"Bitterness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... — say no more. I comprehend it all too well," replied Wendot, not without a natural though only momentary feeling of bitterness at the thought of what this pledge was already costing him, but his native generosity and sweetness of temper soon triumphed over all besides, and he said with his peculiarly bright and steadfast smile, "You have judged rightly and well for us both, my lord. Did I but drag ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... represent the war as religious; to describe it as a species of crusade instigated by the Pope, in order to bring heretical England once more into the fold of the true Church. In reality nothing can be more inaccurate. It is, indeed, quite certain that religious bitterness was imported into the quarrel; but the war had its origin in two perfectly clear and wholly ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... it seems that Milton did not inwardly forfeit the peace which passeth all understanding. He had formerly said himself (Doctrine and Disc.), "nothing more than disturbance of mind suspends us from approaching to God." Now, out of all the clamour and the bitterness of the battle of the sects, he can retire and be alone with his heavenly aspirations, which have lost none of their ardour by having laid aside all their sectarianism. His genius has forsaken him, but his soul still glows with the fervour of devotion. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... Witch, being mad with shame and spite, fled from the face of man, and ran through the woods like a wild wolf. And so she came to Bar Harbor (Pes'sonkqu', P.), and sat down on a log, and said, with her heart full of bitterness and malice, "I would that I could become something which should torment all men." And as she said this she became a mosquito (T'sis-o, P.), and so it came to pass that mosquitoes were made. And to this day men see that wherever ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... deserted his coffee shop for that reason. He gave out that Djemal Pasha's name over the door stood for reaction and political intrigue. So his place began to be frequented by effendis in tarboosh and semi-European clothes, who could chew the cud of bitterness aloud between walls that the crusaders had built four feet thick. The only entrance was through the narrow front door, where Yussuf inspected every visitor ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... leaving the sweet silence of the woods for the strife and noise of cities, learning to share the burdens of my fellows. See you not, my father, see you not the way of it?" So spake Beltane, hot and passionate, striding to and fro upon the sward, while Ambrose sat with bitterness in his heart ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... the one thing unbearable in her experience. The bitterness of it all welled up and overflowed in a few hot tears that stung her hands as they dropped slowly from the burning eyes. It was a long time before the little blinds swung out, and the doctor appeared with her husband. Preston was talking affably, fluently, and now ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... to pagan philosophies. The fact of this double derivation deserves to be emphasised. It refutes the charge of inquisitorial bigotry, so frequently levelled against the theologians of the early centuries. The non-Christian affinities of the heresy account for the bitterness of the controversy to which it gave rise, and, in large measure, excuse the intolerance shown by both parties. Heresies were not domestic quarrels. Contemporaries viewed them as involving a life and death struggle between believers and unbelievers. Christianity can afford to ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... Julia had experienced all the vicissitudes of fortune. From an humble station she had been raised to greatness, only to taste the superior bitterness of an exalted rank. She was doomed to weep over the death of one of her sons, and over the life of the other. The cruel fate of Caracalla, though her good sense must have long taught' er to expect it, awakened the feelings of a mother and of an empress. Notwithstanding the respectful ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... evidently made or left for its sake, the distant prospect was visible. It was a morning in early summer, when the leaves were not quite full-grown but almost, and their green was shining and pure as the blue of the sky, when the air had no touch of bitterness or of lassitude, but was thoroughly warm, and yet filled the lungs with the reviving as of a draught of cold water. We had fastened the carriage umbrella to the sofa, so that it should shade her perfectly without obscuring her prospect; and behind ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... have a Christmas cake; also, he suggested we should invite Tom Devine and Charley de Buis, the two American traders who lived across the lagoon, to join the party. Being aware of the fact that, from trade jealousies, there had hitherto been a somewhat notorious bitterness of feeling between my German fellow-trader and the two Americans, I shook his hand warmly, said that I was delighted to see that he could forgive and forget, and that I should that moment send my boat ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... life could be portrayed in a series of such charming pictures! but grinding poverty was there also, and the bitterness of disappointed hopes. His sensitive nature could not withstand the repeated material shocks to which it was subjected. And the pity is, that it gave way just when there seemed a prospect of a change. "The Magic Flute" had been produced with great success, and that ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... Success does not ordinarily go, in the minds of the poor, with charity and kind-heartedness, but rather with the opposite qualities. The rich landlord is he who collects with sternness, who accepts no excuse, and will have his own. There are moments of irritation and of real bitterness against