# Bitterness

Bitterness is the quality of something to have a bitter taste or the emotion of feeling bitter; acrimony, resentment. It is the opposite to Sweetness.

## Quotes

* Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
** The Bible, Book of Isaiah 5:12-21.
* νόμωι (γάρ φησι) γλυκὺ καὶ νόμωι πικρόν, νόμωι θερμόν, νόμωι ψυχρόν, νόμωι χροιή, ἐτεῆι δὲ ἄτομα καὶ κενόν (Tetralogies of Thrasyllus, 9; Sext. Emp. adv. math. VII 135)
** Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, colour by convention; atoms and Void [alone] exist in reality. (trans. Freeman 1948), p. 92.
** By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void. (trans. Durant 1939), Ch. XVI, §II, p. 353; citing C. Bakewell, Sourcebook in Ancient Philosophy, New York, 1909, "Fragment O" (Diels), p. 60
* Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eyes.
** Harry Emerson Fosdick, Riverside Sermons (1958), p. 100.
* Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se, quam quod ridiculos homines facit.
** Bitter poverty has no harder pang than that it makes men ridiculous.
** Juvenal, Satire III, line 152-3.
** Variant translations:
*** Of all the Griefs that harrass the Distrest, Sure the most bitter is a scornful Jest.
**** As translated by Samuel Johnson
* One would think that an unsuccessful volume was like a degree in the school of reviewing. One unread work makes the judge bitter enough; but a second failure, and he is quite desperate in his damnation.
** Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Romance and Reality (1831), Vol I Chapter 14
* Failure makes people bitter and cruel.
** W. Somerset Maugham, in The Summing Up (1938)
* We may avoid much disappointment and bitterness of soul by learning to understand how little necessary to our joy and peace are the things the multitude most desire and seek.
** John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 129-130
* Asperæ facetiæ, ubi nimis ex vero traxere, Acram sui memoriam relinquunt.
** A bitter jest, when it comes too near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind it.
** Tacitus, Annales (AD 117), XV. 68.
* That loss is common would not make My own less bitter, rather more.
** Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part VI, Stanza 2.
* When streams of unkindness, as bitter as gall, Bubble up from the heart to the tongue.
** Martin Farquhar Tupper, Forgive and Forget, lines 1-8.

### Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

    Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).
* World's use is cold, world's love is vain, World's cruelty is bitter bane; But pain is not the fruit of pain.
** Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Vision of Poets, Stanza 146.
* Sed ut acerbum est, pro benefactis quom malis messem metas!
** It is a bitter disappointment when you have sown benefits, to reap injuries.
** Plautus, Epidicus, V, 2, 52.
* There is a snake in thy smile, my dear, And bitter poison within thy tear.
** Percy Bysshe Shelley, Beatrice Cenci.

## See also

* Sweetness
* Taste
* Senses

## References

* ↑ Tr. Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Complete Translation of the Fragments in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Harvard University Press, 1948; republished by Forgotten Books, 2008, ISBN 1606802569 (full text online at Google Books; full text online at sacred-texts.com)
* ↑ Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part II – The Life of Greece, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1939