"Bitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'nuff, Brer Fox got whar he kin grab de lowmos' lim's, en dar he wuz! He crope on up, he did, twel he come ter whar he kin retch de green scaly-bark, en den he tuck'n pull one en bite it, en, gentermens! hit uz dat rough en dat bitter twel little mo' en he'd 'a' drapt spang out'n ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... of caste rules it is very different. Hinduism will tolerate anything but caste insubordination. So that when a man, in becoming a Christian, severs his connection with his caste and becomes, socially, an alien to his people, then Hinduism steps in and brings to bear upon him all the bitter penalties of caste infliction, and persecutes him in a thousand social ways such as make life a burden unto him. The engine of caste is the most complete and mighty instrument of religious persecution the world has known, as many ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... Conall, not weak of hand, To get news of the noble's son. Bitter and hard was the way of it; Conall was ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... and although sorrow, and the bitter calamity with which the reader is already acquainted, had left their severe traces upon her constitution and features, still she was a woman on whom no one could look without deep I interest and sympathy. Even at that age, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... till they term all virtue of an heroic cast, romantic attempts at something above our nature, and anxiety about the welfare of others, a search after misery in which we have no concern. But you will say that I am growing bitter, perhaps personal. Ah! shall I whisper to you, that you yourself are strangely altered since you have entered deeply into commerce—more than you are aware of; never allowing yourself to reflect, and keeping your mind, or rather ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... she told Maggie, if she would but drink, would make her quite well again, and protect her against hunger and thirst for the rest of the journey. Upon this, Maggie drank it all but the dregs, and she found it so bitter that she thought it far worse than any cold she had ever endured. But, when the bright being saw she left the dregs in her cup, she was not satisfied, and bade her drink those, even with tears in her eyes. Maggie drank ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... spareth not to smite in the left side. A good leech leaveth not cutting or burning for weeping of the patient. And he hideth and covereth the bitterness of the medicine with some manner of sweetness. He drinketh and tasteth of the medicine, though it be bitter: that it be not against the sick man's heart, and refraineth the sick man of meat and drink; and letteth him have his own will, of the whose health is neither hope ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... the index of sound health, intelligence, good feelings and peace of mind. All are aware that uneasy feelings, existing habitually in the breast speedily exhibit their signature on the countenance, and that bitter thoughts or a bad temper spoil the human expression of its comeliness ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... more with a short breakfast and a long morning, Stanton sank back gradually into a depression infinitely deeper than his pillows, in which he seemed to realize with bitter contrition that in some strange, unintentional manner his purely innocent, matter-of-fact statement that Cornelia "had just gone south" had assumed the gigantic disloyalty of a public proclamation that the lady of his choice was not quite up to the accepted standard of feminine intelligence or ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... "dragon's teeth" to sow? God grant she may never have to defend those English homes against the guns of Vincennes! but if she must, it is on a comparatively undisciplined militia she must depend;—and then she may remember, with bitter self-reproach, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... peculiar organisation corresponding to its character, so that he was able to oppose to the English troops better armed than their own, and make the restoration of a firm peace even desirable for them. But this reacted on England in two ways. The government, which was inclined for peace, fell into as bitter a quarrel as any that had hitherto taken place with the national bodies politic, which either did not recognise this necessity, or attributed the disasters incurred to bad management. The man most trusted by the King ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... bread we are only going back to the methods of our forefathers. Barley is supposed to be one of the first cereals used by man. Good barley flour is a very acceptable substitute for wheat, but if too large a proportion of the kernel is included, it may be bitter in flavor. ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... dear Duke!—my dear Duke! The oil!—the oil!" cried the millionaire, in a tone of bitter distress. "Do you think it's my object in life to swell the Rockefeller millions? We never have more than six lamps burning unless we ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... perhaps tell you of the strange romance that surrounds her—a mystery which I have not yet been able to fathom. She is a Russian subject, although she has been educated in England. Baron Oberg himself is, I believe, her worst and most bitter enemy." ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... thus add to their years. Amongst schoolboys, notwithstanding the general tenor of those romancists who see that every thing young bears a rose-colored blush, misery is prevalent enough. Emerson, Coleridge, Wordsworth, were each and all unhappy boys. They all had their rebuffs, and bitter, bitter troubles; all the more bitter because their sensitiveness was so acute. Suicide is not unknown amongst the young; fears prey upon them and terrify them; ignorances and follies surround them. Arriving at manhood, we are little better off. If we are poor, we mark the difference ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... development, beyond the exposure by his means of fraud, flattery, and hypocrisy: he bears no relation, however distant, to any of the parties engaged in the performance, and seems to have been designed by the unknown author as a sort of running commentator and bitter satirist upon the vices and follies of mankind. On the other hand, the chief characters among the dramatis personae are real and historical, and King Edgar and Bishop Dunstan, with Ethenwald and Alfrida, may be said to figure prominently ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... more impossible, as our acquaintance with the warring interests of the world's parts grows more concrete, to imagine what the one climacteric purpose may possibly be like. We see indeed that certain evils minister to ulterior goods, that the bitter makes the cocktail better, and that a bit of danger or hardship puts us agreeably to our trumps. We can vaguely generalize this into the doctrine that all the evil in the universe is but instrumental to its greater perfection. But the scale of the evil actually in sight defies ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... his returning with money for us, we were obliged to pay money that he had borrowed to get home with, besides his expenses for the ten months that he was gone. This was harder for me than any of the others, and was indeed a bitter pill. As it was my first heavy loss I could ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... occasion after the Missouri Compromise, on which slavery made its influence strongly felt at Washington, was when Mr. Adams's scheme of the Panama mission aroused such bitter and unexpected resistance in Congress. Mr. Webster defended the policy of the President with great ability, but he confined himself to the international and constitutional questions which it involved, ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... should do. Mortified as I was at his behavior, and resolved as I had been to dismiss him when I entered my offices, nevertheless I strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain if I dared to breathe one bitter word against this forlornest of mankind. At last, familiarly drawing my chair behind his screen, I sat down and said: "Bartleby, never mind then about revealing your history; but let me entreat you, as a friend, to comply as far as may be with the usages of this office. Say now you will help to ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... formidable candidate for the Republican nomination was Secretary Chase. The relations between him and the President had not latterly been very harmonious; and the breach was greatly widened by a bitter personal assault on Mr. Chase by General F.P. Blair, a newly elected Congressman from Missouri, made on the floor of the House, about the middle of April, under circumstances which led Mr. Chase to believe that the President inspired, or at least approved, the attack. Mr. Chase ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... At its conclusion he turned his livid face toward where, above him, Patsy was swaggering and heaving his shoulders in a consummate display of bravery and readiness. The Cuban, in his clear, tense tones, spoke one word. It was the bitter insult. It seemed fairly to spin from his lips and crackle in the air ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... minds, Keening pitifully after the Fenians. The pipes of our organs are broken; Our harps have lost their strings that were tuned That might have made the great lamentations of Ireland; Until the strong men come back across the sea, There is no help for us but bitter crying, Screams, and beating of hands, ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... should have turned bitter and never believed any more in fairies and all that. I don't think I mean fairies, and I can't explain what 'all that' stands for, but I know I should have been warped if I hadn't turned ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... expresses the superlative when used with other signs; with coward it denotes a base coward; with hunger, starvation; and with sorrow, bitter sorrow. I have not seen it used with the sign for pleasure or that of hunger, nor can I learn that it is ever used ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... late in December. The weather was bitter cold, and the enemy seldom stirred from their quarters to visit the interior of the State. This respite would have been refreshing to the harassed farmer, if the withdrawal of the regular troops had not left free play for the ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... like it. The punishment to be endured was being commenced. 