him, but there is still admiration, because he is rich and successful. The good-natured landlord, he who pities and spares his poverty-pressed tenants, is seldom rich. He often lives in the back of his house, which he has owned for a long time, perhaps has inherited; but ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... upper rapids, their boat, with all its contents intact, rode safely in the placid waters of a little bay where the river widened out and navigation was once more possible. Here at last the kind-hearted natives bade a reluctant and sorrowful farewell to Dick and Stukely; the bitterness of parting being mitigated by a promise on the part of the white men that, in the event of their returning by way of the river, they would not fail to make a stay of at least a week in ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... we Americans have swarmed over the face of the world, taking it for granted that the earth's surface belongs to us because we can pay for it, and it is rather worse than ever since the war, when the advantages of exchange add bitterness to irritation. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... this seems justified by the oppression of the times and by the barbarous severity of the game laws. An intense hatred of shams and injustice lurks in every song; but the hatred is saved from bitterness by the humor with which captives, especially rich churchmen, are solemnly lectured by the bandits, while they squirm at sight of devilish tortures prepared before their eyes in order to make them give up their golden purses; ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... us that time can never tame; And life will always seem a careless game; And they'd better far forget — Those who say they love us yet — Forget, blot out with bitterness our name. ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... was waiting for him to return to her, and he groaned aloud in the bitterness of his anguish, in the agony ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... kneeling at the foot of the bed. In his heart was the bitterness of loss and defeat. His dreams of greatness for this clay! The worldly pomp which was to have attended it! Life was but a warm breath on the mirror of eternity; for one the ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... some time after Charnock left. His bitterness against his wife had gone, and it was plain that he had been a fool. For all that, he could not go home yet; the money was still an obstacle. Pride forbade his letting Helen support him. Moreover, he felt that to act against his convictions now would cost him her respect. There was ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... us; theirs is the polish of steel which we admire for the labour bestowed upon it, but by which we do not benefit. The inevitable ills of life strengthen and refine when they are heroically borne; it is the preventable ones that act on our evil passions, and fill us with rage and bitterness; and what we want from the written word that reaches all of us is help and advice, comfort and encouragement. If art interferes with that, then art had better go. It would not be missed by the wretched—the happy we need not consider. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... complete. Drawing his sword from its scabbard, he placed the point on the ground; then, bending the blade into the form of a bow, he gave the hilt a sudden, peculiar thrusting jerk, and the blade snapped in twain. Then, tossing the hilt from him, he exclaimed, in a tone of concentrated bitterness, "I surrender!" and burst into tears of anger ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... languished so long rose the radiant Balder, together with his brother Hodur, with whom he was reconciled, and with whom he was to live in perfect amity and peace. The past had gone for ever, and the surviving deities could recall it without bitterness. The memory of their former companions was, however, dear to them, and full often did they return to their old haunts to linger over the happy associations. It was thus that walking one day in the long grass on Idavold, they found again the golden disks with ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... business they were most admirably fitted, and most faithfully did they perform it." Those inevitable evils which man is destined to endure in this present state, are enough without the addition of the almost unmingled bitterness of the infusion, which superstition would pour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... forerunners were turbulent savages, destitute of all culture, or whether they were valiant, immature men labouring through the twilight of their age towards that dawn which does not yet flush our own horizon. But we are far from wishing that dead centuries should be summoned back to wake old bitterness that ought also to be dead. Hand history over to the scholars, if you will; let it be marshalled as a multitudinous and coloured pageant, to incite imaginations and inspire literature. Such is our ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... places similar holocausts were under way. There was practically nothing going on on Kandar which was not related to the disaster for which the people of that world waited. The feel of bitterness and despair was everywhere. Broadcasting stations stayed on the air only to report monotonously that the tragic event had not yet happened. The small space-navy of Kandar waited, aground, to take the king and some other persons on board at the last ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... by the industrial revolution most sorely and directly; it sprang up with particular vigour in the years immediately following the great Reform Bill; and it has been remarked that disappointment of the hopes which that measure had cherished had something to do with its bitterness. As it went on, obvious causes for failure were developed in it; self-seeking leadership; futile discussion of the means of making the change, before organization of the party was perfected; blind fear of ultimate consequences on the part of some, ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... disregard and nullify the right of the Senate to exercise independently its constitutional share in the treaty-making power. Thus at the very outset of the struggle between the President and the Senate a feeling of hostility was engendered which continued with increasing bitterness on both sides and prevented any compromise or concession in regard to the Covenant as it finally appeared in the Treaty ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... thousand times I have longed for death, and wished, with an expressible ardor, for an end to what I suffered. A thousand times I have meditated suicide, and ruminated in my soul upon the different means of escaping from my load of existence. A thousand times in wretched bitterness I have asked myself, What have I to do with life? I have seen and felt enough to make me regard it with detestation. Why should I wait the lingering process of an unfeeling tyrant that is slowly tearing me to pieces, and not dare so much as die but when and how the marble-hearted thing ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... of him, and then as if in answer to my thought, I heard him emit a screech of laughter as his car suddenly shot away from us, and in half a minute placed him at least a quarter of a mile ahead. The bitterness of that moment, as my hope died within me, I can never forget. I ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... Ulrica, stepping before the couch of Front-de-Boeuf; "she hath long drunken of this cup, and its bitterness is now sweetened to see that thou dost partake it. Grind not thy teeth, Front-de-Boeuf—roll not thy eyes—clench not thy hand, nor shake it at me with that gesture of menace! The hand which, like that of thy renowned ancestor who gained thy name, could have broken with ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... rack us, or party divide us, And bitterness break the gold links of our story, Our father and leader is ever beside us. Live, and forgive! But forget not the glory Of him whose height we try for, A name to live and die ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... delight in perpetual exaggeration. For example, if he were told of any disaster, that a village had been struck by lightning, or that a mill had been carried away by floods, or that a peasant had cut his hand with an axe, he invariably asked with concentrated bitterness, 'And what's her name?' meaning, what is the name of the woman responsible for this calamity, for according to his convictions, a woman was the cause of every misfortune, if you only looked deep enough into the matter. He once threw himself on his knees before ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... Couthon attacked the Mountain. "Let them know," replied Bourdon de l'Oise—"let the members of the committee know that if they are patriots, we are patriots too. Let them know that I shall not reply with bitterness to their reproaches. I esteem Couthon, I esteem the committee; but I also esteem the unshaken Mountain which has saved our liberty." Robespierre, surprised at this unexpected resistance, hurried to the tribune. "The convention," said he, "the Mountain, and the committee are ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... man who is trying to keep his head above water; and it is often sufficient to turn his heart against his wife and her extravagances. It is in this way that incomes are muddled away, and that life is rendered the scene of bitterness and discontent. This is especially the case when both husband ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... grey and moss-grown like the others! The mother placed herself where the staring black letters of Hugh's name could not remind her so harshly that it no more belonged to the living; and, sitting down on the ground, hid her face, to struggle through the parting agony once more, with added bitterness. ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... understood perfectly that he owed the acquiescence of Mademoiselle Grandet to some bitterness of love, and he made haste to obey her orders, lest time should effect a ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... with the Considerations on the French Revolution, it will perhaps be found that the reign of Napoleon is criticized in the first of these works with greater severity than in the other, and that he is there attacked with an eloquence not always exempt from bitterness. This difference may be easily explained: one of these works was written after the fall of the despot, with the calm and impartiality of the historian; the other was inspired by a courageous feeling of resistance to tyranny; ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... associated with the cause of Infidelity; and among the plausible pretexts for Atheism we might mention the inconsistencies of professed believers and especially of the clergy, the divided state of the religious world, as indicated by the multiplicity of sects, the bitterness of religious controversy, the supposed opposition of the Church to the progress of science and the extension of civil and religious liberty, and the gross superstitions which have been incorporated with Christianity itself in some of the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... need for questioning. One glance told her all. She made her way to the moonlit corner, pushed both aside with rough strength, and knelt down. "I might ha' knowed," she said with helpless bitterness—"I might ha' knowed;" and she laid her face against the dead hand in a sudden passion of weeping. "I might ha' knowed, Jinny lass," she cried, "but I didna. It was loike aw th' rest as tha' should lay thee ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... actually the fact. I am personally well acquainted with an ex-slave, who is also a native of Virginia, who vividly remembers those days. At the time of his birth his mother was hardly more than sixteen years of age; but, notwithstanding, this girl had already tasted enough of the anguish and bitterness of slavery which might more than have sufficed for a long lifetime. She was so roughly treated by her owner that for some little time preceding her child's birth she remained concealed in a neighbouring wood, where the only diet procurable was berries or wild fruit. In this case the painful ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... not omit any precautions. Your enemy has a long purse, and can reach right across France. That last affair is proof of his bitterness against you, and it would be rash indeed were we to act as if, having made one attempt and failed, he would abandon his plans altogether. He is clearly a man who nourishes a grudge for years, and his first failure is only likely to ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about him, his dream had had its usual effect—it had intensified the sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold. Then came bitterness, and heart-break, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... can be of use to the author in sparing him some of the bitterness that the author feels when his manuscript is rejected. Who that has read it can ever forget the story of how Hawthorne, while still struggling for success, submitted a collection of short stories to a publisher, and of how the publisher, not having much capital, laid the manuscript aside, intending ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... Theophile tasted the bitterness of death as the men who slept from the stroke of his sword could never taste it. And because he was not a man to put his soul into the keeping of his tongue, he made no answer, but in his secret heart he resolved to win her love, though the adventure cost ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... like what he saw. To him, separating black soldiers from white soldiers was a fundamental error. First, the effect on black morale was devastating. "Beneath the surface," he wrote, "is widespread discontent. Most white persons are unable to appreciate the rancor and bitterness which the Negro, as a matter of self-preservation, has learned to hide beneath a smile, a joke, or merely an impassive face." The inherent paradox of trying to inculcate pride, dignity, and aggressiveness in a black soldier while inflicting on him the segregationist's ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... and that a hundred thousand men and women would curse him that night before they slept. He recollected what a vigorous striker he had been in the beginning, how he had shouted, "Put him out" when the grand master had said: "We are fighting a losing fight." He recalled with some bitterness that their leader had looked him straight in the face when he added: "And you who fight hardest here will be ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... no fresh laces," said the priest, with some bitterness; but he was mistaken. An hour later, Ninon was back, not only with a box of laces, but also with a collection of cosmetics, with which she proceeded to make startling the scratched and faded face of the wooden ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... of the room, and Aunt Lucy, the first bitterness of her disappointment over, retired to bed, and slept more tranquilly than the unscrupulous woman ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... have constant memories of her from the earliest times I can remember till she went to live at Oxford. I was always devoted to her, and she had an almost uncanny power of reading my thoughts. I don't feel there can have been a shade of bitterness in death for her, though she loved life; but there is something woefully pathetic in its circumstances, the pain, the loneliness, ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... dearest Siegfried! 't is e'en thy death I dread. Last night I dreamt, two mountains fell thundering on thy head, And I no more beheld thee; if thou from me wilt go, My heart will sure be breaking with bitterness ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... the Spencers (Sunderland), or the Comptons (Northampton), who felt and owned their paramount duty to lie in public self-dedication, and died therefore, and oftentimes left their inheritances a desolation. 'Thus far'—oh heavens! with what bitterness I said this, knowing it a thing undeniable by W. W. or by Sir George—you, the peerages that pretend to try conclusions with the English, you—French, German, Walloon, Spanish, Scottish—are able to do so simply because you ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... principles were practiced both in the war of 1812 and during our own war of 1861-65. Even with all the bitterness (now happily ended and forgotten) and all the difficulties of having no port to which to send a prize, Captain Semmes of the Alabama strictly observed the rule as to human life, even going so far as to release ships because he could not care for the passengers. But we are not confined ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... with the beating of the drum, the yell, the war-whoop and the war-dance, so inspiring to Indian valor. All, however, were lost upon the peaceful spirits of his hearers; not a Nez Perce was to be roused to vengeance, or stimulated to glorious war. In the bitterness of his heart, the Blackfoot renegade repined at the mishap which had severed him from a race of congenial spirits, and driven him to take refuge among beings so destitute ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... it makes me sad," said Morel, with bitterness; "you so much fear to grieve people. Well, then, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... I, with a bitterness that startled him, "is a victim in the hands of your lordship's followers. She has been decoyed away and carried off to Holland as an act of reprisal ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... naivete and joyousness! Oftentimes it is the gray and lonely air of the organ-loft at St. Clothilde, the church where he played so many melancholy years, that breathes through his work. Alone with his instrument and the clouded skies, he pours out his sadness, his bitterness, strives for resignation. Or, his music is a bridge from the turmoiled present to some rarer, larger, better plane. In symphony and quartet, in sonata and oratorio, he attains it. The hellish brood is scattered; the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Well, I will follow her there, see what I dread to see, and die of it; it will be trouble saved for the musket or cannon. Alas! I did not seek this; I went calmly to meet a glorious death, and I wished to die with her name on my lips. It is not so to be; I am destined to a death full of bitterness and torture. Well, ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... of my text, 'is not to be repented of,' which will leave no regrets in your hearts in the day when all else shall have faded, and the sinful sweets of this world shall have turned to ashes and bitterness on the lips of the men that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... interested in the subject, he kindly promised a practical evidence of his doctrine, and the next day intentionally spoiled the dish by a trifling addition of parsley. He had not exaggerated the consequences; the delicate flavour entirely departed, and left a nauseous bitterness in its place, like the remembrance of an ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... only voiced a feeling which in Nelson's heart had all the strength of a principle; and this light of the single eye stood him in good stead in the moments of bitterness which followed a few months later, when a lull in the storm of fighting gave the sense of neglect a chance to rankle. "My heart is full," he writes then to his uncle Suckling, speaking not only of Bastia, but of the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... plaster mask of Dante in the red lamplight, with a forest of silver-white hair above the brows. Blindness intensified the expression of bitterness and sorrow in that grand face of his; the dead eyes were lighted up, as it were, by a thought within that broke forth like a burning flame, lit by one sole insatiable desire, written large in vigorous characters upon ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... noon, he tossed over the last bundle of white-ribboned missives and tumbled in after them. The life of Burns is a tragedy, through which are interspersed sparkling scenes of gaiety, as if to retrieve the depth of bitterness that would otherwise be unbearable. Go ask Mary Morison, Highland Mary, Agnes McLehose, Betty Alison, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... a kind of sport that I do not admire; it is a sort of midnight murder, and many a poor brute who comes to the silent pool to cool his parched tongue, finds only a cup of bitterness, and retires again to his jungle haunts to die a lingering death from some unskilful wound. The best shot must frequently miss by moonlight; there is a silvery glare which renders all objects indistinct, and the shot very doubtful; ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... a woman dressed all in black had picked up the poor old Noah's ark and was looking at it wildly. She was a widow who had just lost her only child, a little son, and she was in a state of morbid bitterness ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... a young man on the morning after his betrothal received orders to join the standard of de Rieux "to help the Bretons oversea." It was with bitterness in his heart, says the lover, that he entered the house of his betrothed with the object of bidding her farewell. He told her that duty called him, and that he must go to serve in England. At this her tears gushed forth, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... with a touch of bitterness in his voice; for Mimi's supposed possessions seemed to him to be the chief barrier ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... walkover for her!" he exclaimed in consternation. Being full of concern for Jack, he forthwith proceeded with the news to Miss Bright, and they lamented together in bitterness over the young man's impending ruin. "She has played her cards like a sharper, and I have no doubt that that old idiot, Jack, is done ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... in following the directions of the wild, masterless man, whom he left among the trees where he had found him. His heart was the heavier for the encounter, not only because all bitterness and wrath were abhorrent to his gentle nature, but also because it disturbed him to hear his brother spoken of as though he were a chief of outlaws or the leader of a party against the state. Indeed, of all the things which he had seen yet in the world to surprise ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sweetest of little wives—for nothing could have been more competent than the way she managed her baby and her simple housekeeping. Indeed, there came to the young husband's mind not infrequently, and always with a slight aroma of bitterness, the conviction that Lydia was perfectly able to do whatever she really wished to do and considered important; and that previous conditions must have been due to her unwillingness to set herself seriously at the problems before her. It was a new theory ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... only in the boundless expanse of such imaginations, unreal and fictitious as they are, that we are truly blessed! Our choicest blessings in life come even so associated with some sources of care that the cup of enjoyment is not pure but dregged in bitterness. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Satires of Horace there is none of the lofty moral indignation, the fierce vehemence of invective, which characterized the later satirists. It is the folly rather than the wickedness of vice which he touches with such playful skill. In the Epodes there is bitterness provoked, it should seem, by some personal hatred or sense of injury; but the Epistles are the most perfect of the Horatian poetry, the poetry of manners and society, the beauty of which consists ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... gathering from his design this impression of a melancholy and sorrowing Dionysus. But modern motives are clearer; and in a Bacchus by a young Hebrew painter, in the exhibition of the Royal Academy of 1868, there was a complete and very fascinating realisation of such a motive; the god of the bitterness of wine, "of things too sweet"; the sea-water of the Lesbian grape become somewhat brackish in the cup. Touched by the sentiment of this subtler, melancholy Dionysus, we may ask whether anything similar in feeling is to be actually found in the range of Greek ideas;—had some antitype of ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... is from love. We always love those who depend on us for life. Your sufferings have been great, and great is our sympathy. Pity, sympathy, tenderness, all flow towards you, and no remembrance of the past mingles bitterness with their balm." ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Athens and AEgina, went on for a long time, increasing in bitterness and cruelty as the injuries increased in number and magnitude which the belligerent ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... know some of the commentators have imagined that Mr Dryden, in the altercative scene between Cleopatra and Octavia, a scene which Mr Addison inveighs against with great bitterness, is much beholden to our author. How just this their observation is I will not presume ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... spoke with bitterness, but Mrs. Crane was reminded instantly of her own affairs. "I feel condemned that I ain't begun my own fall cleanin' yet," she said, with an ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... sit down, let me ask you what is this people, about which so many men in England at this moment are writing, and speaking, and thinking, with harshness, I think with injustice, if not with great bitterness? Two centuries ago, multitudes of the people of this country found a refuge on the North American continent, escaping from the tyranny of the Stuarts and from the bigotry of Laud. Many noble spirits from our country ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... The bitterness of this language was intensified by a comment made to the Japanese envoys when handing them the above despatch. His Majesty said that Japan's programme of conquering China resembled an attempt to bail out the ocean with a ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... of course you do," her father said, quite unmoved by her attack. "Now you are tasting something—only something—of the bitterness of my life. And it is good that you should. The parent's sins—the children. Yes, you ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... had seen carried by Clement Lindsay. But he was used to concealing his emotions, and he greeted the two older ladies who presently came into the library so pleasantly, that no one who had not studied his face long and carefully would have suspected the bitterness of heart that lay hidden far down beneath his deceptive smile. He told Miss Silence, with much apparent interest, the story of his journey. He gave her an account of the progress of the case in which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... carpets," Thomas thought with a little bitterness for which he at once reproached himself. For, after all, Persis' friendship had been stanch and steadfast till his own confession had disclosed his unworthiness. He atoned for his momentary lapse by making her a substantial discount on the linoleum ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... forgotten. Of the rest, to part I have given the highest approbation, by inserting the offered reading in the text; part I have left to the judgment of the reader, as doubtful, though specious; and part I have censured without reserve, but I am sure without bitterness of malice, and, I hope, without wantonness ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... exercises without vim; at her studies she was both stupid and sullen. When Mrs. Ring's patience was exhausted and her frayed nerves finally gave out, Allie rounded upon her with a violence unparalleled. Those previous exhibitions of temper were tame as compared with this one; the girl spat scorn and bitterness and hatred; she became a volcano in ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the part of wisdom to take for our guide the Federal Constitution, rather than resort to measures which, looking only to the present, may in a few years renew, in an aggravated form, the strife and bitterness caused by legislation which has proved to be ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... receive from us impassioned arguments against his own nation on account of slavery, might well be pardoned were he to say to us, with somewhat of intemperate feeling, 'Physician, heal thyself,' and to expose with bitterness the awful inconsistency of Britain's vehement denunciation of American slavery, while, by most ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... own crushed victim to the gratification of his depraved appetites and passions. I would rather enter the gloomy cell of your friend Fairbanks, and spend every hour of this brief existence in all the bitterness that the hand of tyrants can inflict, than live in all pomp and splendor that the unpaid toil of slaves could ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... the psychological moment, and on the part of the inventor to secure any adequate return for years of effort and struggle in founding one of the great arts. Neither of these men was squelched by such a calamitous result, but if there were not something of bitterness in their feelings as they survey what has come of their work, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... slowly away from the world that had so applauded her hollow, but brilliant career, tasted the bitterness of death in reflecting that she should so soon be given over to the worms and the biographers. Fortunate Rachel, resting in serene confidence that the two would be fellow-laborers! It is the unhappy fate of her survivors to have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... those long, lanky, loose-jointed girls Who fool people into believing They are willowy and psychic and mysterious. I was always hungry; I never ate enough to satisfy me, For fear I'd get fat. Oh, how little the world knows of the bitterness of life To a woman who tries to keep thin! Many thought I died of a broken heart, But it was an empty stomach. Then Mr. Rossetti wrote about me. He described me all dolled up in some ladies' wearing apparel That I wore at a fancy ball. I had fasted all day, and had had my hair ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... collieries. Had they known where to find Derrick and Paul, a score of stalwart fellows would willingly have dashed into the flames after them. As it was, no sign that they were still in existence had been discovered, and the spectators of the fire were forced to stand and watch it in all the bitterness of ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... Beverly's arms he felt around his neck. Nevertheless he held to Elizabeth more completely than he knew, for the one thing that emerged from his misty recollection of her was that she cared for him. In a world of hate and bitterness she cared. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... met to decide our fate. According to the ordinary way of the world, nearly all our friends, from the moment that they saw our cause lost, abandoned us, and the majority, to avoid all suspicion of having had a share in the conspiracy, insisted on our condemnation with even more bitterness than our enemies themselves. That we deserved the penalty of death was a point on which the agreement was soon very general; only the mode in which we were to be dispatched furnished the matter for prolonged discussion. Some voted for our public execution ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... not to be discharged save graciously. Whilst, on the other hand, to scold at people guilty of remissness, to drive and fine and chasten, these are proceedings doubtless which go hand in hand with hate and bitterness. ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... quarrel with the first difficulty on your path, and quit it in weak disgust; you reflect that it cannot be quitted, that it must be conquered, a wise arrangement fallen on with regard to it. Ye foolish Wedded Two, who have quarrelled, between whom the Evil Spirit has stirred-up transient strife and bitterness, so that 'incompatibility' seems almost nigh, ye are nevertheless the Two who, by long habit, were it by nothing more, do best of all others suit each other: it is expedient for your own two foolish selves, to say nothing ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... deceiver, and welcomed him, as friend and deliverer, to their arms. Fortunately for me, my early training and subsequent mode of life preserved me from any thought of this fatal solution to the problem of my life. I read my bible almost constantly, although my reading seemed only to add to the bitterness of my regrets and self-reproaches. These questions would constantly suggest themselves to me: "Could I ever have been a Christian?" and "What will the enemies of Christianity think and say about my fall?" Until one day about ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... her eyes and stooped more humble downward. She saw now why the darkness had hung so long over her prayers. Filled with unforgiving bitterness against her mother she had asked God to forgive her, scarcely deeming her fault one to be repented of. A brief struggle against the memory of bitter ill-usage and fierce wrong inflicted by her mother, and Mary drew a deep free breath. Her eyes filled, and meekly folding ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... The serious level brows of Rose haunted the poor youth; and reflecting whither he was tending, and to what sight, he had shadowy touches of the holiness there is in death, from which came a conflict between the imaged phantoms of his father and of Rose, and he sided against his love with some bitterness. His sisters, weeping for their father and holding aloof from his ashes, Evan swept from his mind. He called up the man his father was: the kindliness, the readiness, the gallant gaiety of the great Mel. Youths are fascinated ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to Janet to discuss as he naturally brought everything that touched him to her, and Janet, believing it to be a lover's pleasure, could not forbid him. When he criticised Elfrida, Janet fancied it was to hear her warm defence, which grew oddly reckless in her anxiety to hide the bitterness that ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... been changed, that such of the body of the people as thought themselves federalists, would find that they were in truth republicans, and would come over to us by degrees; but that their leaders had gone too far ever to change. Their bitterness increases with their desperation. They are trying slanders now which nothing could prompt but a gall which blinds their judgments as well as their consciences. I shall take no other revenge, than, by a steady pursuit of economy and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... burst into wild entreaty, and, clasping her fast, poured forth my supplications with the bitterness of death. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... was bitterness and fear in the old man's voice. In the corner of the room, Nema looked up for a moment, and there was fear and worry in her eyes before she looked back to her weaving of endless knots. Sather Karf sighed in weariness. "If I ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... tell us," said he, dipping his pen in the gall of bitterness, "that our King is a father to us and our officers friends. They are so, we must confess, in some respects, for Indeed they use us like Children in Whiping us into Obedience. As for English Tars to be the Legitimate Sons of Liberty, it is an Old Cry which we have Experienced and Knows it to be ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson |
