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Bitterness   Listen
noun
Bitterness  n.  
1.
The quality or state of being bitter, sharp, or acrid, in either a literal or figurative sense; implacableness; resentfulness; severity; keenness of reproach or sarcasm; deep distress, grief, or vexation of mind. "The lip that curls with bitterness." "I will complain in the bitterness of my soul."
2.
A state of extreme impiety or enmity to God. "Thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity."
3.
Dangerous error, or schism, tending to draw persons to apostasy. "Looking diligently,... lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bitterness" Quotes from Famous Books



... true that his misfortunes were from his own fault; but that consideration never makes a man a particle more patient or good-natured— indeed, it is an additional bitterness in his cup. John was an Englishman. When he first landed in New York from the old country, he had been wild and dissipated and given to drinking. But by his wife's earnest entreaties he had been persuaded to ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... plays so large a part. This latest publication from his pen is the result of years of study, of unremitting toil in the great libraries of this country and abroad where every facility was at hand to obtain data and to verify facts. It is a book written without bitterness ... which seeks to carry conviction, not by the force of unverified quotations, or the repetitions of utterances often made in the heat of controversy, but by arguments based upon demonstrable fact, and supported by authorities to which ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... heart has learned what love is from even the 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... was made in much bitterness, and meant the very contrary to what the words expressed; but Evelyn thought she meant what she ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... intense bitterness on his face he rose slowly to his feet. The blood was running down his chin, and there were several stains upon his white collar and his shirt front. If a look could have crushed me I ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer

... not spoken, or offered to speak. Now that he had finished, she answered him from the half shadow in which she sat on the farther side of the sewing machine upon which the lamp burned. There was no bitterness, he thought, in her words; merely a sense of resignation to and acceptance of a state of things not of her own contriving, and not, conceivably, to be ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... not omit any precautions. Your enemy has a long purse, and can reach right across France. That last affair is proof of his bitterness against you, and it would be rash indeed were we to act as if, having made one attempt and failed, he would abandon his plans altogether. He is clearly a man who nourishes a grudge for years, and his first failure is only ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... and family had been unfortunate, and it would be well that there should be no Amedroz left to trouble those more fortunate persons who were to come after them. In her sorrow and bitterness she included both her Cousin Will and Captain Aylmer among those more fortunate ones for whose sake it might be well that she should be made to vanish from off the earth. She had read Captain Aylmer's letter over and over again ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... more than live and love:—she had endured while endurance was demanded; and, released from the house of bondage, she had, without trace of bitterness in her heart, forgiven those who had caused ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... fringe the vast solitude of the sea. For, their land—like ours—lies under the inscrutable eyes of the Most High. Their hearts—like ours—must endure the load of the gifts from Heaven: the curse of facts and the blessing of illusions, the bitterness of our wisdom and the deceptive consolation of ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad

... within me that weeps yet, at the echo of that music. Oh, what would I not give for music! How much of my bitterness, how many of my sorrows have melted into ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair

... offer an apology or explanation for their conduct and thereby furnish him with the opportunity for berating them and relieving his soul of the bitterness that rankled there. To lash somebody, anybody, with his tongue would have ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett

... sudden touch of real and fierce bitterness which brought the light dancing into her eyes and a spot of colour to her cheeks. "I preserve you! Why, you can never hear my name without thinking of sin, of crime of some sort! Do you seriously expect me to ever preserve any ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... strongly dissented. Ould Michael heeded him not, but poured out his bitterness and grief. "For twinty years and more did I folly the flag in all lands and in all climates, wid wounds all over me body, an' medals an' good conduct sthripes an'—an' all that; an' now, wid niver a word av complaint or explanashun, to be turned aff ...
— Michael McGrath, Postmaster • Ralph Connor

... birth in 1831. Fanatics like John Brown, and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, fanned into flame the sparks that had so long-smouldered, till the helpless negro was dragged from his havens of peace and comfort. If he felt bitterness towards the whites, what was to prevent his rising in insurrection and slaying them all? There were plantations where 600 or 700 slaves were governed by two or three white owners. They occupied little ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... of Maximilian wonderfully allayed the bitterness of religious strife in Germany, while other portions of Europe were desolated with the fiercest warfare between the Catholics and Protestants. In France, in particular, the conflict raged with merciless fury. It was ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... with emphatic bitterness, and the company thanked him. Seeing him stand up as to depart, however, a storm of contempt was hurled at him; some said he was like old Sedgett, and was afraid of his wife; and some, that he was like ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Hispaniola with power to depose Colon and treat him as a criminal,—so cunningly were his instructions framed. When the great discoverer was actually thrown into prison and sent to Spain manacled like a felon, it might have added a few drops of bitterness to his reflections if he had known what Ojeda was doing. This youth, whom he had trusted and liked, was now looking forward to the conquest of the very region which the Admiral had discovered, and using what was supposed to be the Admiral's ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... abundantly taught us that the agitation by citizens of one part of the Union of a subject not confided to the General Government, but exclusively under the guardianship of the local authorities, is productive of no other consequences than bitterness, alienation, discord, and injury to the very cause which is intended to be advanced. Of all the great interests which appertain to our country, that of union—cordial, confiding, fraternal union—is by far the most important, since it is the only ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... began to curse Macdonald with a bitterness that surprised the Government agent. What struck him most, though, was the obvious anxiety of Northrup to quiet his partner and to gloss over what he had said. Thinking of it later, Gordon wondered why the Dane, who had as much cause to hate ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... his voice; at least, she detected nothing else. There was none of the bitterness which, while it made Celestia's heart ache that afternoon, had made her all the more determined to do what she believed to ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... alarmed than her pride. If one moment she murmured reproaches upon Glaucus—if one moment she renounced, she almost hated him—at the next she burst into passionate tears, her heart yielded to its softness, and she said in the bitterness of anguish, 'He despises me—he ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... indeed, there was war between us. The brief happiness of yesterday was clouded over and gone, and I thought that never since the day of the first separation had I felt so exquisitely unhappy as now, when the bitterness of quarrel was added to the pangs of parting, and I stood not only alone but friendless. In the course of one year's constant intimacy I had come to regard Lambert with a reverence and affection which ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of the child, Henderson conceived a new impetus and also a new sense of bitterness and self-reproach. A homeless failure may tramp the face of the earth and feel no shame; but the unsuccessful man who is a husband and a father moves upon a different plane. He has ties—responsibilities—something for which he ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... looked there fell from him the past five years, the long estranging years of bitterness and misery and vain desire, and the years, still more estranging, of his madness and his folly; and not the thinnest phantom shadow of time divided him from the days of Harmouth, That moment of recognition annihilated all between; a lustre of his life swept away in one sweep of her eyelids, dropped ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... conscientiously endeavoured to be kind, just, patient. And she knew herself to be sagacious and prudent. In the frightful and unguessed trials of her existence as a wife, surely she might have been granted consolations as a mother! Yet no; it had not been! And she felt all the bitterness of age against youth—youth egotistic, harsh, cruel, uncompromising; youth that is so crude, so ignorant of life, so slow to understand! She had Constance. Yes, but it would be twenty years before Constance ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... he was justified in thinking her harsh and unfeeling, for where love had once blossomed in her soul, a spring of bitterness now gushed forth poisoning ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... glorious as its dawn. But his proud heart could not permit his title to be torn from him without a struggle. If even now you can read how the gallant fellow, unable with his one eye to judge his distances, fought for thirty-five minutes against his young and formidable opponent, and how, in the bitterness of defeat, he was heard only to express his sorrow for a friend who had backed him with all he possessed, and if you are not touched by the story there must be something wanting in you which should go to the making ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... but one reflects that the thief of the watch became a thief from causes of heredity and environment which are as interesting as they are scientifically comprehensible; and one buys another watch, if not with joy, at any rate with a philosophy that makes bitterness impossible. One loses, in the study of cause and effect, that absurd air which so many people have of being always shocked and pained by the curiousness of life. Such people live amid human nature as if human nature were a foreign country full of awful foreign customs. But, having reached ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett

... reported to us, have reminded us of your great and sudden loss; yet what had I to say to you? I have thought that the echo from your son in Calcutta may have made your grief break out afresh.... I trust that time, which has not yet at all had softening powers, has not added any fresh bitterness ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... bitter or sweet; yet in this respect we have a graduated difference, for the kernel is very bitter in Shipley's apricot; in the Hemskirke less bitter than in some other kinds; slightly bitter in the Royal; and "sweet like a hazel-nut" in the Breda, Angoumois, and others. In the case of the almond, bitterness has been thought by some high authorities to indicate ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... The bitterness was like a sour taste in Orne's mouth. He could see the pattern so clearly. "Di, I ran away from home when I was ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert

... Oh, I see. At least you're honest now; you don't attempt to deny that you've known all about it, then." There was perhaps a fresh ring of bitterness in his voice, as if some last faint hope had been ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... Bev. In bitterness of heart he told me, just now he told me, I had undone him. Could I hear that, and think of happiness? No; I have disclaimed it, while ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... day thinking and two more to go on deck at night, and see how much time the rest of the world would have to go fishing. See how politics would become simplified. Conventions, primaries, bargains and sales, campaign bitterness and vituperation—all might be wiped out. A pair of political thinkers could furnish 100,000,000 of people with logical conclusions enough to last them through the campaign and put an unbiased opinion into a man's house each day for less than he now pays for gas. Just ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... with despair, was sitting close to Lon. She knew without being told that the father she had just found had lost from his memory all of the bitterness of the years gone by. He had gone back to his Midge, and now centered upon his newly found child the identity of this dead woman. It was better so, even Katherine admitted; for he was meek and tender, wholly unlike the sullen, ugly man they had seen earlier in the evening. The squatter's condition ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... sure there would be no pursuit—the elder Leffingwells would certainly keep their sons from joining it—he sent his great horse straight ahead at a good pace for a long time, the road being fairly good. His excitement and rapid motion kept him from noticing at first the great bitterness of ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... did the young man detect any sign of personal feeling. Then for an instant, some veil seemed to be lifted, some curtain drawn aside; while, with dazzling effect, he became cognizant of underlying bitterness, underlying romance—of secret dealings of man with man, of man with woman, and the dealing, arbitrary, immutable, final, of Death and a Greater than ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... lyrics are Carolina and A Cry to Arms, which in the exciting days of '61 deeply moved the Southern heart, but which today serve as melancholy mementos of a long-past sectional bitterness. Of the vigorous lines of the former, Hayne says in an interesting autobiographic touch, "I read them first, and was thrilled by their power and pathos, upon a stormy March evening in Fort Sumter! Walking along the battlements, under the red lights of a tempestuous ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... of being "trusted!" ' she said—quietly, though there was some bitterness in the tone—'it is almost a wonder it never occurs to you that a woman might like it too! I know every one of the carriage party with whom I came. And that I did not ask Mr. Falkirk's leave before I left home was only because I did not ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... bitterness to follow vict'ry. Jeff emerges like Diana from the bath an' frales the wamus off me with a club. Talk of puttin' a crimp in folks! Gents when Jeff's wrath is assuaged I'm all on one side like the leanin' tower ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... mind. My heart sinks always as I ascend the stairs to my office, from a dim augury of ill news from Lisbon that I may perhaps hear,—of black-sealed letters, or some such horrors. Nothing gives me any joy. I have learned what the bitterness of exile is, in these days; and I never should have known it but for the absence of "Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,"—I can perfectly appreciate that line of Goldsmith; for it well expresses my own torpid, unenterprising, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... you return to your recaptured and glorious Belgium, you will only have to say the word, Sire, and all disputes will lose their bitterness and all antagonisms fade away. After being our strength and defender, you will become our peacemaker and reconciler. With ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... labouring to reconcile them to the Dacres, and to bring about a contract of marriage between these two unfortunate children, but he feared that whatever he could do, there would only be additional feud and bitterness, though it was clear that the mishap was accidental. The Lord of Whitburn himself was in Ireland with the Duke of York, while his lady was in attendance on the young Queen, and it was judged right and seemly to despatch ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... stay or delay and opened one of the cupboards in the pavilion and taking out a loaf of refined sugar, broke off a great slice which he put into Nur al-Din's cup, saying, "O my lord, an thou fear to drink wine, because of its bitterness, drink now, for 'tis sweet." So he took the cup and emptied it: whereupon one of his comrades filled him another, saying, "O my lord Nur al-Din, I am thy slave," and another did the like, saying, "I am one of thy servants," and a third said, "For my sake!" and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... and resentful mood he no longer cared—or thought he didn't, which resulted in the same thing—the accumulation of increasing bitterness during a dull, rainy working day at the office, and a dogged determination to keep clear of this woman until effort to remain away from her was ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... who spoke the vernacular tongue of Palestine, were natives of the country, there were, perhaps, suspicions that local influence secured for their poor an undue share of the public bounty. The expedient employed for the removal of this "root of bitterness" seems to have been completely successful. "The twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... Whether such personal grounds existed in the case of Barnabas Bidwell cannot now be readily ascertained. It is however certain that he was regarded by a host of clever and unscrupulous persons with a bitterness of enmity almost amounting to ferocity. He seems to have made no attempt to conciliate his foes, but treated them with a sort of haughty contempt. In the year 1810 the weight of their anger descended upon him like ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... slowly it moved! The air was like steam. If there broke one of those dark, violent storms common though rare to the country, Duane believed he might slip away in the fury of wind and rain. Hope, that seemed unquenchable in him, resurged again. He hailed it with a bitterness ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