'Of course you can say bitter things,' he replied. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... "disappointment is the salt of life"—a salutary bitter which strengthens the mind for fresh exertion, and gives a double ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... vengeance; not one feeling of honesty or decency remained; while the people, ever quick-witted to perceive the vices of their rulers, especially when they are indulged at their expense, revenged themselves by bitter and seditious language, and by satires and pasquinades in which neither respect nor mercy was shown even to the sacred person of the sovereign himself. He was callous to all marks of contempt displayed for himself; but was, or was induced to profess himself, deeply ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... has put to you?" Nanda looked at him a while with a sort of solemnity of tenderness, and her voice, when she at last spoke, trembled with a feeling that clearly had grown in her as she listened to the string of whimsicalities, bitter and sweet, that he had just unrolled. "You're wild," ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... was an intimate friend of both Signor Orlando and Baron Sonnino and who had been very active in the secret negotiations regarding the Italian boundaries which had been taking place at Paris since the middle of December. This diplomat was extremely bitter about the whole affair and took no pains to hide his views as to the causes of the critical situation which existed. In the memorandum of our conversation, which I wrote immediately after he left ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... full-lipped mouth. For a moment Spike strove desperately to reach Bud's grim-smiling face until, finding his efforts vain, he ceased all at once, bowed his head upon his arms, and burst into a passion of bitter sobbing; then, with an agile twist, he wrenched himself free, and turning, sped away, heedless of his jaunty straw hat that had fallen and lay upon the dusty sidewalk. Languidly Soapy ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... lady; yes, but that was exactly what she was not to become. On that account she had gone to work, when in reality there was no need for her to do so. Never must she remove herself from the poor and the laborious, her kin, her care; never must she forget those bitter sufferings of her childhood, precious as enabling her to comprehend the misery of others for whom had come no rescue. She saw, moreover, what was meant by Michael's religious teaching, why he chose for her study such parts of the Bible as taught the ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... Hitchcock, slightly menacing even in the eyes of the daughter, whose horizon was wider. Sommers had noticed the little signs of this heated family atmosphere. A mist of undiscussed views hung about the house, out of which flashed now and then a sharp speech, a bitter sigh. He had been at the house a good deal in a thoroughly informal manner. The Hitchcocks rarely entertained in the "new" way, for Mrs. Hitchcock had a terror of formality. A dinner, as she understood it, meant a gathering ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and continued throughout tea. I must say I never admired Lloyd George more than I do at this moment when, in face of most bitter public opposition, he has had the courage to give office to Churchill. ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... I am drunk of my love, With the force of my passion for you! Don't give me the wine! Or my tongue will betray All the love no one dreamed hitherto; For wine will reveal all I hid in my breast, All the bitter hot tears that were mine, My thirst, without hope, for a future so blest— I am drunk of my ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... while exemptions purchased from Rome shielded the scandalous lives of canons and monks from all episcopal discipline. And behind all this was a group of secular statesmen and scholars, the successors of such critics as Walter Map, waging indeed no open warfare with the Church, but noting with bitter sarcasm ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... recollect, and that after the fuck we both fell asleep, and were awakened by a knock at the door. It was late in the morning, and broad daylight, Laura was knocking. I opened the door. Laura looked at me, and then at Mabel, and said, "Well the sooner I send you back the better." There was a somewhat bitter row between them, short but sharp, in which Mabel gave as good as she got. Laura went away. Mabel turned round and wept; then we fucked, and went ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... years ago, about a friend of ours, a young Southern poet of distinct promise, who had just died. Like many Southern verse-writers of his generation, he had lived and written under the inspiration of Poe. Asbury surprised me by the almost bitter remark that Poe's influence had been a blight upon the younger Southern poets, inasmuch as it had tended to over-subjectivity, to morbid sensibility, and to a pre-occupation with purely personal emotions. He argued, as he has since done so courageously in his Texas Nativist, [Footnote: Published ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... ever-increasing emptiness of his exchequer. Their majesties (if they had followed their hidden wishes) would have as lief consulted their cows and their pigs as the good burghers of their cities. But they could not help themselves. They swallowed the bitter pill because it was gilded, but ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... poor girl flung herself upon the bosom of the Lady de Tilly, convulsed and torn by as bitter sobs as ever ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to ourselves two races of men so different as the Milesian Celts on the one side, and the Scandinavian Norman French on the other, having concluded such a treaty as that of Windsor, each side resolved to push its own interpretation to the bitter end. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... has been a bitter, bitter draught; yet its dregs have in a measure lost their power, for he has learned that 't is his Father holds the cup. Little, did he think, as they sat together there on that high bank, which overlooks the sea, upon that ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... This new disappointment, bitter though it was, did not find Columbus in such friendless and unhappy circumstances as those in which he left Portugal. He had important friends now, who were willing and anxious to help him, and among them was one to whom he turned, in his profound depression, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... Give me thy glove, soldier. Look, here is the fellow of it. 'Twas I, indeed, thou promisedst to strike; And thou hast given me most bitter terms. ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... monuments around, has a significance of its own which gives it a peculiar claim to consideration. Inscribed on it, appear the names of ten fishermen of the parish who went out to sea to pursue their calling, on one wintry night in 1846. It was unusually cold on land—on the sea, the frosty bitter wind cut through to the bones. The men were badly provided against the weather; and hardy as they were, the weather killed them that night. In the morning, the boat drifted on shore, manned like a spectre bark, by the ghastly figures of the ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... Honourable John Haddon is a poor man, and it is quite out of the question for one brought up as I have been to marry into poverty. He was very headstrong and reckless about the matter, and involved my uncle in a bitter quarrel while discussing it, much to my chagrin and disappointment. It is as necessary for him to marry wealth as it is for me to make a good match, but he could not be brought to see that. Oh, he is not at all a sensible young man, and my former friendship for him has ceased. Yet I should dislike ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... and melody in sound and colour which affect animals and ourselves to a large extent similarly. Sweets are agreeable and bitters are disagreeable, though it is the fact that the snail, which loves sugar, recoils from saccharine, and there are "mites" (Acari) which feed with avidity on bitter strychnine! Excess of heat and of cold is disliked by animals and all men, whilst the sense of touch is pleasurably or painfully affected in much the same way in most men and animals, more than is ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... moment, some groans broke out, so terribly acute and bitter, from a heap of gory carcasses hard by Arvina and the old trooper, that after calling several times in vain to enquire who was there, the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... their mother said, 'the handsomest coachman who ever drove to St. James's;' but he had driven thither once too often; he had caught his death of cold one bitter day when Lady Jane Selby was obliged to go to a drawing-room, and had gone off in a deep decline fourteen years ago, when the youngest of his five children was ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... respecting schools as have been stated with regard to churches. The fate of the Church and School Corporation has elsewhere been related.[219] Suffice it to say, then, that the same spirit of hostility or indifference has been equally exhibited in both cases; indeed, it would be strange if the bitter enemies, and feeble or false friends of that system of religious instruction which is carried on among the adult population by our national Church, were not alike vigorous in their opposition, or impotent in their friendship, ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... travel-worn and agglomerated, comparatively, without order or beauty, far down in their fall, like men in their advanced age. As for the circumstances under which this occurs, it is quite cold, and the driving storm is bitter to face, though very little snow is falling. It comes almost horizontally from the north.... A divinity must have stirred within them, before the crystals did thus shoot and set: wheels of the storm chariots. The same law that ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... Lord Mayor. The upper end of the great hall was filled with aldermen in their robes and chains, with the sheriffs of London and the whole imposing array, and the Lord Mayor with the Duke sat enthroned above them in truly awful dignity. The Duke was a hard and pitiless man, and bore the City a bitter grudge for the death of his retainer, the priest killed in Cheapside, and in spite of all his poetical fame, it may be feared that the Earl of Surrey was not of much more merciful mood, while their men- at-arms spoke savagely ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cruelties: to wound! to massacre! to tear limb from limb! And how restrain myself? I looked round; I saw the tree, I perceived the hole. "Entomb thyself," said the voice, "and hold on tight! Thou wilt thus overcome temptation by main force!" It was bitter, just when the blood of my heroic grandfather boiled most fiercely; but I obeyed! I dragged my unwilling feet along; I entombed myself! Through the hole I watched the battle! I shouted curses and defiance on the foe! I noted them fall with satisfaction! Why not? ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... legs in their absurdly scant modish trousers would have lost some of their elasticity; if the buoyant step in the flat-heeled shoes would not drag a little. Thirteen years of business experience had taught her to swallow smilingly the bitter pill of rebuff. But this boy was to experience his first dose to-day. She felt again that sensation of almost physical nausea—that sickness of heart and spirit which had come over her when she had met her first sneer and intolerant ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... however, had been full of hunters: and it was generally said that no men in Hampshire were better mounted than Gregory the father and Ralph the son. Of the father we will only further say that he was a generous, passionate, persistent, vindictive, and unforgiving man, a bitter enemy and a staunch friend; a thorough-going Tory, who, much as he loved England and Hampshire and Newton Priory, feared that they were all going to the dogs because of Mr. Disraeli and household suffrage; but who felt, in spite of those fears, that ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... written when Jesus was a child and a youth, and that he never once mentions Jesus or Christianity. It must not be forgotten that Philo lived in Alexandria, not in Judaea, and that between the Canaanitish and the Hellenic Jews there existed the most bitter hostility, so that—even were the story of Jesus true—it could not have reached Philo before A.D. 40, at which time he was old and gray-headed. We again quote from Mr. Lake's treatise, who prints the parallel passages, and we would draw special attention ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... his own, he turned an unsympathetic and stubborn ear. He was coming to believe very strongly that all this fanciful optimism was so much laughing-gas, with only a passing power, and when the effect wore off there would be the Dickens to pay. He did not want to see Margaret MacLean turn into a bitter-minded woman of the world—stripped of her trust and her dreams. He—all of them—had need of her as she was. Her belief in the ultimate good of things and persons, however, was beyond power of human achievement; and the surest cure for disappointments was to amputate all expectations. ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... never be forgotten, was, all the time, a good man. With all his mistakes about himself, with his sad misadventure, with all his loss of blood and of money, and with his whole after-lifetime of doleful and bitter complaints,—all the time, Little-Faith was all through, in a way, a good man. To keep us right on this all-important point, and to prevent our being prematurely prejudiced against this pilgrim because of his somewhat prejudicial name—because ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... this, Daniel and Barzimeres, having been thus balked of their prey, returned to Tarsus, and were loaded with bitter reproaches as inactive and blundering officers. But like venomous serpents whose first spring has failed, they only whetted their deadly fangs, in order at the first opportunity to inflict all the injury in their power on the king who had thus ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... of God's grace by which inbred sin is removed and the heart made holy. Inbred sin or inherited depravity is the inward cause of which our outward sins are the effects. It is the bitter root of which actual sins are the bitter fruits. It is the natural evil tendency of the human heart in our fallen condition. It is the being of sin which lies back of the doing of sin. It is that within us ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood, With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning red: Alas! if ever such a pillow could Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were dead,— Better all life forget her than this thing, That ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... fourth day that wretchedness turned to bitter restlessness, and that to a sudden resolve. Not to write, not even to say she forgave, might make him think that her heart was still hardened against him. Her fear had blunted her imagination. Clearly now she saw, and with an anguish in the vision, that Augustine must be suffering too. ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... marry Mr. Francis Barold, if he will take me," she said, with a bitter little smile,—"Mr. Francis Barold, who is so much in love with me, as you know. His mother approves of the match, and sent him here to make love to me, which he has done, as you have seen. I have no money ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... buildings are dreary, empty places." Artists in words, like Lafcadio Hearn and Henry James, are able to make articulate the sadness which our cities inspire, but it is a blight which lies heavy on us all. Theodore Dreiser says, in Sister Carrie—a book with so much bitter truth in it that it was ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... time, therefore, a contest between the two rival systems of continuous spinning which were in bitter antagonism over a century ago, is waging a more fiercely contested fight than at any ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... Erskine received Mrs. Bell at first with a cheerful smile, and seemed, to all appearance, as contented and happy as usual. The sight of Mrs. Bell, however, recalled forcibly to her mind her irremediable loss, and overwhelmed her heart, again, with bitter grief. She went to the window, where her little work-table had been placed, and throwing herself down in a chair before it, she crossed her arms upon the table, laid her forehead down upon them in an attitude of despair, ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... quantitative concepts, but falsely quantitative, since there is no way of measuring them; they are, at bottom, metaphors, emphatic phrases, or logical tautologies. The humorous will be laughter mingled with tears, bitter laughter, the sudden passage from the comic to the tragic, and from the tragic to the comic, the comic romantic, the inverted sublime, war declared against every attempt at insincerity, compassion which is ashamed to lament, the mockery not of the fact, but of the ideal itself; and whatever else ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... he said, with faltering voice, "and put aside, if you can, the thought of your bitter, terrible disappointment. Only you can cheer, and inspire, and aid your husband to maintain the calmness of spirit which is of such vital importance to his chance of recovery. You can't leave him against his wish at such ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... arts and manners have been learn'd: So the Twins' humours,[2] in our Terence, are Unlike-this harsh and rude, that smooth and fair. Our nature here is not unlike our wine, 677 Some sorts, when old, continue brisk and fine; So age's gravity may seem severe, But nothing harsh or bitter ought t'appear. Of age's avarice I cannot see What colour, ground, or reason there should be: Is it not folly, when the way we ride Is short, for a long voyage to provide? To avarice some title youth may ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... to me Is my ain gudeman, For kindly, frank, an' free Is my ain gudeman. An' though thretty years ha'e fled, An' five sin' we were wed, Nae bitter words I 've ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... here in proportion as it is rancid, being regarded by them with more than affection when it has reached a degree of rancidness and odoriferousness that would drive a European - barring perhaps, a Limburger - out of the house. These two delicacies, and the inevitable tiny cups of black bitter coffee make up all the edibles the khan affords; so seeing the absence of any alternative, I order bread and coffee, prepared to make the most of circumstances. The proprietor being a kindly individual, and thinking perhaps that limited means forbid my indulgence ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Payne, "Shakespere had been without education, do you think the fact would have escaped the notice of such bitter and unscrupulous enemies as Nash, Greene, and others, who hated him ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... govern, that he may be seen. Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature,—the sweet, without the other side,—the bitter. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... under the name of Hyacinthus. Dioscorides believes it to be that called 'vaccinium' by the Romans, which is of a purple colour, and on which can be traced, though imperfectly, the letters ai (alas!) mentioned by Ovid. The lamentations of Apollo, on the death of Hyacinthus, formed the subject of bitter, and, indeed, deserved raillery, for several of the satirical writers ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... be biting elks in the neck. Happier than most tamed brutes he is involved as chief actor in a round up of some desperate outlaws, among whom is his chief enemy, and he is fortunate enough to serve the state while pursuing to a successful end his bitter private quarrel. Brute Brent gets and deserves the kind of bite which was planned by a far-seeing providence for the elk.... You can tell when an author really loves and knows animals or is merely "putting it on." Mr. EVARTS understands, sentimentalises less than most interpreters; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... They'll make you do things you don't approve of, Dodo, if you don't look out. Mother's fearfully bitter when she gets her knife in. If old Hornblower's disgusting, it's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to mediaeval romance is one of regretful suspicion, his attitude to the greatest of mediaeval institutions is one of bitter contempt. He inveighs even against the "antiquitarians," such as Camden, who, he says, "cannot but love bishops as well as old coins and his much lamented monasteries, for antiquity's sake." For near twelve hundred years these same bishops "have been in England to our souls ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... thrilled in its every accent by the affection and sympathy of his honest spirit, told him the whole story of Innocent—of her sweetness and prettiness—of her grace and genius—of the sudden and brilliant fame she had won as "Ena Armitage"—of the brief and bitter knowledge she had been given of her mother—of her strange chance in going straight to the house of Miss Leigh when she travelled alone and unguided from the country to London—and lastly of his own admiration ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... the power of Spain was hopeless. It failed after a bitter and protracted conquest, characterized by the utmost inhumanity on both sides. But when her followers were scattered and killed, when the victorious whites had again in their hands all the power and resources of the country, not their most diligent search, nor the temptation of any reward, ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... independence from Ethiopia on 24 May 1993, Eritrea faced the bitter economic problem of a small, desperately poor African country. The economy is largely based on subsistence agriculture, with over 70% of the population involved in farming and herding. The small industrial sector consists ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... subjects that were full as unfortunate as himself, some blind, some deaf, some dumb, &c., among whom were his old friends and school-fellows Martin, Escott, and Coleman. The mayor of that corporation, a bitter enemy to their community, jocosely said, that he would make the blind see, the deaf hear, and the lame walk; and by way of preparation or beginning to this intended cure, he had them all apprehended and confined in a dark hole, which greatly ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... neither the Boians nor the Spaniards, with whom they had been at war during that year, were such bitter and inveterate foes to the Romans as the nation of the Aetolians. These, after the departure of the Roman armies from Greece, had, for some time, entertained hopes that Antiochus would come and take possession of Europe, without opposition; and that neither Philip nor Nabis would continue quiet. ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... but then neither of them are mothers. Her son is asking every moment if the messengers have departed, and what shall she answer him? She cannot lie, but must tell the whole bitter truth." ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... of "Sententien van Alva," in which a portion only of the sentences of death and banishment pronounced by him during his reign, have been copied from the official records—these in themselves would be a sufficient justification of all the charges ever brought by the most bitter contemporary of Holland or Flanders. If the investigator should remain sceptical, however, let him examine the "Registre des Condamnes et Bannia a Cause des Troubles des Pays Bas," in three, together with the Records of the "Conseil des Troubles," in forty-three folio volumes, in the Royal Archives ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in the fear of God, not to delight in worldly vanities, which I too well know be but baits to draw her out of the heavenly kingdom. And I pray thee thank thy kind uncle and aunt for her (?) and their many kindnesses to me. Thus, out of the bitter and greedy desire of a repentant heart, begging thy pardon for any wrong that ever in my life I did thee, I commend these my requests to thy wonted and undeserved kind wifely and lovely consideration, my body to God's disposing and my love ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... is a sarcasm of Voltaire's; but Voltaire, though born a Frenchman, neither imbodied nor was capable of understanding the true French ideal. The French head he had, but not the French heart. And from his bitter judgment we might appeal to a thousand noble names. The generous Henri IV., the noble Sully, and Bayard the knight sans peur et sans reproche, were these half tiger and half monkey? Were John Calvin and Fenelon ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... carrying before him the spoils of the three brothers: his sister, a maiden who had been betrothed to one of the Curiatii, met him before the gate Capena: and having recognized her lover's military robe, which she herself had wrought, on her brother's shoulders, she tore her hair, and with bitter wailings called by name on her deceased lover. The sister's lamentations in the midst of his own victory, and of such great public rejoicings, raised the indignation of the excited youth. Having therefore drawn his sword, he run the damsel through the body, at ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... he watched them all. He had studied astronomy among other things in school, but then it had been merely a hated task to be shirked and slighted and forgotten as one's palate forgets the taste of bitter medicine. Up here, with the stars all around him and above him for many nights, he was ashamed because he could not call them all by name. He would train his telescope upon some particularly bright star and watch it and wonder—Jack did ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... want things. To pretend that I don't would be to lie—and I won't lie to you whatever happens. I simply won't. We both know what your place in the University means; I perhaps better than you, because I've seen my father's experience. I don't often