Bitter Quotes - page 31
The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy's mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness.
Willa Cather
If you're telling a non-black person about something racist that happened to you, make sure you are not bitter. Don't complain. Be forgiving. If possible, make it funny. Most of all, do not be angry. Black people are not supposed to be angry about racism. Otherwise you get no sympathy. This applies only for white liberals, by the way. Don't even bother telling a white conservative about anything racist that happened to you. Because the conservative will tell you that YOU are the real racist and your mouth will hang open in confusion.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
But have you ever thought as to how the efforts toward the abolition of castes can be made successful? Castes cannot be abolished by inter-caste dinners or stray instances of inter-caste marriages. Caste is a state of mind. It is a disease of the mind. The teachings of the Hindu religion are the root cause of this disease. We practise casteism, we observe untouchability, because we are asked to do it by the Hindu religion in which we live. A bitter thing can be made sweet. The taste of anything can be changed. But poison cannot be made Amrit [=nectar]. To talk of annihilating castes is like talking of changing poison into Amrit. In short, so long as we remain in a religion which teaches man to treat man as a leper, the sense of discrimination on account of caste, which is deeply rooted in our minds, cannot go. For annihilating castes and untouchability from among the Untouchables, change of religion is the only antidote.
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar
Surely mankind has yet to be born. Surely this is true! For only something blind and uncomprehending could exist in such a mean conjunction with its own flesh, its own kind. How else account for such faltering, clumsy, hateful cruelty? Even the possums and the skunks know better! Even the weasels and the meadow mice have a natural regard for their own blood and kin. Only the insects are low enough to do the low things that people do - like those ants that swarm on poplars in the summertime, greedily husbanding little green aphids for the honeydew they secrete. Yes, it could be that mankind has yet to be born. Ah, what bitter tears God must weep at the sight of the things that men do to other men!” He broke off then and I saw him shake his head convulsively, his voice a sudden cry: "In the name of money! Money!
William Styron
We weren't born to follow,
come on and get up off your knees.
When life is a bitter pill to swallow,
you've got to hold on to what you believe.
Believe that the sun will shine tomorrow
and that your saints and sinners bleed.
We weren't born to follow,
you've got to stand up for what you believe.
Jon Bon Jovi
Angell argued that in a modern economy no economic benefit could be generated even by successful wars of conquest... Angell's argument showed, beyond reasonable doubt, that war and territorial expansion are not, in general sensible policies. His views have often been derided on the basis that they were falsified by the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, which was pursued to the bitter end even though it destroyed the global market economy that had formed the backdrop to his analysis. But in reality the outcome proved him right. Of course, Germany, the power most influenced by the arguments of Clausewitz and his successors, reaped nothing but grief from the war. But the attempts of the victorious allies to exact reparations, extend their colonial influence and so on were also entirely futile, exactly as Angell had predicted.
Norman Angell
To speak and to offend is with some people but one and the same thing; they are biting and bitter; their words are steeped in gall and wormwood; sneers as well as insolent and insulting words flow from their lips. It had been well for them had they been born mute or stupid; the little vivacity and intelligence they have prejudices them more than dullness does others; they are not always satisfied with giving sharp answers, they often attack arrogantly those who are present, and damage the reputation of those who are absent; they butt all round like rams - for rams, of course, must use their horns. We therefore do not expect, by our sketch of them, to change such coarse, restless, and stubborn individuals. The best thing a man can do is to take to his heels as soon as he perceives them, without even turning round to look behind him.
Jean de La Bruyère
He came to science fiction in 1952; some two or three years later, somebody told him he was writing parables, and Sheckley believed it. The stripped quality of his subsequent work, and its utter divorcement from fact and logic, are traceable to this unfortunate influence.
He has a unique touch with a wacky civilization, a clean, compact style, and a satirical wit that is dry without being bitter.
Robert Sheckley
There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules. There is but one moral code that the absurd man can accept, the one that is not separated from God: the one that is dictated. But it so happens that he lives outside that God. As for the others (I mean also immoralism), the absurd man sees nothing in them but justifications and he has nothing to justify. I start out here from the principle of his innocence.
That innocence is to be feared. "Everything is permitted," exclaims Ivan Karamazov. That, too, smacks of the absurd. But on condition that it not be taken in a vulgar sense. I don't know whether or not it has been sufficiently pointed out that it is not an outburst of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment of a fact.
Albert Camus
Thou great Creator! Pardon us who reach
For other heaven beyond this world of thine,
This matchless world, where thy least touch doth teach
Thy solemn lessons clearly, line on line.
And help us to be grateful, we who live
Such sordid, fretful lives of discontent,
Nor see the sunshine nor the flower, nor strive
To find the love thy bitter chastening meant.
Celia Thaxter
Is all our Life, then, but a dream
Seen faintly in the golden gleam
Athwart Time's dark resistless stream?Bowed to the earth with bitter woe
Or laughing at some raree-show
We flutter idly to and fro.Man's little Day in haste we spend,
And, from its merry noontide, send
No glance to meet the silent end.
Lewis Carroll
Clemente was an emotional man, and that was his beauty. It drove him not only to physical anguish, but also to nearly incredible performances on the field as well as to the good work he was engaged in at his death. Often, although not so much in his maturing years, he seemed almost paranoid in his complaints against this or that, but when he said he loved mankind you had to believe him, because even the heat of his most bitter outburst almost always blew over, and where he had been loud, he would suddenly become reasonable and even eloquent. A man to confuse you? Yes, absolutely, but only because man's full range of passions ran strong in him. Cunning he was not. Honest he was. And the proof is that he was no honorary chairman of that relief committee for Nicaragua -- he was no figurehead chairman in name only; he was not merely a celebrity lending his prestige but not his heart or his labor to a cause. Honorary chairmen do not disappear into the Atlantic in the performance of duty.
Roberto Clemente
But then to part! to part when Time
Has wreathed his tireless wing with flowers,
And spread the richness of a clime
Of fairy o'er this land of ours;
When glistening leaves and shaded streams
In the soft light of Autumn lay,
And, like the music of our dreams,
The viewless breezes seemed to stray-
'T was bitter then to rend the heart
With the sad thought that we must part;
And, like some low and mournful spell,
To whisper but one word-farewell!
Park Benjamin, Sr.
For some people the wait for Maitreya to emerge has been too long. They become angry, impatient, disillusioned, discouraged, alienated, cynical, frustrated, bitter, disaffected. In a word, they have lost faith, which in their case is rooted in their emotional aspiration rather than their soul intuition.
Benjamin Creme
I have no perfect panacea for human ills. And even if I had I would not attempt to present a system of philosophy between the soup and fish, but this much I will say: The distinctively modern custom of marital bundling is the doom of chivalry and death of passion. It wears all tender sentiment to a napless warp, and no wonder is it that the novelist, without he has a seared and bitter heart, hesitates to follow the couple beyond the church door. There is no greater reproach to our civilization than the sight of men joking the boy whose heart is pierced by the first rays of a life-giving sun, or of our expecting a girl to blush because she is twice God's child today she was yesterday.
Elbert Hubbard