... thee; That whene'er I woo, I find Virgins coy but not unkind. Let me when I kiss a maid Taste her lips so overlaid With love's syrup, that I may, In your temple when I pray, Kiss the altar and confess There's in love no bitterness. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... "they has to be cwacked dus 'ike nuts." And she proceeded to crack, not the stones, but her own little, eager, blundering fingers, instead. O stony, stony-hearted stones and pebbly-hearted pebbles! Tot's cup of bitterness seemed to flow over. She stood up, sobbing. A sudden sense ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.

... some sentiment of regret, unless it be to receive liberty. Of the twenty months which my detention had now reached, more than sixteen had been passed in the Garden Prison, sometimes rather lightly, but the greater part in bitterness; and my strength and appearance were so changed, that I felt to be scarcely recognisable for the same person who had supported so much fatigue in exploring the coasts ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... town, believing himself sought by the law, for so Hayden wrote him. Not long ago he discovered that the matter in which he and Hayden had offended had never been disclosed after all. He hurried back to the states. You can imagine his bitterness. He had been engaged to Myra Thornhill, and the fact that Hayden was also in love with her may have had something to do with his ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... times it was simply in order to please the king. If the Court subsisted after her it was only to languish. Never was princess so regretted, never one so worthy of it: regrets have not yet passed away, the involuntary and secret bitterness they caused still remain, with a frightful blank ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... mountains and hills will be thought light, and men would rather wish to be covered with them, Rev. vi. 16. Suppose, now, you could swim in a river of delights and pleasures, (which yet is given to none, for truly, upon a just reckoning, it will be found that the anxiety, and grief, and bitterness, that is intermingled with all earthly delights, swallows up the sweetness of them,) yet it will but carry you down ere you be aware, into the sea of death and destruction, as the fish that swim and sport for a while in Jordan, are carried down into the Dead sea of Sodom, where they are presently ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... not mix two new-crop acid coffees, or two old-crop bitter kinds, unless their bitterness or acidity is counteracted by coffees with opposite flavors. One blender insists that every blend ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... tattle about other men's matters, which do not concern them, and perhaps to backbite some of their brethren, and to prejudice the minds of persons against their teachers and their work, if they do not please them. And will not such meetings have bitterness in the end? Is it not great iniquity for Christians to tempt one another to sin, and to wrong their own souls, by misspending that precious time which they might have employed in the service of God, and one another's spiritual profit. Men and women ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... inspiration in sentiment as in narration.) "Scarce any writer presents to us a sentiment with such a tearful depth of expression; but though it is a tearful depth, those tears were shed long since, and Faith and Love have hallowed them. You nowhere are made to feel the bitterness, the vehemence of present emotion; but the phoenix born from passion is seen hovering over the ashes of what was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... these good, honest, middle-aged couples," cried the Iron King with the bitterness of an oft-defrauded widower. "The woman always drinks, and them man always steals ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... of enmity with Daisy Medland. Indeed this unhappy young man, for all that his whole soul was by way of being absorbed in reconstructing society, would have thought most things a bad bargain at such a price. But his bitterness had been too strong. It seemed as though all his devotion, ay, and—he did not scruple to say to himself—all his real gifts were to weigh as nothing against the cut of a coat and the "sit" of a cravat—for to such elemental constituents his merciless ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope

... perturbed and almost sleepless one from the chaos and bitterness of her thoughts. The old was breaking ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... too truly,—God knows I'm afraid so!" said St. Clare, in a tone of sudden bitterness, as he hurried down to take ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... live a lonely kind of life in this disorderly household, often marked out as the object of the spites and petty tyrannies of both parties. She was regarded with bitter hatred and jealousy by Madame Mendoza, who was sure to visit her with unsparing bitterness and cruelty after the occasional demonstrations of fondness she received from her father. Her exquisite beauty and the gentle softness of her manners made her such a contrast to her sisters as constantly excited their ill-will. Unlike ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... dominant party whose hand was strengthened by her potent neighbour, sought relief from the gloom of the present, by looking far back into the fabulous glories of the past—and it seemed the last drop in her cup of bitterness when this pleasant vista was also to be closed by the hard utilitarian hand of the ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... his pleasant face, round, rosy, and beardless as a child-cherub of Rubens, tempting pale men with splitting heads to throw boots at him in the bitterness of their envy as he entered their rooms on the morning after a heavy drink, his eyes so clear and guileless that you would never guess how sharp they could be at times when a dangerous horse was coming ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... to see this asylum of which you had heard, did you not?" asked the queen with a shade of bitterness. "I have been calumniated to you, as I have been to the king and to the French people. I know how my enemies are trying to make my subjects hate me! I know that about these very rooms, lewd songs are sung on the Pont-Neuf which make the Count de Provence hold ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... in great suffering through the cruel treatment to which her husband subjected her; and she determined to free herself from this pain and anguish by putting an end to her life, which was passing in such bitterness. For this purpose, she placed a noose around her neck, the demon aiding her, and hanged herself. The noise which she made while in the pains of death was heard by one of her neighbors, who hastened to her, and, encountering this horrible sight, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... moment. It was necessary that, at least for a moment, the poison of some aeons should distil. There was need of savagery to say what she proposed to say. The voice of training, of civilization, of unselfishness, of friendship raised a protest. Wait then for a moment. Wait until the bitterness of an ambitious and unrounded life could formulate this evil impulse. Wait, till Mary Connynge could summon treachery enough to slay her friend. And yet, wait only until the primitive soul of Mary Connynge should become altogether imperative ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... that vice from which the Government derives a huge revenue—the vice which is ironically associated with friendliness, good temper, merriment, and all goodly things. There are times when one is minded to laugh for very bitterness. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... Godfrey, Isobel made her great recantation, for which probably there would never have been any need had she been born in different surroundings and found some other spiritual guide in youth than Mr. Knight. As the cruelties and the narrow bitterness of the world had bred unfaith in her, so did supreme love breed faith, if of an unusual sort, since she learned that without the faith her love must die, and the love she knew to be immortal. Therefore the existence of that living love presupposed all the rest, and convinced her, which ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... in the way of controversy. I would listen, rather than criticise. The utterances of pious souls, in all ages, are to me often like fountains in a thirsty land, strengthening and refreshing, yet not without an after-taste of human frailty and inadequateness, a slight bitterness of disappointment and unsatisfied quest. Who has not felt at times that the letter killeth, that prophecies fail, and tongues cease to edify, and been ready to say, with the author of the Imitation of Christ: "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. Let not ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Old Testament that is reached the highest ethical note ever yet sounded, not only by Judaism but by man, and that this mass of literature is so saturated with the conception of a people chosen not for its own but for universal salvation, that the more material prophecies—evoked moreover in the bitterness of exile, as Belgian poets are now moved to foretell restoration and glory—are practically swamped. At the worst, we may say there are two conflicting currents of thought, as there are in the bosom of every nation, one primarily self-regarding, and the other setting towards ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill

... their coats-of-arms right away; and their society was courted by everybody, the nobles and commons alike. The Standard-Bearer said, with some touch of bitterness, that he could see that they just felt good to be alive, they were so soaked with the comfort of their glory; and didn't like to sleep at all, because when they were asleep they didn't know they were noble, and so sleep was a clean loss of ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... faithfully believed? What are the improbable things? The things that one has done oneself. No, Ernest; life cheats us with shadows, like a puppet- master. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to us, with bitterness and disappointment in its train. We come across some noble grief that we think will lend the purple dignity of tragedy to our days, but it passes away from us, and things less noble take its place, and on some grey windy dawn, or odorous eve of silence and of silver, we find ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... to remember the past? I think of it without bitterness. God decreed it—God the all-wise, the all-merciful—for his own purpose. I do not indulge any repinings, or reflect with rancor upon the issue of the struggle. I prefer recalling the stirring adventure, the brave voices, the gallant faces: even in that tremendous drama of 1864-5, I ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... locket? He had heard, he added, that I had said in the lodging-room that I wished the French would win, and he would only be giving me what I deserved if he sent me to the Island. I heard and understood. He was himself a German. All my sufferings rose up before me, all the bitterness of my soul poured itself out upon him. I do not know what I said. I remember that he told the doorman to put me out. And he seized me and threw me out of the door, coming after to kick ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... reclaim? Are there not in Spain tribunals which dispense justice to all? God will do the rest, but I will not madly expose two noble lives. I do not speak of mine; young as I am, I have drunk the cup of bitterness to the dregs. You have done enough, and your generous subterfuges cannot ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... make this note to myself that it is a great pleasure and interest to sit beside a nice young man with a cigarette in his mouth and one in my hand as if for smoking, which I do not like to do from its bitterness, and converse with him about matters of good sense without having in any way to use that coquetry which breaks into small sections the usual conversation between a man and a ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... time when the allegory, if accepted, could have carried the same value as the portraits. And surely the second line is utterly inconsistent with the theory. Original or not, it has a very startling likeness to a plea which Holbein himself must have urged more than once, to soften a bitterness his own errors could not ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue

... himself with the dust of the market-place. As he was sitting thus, a porter passed him with jars of wine on his shoulders, and the prince begged him to give him a jar, for he was exceeding thirsty and faint. But the porter said, "What will my lord give me first?" And the prince, in very bitterness of spirit, said, "Take this," and handed him his STOKH, and so exchanged it ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte

... of the girl with the baby whom Clithering had seen shot. They realized, perhaps, the menace for husbands, lovers, and sons which lay in the guns of the black ironclad parading sluggishly before their eyes. Remembering and anticipating death, they hated the source of it with uncompromising bitterness. The men in the crowd seemed crushed into silence by mere wonder and expectation of some unknown thing. They were not, so far as I could judge, afraid. They were not excited. They simply waited to see what was to happen to them and ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... lifting his head, "oh, lad, lad—I've missed more than I thought—Love's a wonderful thing, far better and more beautiful than I ever dreamed it; pain and grief lose half their bitterness when Love looks at us from a woman's eyes and Death itself would come kinder—less dreadful, for the touch o' the loved hand, the sound o' the loved voice when the shadows gather. And—I might ha' had this blessing once—for the ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... practice on others. A day or two after we left Liverpool, he took occasion, when several of the crew were standing by, to make my rather quaint NAME the subject of some offensive remarks. My indignation was roused at such ungentlemanly conduct, and I retorted with a degree of bitterness as well as imprudence that surprised ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... then to maintain as do the Jews and their friends—for the pro-Jew is frequently plus royaliste que le roi—that all the faults of the modern Jew are to be attributed to bitterness engendered by persecution. Judaism has always contained an element of cruelty[824] which finds expression in the Talmud. It is from the Talmud, not from the Mosaic law, that the inhuman methods of Jewish slaughtering are derived.[825] The Talmud likewise gives the most horrible directions ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... she laughed less. She did not welcome Lo-Lale when he returned from his walks or his communings with Nature on the hills. The voice of the sea was calling her,—and the voice of Kalamakua. A separation had to come. It was without any spoken bitterness. The husband wished her well, bestowed on her some parting gifts, and sent her to the shore in a palanquin borne by four men and attended by a guard of three hundred, as became her station. Kalamakua was waiting on the beach,—Kalamakua, handsome, reckless, ardent. She ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... thought of other things—and the life of the fraternity house had been a gallant one! Then came his wander year—which stretched into two. And now, having eaten of the apples of Paradise and felt them turn to bitterness in his mouth, he would go back ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors

... must divine his feelings, and might say a word which would relieve them, if she chose. He watched Richard jealously. He was sure that Richard would be averse to his future wife relinquishing any of her rights, and he could scarcely restrain the bitterness of his thoughts when he imagined Richard master of Hallam. And Richard, quite innocent of any such dream, preserved a calmness of manner, which Antony took to be positive proof ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr

... particular remedy. He was not a botanist in the finer sense of the word, but in creating him the Spirit of the Wild had ordained that he should be his own physician. As a cat seeks catnip, so Thor sought certain things when he was not feeling well. All bitterness is not quinine, but certainly bitter things were Thor's remedies, and as he made his way up the gorge his nose hung close to the ground, and he sniffed in the low copses and thick bush-tangles ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... had been his efforts? He had won the princess, but how brief had been his triumphs! With a belief that was almost superstition, he had imagined his destiny lay thronewards. But the curse of his birth had been a ban to his efforts; the bitterness of defeat smote him. He knew he was falling; his nerveless hand ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... damosel; It is not for wrath nor bitterness, If rash and raving thoughts I tell. For sin my heart seethed in distress, Like bubbling water in a well. I cry God mercy, and confess. Rebuke me not with words so fell; I have lost all that my life ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett

... some bitterness over the choice of the President's companions in the carriage, since it was manifestly impossible for the entire committee of seven to pile into the space of four, though young Forshay, who had inherited his father's gift of humor, volunteered to ride on the President's ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... said Gilbert Glossin as the purchaser of the said lands and estate.' The honest writer refused to partake of a splendid entertainment with which Gilbert Glossin, Esquire, now of Ellangowan, treated the rest of the company, and returned home in huge bitterness of spirit, which he vented in complaints against the fickleness and caprice of these Indian nabobs, who never knew what they would be at for ten days together. Fortune generously determined to take the blame upon herself, and cut off even ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... She who at home coquetted through the years In which I vainly penned her wishful words To come and comfort me in Italy, Might, faith, have urged it then effectually! But never would you stir from Paris joys, [With some bitterness.] And so, when arguments like this could move me, I heard them not; and get them only now When their weight dully falls. But I have said 'Tis not for me, but France—Good-bye an hour. [Kissing her.] I must dictate some letters. This ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... never seriously contemplated a blockade of the American coast. The U-53 returned to its base and the danger was ended. American commerce went peacefully on, and the net result of the German audacity was in the increase of bitterness in the popular feeling toward ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... there, to my cost; and I had no notion of asking any exemption for him," returned Woodburn, with bitterness. "But this old gentleman, whatever may be his feelings, has committed none of those acts of violence, for which, only, I understand, our leaders intend to institute trials. Shall we not, then, let him and his ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... discontent that the words oppression and tyranny were uttered with no less passion and bitterness at that time than during the days which immediately preceded the downfall of the throne. Beaumarchais was so far put off his guard by rage as to exclaim, "Well, gentlemen, he won't suffer it to be played here; but I swear it shall be played,—perhaps in the very ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... who was. Much for James Scarlett, tamer of lions and general mountebank," I said, laughing down the rising tide of bitterness. Why had she stirred those dark waters? I had drowned myself in them long since. Under them lay the corpse of a man I ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... shepherdes and countrie people he accompted moste happie and sure." Deprived of its poetic fancy, this passage means that Barclay was a monk of the order of St. Francis, that he was born north of the Tweed, that his verse was infused with such bitterness and tonic qualities as camomile possesses, and that he advocated the cause of the country people in his independent and admirable 'Eclogues,' another title for the first three of which is 'Miseryes of Courtiers and Courtes of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... for myself that way thoroughly," said the trusser with a contemplative bitterness that was well-night resentful. "I married at eighteen, like the fool that I was; and this is the consequence o't." He pointed at himself and family with a wave of the hand intended to bring out the penuriousness of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... the knowledge that Delamere was the favored lover of Miss Pemberton lent a touch of bitterness to Ellis's reflections upon his rival. Ellis had no grievance against the "aristocracy" of Wellington. The "best people" had received him cordially, though his father had not been of their caste; but Ellis hated a hypocrite, and ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... my experience, previously counted chickens never do hatch. How many of mine I have counted! and never a one of them but failed! It is much better to hedge disappointment by not counting.—Unexpected money is a delight. The same sum is a bitterness when ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... people in the boat next came on. The others swore that we belonged to the schooner and the negro, in the bitterness of his feelings against me, had acknowledged the same. I told my history ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... me a better opinion of the commercial intelligence pervading his morgue than I had had before; it also softened my feelings toward him, and also my tone, which had hitherto been tinged with bitterness. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Mrs. Harlowe said solemnly. "When one thinks of the poor and unfortunate, to whom Thanksgiving can bring nothing but sorrow and bitterness, it seems little short of marvelous that we should be ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower

... return. Fanny answered, very disappointingly. Fanny indeed had no literary gift, but it was new to Miss Winchelsea to find herself deploring the want of gifts in a friend. That letter was even criticised aloud in the safe solitude of Miss Winchelsea's study, and her criticism, spoken with great bitterness, was "Twaddle!" It was full of just the things Miss Winchelsea's letter had been full of, particulars of the school. And of Mr. Snooks, only this much: "I have had a letter from Mr. Snooks, and he has been ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... it, is fatal. The insistence on rights, the urging of claims, the enforcement of private whims and fancies, are the death of love and the destruction of the family. Unless one is ready to give everything, asking nothing save what love gives freely in return, marriage will prove a fountain of bitterness rather than of sweetness; a region of storm and tempest rather than a haven of repose. Within a bond so close and all-embracing there is no room for the independent life of separated selves. Each must ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... replied in part: "I hope the Tennessee Legislature will meet and ratify the amendment and thus make immediate action by North Carolina unnecessary. We have neither the time nor the money and such action on the part of Tennessee would save this State the feeling of bitterness that would surely be engendered by debate on the subject that would come up in the Legislature. I have said all I intend to say on the subject of ratification. While I will take my medicine I will never swear that it tastes good, for ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... persecuted. How could the Irish help having a lower standard of life than the English when their lives had been so disrupted and disturbed that it was difficult for them to have a standard of life at all? Now, when the disturbance was over and security of life had been obtained (after what misery and bitterness and cruel lack of common comprehension!) the Irish would soon set up a level of life that might ultimately be higher than that ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... a friend, it seemed equally incredible that if a word had been said and heard, he should not have repeated it to me. Therefore, it was a failure; the worst of failures, that of silence. With a bitter feeling at heart, I hardly knew where I went; but this feeling soon changed, and the bitterness was superseded by quite ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... to the truths and cause of Christ, or for discovering any piece of zeal and affection that way. Much covetousness and worldly-mindedness, repining, murmuring and discontentment with God's dispensations; revenge, wrath, malice, envy, bitterness and innumerable sins, both against the precepts of the moral law, and the offers of Christ in the Gospel, which plainly says that we have not used the endeavours which in this Article we promise, for "Rooting up profaneness ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery

... thus to leap into a perfectly Corsican fury of bitterness, sank back at once to its ordinary level of passive mutual repudiation. Rose and Millicent were not bereft of the finer feelings which distinguish humanity from the beasts of the jungle; sometimes they could be almost affectionate. There were, however, moments when to all appearance ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... in bitterness she cried, 'Hell is on earth, and heaven is but a dream; And human life a troubled aimless stream; And God is nowhere. Would God so deride A loving creature's faith?' A voice replied, 'The stream flows onward ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... take no interest one way or another—among whom, for the time being, she certainly discerned the features of Ralph Denham. Indeed, when Miss Markham asked her to suggest the names of a few friends of hers, she expressed herself with unusual bitterness: ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... it, poor Hetty, and sometimes wish in bitterness of spirit that I had prayed more myself, and thought less of my beauty! As you say, we are now safe and need only go a little south and ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... entreaties that he might be sent to Spain, where a monarch would be the arbiter of his lot. But pity never touched the unfeeling heart of Pizarro. He ordered him to be led instantly to execution; and, what added to the bitterness of his last moments, the same monk who had just ratified his doom, offered to console, and attempted to convert him. The most powerful argument Valverde employed to prevail with him to embrace the Christian faith, was a promise ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... way with regiments of the Scots Brigade to make sure of Scotland for William. A few days after Dundee left Edinburgh MacKay arrived, and now, as Dundee rode northward in hot haste, MacKay was on his track. Both were eager for a meeting, but the bitterness of it for Dundee was that he dared not run the risk. With all his appeals and all his riding, he had only a handful of mounted men, and the clans had not risen. It seemed as if his enterprise were futile, and that Scotland would not lift ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... bitterness, acridness^, acridity, acrimony; caustic, alkali; acerbity; gall, wormwood; bitters, astringent bitters. Angostura [additive for alcoholic beverages], aromatic bitters. sourness &c 397; pungency &c 392. [bitter substances] alkaloids; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... he found out how he had, as he considered it, been taken advantage of and imposed upon, was intense in the extreme. No one dared refer to Mr Sutterby in his presence, while the very name of the poor boy Amos was scarcely ever spoken by him except in a tone of bitterness; and even his mother looked forward to his holidays with more ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... feelings, that moulds herself so pliantly, so closely to our humours; reposing on her calm and warm affection, to relax our spirit from a thousand distractions, a thousand wild wishes and tumultuous passions; to dream away all the bitterness of fortune, in the bosom of domestic enjoyment; this the true delight of life.' Some years had elapsed since he expressed these sentiments, which time had confirmed, not weakened: the presence of the Fraeulein Lengefeld awoke them into ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... worthy of Nicholas whom she loved more than anything in the world. But now they wanted her to sacrifice the very thing that constituted the whole reward for her self-sacrifice and the whole meaning of her life. And for the first time she felt bitterness against those who had been her benefactors only to torture her the more painfully; she felt jealous of Natasha who had never experienced anything of this sort, had never needed to sacrifice herself, but made others sacrifice themselves for her and yet was beloved ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... perfection on conditions which can never be completely fulfilled in our present state of imperfection; and, therefore, the short-lived happiness to which it gives birth is always mingled with a certain amount of bitterness. ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux

... gained the other side, he screamed louder than ever, and after running back and forth in vain search for a way of escape, he would return to the brink of the crevasse above the bridge, moaning and wailing as if in the bitterness of death. Could this be the silent, philosophic Stickeen? I shouted encouragement, telling him the bridge was not so bad as it looked, that I had left it flat and safe for his feet, and he could walk it easily. But he was afraid to try. Strange so small an animal should ...
— Stickeen • John Muir

... esculent, which in the wild state are poisonous or repulsive. In northern latitudes, the light being intense for a short time only, many plants are used there which, in the southern, are dangerous or destructive, such as hemlock and monkshood. A moderate degree of bitterness is a very useful accompaniment of the gum, which alone is cloying and even oppressive to the stomach. The presence of a bitter principle in many lichens promotes their digestion, and thus even the tough and leathery ones, called tripe of ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various

... bitterness You presently shall rue. Had I known you outlawed, shelterless, Hunted the country through— Trust me, the day that brought you here Would have seemed the fairest of many a year; And a feast I had counted it indeed When you turned to ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen

... woman with the face of the Mother Mary talked to the poor outcast girl, helping her to forget, turning her thoughts from the sadness and bitterness of her experience to the gladness and beauty of a possible future, until—when the sun lighted up the windows on the other side of the square with flaming fire, and all the sky was filled with the glory of his going—the sick girl slept, clinging ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... In her unutterable bitterness he saw a darkness of mood that could not have been caused by her present weak and feverish state. She hated the life she had led, that she probably had been compelled to lead. She had suffered some unforgivable wrong at the hands of Oldring. With that conviction ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... then arose, proceeded to the platform, where she devoutly kissed the stigmata; then leaving her slippers at the foot of the scaffold, she nimbly ascended the ladder, and instructed beforehand, promptly lay down on the plank, without exposing her naked shoulders. But her precautions to shorten the bitterness of death were of no avail, for the pope, knowing her impetuous disposition, and fearing lest she might be led into the commission of some sin between absolution and death, had given orders that the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... sway, Then gloomy thoughts rose up in dark array; He thus would wander, weary and alone, Listening the breezes in their fitful moan, As in their anger they swept through the woods, While thunder-clouds sent down their copious floods, And ask himself, in bitterness of soul, Why he his destiny could not control? Why some were wealthy, and could take their ease, And ride about wherever they should please? While he, poor lad, on foot his weary way Kept plodding still, till nearly ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... and affectionate. I receive few like them. Since two thirds of the letters addressed to me (partly copies of letters written to the king or the ministers) remain unanswered, I am blamed, charged with being a parvenu courtier, an apostate from science. This bitterness of individual claims does not diminish my ardent desire to be useful. I act oftener than I answer. I know that I like to do good, and this consciousness gives me tranquillity in spite of my over burdened life. You are happy, my dear Agassiz, in the more simple and yet truly proud position which ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... bitterness and desire for vengeance, what canine fawning flattery, does not corporal punishment call forth. It makes the lazy lazier, the obstinate more obstinate, the hard, harder. It strengthens those two emotions, the root of almost all evil in the world, hatred and fear. And as long ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key

... was of tremendous importance to me; there was something in it like a sanctification. When disappointment and bitterness are in store for me, I shall recall his words, and the remembrance of that hour will have a wonderful power to uphold me in ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... is now a grown-up, healthy man. And our child died. Yet we had prayed for her as few, perhaps, have prayed for any child. Why, then, was she not spared? I do not know. But I do know that there was in my life, at that time, the sin of bitterness toward another, and an unwillingness to forgive a wrong. This was quite sufficient to hinder any prayer, and did hinder for years, ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth

... walked to his vestry meeting with a smile upon his thin, gentlemanly-looking face, and rage and bitterness in his heart. ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... you the man who did it all is lying back there in the road!" screamed Rod, furious with indignation at this outrage and almost sobbing with the bitterness of his distress. "He is a train robber, and I'm a passenger brakeman on the New York and Western road. He made an escape and I was ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... Something had changed within her so that what had been anger at herself was sorrow for him. He was such a splendid man. She could not feel the same; she knew her debt to him, yet she could not thank him, could not speak to him. She fought an unintelligible bitterness. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... very delicate poetry, of trees and flowers, which form on the surface of the earth a veil of vegetation; 'of strange intermediate being; which breathes, but has no voice; moves, but cannot leave its appointed place; passes through life without consciousness; to death without bitterness; wears the beauty of youth without its passion, and declines to the weakness of age without its regret' Passing on, then, to the 'orders of the leaf,' he arranges plants in two classes,—the TENTED PLANTS, which live on the ground, as lilies, or crawl on the rocks, as lichen and mosses, leading ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... later years wondered at Mark Twain's occasional attitude of pessimism and bitterness toward all creation, when his natural instinct lay all the other way, may find here some reasons in his logic of gloom. For years he and his had been fighting various impending disasters. In the end ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... the impressive requiem was about to be sung—a dirge full of soul-stirring reflections and sacred grandeur—Margaret's head was full of bitterness, and she failed to respond to the sympathetic sublimity of the service, or to notice its serene beauty either. To her it was nothing more than a tiresome form; her interest was centred on Dorothy alone, and she heartily condemned herself for not arranging that. Dorothy should not sit ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... defend himself; the rather as he had been already perplexed in his mind by the honour of a visit from this venerable lady, when it was plain she held him in the utmost abhorrence. He could not but look at her with disconcertment, as she sat breathing bitterness and scorn, and staring leagues away. Flora, however, received the remark as if it had been of a most apposite and agreeable nature; approvingly observing aloud that Mr F.'s Aunt had a great deal of spirit. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... Girardin) at the head of one of the chief organs of the Paris press, they were much flattered and courted; at the period I speak of" (about 1817-1825) "their position was far from brilliant, and Mme. Gay was far from popular. Every word that fell from her mouth, uttered in a sharp tone, and full of bitterness and envy, went to speak ill of others and prodigiously well of herself. She had a mania for titles and tuft-hunting, and could speak of no one under a marquis, a count, or a baron. Her daughter's beauty and talents caused her afterwards to be more generally admitted into society; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... in upon her face. It was the Breath of the Wide World—that world that lay before her if she left the shelter of Pinewood Hall and the bitterness of her life here. ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe

... bruised, and again he attributed his mortification to Hamilton. If he had disliked him before, his dislike in a constant state of irritation through the ascendency and fame of the younger man, he hated him now with a bitterness which formed a dangerous link between himself and the Republican leaders. The time came when he was ready to humiliate his country and ruin his own chance of reelection, to dethrone his rival from another proud eminence and check ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... became aware of a most singular sensation as of bitter resentment herself, and not against the mother and sister who had so treated her own mother, but against her own mother, and then she became aware of a like bitterness extended to her own self. She felt malignant toward her mother as a young girl whom she remembered, though she could not have remembered, and she felt malignant toward her own self, and her sister Amanda, and Flora. Evil suggestions surged in her brain—suggestions which turned her heart to stone ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... not died out of his eyes. He did not know what he intended to do with her—had no plan, no purpose, he said. What plan or purpose could he have had unless murder? And even in his madness I'm sure that that never occurred to him. But his blood was hot and his anger and bitterness overwhelming. His fear of her delicacy diminished with her struggles, for her resistance inflamed him. He did not know, nor did she just then, that the animal instinct to conquer was what she had taught him, and that ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... vanities, the more clearly she discovered their emptiness and dangers, and sighed to see men pursue such bubbles to the loss of their souls; for, under a fair outside, they contain nothing but poison and bitterness. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... majority captured. Santana ordered the prisoners shot and twenty were executed on July 4, 1861, notwithstanding the protests of General Pelaez, the Spanish officer second in command. The act provoked bitterness against Spain and made the men so killed martyrs in the eyes of their countrymen. It also marked the beginning of strained relations between Santana and Pelaez, made worse by Santana's arrogance. ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... the world and soothed the ache in her heart by their very extravagance, which even her frugal conscience could not chide; dreams which drew hot tears upon her cheeks, to trickle down among her knotted fingers and tincture the bitterness ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... with intense bitterness, had escaped him by death. By his orders the bones of the old general were torn from their tomb near the Anio and flung into that stream. The son of Marius had slain himself to prevent being taken. His head was brought to Sulla at Rome, who ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... rendered by the Phalanx in the West. The operations in Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky, afforded an excellent opportunity to the commanders of the Union forces to raise negro troops in such portions of the territory as they held; but in consequence of the bitterness against such action by the semi-Unionists and Copperheads in the Department of the Ohio and Cumberland, it was not until the fall of 1863 that the organizing of such troops in these Departments fairly began. The ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... beds felt also the effects of the slump which had turned Marija out; but they felt it in a different way, and a way which made Jurgis understand at last all their bitterness. The big packers did not turn their hands off and close down, like the canning factories; but they began to run for shorter and shorter hours. They had always required the men to be on the killing beds and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... about it; yet not a great many, and without the least bitterness in them. But she felt faint and tired and disappointed. Here, however, at her own room-window, and alone, there was no bar to thanksgivings; and Daisy had them in her heart, as well as prayers for the people who had them not. She was too tired to pray at last; she only knelt at the window with her ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell

... after I finished at Madam Truxton's. How fondly I have looked forward to that coming day! It has been the one single hope of my miserable life; and now that the time draws so near, is it possible that my dream must vanish into nothingness? Must this heart taste the bitterness of deception, among its other sorrows? Miserable girl that I am! Surely some evil star shone over the hour and place of my birth. But I'll hope on for the best, and still continue to look forward to the coming day, when my life shall be separated from the wretched woman ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott

... very word might, perchance, call up within her recollections I would were banished from her mind for ever. The name of her nursling, whom she once loved as were she his own mother, and he had not worn a crown, is now a sound of horror to her. Often has she cursed him in the bitterness of her heart," she continued in a low tone of mystery, as if fearful lest the very walls should hear her confidence, "as the slayer of the righteous. She never can forgive him the treacherous order given for that murderous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... and most imperative cravings of the human heart, as it follows its beloved ones beyond the veil, is for some assurance that they still love and care for us. Could we firmly believe this, bereavement would lose half its bitterness. As a German writer beautifully expresses it, "Our friend is not wholly gone from us; we see across the river of death, in the blue distance, the smoke of his cottage;" hence the heart, always creating what it desires, has ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... wrote that letter," replied Darcy, "I believed myself perfectly calm and cool, but I am since convinced that it was written in a dreadful bitterness of spirit." ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... they might now prove the justice of their contempt by her fate. For having saved the man who was to her as a husband, she was rewarded in this way with cruel death by the deity, but Laodice was advanced to honour. The bitterness of these words remains ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies

... gazed gallantly into the eyes of many women, intent, I fancy, upon his own miniature there. Nor is the incomparable set of his trousers spoilt by the perching of any dear little child upon his knee. And so, now that he is stricken with seventy years, he knows none of the bitterness of eld, for his toilet-table is an imperishable altar, his wardrobe a quiet nursery and very constant harem. Mr. Le V. has many disciples, young men who look to him for guidance in all that concerns costume, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... agitated soul— He felt a power, from whence he could not tell, Drawing away, he knew not where it led. He knew the dreaded separation near, Yet half its pain and bitterness was passed. He need not leave his loved ones comfortless— His loving people still would have their prince, The king in young Rahula have his son, And sweet Yasodhara, his very life, Would have that nearest, dearest comforter ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... of Louis XVI in January, 1793, increased the bitterness of the approaching grave struggle. A royalist reaction in France itself precipitated civil war in La Vendee. Dumouriez, the ablest general of the day, in disgust deserted to the Austrians. And at this very ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... to Tiburcio to receive these compliments with a smile very different from that she had accorded to himself; he also observed, with a feeling of bitterness, the superior easiness of manner in which those whom he regarded as his rivals addressed themselves to her. With anguish he noticed the colour become more vivid upon her cheeks; while the heaving of her bosom, as the scarf rose and fell ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... and again we meet statements which, if not absolutely impossible, are at least highly improbable. Many of the events of the History are presented in an entirely new light; we seem to hear one speaking out of the bitterness of his heart. It should be said, at the same time, that there are very few contradictions in statements of fact. The author has plainly singled out the empress Theodora as the principal victim of his venomous ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius

... shoulders, and a heartrending smile, and by insensibly exciting his feelings. In a word, she triumphed over the last remaining doubts, which might still have mingled with the affectionate pity with which that poor, solitary heart, which, so full of bitterness, overflowed. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... of the cup of hate; The bitterness of sorrow, shame, and scorn; Where'er the tongues of mortals curse their fate, She saw herself an outcast and forlorn; And hating sore the day that she was born, Down in the dust she cast her golden head, There with ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... there. The two lads grew more and more imbued with the war-faith of their parties, and as they became sturdier and more manly, hardened as they were by the rough, open air life they led, a feeling of bitterness foreign to their natures rapidly increased, till they were ready to speak with hate and contempt of the enemy they blamed for destroying the peace ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... cavil at its bitterness, and to say that for Christians it is too full of threats and vengeance. Perhaps it is; nay, certainly it is. But there are two noble feelings in it, and two vivid pictures of character. The Psalm is inspired by a brave contempt for wickedness in high places, and by a most ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith

... Zwischenstufen, vol. iii, 1901). An instructive document, an unpublished portion of De Profundis, in which Wilde sought to lay the blame for his misfortune on a friend,—his "ancient affection" for whom has, he declares, been turned to "loathing, bitterness, and contempt,"—was published in the Times, 18th April, 1913; it clearly reveals an element of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis



Words linked to "Bitterness" :   grievance, rancour, rancor, acridity, taste property, gall, resentment, acerbity, envy, sulkiness, thorniness, disagreeableness, acridness, ill will, score, bitter, heartburning, jaundice, gustatory sensation



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