get bitter, but I come very near it when I look back and think how my mother had to plan and scrimp. I feel like condemning the whole University to the bottomless pit. I suppose Margery Randall would resent it if I told her so, but honestly I pity her; the more so ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... affectionate. She felt very lonely and unfriended; she wished that her grandfather had said he was glad to have her at Abbotsmead, instead of telling her that she had a right to be there; but she was also very tired, and sleep soon prevailed over both sweet and bitter fancies. Premature resolutions she made none; she had been warned against them by Madame Fournier as mischievous impediments to making the best of life, which is so much less often "what we could wish than what we must even put ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... flanking it on the east and the high Sierra on the west. It is from ten to fifteen miles wide, that valley, with the Owens river running down the eastern side most of the way until it empties into Owens lake just above Keeler. The lake is salty, bitter, filled with alkali, boras and soda, and for nearly forty miles above its mouth the river itself is pretty brackish and alkaline. Away up the valley the river water is sweet but as it approaches the lake it gathers alkali and borax from the formation ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... Monsieur the Viscount's imprisonment was a terrible one. The bitter chill of a Parisian autumn, the gnawings of half-satisfied hunger, the thick walls that shut out all hope of escape but did not exclude those fearful cries that lasted with few intervals throughout the ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... up the great chimney; while the north wind whoo-ooed around the eaves and fine, frozen snow meal swished against the one little window; while shivering, drifting range cattle tramped restlessly through the sparse willow-growth seeking comfort where was naught but cold and snow and bitter, driving wind; while the gray wolves hunted in packs and had not long to wait for their supper, Thurston had written better than he knew. He had sent the cold of the blizzards and the howl of the wolves; he had sent bits of the wind-swept ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... faith, the result will probably be but a modern form of the ancient Baal-worship. It will in some respects be a superior cult to its ancient prototype. Its devotees will not cut themselves with knives. They will cut themselves with sweet and bitter poignancies of laughter and tears, when the sun shines upon wet forests in the green earth. This, too, is Baal-worship, hardly distinguishable in essence from that cruder devotion to the fructifying ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... the son of a British officer and U. E. Loyalist, yet the fact that, as one of the "despised sect" of Methodists, he dared to question the right of "the Church" to superiority over the "Sectaries," subjected him to a system of petty and bitter persecution which few men of less nerve and fortitude could have borne. As it was, there were times when the tender sensibilities of his noble nature were so deeply wounded by this injustice, and the scorn and contumely of his opponents, that were it not that his intrepid courage was of the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... again. I'm somebody totally different. I feel different. Even when I walk. You never knew me. I can remember our years together clearly. But it seems like a story that was once told me. Do you understand, Erik? I am not bitter or sad, and I have no blame for you. You ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... amazing lift was gone from her gait, and she pounded heavily with the forelegs. And still she struggled on. He looked back, and Gray Peter still gained, an inch at a time, and his stride did not seem to have abated. The one bitter question now was whether Sally would not collapse under the effort. With every lurch of her feet, Andrew expected to feel her crumble beneath him. And yet she went on. She was all heart, all nerve, and running on it. Behind her came ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... so often wondered before, whether any one had ever yet succeeded in turning Garth Trent aside from his set purpose, whatever it might chance to be. She could not imagine his yielding to either threats or persuasions. However much it might cost him, he would carry out his intention to the bitter end, even though its fulfillment might involve the shattering of ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... was heartbroken at reading these words. He fell to the ground and, covering the cold marble with kisses, burst into bitter tears. He cried all night, and dawn found him still there, though his tears had dried and only hard, dry sobs shook his wooden frame. But these were so loud that they could be ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to show even visible displeasure if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths." In consequence of these principles he nursed whole nests of people in his house, where the lame, the blind, the sick, and the sorrowful found a sure retreat from all the evils whence his little income could secure them: and commonly spending the middle of the ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi |
