story," and "Where is my Wandering Boy Tonight?" There is a tragedy in every heart, and each man has experienced the bitterness of sin and bears its scars branded in his body. Look into the faces of some of these men. Here in front, this very first one, is an American cowboy from Texas, Frank B——. As a "broncho-buster" he became the star rider in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and was finally adopted as ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... in their sea-faring in that long race with the north wind, for every moment they looked to have the mast torn up by the root and the frame-work of the ship broken asunder. The salt surf quenched their fire and mingled their bread with bitterness. ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... speak That parting word of bitterness; the cheek Grows pale when the tongue utters it; the knell Which tells "the grave is ready!" and doth swell On the dull wind, tolling—"the dead—the dead!" Sounds not more desolate. It is a dread And fearful thing to be of hope bereft, As if the soul itself had died, and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... it," said Leone, sadly. "I trust you as you trust me. I have had a great sorrow in my love; greater—oh, Heaven!—than ever fell to the lot of woman. And one day, when I saw your husband, the bitterness of it was lying heavily on me. I said something to him that led him to understand how dull and unhappy I felt. Lady Chandos, he took me on the river that he might give me one happy day, nothing more. Do you grudge it to me, dear? Ah, if I could give you the happiness of those few fleeting ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... next day. Take four men, we will say, two to do the day thinking and two more to go on deck at night, and see how much time the rest of the world would have to go fishing. See how politics would become simplified. Conventions, primaries, bargains and sales, campaign bitterness and vituperation—all might be wiped out. A pair of political thinkers could furnish 100,000,000 of people with logical conclusions enough to last them through the campaign and put an unbiased opinion into a man's house each day for less than he now pays for gas. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... with stiff bristles, so that one dare scarcely approach them without fear of being pricked! For want of a little occasional command over one's temper, an amount of misery is occasioned in society which is positively frightful. Thus enjoyment is turned into bitterness, and life becomes like a journey barefooted amongst thorns and briers and prickles. "Though sometimes small evils," says Richard Sharp, "like invisible insects, inflict great pain, and a single hair may stop a vast machine, yet the ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... library, to which led the curtained door on the right. Sitting idly in his light, wheeled chair, ready to enter when his cousin appeared, he had heard the chat of Annon and the major. As he listened, over his usually impassive face passed varying expressions of anger, pain, bitterness, and defiance, and when the young man uttered his almost fierce "We shall see," Treherne smiled a scornful smile and clenched his pale hand with a gesture which proved that a year of suffering had not conquered the man's spirit, though ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... arrangements. Much as it grieved her to part with Rhoda, she could not help looking forward with delight to going back to the dear old farmhouse in which her childhood had been spent. And Rhoda understood exactly how she felt. There was no bitterness in her heart; but, brave and cheery as she was, she dreaded to think of the lonely days that lay ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... Harry both laughed heartily; one congratulating him on not having carried the principle into the cockpit, the other adding, 'Don't indoctrinate Leonard with it; there is enough already to breed bitterness between those brothers! Leonard ought to be kept in mind that Henry has so much to harass him, that his temper ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kind of story to avoid is Andersen's "Story of the Butterfly." The bitterness of the Anemones, the sentimentality of the Violets, the schoolgirlishness of the Snowdrops, the domesticity of the Sweetpeas—all this tickles the palate of the adult, but does not belong to the place of the normal child. Again, ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock |
