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Bitter   /bˈɪtər/   Listen
Bitter

noun
1.
English term for a dry sharp-tasting ale with strong flavor of hops (usually on draft).
2.
The taste experience when quinine or coffee is taken into the mouth.  Synonym: bitterness.
3.
The property of having a harsh unpleasant taste.  Synonym: bitterness.



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"Bitter" Quotes from Famous Books



... did: he threw open King's House to the wounded, and set the surgeons to work, thereby checking bitter criticism and blocking the movement rising against him. For it was well known he had rejected all warnings, had persisted in his view that trust in the Maroons and fair treatment of themselves and the slaves were ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... down. There was hardly a pair of shoes among the lot, officers nor men, and our feet was cut and bleeding; but still that General Craufurd kept driving of us on. He was always the first ready to start, and there he would stand waiting, his beard all white with frost on the bitter mornings, looking to the men with their clothes all in rags, so cold and stiff and faint that they was hardly able to move; and this I will say, that he favoured hisself no more than he favoured the men. It was terrible to see mun looking ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue

... me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead, They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. I wept as I remember'd how often you and I Had tired the sun with talking and sent him ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... return of Carmena. She carried a modern Indian basket-vase that would have been very convenient for holding Lennon's collection. But she gave him no chance to ask for it. She stared in at him and Elsie from the doorway, her dark eyes glittering strangely in the candle light. Her lips were hardset in a bitter smile. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... conclusion: I'll yield my breath, But my leal old house and my good blade never! Better one bitter kiss on the lips of Death Than despoiled Defeat as ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... that all? I shall have a cold in my head. Bitter weather. He's dog-tired after yesterday—processions, three speeches, kindergarten, lecture on 'the moon,' article on co-operation. That's his style." It was also Grodman's style. He never ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... it exposed her to the insults of such creatures as Orgles. She sat in Mrs Ellis' back sitting-room three days before she was to commence her duties at "Dawes'"; she was moody and depressed; on the least provocation, or none at all, she would weep bitter tears for ten minutes at ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... Noir was a villain. I thought his anger honest, though unjust, and I was as ignorant as a child. I had no mother nor matronly friend to instruct me. I knew that I had broken no command of God or man; that I had been a faithful wife, but when Gabriel Le Noir accused me with such bitter earnestness I feared that some strange departure from the usual course of nature had occurred for my destruction. And I was overwhelmed ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... ground, molded, and sold as bitter or baker's chocolate. In the preparation of sweet chocolate sugar is added to the powdered chocolate before molding. Cocoa differs from chocolate in that some ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer

... It was bitter cold weather, and the snow had fallen heavily during the whole day; but although nearly dusk, there was a bright moon ready for us. We walked very fast, and soon observed persons ahead of us. "Let us overtake them, we may obtain some information." As we came up with them, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... neck of her stalwart firstborn and kissed his bearded face. There were handshakings and greetings and laughter. Only Nanny, far back in the shadows of the firelit hall, swallowed a resentful sob, and wiped two bitter tears from her eyes ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Taylor, you kindly hinted that you would occasionally favour me with a note; but, knowing the demands upon your pen, I should not have reminded you of this kindness but for an incident which occurred last evening when my niece, Ina Reeve, came in to me, saying she had read such a severe and bitter review of your late publication as quite surprised her. As she brought the 'Saturday Review' with her, she read it to me, and perhaps, dear friend, you may have read it, and perhaps guess its author. To me it seems he is not so angry with your books as with yourself. Mr. Reeve floats ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... the Cimmerians, who dwell in perpetual cloud and darkness, and in whose country are the gates leading to the regions of the dead." All is darkness, discontent, hunger; nothing is said of virtue, wisdom, beauty, happiness. Only bitter gloom! No wonder this heathen poet considered, with such views of a future life, sensual pleasures as the chief ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fire-place was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens

... closed the safe in her father's study when she was startled by a slight noise. She turned like a defensive animal to face danger. It had indeed occurred to her that she was rather like an animal in captivity, and she found a bitter pleasure in the idea, though it ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... group of wise men chosen from both sides, men British in blood and outlook, sitting round a table and reaching an agreement to result in a real independence for America and a real unity with Great Britain. A century and a quarter later a bitter war with an alien race in South Africa was followed by a result even more astounding. The surrender of Burgoyne had made the Prime Minister, Lord North, weary of his position. He had never been in sympathy with the King's policy ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong

... general nature of these phenomena may be thus stated:—A body, A, without giving to, or taking from, another body B, any material particles, causes B to decompose into other substances, C, D, E, the sum of the weights of which is equal to the weight of B, which decomposes. Thus, bitter almonds contain two substances, amygdalin and synaptase, which can be extracted, in a separate state, from the bitter almonds. The amygdalin thus obtained, if dissolved in water, undergoes no change; ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... that our nature labours under so bitter an aspersion? We have been described as cunning, malicious and treacherous. Other animals herd together for mutual convenience; and their intercourse with their species is for the most part a reciprocation of social ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... ultimatum; Southern Californians heard and trembled. The last time this dread interdiction had been invoked—in the midst of a bitter election fight—it had sent them scurrying to the polls to do their benefactor's bidding. Now indeed the grass menace would ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... is the noblest and most heroically passionate of these poems, Adam, Lilith, and Eve, is the most pregnant and suggestive. Browning has rarely excelled it in certain qualities, hardly found in any other poet, of pungency, novelty, and penetrating bitter-sweetness. ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... blesses me every hour of my life that had I translated a thousand times more diligently, I should not have deserved to live or have a sound eye for even a single hour. All I am and have to offer is from his mercy and grace—indeed of his precious blood and bitter sweat. Therefore, God willing, all of it will also serve to his honor, joyfully and sincerely. I may be insulted by the scribblers and papists but true Christians, along with Christ, their Lord, bless me. Further, I am more than amply rewarded ...
— An Open Letter on Translating • Gary Mann

... not for me, it will be a sort of satisfaction to think that in fighting against her country I may in a way humiliate herself. Ah, Texas! If you find in me a defender, it will not be from any patriotic love of you, but to bury bitter thoughts in oblivion." ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... Amelia would have made him completely happy, in defiance of all adverse circumstances, had it not been for those bitter ingredients which he himself had thrown into his cup, and which prevented him from truly relishing his Amelia's sweetness, by cruelly reminding him how unworthy he was of ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... dexterity, acquired by such long practice, are manifest on every page; but there is little more. He dedicates it to the present Lord Lytton, in evident desire to wipe out the memory of the old feud between him and Bulwer Lytton; but that was too black and too bitter to be sponged away with a ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... anxiety to procure either reparation or vengeance for this insult committed on him by the Scottish nation: his chief concern was to draw advantage from it, by the pretence which it might afford him to levy impositions on his own subjects. He summoned a parliament, to whom he made bitter complaints against the irruption of the Scots, the absurd imposture countenanced by that nation, the cruel devastations committed in the northern counties, and the multiplied insults thus offered both to the king and kingdom of England. The parliament ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... went down to the dory, and put his fishing-gear on board. He did it as a man goes to a funeral. He had been a fisherman in his younger days, but it was a bitter necessity, in his view, which now compelled him to resume it when he was old and stiff. While he was stowing the bait and lines in the skiff, Dock Vincent came down to see him. He had laid aside his suit of black, and now wore ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... universal, both at Court and at Paris there were bonfires; the attorneys' clerks burnt the Archbishop in effigy, and on the evening of his disgrace more than a hundred couriers were sent out from Versailles to spread the happy tidings among the country seats. I have seen the Queen shed bitter tears at the recollection of the errors she committed at this period, when subsequently, a short time before her death, the Archbishop had the audacity to say, in a speech which was printed, that the sole object of one part of his operations, during ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... pamphlet on The Vatican Decrees, Lord Acton wrote during November and December a series of remarkable letters to The Times, illustrating Gladstone's main theme by numerous historical examples of papal inconsistency, in a way which must have been bitter enough to the ultramontane party, but demurring nevertheless to Gladstone's conclusion and insisting that the Church itself was better than its premisses implied. Acton's letters led to another storm in the English Roman Catholic ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... when he was dying at Brindisi, must have remembered that passage. After he had faced the bitter fact that he was to leave the 'Aeneid' unfinished, and had decreed that the great canvas, crowded with figures of gods and men, should be burned rather than survive him unperfected, then his mind must have gone back to the perfect utterance of ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... there; tall, pale, stylish girls, or women whose darkened eyes and faces mealy with powder told of a bitter fight with time. Why, I haven't seen a woman whom I thought beautiful ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... account which can now be obtained of the incunabula of this most indomitable little community, and of the circumstances under which it acquired its since illustrious name. It was, perhaps, natural that a little town, in the centre of insolent and bitter enemies, should assume a name which would long convey to their whole neighborhood a stinging lesson of mortification, and of prudential warning against similar molestations. As to the chronology of this ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... would have called it, though it was really nothing but cowardice, was too strong to permit him to humble himself just yet. So, feeling very unhappy, he tramped moodily on through the woods, full of bitter thoughts, angry with himself and all the world. Yet if any one had asked him what it was all about, ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe

... cattle-breeding, and when they began later on to till the soil, each one tilled as much as he could afford to. But when—immigration continuing, and perfected ploughs being introduced—land stood in great demand, bitter disputes arose among the settlers. They lasted for years, until these men, previously tied by no mutual bonds, gradually came to the idea that an end must be put to disputes by introducing village-community ownership. They passed decisions to ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... Strozzi in this last drama of the liberties of Florence is feeble and discreditable, but at the same time historically instructive, since it shows to what a point the noblest of the Florentines had fallen. All Pitti's invectives against the Ottimati, bitter as they may be, are justified by the unvarnished narrative we read upon the pages of Varchi and Segni concerning this most vicious, selfish, vain, and brilliant hero of historical romance. Married ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... sense; that, notwithstanding the powers of the other comick poets of Athens, Menander has always been considered as possessing a salt peculiar to himself, drawn from the same waters that gave birth to Venus. That, on the contrary, the salt of Aristophanes is bitter, keen, coarse, and corrosive; that one cannot tell whether his dexterity, which has been so much boasted, consists not more in the characters than in the expression, for he is charged with playing often upon words, with affecting antithetical allusions; that he ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... know," he said, "is what you did with your rice pudding. Charlotte says you ate it—and the inference was that it was good to eat. So I ate mine—manfully, I assure you. But it was a bitter dose." ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond

... churchyard, there was a great gathering before a long, low house, painted green. The owner, standing on his threshold, shed bitter tears; as he was very fat and jovial looking, he excited the pity of some soldiers who were seated in the sun against the wall, patting a dog. The one, too, who dragged away his child by the hand, gesticulated as if to say: "What can I ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various

... together. If more had been wanting, the tones of her grandfather's voice would have filled up every gap in the meaning of the scattered words that came to her ear. Her heart sank fast as the dialogue went on, and she needed no commentary or explanation to interpret the bitter little laugh with which it closed. It was a chill upon all the rosy joys and hopes of a most joyful and hopeful ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... world and the unfathomable beneath and above; and, more than these, the spirits of all the innumerable, undoubting, dead, beckoning to the one way by which they had been content to follow the things that belonged unto their peace;—these all stood on the other side: and the choice must have been a bitter one, even at the best; but it was rendered tenfold more bitter by the natural, but most sinful animosity of the two divisions of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... find amusement instead of mental paralysis in the proximity of her present escort, contrasting him with some men she had known; but recent bitter experiences made his probably well-intentioned familiarities sorely trying. There was a lump in his cheek. Geraldine hoped it arose from an afflicted tooth, but she strongly suspected tobacco. Oh, if he would but sit a ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham

... There was the back of Kloon's bushy head. One shot! — and fear, which had shadowed him from birth, was at an end forever. Ended, too, privation, — the bitter rigour of black winters; scorching days; bodily squalor; ills that such as he endured in a wilderness where, like other creatures of the wild, men stricken died or recovered by ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... heard him answer her with a bitter smile and a wave of his hand towards the lilacs: "Little King Hugo is waiting for you in his kingdom." I saw her start; then she laughed awkwardly to cover her confusion, and went down in search ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... clothe some folly in a tattered garb. (Quezox to Francos): And yet most noble sire, my bowels of Discernment do fierce gripe me with the fear That in the rambling words this youth hath tongued Much bitter truth may deeply hidden be. Francos: Fear not! Caesar hath wise discerned that all Who long have on these Islands made their home Are blinded by self-interest, which doth, As colored glass speaks lies ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... shone through them; and where he had stood there was no one. Also the slab of rock was dark, and the two drowned corpses had vanished with him. I pointed to it; but there was no tinder-box at hand to light the lantern again, and in the bitter weather until the dawn the two clung about me, confessing and rehearsing ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... with its sacred enclosure of affection, however rude or poor that spot may be—which, while a man has such a place to call his own, makes him feel that he is somebody, and has some tie and claim in the world; and which, on the other hand, associated the most bitter destitution, the dreariest isolation, with ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... fields of Laing's Nek, Majuba Hill, and Ingogo, names indelibly associated with one of the saddest, as well as most humiliating, episodes of English modern military history, in connection with the Transvaal War of 1881. I gazed mournfully on Majuba Hill, that black spot of bitter memories to every Briton, and of natural exultation and pride to the Boers; and on Colley's grave, the unfortunate commander, whose unhappy and most unaccountable military blunder led to the lamentable and fatal defeat, which cost him his life, and resulted in the miserable fiasco—the ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young

