Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




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








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Bitterness" Quotes from Famous Books



... dashed his fingers into the wound, which he still seemed pleased to refer to, though the reference evidently brought with it bitterness and mortification. He proceeded—his ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... become more intense on the part of the Americans after the failure of their efforts to secure the Indians to their side. The old contests between the Southern colonists and the Indians were renewed and repeated with intense bitterness; and in the Northern colonies the policy of Congress and its agents was to crush and exterminate the Indians altogether. In acts of individual cruelty, their historical and characteristic mode of war, the Indians exceeded the Americans; but in acts of wholesale destruction of life and property, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... Barnum was subjected on his arrival in New York, was in strange and discreditable contrast to that which he had enjoyed abroad. He sometimes spoke of it in later life, though without any bitterness. He was too much of a philosopher to take it to heart. "After my arrival," he would say, "often, in passing up and down Broadway, I saw old and prosperous friends coming, but before I came anywhere near them, if they espied me, they would dodge into a store, or across the street, or ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... years of my life went by pleasantly. The bitterness of my lot I had not yet realized. Comfortably clothed and fed, kindly treated by my old master and mistress and the young ladies, and the playmate and confidant of my young master, I did not dream of the dark ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... fresh, well-shaped lemons, cut a hole just round the stalk, and with a marrow-spoon scoop out the pips, and press out the juice, but leave the pulp in the lemons. Put them into a bowl with two or three quarts of spring water, to steep out the bitterness. Leave them three days, changing the water each day; or only two days if you wish them to be very bitter. Strain the juice as soon as squeezed out, boil it with one pound of loaf sugar (setting the jar into which it was strained in a pan of boiling water fifteen or ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... very low and clear and distinct, in words that might have been angels' plumage for their soft bearing upward of the sufferer's thoughts. Faith could feel a slight trembling once or twice of the hand that held hers, but the bitterness of its grasp had relaxed. Dr. Harrison was behind her; whether he stood or knelt she did not know; but he knew that when the other two rose to their feet, one of them was exceedingly pale; and his move, made on the instant, was to get her a glass ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... elements which, in their wanderings, they have lost. As cold water is one of the best non-conductors of heat, the Gulf Stream is thus prevented from losing its caloric on its way across the Atlantic to ameliorate the climates of the western coasts of Europe, and moderate the bitterness of the northern seas. Were it otherwise, and this great stream flowed over the crust of the Earth, so much of its heat would be extracted, that the climates of France and our own islands would probably resemble ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... inherent craving of their nature may yet be gratified, where, however insignificant the truth may be, they may yet find some truth to believe. This has been the condition of too many great men in the church of Rome; and it accounts for that bitterness of feeling with which Machiavelli, and others like him, appear to have regarded the whole subject ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... 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 of mitigation in his punishment. The dread of a cruel ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... phraseology and knew, even without the evidence of his angular writing, that the document was genuine. She knew also that Robert Grant Burns was justified in ordering her off that bench; she had no right there, where he was making his pictures. She forced back the bitterness that filled her because of her own helplessness, and folded the paper carefully. The little brown bird chirped shrilly and fluttered a feeble protest when she took away her sheltering hand. Jean returned the paper hastily to its owner ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower

... Mr Gazebee had long since discovered the bitterness of his heart and the fact of his repentance, and Gazebee had ventured to suggest to his wife that his noble sister-in-law was preparing for herself a life ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... under other forms again disturb France, and menace the repose of other states. This was planting an iron foot upon the neck of rebellion, but it was the only means of securing the peace of Europe. The French government and the nation at large felt the bitterness of the terms: but, conscious of their justice, they submitted to them without a murmur. On the re-establishment of the kingly government in France, measures were taken for the punishment of those who had been most active in the late rebellion. Among those who were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... looked at his daughter narrowly. There was not the slightest impatience nor bitterness in her manner: it was as well regulated as the sentiment ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... you see, Your eyes no more shall view!— Peace to your fears!—your fathers' God This day shall fight for you; For Egypt, in her haughty pride And stubbornness abhorred, This day, in bitterness shall learn, ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... her equanimity; for not all the hard divinity he had preached for half a century had spoiled his kindly nature; and not the gentle Melanchthon himself, ready to welcome death as a refuge from the rage and bitterness of theologians, was more in contrast with the disputants with whom he mingled, than the old minister, in the hour of trial, with the stern dogmatist in his study, forging thunderbolts to smite ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Andrews, asked if he would subscribe it. He professed himself ready. The clerk, at the bishop's desire, began to read it, but had scarce read three lines, till the bishop burst forth in railing speeches, full of gall and bitterness, and turning to Mr. David, he said, "These men will speak of humility and meekness, and talk of the Spirit of God, &c. but ye are led by the spirit of the devil; there is more pride in you, I dare say, than in all the bishops of Scotland. I hanged a jesuit in Glasgow ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... he had met it with this freedom from bitterness. And it would be a great kindness to keep him here a day or two. Apart from being with you, the showing himself at Compton or at Strawyers on Sunday ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... do there?" Elizabeth's voice had a wistful note. This was just what she should have been doing, but Charles Stuart had never appealed to her for help. He knew better, she told herself, with some bitterness. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... case. I understand that of this evening; do not imagine I shall ever return an answer to it; I am too anxious to forget what it contains; and although you excite my pity, I am not proof against the bitterness with which it has filled my mind. I! descend to trick and cunning with you! I! accused of the blackest of all infamies! Adieu, I regret your having the adieu. I know not what I say adieu: I shall be very anxious to forgive you. You will come when you please; you will be better received than your ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... selected on the present occasion is full of the deepest interest. The English and the Danish invaders of their soil were struggling desperately for the possession of England—a struggle aggravated by religious bitterness, and by the sanguinary nature ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... his measures through Congress, by sheer dexterity of management when numbers were against him, added intense bitterness to the natural chagrin felt by the defeated faction. Men like Jefferson and Madison were subject to traditions of behavior that required them to maintain a certain style of public decorum no matter how ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford

... been an unfortunate, unhappy fellow!" exclaimed poor Ellis one day, in the bitterness of his spirit, after he had been more than usually bullied. "Unfortunate I have been, and unfortunate I expect to be to the end of ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... law afforded them a new pretext to assail the administration; and Democratic members of both Houses of Congress denounced it with extravagant partizan bitterness as a violation of the Constitution, and subversive of popular liberty. In the mouths of vindictive cross-roads demagogues, and in the columns of irresponsible newspapers that supply the political reading among the more ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... remember what human nature is, apart from the grace of God, we may not greatly wonder, in view of the heritage of the past and the real difficulties and perils of the present, that there is an intensity of race prejudice, and a bitterness of caste spirit, and an increasing hostility to the rising colored population which registers itself in outbreaks of violence and bloodshed, in the defiance of law, and in crimes against the ballot-box. We may not be greatly surprised that there should be intelligent ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various

... better climate it would make you think of Rome still more. Notoriously, however, it has not a good climate and we had not come at the right season to get the best of the bad. The bad season itself was perverse, for the rains do not usually begin in their bitterness at Madrid before November, and now they began early in October. The day would open fair, with only a few little white clouds in the large blue, and if we could trust other's experience we knew it would rain before the day closed; ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... an abler woman!" she breathed. And then her common sense and common honesty made her reply to herself: "I am able enough—in my own work! Nobody can do everything. I don't believe Edgar'd do it any better than I do.—He don't have to!—and then such a wave of bitterness rushed over her that she was afraid, and reached out one hand to touch the crib—the other ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... indispensable to him as an author, especially now that he could not command the Records of the Foreign Office. To sell these materials would be to give up writing. On the contrary, he hoped to make additions to them. Then, with a touch of bitterness and affection, which betrayed the whole depth of the father's disappointment, he said, 'After my time, my fine gentleman of a son may sell them if he chooses; and since all he wants is to be rich, I will answer for ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... he looked round despondently, and thought of his brother's words, which, broken and incoherent as they were, told of the disappointment and bitterness which had followed the long, ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn

... desired one thing all her life, and who, having attained with great pains and toil that forbidden fruit which she had coveted, had found it turn, as such fruits too often do, to dust and ashes between her teeth. It was to have been sweet as honeydew—and behold, it was nothing but bitterness! ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... the more remote quality of his mind—his brooding melancholy, shot through with bitterness and doubt—that may at first sight escape the notice of the reader, and that will repay the deepest attention. His greatest works come near to tragedy. Le Tartufe, in spite of its patched-up happy ending, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... companionship. He knew very well that he was to her as she was to him, something human, something that filled an empty place, yet something without direct personality. Little by little he felt the bitterness in his heart grow less. Then a late spring—late, at any rate, in this quaint corner of the world—stole like some wonderful enchantment across the face of the moors and the marshes. Yellow gorse starred with golden clumps the ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... energetic, and the fish impatient, but there was no prospect of its ever being landed; till at last, having got his rod inextricably entangled among the neighbouring bushes, he let it fall, and most unscientifically hauled the fish out by the line, exclaiming, in the bitterness of his heart, "that rods were contemptible childish things, and that a stout branch of a tree was the rod for him." This last essay seemed to have frightened all the rest away, for not another bite did ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... bride and bridegroom are next warmly welcomed by Ilmarinen's family, old Wainamoinen himself singing at their bridal feast, and again instructing the bride to be all love and submission and to expect nothing save bitterness and hardship from marriage. Having concluded his song by praising the father who built the house, the mother who keeps it, and having blessed bridegroom and bride, Wainamoinen departs for the Land of the Dead, to borrow an auger to repair his sled, which has ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... alone and began to take an inventory of her innermost self. She had loved Dru from the moment she first saw him at her home in Philadelphia, but with that her prescience in such matters as only women have, she knew that nothing more than his friendship would ever be hers. She sometimes felt the bitterness of woman's position in such situations. If Dru had loved her, he would have been free to pay her court, and to do those things which oftentimes awaken a kindred feeling in another. But she was helpless. An advancement from her ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... June, they planned to make her life one long summer holiday. For eighteen years success went hand in hand with their desire; then an unfortunate marriage plunged the joyous girl into bleak November. She grew to hate her happy name. But with the passing of the man she called husband much of the bitterness vanished, and she ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd

... me to give you up, for whom I have lost all that I had in life!" Realizing that he has given so much for so little, his bitterness becomes uncontrollable, and though he says nothing, Carmen surprises a horrid look on ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... clump of bamboo and halted. A few steps before us was Page Hanaford. Seated on the edge of an old stone lantern, head in hands, out of the bitterness of some agony we heard him cry, "God in Heaven! How can I ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... in North Carolina in the early days mentioned, may help to explain the intense bitterness manifested on all occasions toward men like Stephens. He was of humble parentage, but had been put forward by Governor Holden as a trusted agent of the State government. Thus was invaded the prerogatives of the privileged classes. The prejudices ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... attempt to win a woman's love by threats," replied the girl, more calmly, though bitterness rang in her tone. "As for you, I wish to assure you that I ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock

... have so little to tell," said Jennie, trying to evade the subject; "the time spent with you has been so pleasant, that it quite banishes the bitterness of my younger days." ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... he himself is exempt. On the contrary, his vanity is magnified when that of others is upon the rack. Finally the humiliation caused by laughter is not a chastisement which one accepts but a torture to which one submits; it is a feeling of resentment, of bitterness, not a wholesome sense of shame, nor one from which anyone is likely to profit. Laughter may then have a social use; but it is not an act of justice. It is a quick and summary police measure which will not stand too close a scrutiny but ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... will grieve, I think, to learn that my atonement is not complete, my pilgrimage unfinished. I must wander the roads again, preaching Forgiveness, for, sir,—Clemency is gone, my Beatrix is vanished. I am—a day too late! Only one day, sir, and there lies the bitterness." ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... arose between them as to the land and labor, and it was therefore proposed to divide it, and separate; but, as has been before mentioned, they had begun to clear off a part of it, and they could not agree which should have the cleared land, where he had bestowed so much labor. Great bitterness sprang out of it, when the mother and friends interposed, and settled the difficulty as well as they could. Theunis obtained the cleared land on condition he should make some indemnity to the other; and a part of the land, where ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... of his counsellors, the earnest chief was equally devoted to the work in hand. Being a savage—and, consequently, led entirely by feeling, which is perhaps the chief characteristic of savage, as distinguished from civilised, man,—he hated his enemies with exceeding bitterness, and loved his ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... This was a great bitterness. She thought that she hated him. But hatred was inconsistent with her present mood, and she reflected that, after all, Ralph was dying for love of her, that was a fact, and behind that fact it were not wise to look. No man could do ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... people—exactly. Only by circumstances. I—I can't tell you any more, though, believe me, I am grateful for all you mean, and all you would do for friendship's sake." There seemed a faint ring of stifled bitterness in the last three words, though wherefore it should come I knew not. If she had resented the warmth of my "friendship" after our brief acquaintance, what would she feel, I dimly wondered, should I forget myself, ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson

... There was no bitterness or reproachfulness in Kate's words, but she looked a little serious, and began to swing herself very vigorously. It was evident that she felt this resignation of her favorite office much more deeply than she chose to express. ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton

... thrall of a wealthy stockjobber who paid his virtues by the month and his opinions by the line. He spoke in this way for an hour, bitter, excessive, nervous, extravagant, and sometimes eloquent. All at once he stopped,—and pressing my hand with a mixture of bitterness and cynicism, he said,—"Old boy, I have now given you a dollar's worth of literature; lend me ten dimes." I hastily drew from my pocket three or four gold coins, and, blushing, slipped them into his hand; it trembled a little; he thanked me with a glance, and, muttering something ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... only that they may brag and conquer there, and not a thought has enriched either party, and not an emotion of bravery, modesty, or hope. So neither should you put yourself in a false position to your contemporaries by indulging a vein of hostility and bitterness. Though your views are in straight antagonism[687] to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying precisely that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt. So at least ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... head of the street, he was quite near enough to the music. But he was not long in noting that both cadet escorts and cadets without young ladies took pains not to approach too close to where he sat. It was enough to fill him with savage bitterness, though he still strove to be just to his classmates who had been blinded ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock

... greedy of liquor than any of the company, and yet, methought, he did not taste it with delight As he grew warm, he was suspicious of every thing that was said; and as he advanced towards being fuddled, his humour grew worse. At the same time his bitterness seemed to be rather an inward dissatisfaction in his own mind, than any dislike he had taken to the company. Upon hearing his name, I knew him to be a gentleman of a considerable fortune in this county, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... how emphatically verse 14 brings out the thought that Jesus died, since He suffered all the bitterness of death, not only in physical torments, but in that awful sense of separation from God which is the true death in death, and that, because He did, the ugly thing wears a softened aspect to believers, and is but sleep. He died that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... represent to us things under those appearances which they are fitted to produce in us: whereby we are enabled to distinguish the sorts of particular substances, to discern the states they are in, and so to take them for our necessities, and apply them to our uses. Thus the idea of whiteness, or bitterness, as it is in the mind, exactly answering that power which is in any body to produce it there, has all the real conformity it can or ought to have, with things without us. And this conformity between our simple ideas and the existence of things, is ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... obliged to give it up, and he groaned in bitterness of spirit. To be charged with stealing the letter, and with violating the revenue laws at the same time, was more than he had anticipated. On the first, if convicted, he would be sentenced to imprisonment, and on the other, to pay a heavy fine. ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic

... days held her in a kind of spell. The woman of memories—memories of a brief youth, a swiftly blighted flowering of life—had for once been forced back to a forgotten theme. And she found, recalling the days of her first balls, that the customary bitterness of contrast had suddenly disappeared. There was much that was new in this present situation: she was alive to sensations unfelt for years. There stirred in her heart what she was only to define after it had gone again: that which ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... 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

... ever lest Pauline, in the bitterness of her anger, attempt some injury toward the girl he loves and who has made the sweet confession that he is very dear ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne

... emotionally the real relationship. We very often have opportunity of seeing how unsatisfactory such a relationship becomes. The artificial mother is deprived of a child she had begun to feel her own; the child's emotional relationships are upset, split and distorted; the real mother has the bitterness of feeling that for her child she is not the real mother. Would it not have been much better for all if the State had encouraged the vast army of women it had trained for the position of mothering other women's children, to have, instead, children of their own? The women who are incapable ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... brothers and sisters refused him shelter, his father turned against him, and again was the icy unkindness of kinsmen made manifest. The tribe of Spinoza lives in history, saved from the fell clutch of oblivion by the man it denied with an oath and pushed in bitterness from its heart. Spinoza fled to his friends, the Mennonites, plain market-gardeners who lived a few miles ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... dust I return. Life is full of humiliations and sorrows," continued he, becoming still more melancholy; "all the ties which attach him to life break in the hand of man, particularly the golden ties. Oh, my dear d'Artagnan," resumed Aramis, giving to his voice a slight tone of bitterness, "trust me! Conceal your wounds when you have any; silence is the last joy of the unhappy. Beware of giving anyone the clue to your griefs; the curious suck our tears as flies suck the blood of a ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... fat that when he is smitten with fishers' darts he feeleth not the wound, but it passeth throughout the fatness. But when the inner fish is wounded, then is he most easily taken. For he may not suffer the bitterness of the salt water, and therefore he draweth to the shoreward. And also he is so huge in quantity, that when he is taken, all the country is better for the taking. Also he loveth his whelps with a wonder love, and leadeth them about in the sea long time. And if it happeth that ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... ignorant of yours, madam,' I said respectfully; 'but I know my own; and, knowing them, I can speak of their weight and bitterness. By your very position, you cannot undergo the same kind of distress as that overwhelming me at this moment: you may have evils in your path of life, but they ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various

... box and opened it. It contained nearly two hundred grains of a white powder, a few particles of which he carried to his lips. The extreme bitterness of the substance precluded all doubt; it was certainly the precious extract of ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... Abbess of the Cistertians' convent afforded. Yet that was severe enough; for maiden aunts, whether abbesses or no, are not tolerant of the species of errors of which Eveline was accused; and the innocent damosel was brought in many ways to eat her bread in shame of countenance and bitterness of heart. Every day of her confinement was rendered less and less endurable by taunts, in the various forms of sympathy, consolation, and exhortation; but which, stript of their assumed forms, were undisguised anger and insult. The company of Rose ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... that Henry Pollard was her uncle. The thought added its bitterness. But she remembered, too, the look she had seen upon Pollard's face when she had told him that Thornton had robbed her, she remembered the look of cruel satisfaction she had surprised there more than once, and she ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... watched the clouding of her mind with false conceits, and knew it to be owing to the heart's want of vigour. Again and again he was tempted to lay an irreverent hand on the veil his lady walked in, and make her bare to herself. Partly in simple bitterness, he refrained: but the chief reason was that he had no comfort in giving a shock to his own state of deception. He would have had to open a dark closet; to disentangle and bring to light what lay in an undistinguishable ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... we may very tentatively draw from these sets of facts would seem to be as follows. Shakespeare during these years was probably not a happy man, and it is quite likely that he felt at times even an intense melancholy, bitterness, contempt, anger, possibly even loathing and despair. It is quite likely too that he used these experiences of his in writing such plays as Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, King Lear, Timon. But it is evident that he cannot have been for any considerable ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... to chafe my mood; and yet, God knows, I would fight in honourable contest with word or blow for my political opinions; but I cannot permit that strife to "mix its waters with my daily meal," those waters of bitterness which poison all mutual love and confidence betwixt the well-disposed on either side, and prevent them, if need were, from making mutual concessions and balancing the constitution against the ultras of both parties. The good man ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... was this pain which consumed her? Gustave remembered her passion of tears on the previous night; her talk of friends that were dead, and happiness lost; and now to-day she talked of going home to her friends: but O the bitterness of expression with which she had ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... in all its bitterness when she arrived in Richmond that dull October day, and found the first snow of the season several inches deep on the ground, making her shiver with cold in her thin summer ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller

... of dress and diamonds and gayety, with no fields, no woods, no glen, no—no kitchen! Hilda looked about the room which she had learned so to love, trying to fancy Madge Everton in it; remembering, too, the bitterness of her first feeling about it. The lamplight shone cheerily on the yellow painted walls, the shining floor, the gleaming brass, copper, and china. It lighted up the red curtains and made a halo round good Nurse Lucy's head as she bent over ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... was lying upon a manger full of hay. An Ox, being hungry, came near, and wanted to eat of the hay; but the envious, ill-natured cur, getting up and snarling at him, would not suffer him to touch it. Upon which the Ox, in the bitterness of his heart, said, "What a selfish wretch thou art, for thou canst neither eat hay thyself, nor suffer others to ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... award to be the high priest of Nature. Exact sciences not yet born shall be my servitors and the augmenters of my fame. By the methods I have discerned shall mankind discover and apply those beneficent innovations which are the chiefest births of time. Yet even this hope hath its flavor of bitterness, as thus guided my pupils may far overpass me and my memory be lost. But the love of beauty and melody in poesy is of perennial life, and thy memory shall survive the mutations of time, and shall be the Nation's heritage while fancy and imagination dwell ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head

... definite is known of the substance or substances to which the hop owes its bitterness. Lermer has succeeded, it is true, in separating from hops a crystallized colorless substance, insoluble in water, an alkaline solution of which has a marked bitter flavor, and which easily changes on exposure to the air, assuming ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various

... joke contained in the "Translation from an Ancient Chaldee Manuscript," published a year before. The number containing it had, as we have already seen, been suppressed, because of the offence it had given to many persons of celebrity, while the general tone of bitterness and personality had been subsequently modified, if not abandoned. Murray assured Blackwood that his number for October 1818 was one of the best he had ever read, and he desired him to "offer to ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... tries to get into society on the strength of his money alone. He is more to be pitied than any other sort of rich man. For he not only works hard and suffers humiliation in getting his place in society, but after he is in he works just as hard, and with bitterness in his heart, to keep out other parvenues like himself. And this ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... I know that hers, unfortunate as they certainly were, have made a lady and a very perfect one. I don't forgive Madame von Marwitz for a great many things in regard to her treatment of Karen," Gregory went on with growing bitterness, "chief among them that she has taken her at her market value and allowed her friends to do the same. I've been able, thank goodness, to rescue Karen, at all events, from that. Madame von Marwitz can't carry her about any longer like ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... 17th we shall visit that dear grave! Last year she was still so well, and so full of life; but it was a very sad birthday, two days after the loss of that dear beloved sister, whom she has joined so soon! Oh! the agony of Wehmuth, the bitterness of the blank, do not get better with time! Beloved Mamma, how hourly ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... under the personal leadership of Louis VII. and Conrad the Emperor, accompanied by Queen Eleanor and many noble ladies of both realms. The ill fortunes which attended this war brought to Bernard the greatest bitterness of his life. So signal was the failure of the Second Crusade, that but a pitiful remnant of the brilliant army which had crossed the Bosphorus returned to Europe, and Bernard was assailed with execration from hut and castle throughout the length of Europe. His only answer was as gentle ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... but she knew naught of its passing. She was in a place of bitterness very far removed from the ordinary things of life. She shed no tears. The misery and shame that burned her soul were beyond all expression or alleviation. She could have laughed over the irony of it all more easily than ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... political draught of bitterness came sweetened with the wisdom of good-humour. The good-humour of the essayists touched with a light and kindly hand every form of affectation, and placed every-day life in the light in which it would be seen by a natural and honest man. A sense of the essentials ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... dingy to the last degree. The dust lay thick upon the corner of the table. It crusted the window ledge and hung upon the sallow wall. What was the use, things being as they were, to disturb the dust? Let it lie in all its bitterness. And let the charred ends of the fagots roll out upon the floor. And let the fire die down to ashes. Dust to dust. Ashes to ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough

... Bitterness swept over the old ploughmaker and he used strong words. "The whole point is in what I am now saying. That was my cry to the woman. It came out of my soul. It was the only cry to another I have ever ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson

... now call to mind my past foulness, and the carnal corruptions of my soul; not because I love them, but that I may love Thee, O my God. For love of Thy love I do it; reviewing my most wicked ways in the very bitterness of my remembrance, that Thou mayest grow sweet unto me (Thou sweetness never failing, Thou blissful and assured sweetness); and gathering me again out of that my dissipation, wherein I was torn piecemeal, while turned from Thee, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... the first time Walter had ever heard the word, but he knew what it meant. Nothing sharpens the wits like bitterness of heart. ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... The bitterness of that day was gone; so much could a little letting of blood accomplish. But the thought of one tragedy, so narrowly escaped, did not help Jonathan to forget another impending—if it was to be tragedy. His heart ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller

... alleys in the neighborhood of the Arc de Triomphe. I was sure of Rosa's love, and that thought gave me a certain invigoration. But to be sure of a woman's love when that love means torture and death to you is not a complete and perfect happiness. No, my heart was full of bitterness and despair, and my mind invaded by a miserable weakness. I pitied myself, and at the same time I scorned myself. After all, the ghost had no actual power over me; a ghost cannot stab, cannot throttle, cannot shoot. A ghost can only act upon the mind, and if the mind is feeble enough to allow itself ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... hate, and little did she reck of the sorrows which her sin should bring forth. So she bathed herself in perfumes, shook out her shining hair, and clad herself in white attire. Then she looked upon her beauty in the mirror of silver, and cried in the bitterness of her heart to the Evil that lay beside ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... there sprang from Topsham a man of great resoluteness, pluck, and the spirit to fight against tremendous odds in cold blood. Robert Lyde, mate of the Friend's Adventure, himself wrote an account of his fortunes on board that vessel. Lyde's great bitterness against the French is explained by the fact that he had already suffered intensely at their hands. Two years before he had been captured at sea by a French privateer, and imprisoned at St Malo, 'where we were used with such inhumanity and cruelty ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... confounded 'spirits' that are rocking the boat," declared Nelson. "The old man practically said just that. He seems to have gotten over some of his bitterness against me—perhaps it is, as you say, Mr. Bangs, because I have a better position now and good prospects. Perhaps it is that, I don't know. But he still won't consider my marrying Lulie. He seems to realize that we could marry and that he couldn't ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... explain that this course would prolong, to the unfortunate one, the possession of the pleasures of hope. It would save him, and Margaret, from the very unpleasant incident of a rejection. Such a refusal must always leave behind it a certain bitterness in the memory, that will touch what friendship remains between the two people concerned. And I know Philip's wish that, though he might not be her choice, his old friendship with her might continue perfectly ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... who does it consciously is apt to overdo it, out of sheer enthusiasm, and if a girl suspects that it is done intentionally, the hurt loses its sting and changes her love to bitterness. A succession of attempts is also useless, for a man never hurts a woman twice in exactly the same way. When he has run the range of possible stabs, she is out of his reach—unless she ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed

... put to the ravages of the demon, our benevolent institutions must die, our sanctuaries be forsaken, our beautiful fields be wastes, and the church will read the history of her offspring in the third of Romans: Their throat is an open sepulchre; their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood—all, blasting our bright hope of the ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... fell to the ground. The cause of Wilkes, however, being identified with that of the constitution, his popularity remained undiminished, and the spirit excited by the proceedings against him was still as rife with bitterness as ever. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... more serious by the suddenness of emancipation, and by the fact that the vote was extended the Negroes before most of them were ready for it. The economic, social, and political upheaval effected in the South by the war, together with the bitterness with which many southern white men regarded the newly freed Negroes, also contributed to the difficulty of the situation. Lastly, the Negro became a problem because of the lack of a ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... wouldn't care, nor even listen. He's too busy with his stupid old writings to mind any of us, or what trouble we are in. It's too bad the way we are left to ourselves!' Theo in her excitement lost her self-control, and spoke with a bitterness not belonging to her sweet nature. In truth, the girl was becoming a great deal harassed by the cares that were pressing upon her so ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell

... page, I cannot help wishing that some wise and tender person had been able to explain to me the conditions as I now see them. Probably the thing was incommunicable; one must learn for oneself both one's bitterness and ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... In his first bitterness at this inopportune humiliation, coming like a drop of vinegar in the honey of royal favour, he wrote furiously to Gansbacher, "I see now that her views of high art are not above the usual pitiful standard—namely, that art is but ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... shuns their eye; he fears they will upbraid God. What should they do? It seems a great injustice. But see the facts nearly, and these mountainous inequalities vanish. Love reduces them, as the sun melts the iceberg in the sea. The heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness of His and Mine ceases. His is mine. I am my brother, and my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed and outdone by great neighbors, I can yet love; I can still receive; and he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves. Thereby I make the discovery ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... precipitated into our boat, carrying away one of the sails, and the greater part of the effects which the sailors had saved from the Medusa. Our bark was nearly sunk; the females and the children lay rolling in its bottom, drinking the waters of bitterness; and their cries, mixed with the roaring of the waves and the furious north wind, increased the horrors of the scene. My unfortunate father then experienced the most excruciating agony of mind. The idea of the loss which ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... wretched tackle-maker. Again, when the fish is actually conquered; when he is being towed gently into some little harbour among the tall slim water- grasses, or into a pebbly cove, or up to a green bank; when the bitterness of struggle is past, and he seems resigned and almost happy; when at this crisis the clumsy gilly with the gaff scratches him, rouses him to a last exertion, and entangles the line, so that the salmon breaks free—that ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... with the fire of an ardent spirit, the slender form of the Jesuit seemed to tower, as an enraged deity, above the persons of his two companions. But having poured out the bitterness of his soul, the meekness of the man asserted itself, and sinking into a chair he buried his face in his hands. The ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... that he has made things safe with me by that last conversation, and can afford to take a little holiday and enjoy himself. He does not want to compromise himself too far!" Ruth told herself, with a touch of bitterness which had developed during ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... auxiliary cohorts. These were joined by the 'Picked Horse',[424] a force that had been raised by Vitellius and then deserted to Vespasian. This was commanded by Civilis' nephew, Julius Briganticus,[425] for uncle and nephew hated each other with all the aggravated bitterness of near relatives. Tutor swelled his force of Treviri with fresh levies from the Vangiones, Triboci, and Caeracates,[426] and a stiffening of Roman veterans, both horse and foot, who had either been bribed ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... gentle in thy mein, A something tender in thy voice, Has made my trouble so serene, I can but weep, from very choice. And even then my tears, I guess, Hold more of sweet than bitterness, And more of gleaming shine than rain, Because of ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley

... mood changed as the words escaped her. A reckless defiance of her own better nature—that saddest of all the forms in which a woman's misery can express itself—filled her heart with its poisoning bitterness. She sat down again on the sofa with eyes that glittered and cheeks suffused with an angry red. "I am no worse than another woman!" she thought. "Another woman might have married him for his money." The next moment ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... now of Henry Murger? I wrote this chapter of my Memoirs during his life. I should have suppressed it, did I feel the least drop of bitterness mingled with the recollection of the acts of petty ingratitude of this charming writer. But my object in writing this work is less to satisfy sterile revenge than to exhibit to you a corner of literary life in Paris in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... character which, if it possessed no particular creative power, would not permit self-deception. They were not the eyes of a prophet, but of a man who would not be satisfied with letting a half-known thing alone and saying he believed it. His lips were thin, but not compressed into bitterness; and above everything there was in his face a perfectly legible frankness, contrasting pleasantly with the doubtfulness of most of the faces I knew. I expressed my gratitude to him for his kind opinion, and ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... towards him wickedly, "what if I did it only to excite my revenge; what if I knew it would give me courage to incite my people to carry war into your own homes; to make you of the North feel as I feel, and taste our bitterness?" ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... She belonged to another. My foot was on the rail. I thought then of the name I had signed to the roll. 'No, Jacob Armstrong, you have no right to take the life which you have given to your country.' I turned away toward my boarding place, full of bitterness and despair. A tiny glove was on the stairs. I picked it up and pressed it passionately to my lips, and cursed myself for the act as I threw it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... over one room in his life. To his wife, mother of his beloved Clive, he will make no reference. Not bad, but frivolous and weak and querulous, she was; but Colonel Newcome never whispers it. What had made many misanthropes, made him a better man. No bitterness tainted his spirit. Pure women put him in a mood of worship, as they ought to put us all. He could, in conduct, if not in memory, forget hurts and wrongs, which is one mark of a large spirit. His was, his biographer affirms, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... and more uncertain, and his own lamp was almost out. He felt puzzled and bewildered, and hardly knew which way to go: he had got into a broad beaten path, and he found that many besides himself were going here and there along it. Sometimes they sang; and, in very bitterness of heart, he tried to sing too, that he might not think: but every now and then, when a flashing light came, and he saw the look of the travellers amongst whom he was, it made his very heart shiver—they looked so sad and so wretched. Now, none went straight on: some ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce

... always the battles which leave the most lively impressions. How many delightful things one could relate that have happened outside the sphere of action! What memories of nights passed in the strangest places, as the chances of the march decreed, nights of bitterness during the retreat, nights of fever during the advance, nights of depression in the trenches! What kindly welcomes, what beautiful and what noble figures one ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont

... wife no longer, for, through herself, she has brought disgrace upon us both." Again he remembered the sacrifices he had made for her, not with the generous rejoicing of the morning, but with a fierce bitterness which was like a bodily hurt. "She is no longer my wife," he repeated; "nor am I her husband—for by her own sin she has made me free." Yet the word carried no conviction to his conscience, and ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... this lucky chance I have afforded you of breaking off a detested engagement," cries she, with sudden bitterness. "Hypocrite! how long have ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... within his professional range, interested himself in trying to fathom the moral attitude of these people. He was still suspicious of them, notwithstanding a growing tendency to like every one of their pleasant, really agreeable faces. There was neither solemnity, sourness, nor bitterness to be seen anywhere; at the same time, there was no sign of levity. In every countenance was the same inexplicable mixture of wisdom and benevolence that distinguished Estra. Nowhere was there hostility, and nowhere was there ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... To beasts and fowls, and all the winds shall breathe, Through shady leaves of every senseless tree, Murmurs and hisses for his heinous sin. Now scalds his soul in the Tartarian streams, And feeds upon the baneful tree of hell, That Zoacum, [77] that fruit of bitterness, That in the midst of fire is ingraff'd, Yet flourisheth, as Flora in her pride, With apples like the heads of damned fiends. The devils there, in chains of quenchless flame, Shall lead his soul, through Orcus' burning gulf, ]From pain to pain, whose change shall never end. What say'st thou ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... from the mourning came anger and then a bitterness that rose to blind him. For the rest of that day he tried—he could not have counted the times. A factor was missing—dimly he knew that. The sun was dull red along the valley when he desisted; his hands were raw and bleeding, ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse

... to mine own land, and to my kindred;" and united in the urgent entreaty, "Leave us not, I pray thee; forasmuch as thou knowest how we are to encamp in the wilderness, and thou mayest be to us instead of eyes." With her husband and brother near, on whom to lean, she must have been cheered, and the bitterness of her final separation ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... bitterly at my birth, over the imprudence of our parents' increasing their obligations when they were unable to provide for the education of the children they had already, and had always retained for me a little of the bitterness of those days. On the whole, the vote of the family council was for the education. My own wishes were hardly consulted, for I differed from both opinions, having an intense enthusiasm for art, to which ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... bitterness of thy tongue taken root in thy stomach?" Quickly he raised himself at her first word and gazed with enamoured looks at the amber folds of hair, her glowing face; and with panting breath his eyes rested upon the round fulness of her form as ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... kindred souls, friends of Carl Parker whether they knew him or not, who are making the fight, without bitterness but with all the understanding, patience, and enthusiasm they possess, for a saner, kindlier, ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... entirely reconciled. Make not too much account of his coldness, his passionate temper, his contempt. It is not by these you are to regulate your conduct, but by a motive more elevated—God and his glory. Let your heart endure his bitterness, for the love of Him, who preferred grief to pleasure. At the same time, do no violence to your own sacred feelings, to accommodate yourself to him, in order to give him a pleasure he cannot appreciate. Regard your present condition, as a means God has given you, to manifest your love ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham

... arisen in spite of differences caused by the intensity of a religious revival, an intensity that periodically renews its strength. The Welsh are divided into sects, and the bitterness of sectarian differences occasionally invades politics and education. But there are two ever-present antidotes. One is the Welsh sense of humour, the nearest relative or the best friend of toleration. The other is the hymn—creed has been turned into song, and that is at ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards

... and left it dust. Yet I still look forward with high anticipations. I have placed the goal of my ambitions high—but with the blessing of God it shall be reached. The world has at last breathed into my bosom a portion of its own bitterness, and I now feel as if I would wrestle manfully in the strife of men. If my life is spared, the world shall know me in a loftier capacity than as a writer of rhymes. [The italics are his own.] There—is not that boasting?—But ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard

... letter dated September 1, 1718, and addrest to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was then living in Turkey. Pope and she afterward (about 1722) quarreled bitterly. Leslie Stephen, discussing the matter, says "the extreme bitterness with which Pope ever afterward assailed her can be explained most plausibly, and least to his discredit, upon the assumption that his extravagant expressions of gallantry covered some real passion." If this be a true inference, his passion "was probably converted ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... When bitterness, distrust, and awe Dissolve, like ice in winter's thaw, Beneath the genial touches of ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... that Lord Wyverton felt no bitterness over his disappointment, he himself assured her. He uttered no word of reproach. He did not so much as hint that she had given him cause for complaint. He was absolutely composed, ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... with perfect fluency, and only with the merest suspicion of a drawl in the intonation of the vowels, which suggested rather than proclaimed his nationality; and just now there was not the slightest tone of bitterness apparent in his deep-toned and mellow voice. Once more his friend would have protested, but he ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... her parents had consented to her being educated with the little friend abroad, and if she had been at home, she was only fourteen, too young to be of much use. However Henrietta poured out her bitterness to her in a long letter, and Evelyn wrote back full of loving sentiment and sentimentality. Henrietta wrote also to Miranda, and had a sympathetic letter in answer, most sympathetic, considering that Miranda ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor

... far behind him. All bitterness was gone out of his memories of lady Galbraith. He loved her tenderly, but was ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... only two days' journey of the depot, was the direct cause of the death of Burke and Wills. King was a young man, of good physique, and of a nature in which the disposition to mental worry or anxiety had no part. The leaders had to endure this in addition to their physical sufferings, and the bitterness of dying within the reach of help, after having successfully accomplished the most dashing feat ever recorded in the annals of Australian exploration. They had performed their allotted task, and they perished miserably in the hour ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... strange eyes and bitter-sweet lips—all dimmed, as it were, by drowsiness and smoke, and yet never more intelligently awake than at these nocturnal hours—remained with him as most typical of Helen's most significant and charming self. It was her aspect of mystery and that faint hint of bitterness that he found so charming; Helen herself he never thought of as mysterious. Mystery was a mere outward asset of her beauty, like the powdery surface of a moth's wing. He didn't think of Helen as mysterious, perhaps because he thought little about her at all; he only looked and listened while she ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... no physician would hope to cure typhoid fever by knocking the patient insensible with a club. True, the delirium would cease for a time, but the deep-seated ailment would remain and the patient only be the worse for the treatment.... Here the disease was disagreement, misunderstanding, suspicion, bitterness of heart between employer and employees. Neither hired strike breaker nor policeman's baton could get to the root of it.... Yet he, Bonbright Foote VII, was the man held out to all the world as favoring this treatment, as authorizing ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... features. They reminded him strongly of the features he had seen in the glass that other night in Warwick Gardens. Then he turned away and threw himself on his knees by the bed and groaned aloud in the bitterness of his soul: ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... destruction of the Boyd, George laid the blame entirely on the English, and spoke with great bitterness of the ill-treatment of Philip, the native chief, who came as passenger in the ship. He described and mimicked his cleaning shoes and knives; his being flogged when he refused to do this degrading work; and, finally, his speech to his countrymen ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle

... things!" Rolla exclaimed with such bitterness as her nature would permit. "They know not what love is: They with their drones and their egg-babes! What is family ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... singularly black amid the young leaves of the spring, tender and vivid. The eye could not pierce the intricate greenery; it was more delicate than the summer rain, subtler than the mists of the sunset. It was a scene to drive away all thought of the sadness of life, of the bitterness. Its exquisite fresh purity made James feel pure also, and like a little child he wandered over the undulating earth, broken by the tortuous courses ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... terms of the most unmeasured severity. In this they were warmly supported by a select knot of admirers, to whom they read their weekly effusions at their respective 'houses of call' the evening before publication. Gradually the fire of bitterness began to pale, and the excitement of friends to die out; M'Quirter presently put forth a signal of distress. To accommodate 'a large and influential number of its subscribers and patrons,' he determined to publish on a Tuesday instead of on a Saturday as heretofore, whereupon ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... that are to meet with adverse events and the injuries of fortune, in their depth and sharpness, that are to weigh and taste them according to their natural weight and bitterness, let such show their skill in avoiding the causes and diverting the blow. What did King Cotys do? He paid liberally for the rich and beautiful vessel that had been presented to him, but, seeing it was exceedingly brittle, he immediately broke it betimes, to prevent so ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... her face lighting up with passion. "A man like the archdeacon might, one would think, be better employed than in traducing his sister-in-law and creating bitterness between a ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... was there to life beside it? No one wanted or needed her. No human being cared for her above all others. She had gone on in ruthless pride, trampling, crushing, and now the great world would be only too glad to pay her back; but it never should. Even in this extreme bitterness of spirit an acknowledgment of that divine rule of love was wrested from her. She had never offered love and tenderness and sympathy to others, and it would not come back to her: it was just and right that ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... thousand sacred associations as home, the torturer strove to rise superior to his worries. He whistled bravely as he crossed the threshold and caressed his wife with his usual tenderness. Intuitively she divined the bitterness of the mood which lay beneath the torturer's seeming cheerfulness, but she stifled her curiosity like the wise little woman she was and hastened to lay his supper before him. Through the progress of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various

... from her by the overwhelming bitterness of her disappointment. A rush of tears was smarting behind her rather inexpressive eyes; but she held them back. Miss Delia was thoroughly distressed. She put ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull

... Schuur at eleven o'clock there was always a great gathering for this important ceremony, and naturally the Dutch element usually predominated. I could never find any trace of racial bitterness amongst the men; with some of the women it was rather different. Onlookers are apt to be more bitterly partisan than those who have taken actual part in ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... turned towards her, I realized that her position was but little happier than his. Tears are no strangers to her eyes, but those which welled up at this moment seemed to possess a bitterness that promised but little peace for her future. Yet she quickly dried them and busied herself with ministrations for ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... moment, Thayer's level voice, low, yet so perfectly trained that it reached the farthest corner of the room, broke in upon Lorimer's mirth and quenched it. There was no bitterness in his voice, no excitement; he spoke as quietly as if he had been wishing his ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

... place in the family, and the surviving daughters no longer went to Pravonin. My behaviour was full of arrogance, and by means of it I doubtless wished to vent a certain capricious lust of revenge for the feelings of bitterness with which I had taken leave of this circle some years previously. My friend was well received. The changed family circumstances forced the charming girls ever more and more imperatively to come to some decision as to their future, and a wealthy bourgeois, though not exactly in ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... His feelings toward Helene and Wanda at the present moment were just such as a man might entertain toward the enemy who had conquered him, and the woman who, in his greatest need, had succoured and saved him. For the one a bitterness that could not rise to the crowning revenge of forgiveness, for the other a passion of gratitude that would last ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... the 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 this ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... difficulty experienced in singing very high tones to different syllables, each requiring a different conformation of the buccal cavity. The passage quoted—expressing Tell's bitterness at the recollection of his past sufferings in prison, "Well I know the weight of galling chain"—has to be declaimed with great energy. So far as the relative value of the notes is concerned, it is entirely ad libitum, the rhythmical figure in the orchestra ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam



Words linked to "Bitterness" :   grievance, heartburning, acridness, rancor, gustatory perception, taste perception, envy, gustatory sensation, score, jaundice, enmity, acerbity, resentment, enviousness, grudge, rancour, acrimony, ill will, sulkiness, huffishness, bitter, thorniness, taste sensation, gall, acridity



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com