bitter quotes

We flee from Death's bitter cup; he follows, loving and fain.

-Abu'l-'Ala   Al-Ma'arri
c.1000  Luzu'  miyya'  t, stanza 36 (translated by R  A Nicholson in Studies in Islamic Poetry,1921).

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

- Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
  Essays, no.7,'Of Parents and Children'.

Amer savoir, celui qu'on tire du voyage! Bitter is the knowledge gained in travelling.

- Charles Baudelaire
  Les Fleurs du mal,'Le Voyage'.

Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Colossians 3:19.

Itook thelittlebookout of theangel'shand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Revelation10:9^10.

'It is bitterbitter,' he answered; 'But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart.'

- Stephen Crane
  The Black Riders,'The Heart'. The speaker is a'naked, bestial' creature which the narrator sees eating its heart in the desert.

It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.

- Martha Ellis Gellhorn
  The Face of War, introduction.

You gotta take the sour with the bitter.

- Sam(uel) originally  Schmuel Gelbfisz Goldwyn
Remark allegedly said to Billy Wilder when one of his films flopped. Quoted in  A Scott Berg Goldwyn (1989).

Difficilis facilis, iucundus acerbus es idem: Nec tecum possum vivere nec sine te. Difficult or easy, pleasant or bitter, you are the same: I cannot live with youor without you.

-Martial full name MarcusValerius Martialis
Epigrams, bk.12, no.46.

Because It Is Bitter, And Because It Is My Heart.

-Myles na Gopaleen
   Title of novel.

Un soir, j'ai assis la Beaute   sur mes genoux.Et je l'ai trouve  e ame'  re.Et je l'ai injurie  e. One evening, I sat Beauty on my knees.And I found her bitter.And I hurt her.

- (Jean Nicolas) Arthur Rimbaud
  Une saison en enfer,'Jadis, si je me souviens bien'.

Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold, A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold?

- Algernon Charles Swinburne
  Poems and Ballads,'Hymn to Proserpine'.

Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks isgood, and to forgive.

- Algernon Charles Swinburne
  Poems and Ballads (2nd edn),'AveAtqueVale', stanza17.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!

- Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
  The Ballad of Reading Gaol, pt.1, stanza 7.

Marbles of the dancing floor Break bitter furies of complexity, Those images that yet Fresh images beget, That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

-W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
  'Byzantium', stanza 5. Collected in TheWinding Stair and Other Poems (1933).