The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower. [ William Cowper ]
The compulsion of fate is bitter. [ Wieland ]
Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy,
There is healing in the bitter cup. [ Southey ]
There is healing in the bitter cup. [ Southey ]
The bitter clamour of two eager tongues. [ William Shakespeare ]
Bitter pills may have wholesome effects. [ Proverb ]
Pacing through the forest.
Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. [ William Shakespeare ]
World's use is cold, world's love is vain.
World's cruelty is bitter bane
But pain is not the fruit of pain. [ E. B. Browning ]
Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. [ William Shakespeare ]
When to soft Sleep we give ourselves away,
And in a dream as in a fairy bark
Drift on and on through the enchanted dark
To purple daybreak - little thought we pay
To that sweet bitter world we know by day. [ T. B. Aldrich ]
The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet. [ William Shakespeare ]
'T is a physic that is bitter to sweet end. [ William Shakespeare ]
The bitter dregs of Fortune's cup to drain. [ Homer ]
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet. [ Rousseau ]
Labour has a bitter root but a sweet taste. [ Danish Proverb ]
We hear the rain fall, but not the snow.
Bitter grief is loud, calm grief is silent. [ Auerbach ]
To him that has a bad taste, sweet is bitter. [ Proverb ]
Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause. [ Victor Hugo ]
Reason deceives us often, - conscience, never.
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet. [ Jean J. Rousseau ]
Beauty may have fair leaves, yet bitter fruit. [ Proverb ]
That anxious torture may I never feel,
Which doubtful, watches over a wandering heart.
O, who that bitter torment can reveal.
Or tell the pining anguish of that smart! [ Byron ]
O days remembered well! remembered all!
The bitter sweet, the honey and the gall;
Those garden rambles in the silent night.
Those trees so shady, and that moon so bright.
That thickset alley by the arbor closed.
That woodbine seat where we at last reposed;
And then the hopes that came and then were gone.
Quick as the clouds beneath the moon past on. [ Crabbe ]
Who hath bitter in his mouth spits not all sweet. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a brere;
Sweet is the juniper, but sharp his bough;
Sweet is the eglantine, but sticketh nere;
Sweet is the firbloome, but its branches rough;
Sweet is the cypress, but its rynd is tough;
Sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill;
Sweet is the broome-flowre, but yet sowre enough;
And sweet is moly, but his root is ill.
[ Spenser ]
He who hath bitter in his breast spits not all sweet. [ Proverb ]
O memory, thou bitter sweet, - both a joy and a scourge! [ Madame de Stael ]
That which was bitter to endure may be sweet to remember. [ Proverb ]
The orange that is too hard squeezed, yields a bitter juice. [ Proverb ]
Death is bitter to a man in prosperity, or in much business. [ Proverb ]
It were better to be of no church than to be bitter for any. [ William Penn ]
Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce. [ William Shakespeare ]
Gall in mirth is an ill mixture, and sometimes truth is bitter. [ Proverb ]
A little bitter mingled in our cup leaves no relish of the sweet. [ Locke ]
How bitter it is to reap a harvest of evil for good that you have done. [ Plautus ]
Unjust gains may be sweet in the mouth, but will be bitter in the belly. [ Proverb ]
Revenge, at first though sweet, bitter ere long, back on itself recoils. [ Milton ]
How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes! [ William Shakespeare ]
A bitter and perplexed What shall I do?
is worse to man than worse necessity. [ Coleridge ]
A bitter jest, when it comes too near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind it. [ Tacitus ]
Wounds of the heart! your traces are bitter, slow to heal, and always ready to reopen. [ A. de Musset ]
Alone each heart must cover up its dead; alone, through bitter toil, achieve its rest. [ Bayard Taylor ]
He smiled as men smile when they will not speak, because of something bitter in the thought. [ Mrs. Browning ]
The bitter word which closed all earthly friendships, and finished every feast of love, - farewell. [ Pollok ]
Women swallow at one mouthful the lie that flatters, and drink drop by drop a truth that is bitter. [ Diderot ]
Women call repentance the sweet remembrance of their faults, and the bitter regret of their inability to recommence them. [ Beaumanoir ]
I am persuaded that he who is capable of being a bitter enemy can never possess the necessary virtues that constitute a true friend. [ Fitzosborne ]
Children sweeten labors, but they make misfortunes more bitter; they increase the cares of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of death. [ Bacon ]
There are such things as a man shall remember with joy upon his death-bed; such as shall cheer and warm his heart even in that last and bitter agony. [ South ]
Our illusions fall one after the other like the parings of fruit: the fruit is experience; its savor may be bitter, still it contains something that strengthens. [ G. de Nerval ]
It is a bitter thought to an avaricious spirit that by and by all these accumulations must be left behind. We can only carry away from this world the flavor of our good or evil deeds. [ Beecher ]
Music is one of the fairest and most glorious gifts of God, to which Satan is a bitter enemy; for it removes from the heart the weight of sorrow, and the fascination of evil thoughts. [ Luther ]
No one has found out how to soothe with music and sweet symphony those bitter pangs by which death and sad misfortunes destroy families; and yet to assuage such griefs by music were wisdom. [ Euripides ]
When God will educate a man, he compels him to learn bitter lessons; He sends him to school to the necessities rather than to the graces, that by knowing all suffering he may know also the eternal consolations. [ Celia Burleigh ]
It is now the very witching time of night; when churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood, and do such business as the bitter day would quake to look on. [ William Shakespeare ]
There is a mental fatigue which is a spurious kind of remorse, and has all the anguish of the nobler feeling. It is an utter weariness and prostration of spirit, a sickness of heart and mind, a bitter longing to lie down and die. [ Miss M. E. Braddon ]
Love may exist without jealousy, although this is rare: but jealousy may exist without love, and this is common; for jealousy can feed on that which is bitter no less than on that which is sweet, and is sustained by pride as often as by affection. [ Colton ]
The young man may applaud the negligent and pusillanimous instructor; but when that man, no longer young, suffers the result of that neglect and pusillanimity, it is well if a better spirit had taught him to mention the name of that instructor without bitter execration. [ F. Wayland ]
The education which has, however, made me a writer has been a living one. I have not only read much, I have seen much, and enjoyed much, and, above all, I have sorrowed much. God has put into my hands every cup of life, sweet and bitter, and the bitter has often become sweet, and the sweet bitter. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]
O poets! what injury you have done us, and how right Plato was to banish you from his republic! How your ambrosia has rendered more bitter our absinth! How have we found our lives more barren and more desolate, after having turned our eyes toward the sublime perspectives which your dreams have opened in the infinite! [ T. Gautier ]
Was man made to disdain the gifts of nature? Was he placed on earth but to gather bitter fruits? For whom are the flowers the gods cause to bloom at the feet of mortals? It pleases Providence when we abandon ourselves to the different inclinations that He has given us: our duties come from His laws, and our desires from His inspirations.
There is scare any lot so low, but there is something in it to satisfy the man whom it has befallen, Providence having so ordered things, that in every man's cup how bitter soever, there are some cordial drops, some good circumstances, which if wisely extracted, are sufficient for the purpose he wants them, that is, to make him contented, and if not happy, at least resigned. [ Sterne ]