... 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

... he, leaning over him, "his eyelids fill with blood. What sufferings! how protracted! and under what varied forms! Oh!" added he, with a bitter smile, "when nature becomes cruel, and plays the part of tormentor, she defies the most ferocious combinations of men. Oh! this face is frightful. These frequent convulsions which overspread it contract it, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... house, fate may some time be kind enough to let me see you. Farewell.' And taking her hand into his he raised it reverently, tenderly, to his lips, and imprinted upon it a warm kiss. Then he arose, bowed and went away. For many a bitter day afterwards he remembered the mute misery in her look as ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins

... whole evening, took no notice of him, and when his eyes met Louis', they bore no more consciousness of his presence than if he had been a piece of stone. Frank Digby did not tease Louis, but he let fall many insinuations, and a few remarks so bitter in their sarcasm, that Reginald more than once looked up with a glance so threatening in its fierceness, that it checked even that audacious speaker. Even little Alfred was not allowed to sit with Louis; though Hamilton made no remark, ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... him my secret! I will have blood! yes, there is something devilish in man! Were Heinrich only dead! But others live who know my birth,—my sister! my poor, neglected sister, she who had the same right to intellectual development as myself! How I fear this meeting! it will be bitter! I must away. I will hence—here will my life-germ be stifled! I have indeed fortune—I will travel! This animated France will drive away these whims, and—I am away, far removed from my home. In the coming spring I shall be a stranger among strangers!" And his thoughts melted ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... answer in the other's eyes. When the showdown came they'd die as cheerfully as they knew how, hoping to the last to do something for the people who must still hope that, somehow, they would cause this bitter cup of catastrophe to pass from them. And there were thousands upon thousands whose ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks

... was a very dark and cold night, some of the burghers felt reluctant to leave, and I heard them saying, "What is up again to-night with General Kritzinger? Surely we are perfectly safe here! Why trek again in the bitter cold at midnight?" But my orders had to be obeyed, and at 2 A.M. we ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... was of sensitive fibre. He had flushed angrily; his eyes were alight; a bitter retort was trembling on his lips when one of the elder Barkers, discriminating the elements of an uncontrollable fracas, seized on ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... that the friction [20] of the world shall not wear upon our sensibilities; with an equanimity so settled that no passing breath nor accidental disturbance shall agitate or ruffle it; with a charity broad enough to cover the whole world's evil, and sweet enough to neutralize what is bitter in it,—de- [25] termined not to be offended when no wrong is meant, nor even when it is, unless the offense be ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... He grew bitter as with smiling face but shrinking soul he made his way through that crowd of his fellow-creatures whose contact was defilement. He would have lost them all rather than a song of Hester's—and yet that he would ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... wished to use him as a tool against William of Orange, he had quietly submitted, on the contrary, to serve as the instrument of that great statesman. His personality during his residence was null, and he had to expiate, by many a petty mortification, by many a bitter tear, the boyish ambition which brought him to the Netherlands. He had certainly had ample leisure to repent the haste with which he had got out of his warm bed in Vienna to take his bootless journey to Brussels. Nevertheless, in a country ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Quinine.—Some of this salt was added to water, which is said to dissolve 1/1000 part of its weight. Five leaves were immersed, each in thirty minims of this solution, which tasted bitter. In less than 1 hr. some of them had a few tentacles inflected. In 3 hrs. most of the glands became whitish, others dark-coloured, and many oddly mottled. After 6 hrs. two of the leaves had a good many tentacles ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... shaken as he moved His rattling arrows told of his approach. Gloomy he came as night; sat from the ships Apart, and sent an arrow. Clang'd the cord [8]Dread-sounding, bounding on the silver bow.[9] 60 Mules first and dogs he struck,[10] but at themselves Dispatching soon his bitter arrows keen, Smote them. Death-piles on all sides always blazed. Nine days throughout the camp his arrows flew; The tenth, Achilles from all parts convened 65 The host in council. Juno the white-armed Moved at the sight of Grecians all around Dying, imparted to his mind the thought.[11] The full ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... Tall, such an one the Stocky, such an one the Gruff. Their publick Debates were generally managed with Kicks and Cuffs, insomuch that they often came from the Council Table with broken Shins, black Eyes, and bloody Noses. When they would reproach a Man in the most bitter Terms, they would tell him his Teeth were white, or that he had a fair Skin, and a soft Hand. The greatest Man I meet with in their History, was one who could lift Five hundred Weight, and wore such a prodigious Pair of Whiskers as had never been seen in the Commonwealth ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... in luxury, pampered and indulged—ay, spoiled by an over-indulgent mother, what had he ever known of the bitter realities of life, the struggles many have to undergo ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... triumph call to mind the afflicting scenes of war, nor do emblems of conquest strike the eye of the travelled visiter, and damp his enjoyment by blending with it bitter recollections. Vandalism is the only enemy from whose attacks the monuments, here assembled, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... have still a vivid remembrance of my father's intense expression of sorrow mixed with scorn, as he threw down Count Robert of Paris, after reading three or four pages; and knew that the life of Scott was ended: the scorn being a very complex and bitter feeling in him,—partly, indeed, of the book itself, but chiefly of the wretches who were tormenting and selling the wrecked intellect, and not a little, deep down, of the subtle dishonesty which had essentially caused ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... said Jack hastily. Then he added with a bitter laugh, "I'm not in luck to-day. But come: ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... know whether Mahomed Reza Khan had not secured them to his interest by the known ways in which great men in the East secure men to their interest." He never trusted his colleagues with the secret; and the person that he employed to prosecute Mahomed Reza Khan was his bitter enemy, Nundcomar. I will not go the length of saying that the circumstance of enmity disables a person from being a prosecutor; under some circumstances it renders a man incompetent to be a witness; but this ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... to make myself understood: there is a voice to instruct, a voice to flatter, and a voice to reprehend. I will not only that my voice reach him, but, peradventure, that it strike and pierce him. When I rate my valet with sharp and bitter language, it would be very pretty for him to say; "Pray, master, speak lower; I hear ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... a glance at the mirror. "I'm sunburnt enough to look like a Sikh." And a feeling of bitter resentment was growing against him now, stronger than I had felt before, knowing as I did that in spite of his kindness, and the friendly feeling he professed, he was moved by the strong motive of making me ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... to this house? What could he talk about? Of the long ago? What was there in common between him and her? He could no longer recall anything in presence of this grandmotherly face. He could no longer recall all the nice, tender things, so sweet, so bitter, that had come to his mind that morning when he thought of the other, of little Lise, of the dainty Ashflower. What, then, had become of her, the former one, the one he had loved? That woman of far-off dreams, the blonde with ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... the warmest place in the world on a chill day in late November, yet to the two lads, as they hurried along a narrow string-piece in the direction of a big three-masted steamer, which lay at a small pier projecting in an L-shaped formation, from the main wharf, the bitter blasts that swept round warehouse corners appeared to be of not the slightest consequence—at least to judge by ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... comforters had said—and the raw country lad murdered and thrown out into the river. What wonder that he should shun the light of day! And when big Peter with Rolf in the living flesh, instead of the sheriff, stood before him and told him to come out of that and get into the canoe, he wept bitter tears of repentance and vowed that never, never, never, as long as he lived would he ever again let liquor touch his lips. A frame of mind which lasted in strength for nearly one day and a half, and did not entirely ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... kind of vegetable, but also meat. He has even been known to chew up and eat bones, blankets, and leather! And he is perhaps the only animal that will drink salt water; for the country in which the Two-Humps camel lives has several lakes, the water of which is bitter and salty. ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh

... OLD PROBLEMS. The Peace of Westphalia (1648), which ended the bloody Thirty Years' War, itself the culmination of a century of bitter and vindictive religious strife, has often been regarded as both an end and a beginning. Though the persecution of minorities for a time continued, especially in France, this treaty marked the end of the attempt of the Church and the Catholic States to stamp out Protestantism ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... the fierce conflict within, and he had quite as many objections to make as Gussie, though they were not so openly and freely expressed. Chancing to meet Dexie in the hall, after repeated efforts to catch her alone, his bitter disappointment was so touchingly expressed that, for the first time, Dexie felt a sort of pity for the man, though she could not understand the intense feeling that seemed ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... deprived of the conveniences of life? Take away this opinion, and you remove with it all grief; for no one is afflicted merely on account of a loss sustained by himself. Perhaps we may be sorry, and grieve a little; but that bitter lamentation and those mournful tears have their origin in our apprehensions that he whom we loved is deprived of all the advantages of life, and is sensible of his loss. And we are led to this opinion by nature, without any arguments or ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... 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, for religious and ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... trite remark that all litigants could not be expected to have the highest regard for the judges who have tried their cases, he told the following story: A worthy but unfortunate south-country farmer had fought his case in the teeth of adverse decisions in the Lower Courts to the bitter end in one of the divisions of the Court of Session. After the decision of this tribunal affirming the judgment he had appealed against, and thus finally blasting his fondest hopes, he was heard to mutter as he left the Court: ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... this: "That they were then by one day happier than he." After which, causing him to be stripped, and delivering him into the hands of the tormentors, he was by them not only dragged through the streets of the town, and most ignominiously and cruelly whipped, but moreover vilified with most bitter and contumelious language: yet still he maintained his courage entire all the way, with a strong voice and undaunted countenance proclaiming the honourable and glorious cause of his death; namely, for that he would not deliver up his country into ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... but could not make himself understood. Even the interpreter provided could not thoroughly understand him, and took his excited denunciations against the traitor as the ravings of one half insane with trouble. He does not rightly know, even yet, what he is imprisoned for, but his whole soul is bitter against that man, and he means to kill him yet, if it is the last thing he ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... about his being really sick. But all the same, she made sickness very disagreeable to him, and he felt that in future he should not pretend sickness when she was at home. It made him almost sick to think of the bitter tea he had already drunk, and the oil would have been ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger

... black tea." A piece of toast was all he ate before his return to Mrs. Wharton's from the banking-house at 4 P.M. Mrs. Wharton then offered him some lager beer, and, partly at his own suggestion, put into it something out of a bottle labeled "Gentian Bitters." He found the liquid so bitter that he took but a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... Germany, and so on westward. Very different is this use of the evergreen vine in taverns, from that of adorning churches—the one meaning a mere invitation to drink, while the other reminds the believer that, as the Ivy lives through the bitter winter, so shall our souls endure through cold death and live again in Christ, even as He passed through the grave to live in 'eternal bloom.' Yet to those who have mastered the legend of Bacchus, there is no ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... after his death in 1748 under the name of Telliamed (De Maillet spelt backwards).) work, which I have often heard of, but never seen. I should like to have a look at it, and would return it to you in a short time. I am bound to read it, as my former friend and present bitter enemy Owen generally ranks me and Maillet as a pair of ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... cartridges and more shells, anyway, than we have. They have as many grenades as they can throw; we have—a dozen per Company. There is a very bitter feeling amongst all the troops, but especially the Australians, at this lack of elementary weapons like grenades. Our overseas men are very intelligent. They are prepared to make allowances for lack of shell; lack of guns; lack of high explosives. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... reptile. She could not remove her eyes from his, though she trembled as she gazed. We have said that Peter's orbs were like those of the toad. Age had not dimmed their brilliancy. In his harsh features you could only read bitter scorn or withering hate; but in his eyes resided a magnetic influence of attraction or repulsion. Sybil underwent the former feeling in a disagreeable degree. She was drawn to him as by the motion of a whirlpool, and involuntarily clung to ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Christians," he wrote to the Khalif of Bagdad, "how they come crowding in! How emulously they press on! They are continually receiving fresh re-enforcements more numerous than the waves of the sea, and to us more bitter than its brackish waters. Where one dies by land, a thousand come by sea. . . . The crop is more abundant than the harvest; the tree puts forth more branches than the axe can lop off. It is true that great ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... to thank for this, and was set wondering that my lady's charity was broad enough to mantle even by this little my latest sins against the king's cause. None the less, I ate and drank gratefully, draining the tea-dish to the dregs—which, by the by, were strangely bitter. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... white, with green blinds, and furnished with a furnace stiflingly hot. One of the first things the baby did was to crawl under the sofa in the sitting-room and lay her small fingers against the radiator or register, or whatever it is called, through which the heat came. She withdrew them with a bitter outcry, and on the tip of each was a blister as big as the tip itself. We had no glorious out-door playground in West Newton; it was a matter of back yards and sullen streets. The snow kept piling up, week after week; but there was no opportunity to put it to its ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... of the democratic spirit was the old Yale fence, over the departure of which "old grads" are forever shedding bitter tears. The student who had not known the old fence was inclined to smile wearily over the expressions of regret at its loss, but still the "old grad" continued to insist that the fence was one of the crowning beauties of Yale, and that nothing ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish

... in the late war lost some of his first enthusiasm under the bitter experience of campaigning. One night at the front in France, while his company was stationed in a wood, a lieutenant discovered the recruit sitting on a log and weeping ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... neighbour's backside, and every one with a burthen of anguish on his back, to pour on my devoted head—and there is none to pity me. My wife scolds me! my business torments me, and my sins come staring me in the face, every one telling a more bitter tale than his fellow.—When I tell you even * * * has lost its power to please, you will guess something of my hell within, and all around me—I begun Elibanks and Elibraes, but the stanzas fell unenjoyed, and unfinished from my listless tongue: at last ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... From being a bitter "infidel," a hater of humanity, grossly ignorant and wholly indifferent to the decencies, we now view Girard as a lonely and pathetic figure, living out his long life in untiring industry, always honest, direct, frank, handicapped by physical defects, wistful in his longing for love, helpless to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... magnificence—her $8,000 apartment, her crystal bathtub, her French maid, her automobile, and every other conceivable luxury. The descent from affluence to actual want had been gradual, but none the less swift and sure. It had cost her many a bitter pang, many an hour of keen humiliation, but she had made the sacrifice willingly, cheerfully, feeling in her heart that he would wish it and commend her for it. In all her troubles, John was never for a moment out of her thoughts. ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow

... in the Hof about the return of the cattle, and it was confided to us that Jakob greatly hoped that we should still be at Edelsheim to witness the triumphal entry. The bitter cold and rain, however, whilst it made it a necessity for us to leave, impeded the downward journey from the Eder Olm, which was still further retarded by Zottel, the new queen, not taking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... associations and life-rusting routine, and here was a nation, whose every feeling my heart had so long echoed a response to, beaten down and trampled under the heel of the German whose legions must already be gathering around the walls of Paris. Why not offer to France in the moment of her bitter adversity the sword and service of even one sympathizing friend—not much of a gift, certainly, but one which would be at least congenial to my own longing for a life of service, and my hopeless prospects in a profession in which wealth was made the test of ability. So ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... than ever, and is evidently disposed to look upon another's personality as a marionette of which he pulls the strings. In this presumptuousness we speedily discern a degree of egoism and, behind this latter, something less spontaneous and more bitter, the beginnings of a curious pessimism which becomes the more pronounced as the laugher more ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson

... laugh and get tired. There was about her a kind of half bitter sanity and nonchalance which the nervous ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... be considered that our students are to go out into the world, and a world not of professed Catholics, but of inveterate, often bitter, commonly contemptuous, Protestants; nay, of Protestants who, so far as they come from Protestant Universities and public schools, do know their own system, do know, in proportion to their general attainments, the doctrines and arguments of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... say? She was breaking the fourth commandment; and she wept bitter tears over her great fault; and I am sure, as long as she lives, she will keep the black and white shawl, and remember that God saw fit, out of the mouth of a child, to reprove her for working on ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... gentlemen made addresses in Arabic. The most remarkable address was made by a Greek Priest, Ghubrin Jebara, the Archimandrite and agent of the Patriarch. When it is remembered that in the days of Bird, Goodell and Fisk, the Greek clergy were among the most bitter enemies of the missionaries, it will be seen that this address indicates a great change in Syria. Turning to the great congregation of three or four hundred people who were assembled in the American Chapel, Greeks, Maronites, Mohammedans, ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... New York. The unsuccessful ones remained worthless property in the hands of the state or were sold to private companies, as in the case of the Pennsylvania Railroad. This reckless state enterprise was a bitter lesson in public ownership, and continued for three quarters of a century to have such an effect on public opinion, that few proposals for public ownership could have a fair hearing in America, But railroads and canals are publicly owned, and more or less ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... not lived, Varhely, or you have lived only for your idol, your country, and everything amazes you. If you had, like me, wandered all over the world, you would not be astonished at anything; although, to tell the truth"—and the young man's voice became bitter, trenchant, and almost threatening—"we have only to grow old to meet with terrible ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... sweetest and deepest songs. Who that is not a father can be taught paternal love by words, or can come to a perception of it by an effort of mind? And so with all other emotions. Only the lips that have drunk the cup of sweetness or of bitterness can tell how sweet or how bitter it is, and even when they, made wise by experience, speak out their deepest hearts, the listeners are but little the wiser, unless they too have been scholars in the same school. Experience is our ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... speculate as to the man with whom she was going; his thoughts flew at once to Muriel. But his delight was tempered by the fear that his liberty had come too late to be of service to him with her. Would she ever forgive him? His heart sank when he remembered her indignation, her bitter words when they parted. Surely no woman who had been so humiliated could pardon the man who had brought such shame upon her. Yet how could he have acted otherwise? It was natural that the girl should blame him; but how could he have been false to his plighted ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... Mr. Adams' residence at the Court of Berlin were painfully affected by the bitter party animadversions which assailed his father's administration, and which did not fail to bring within the sphere of their asperities the missions he had himself held in Europe. These feelings became intense ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... thoughts had not done him any good. They had been bitter thoughts of the months he had been compelled to waste in Bavaria when every minute had an incomparable value; worrying, irritating thoughts of the scenes he would have to have with his father, who must be made to ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... there was a good fountain head of them. And again those two pictures of future life rose up before her; not as matters of choice, to take one and leave the other—but as matters of contrast, in somewhat that entered the spring of tears and made them bitter. Was something gone from her life, that could never be got back again? had she lost something that could never be found again? Was there a "bloom and fragrance" waving before her on the one hand, though unattainable, which ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... child more than before. Please give her my warm love, and tell her not to feel troubled about it any more. No one shall be allowed to think it was anything wrong; and some day she will write a great, beautiful story or poem that will make many people happy. Tell her there are a few bitter drops in every one's cup, and the only way is to take the bitter patiently, and the sweet thankfully. I shall love to hear of her reception of the book and how she likes the stories which ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... its chief, his sudden liberation, and the trust reposed in him, were so extraordinary that all Europe was disturbed. Though Continental thought may, as the greatest of modern historians has said, have visited the memory of Ralegh since with an indifference more bitter than censure or reproach, it was very far from indifferent in 1617. At home cynics disbelieved the sincerity of Ralegh. They ridiculed the notion that, after the iniquitous treatment he had experienced, he would ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... accused her of being the cause of it, and could only be convinced of her innocence when she offered to give the whole thing up if he said so. When he would not say so, she carried the affair through to the bitter end, and she did not spare him some, pangs which she perhaps need not have shared with him. But people are seldom man and wife for half their lives without wishing to impart their sufferings as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... becoming intolerable. Such were the anxious thoughts of the leading Puritans in the spring of 1629, and in face of so grave a problem different minds came naturally to different conclusions. Some were for staying in England to fight it out to the bitter end; some were for crossing the ocean to create a new England in the wilderness. Either task was arduous enough, and not to be achieved without steadfast and sober heroism. [Sidenote: Desperate ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... less bitter and austeer when he heard the news, and made the remark, "That he hoped that he would be happy." But there wuz a dark and shudderin' oncertainty and onbelief in his cold eyes as he said that "Hope" ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... hand across his mouth, and his eyes smiled at Lupton. Then some sudden, violent emotion stirred him, and he spoke with such quick and bitter energy that Lupton half rose from his seat in ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke

... said Miss Brass, raising her head, with which she had hitherto sat resting on her hands, and surveying him from head to foot with a bitter sneer, 'this is my brother, is it! This is my brother, that I have worked and toiled for, and believed to have had something of the man ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... passing bitter laugh he turned from her entreaties and hurled the pistol across the battlements into air. A hand flung open the hatch. A British officer—Etherington, Major of the Forty-sixth—pushed his head and shoulders ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... of a bitter personal intention had it not been so clear that Jinny's genius was no longer in question, ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... former guest and fervent friend of the Queen—for whom she seems to have retained a lingering, rueful regard—grasper at an increase of territory, disturber of the peace of Europe, dogged refuser of all mediation. He had an attack of influenza, but the real cause of his death is said to have been bitter disappointment and mortification at his failure to drive the allies out of the Crimea. The "Generals, January and February," on whom he had counted to work his will, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... indulged so freely in obvious hyperbole, and has made so very evident the bitter personal animosities which inspire many of his statements, that it has been a genuine surprise to his former associates and acquaintances that his ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... of separation now approached. It was a bitter moment, but the manly character of the old burgher, and the devout resignation of Catharine to the will of Providence made it lighter than might have been expected. The good knight hurried the departure ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... saith in the midst of the foemen with his war-flame reared on high, But all about and around him goes up a bitter cry From the iron men of Atli, and the bickering of the steel Sends a roar up to the roof-ridge, and the Niblung war-ranks reel Behind the steadfast Gunnar: but lo, have ye seen the corn, While yet men grind the sickle, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... to inspire in the breast of man, feelings of peace and happiness, rather than elements of discord and strife. The pipe of a king burns not more freely the shreds of the plant, than it does the last remnant of hostile feelings and the recollections of bitter wrongs; while the snuff-box of the diplomat contains the precious dust that has soothed the fierce hatred of rival houses and cemented the divided ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... such cases. We will argue the point out systematically thus:—Suppose that you, in your boyhood, had wronged some woman, and suppose that woman had died. You might imagine you had got rid of that woman. But if her love was very strong and her sense of outrage very bitter, I must tell you that you have not got rid of her by any means, moreover, you never will get rid of her. And why? Because her Soul, like all Souls, is imperishable. Now, putting it as a mere supposition, and for the sake of the argument, that ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli



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