bitterness

It is hope--with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians, and our planet--that is primarily to blame for angering and embittering us. The incompatibility between the grandeur of our aspirations and the mean reality of our condition generates the violent disappointments which rack our days and etch themselves in lines of acrimony across our faces.

Lacking an articulable defense of the cultural values under siege, he became a vessel of smoldering animosities.

Stoner and Masters smiled at each other, and they spoke no more of the question that evening. But for years afterward, at odd moments, Stoner remembered what Masters had said; and though it brought him no vision of the University to which he had committed himself, it did reveal to him something about his relationship to the two men, and it gave him a glimpse of the corrosive and unspoiled bitterness of youth.

I'm sick of that, I said. Young, young, young, that's what I get, all day, everyday. But I know your secret....You're all terrified of young people. We remind you of what it was like to have ideals, faith, freedom. We remind you of the losses you've taken as you've grown cynical, numb, disenchanted, compromising the life you imagined. I don't have to compromise yet. I don't have to do a single thing I don't want to do. That's why you hate me.

With improved historical records, and easier access to them, we actually have better reasons for hating one another, for anger and violence toward one another.

All the courtesies in the world do not cover up the one vital and massive discourtesy.

To claim the mantle of purity is always a risky business. It just gives an excuse to be disillusioned once your ordinary humidity is exposed.

The pessimist may call the optimist a fool; but who is more foolish, the happy individual who expects more happiness or the one who fills his life with bitterness and has only more despair to look forward to?

If you ever feel to express proper gratitude for the good things of this life, be sure that you express your gratitude for the right thing. Very likely you will not have a great deal of gratitude, and you must not waste any of it but what you do have will be of the most excellent quality. For it will accumulate, and the accumulation will all go to quality. And the things for which you are to be grateful are the bitternesses you have known.If you have had it in mind ever to give way to bursts of gratitude for this air that comes from off the salt sea, for that line of pearls and violets that you see just above the horizon, for the health of your body, for the sleep that comes to you at the close of the day, for any of those things, then get rid of the idea at once. Those things are quite well, but they are not really given to you. They are merely placed where any one can reach them with little effort. The kind fates don't care whether you get them or not. Their responsibility ends when they leave them

A mindset of gratitude lifts the veil of bitterness and allows you to see beauty and possibility.

He was fortified by a memory which kept only the good things and rejected the ill. Despite his sorrows, he had had a fair share of joys and these were ever fresh and accessible.

One who gossips usually carries boredom in one hand and bitterness in the other.

We shall, as we ripen in grace, have greater sweetness towards our fellow Christians. Bitter-spirited Christians may know a great deal, but they are immature. Those who are quick to censure may be very acute in judgment, but they are as yet very immature in heart. He who grows in grace remembers that he is but dust, and he therefore does not expect his fellow Christians to be anything more; he overlooks ten thousand of their faults, because he knows his God overlooks twenty thousand in his own case. He does not expect perfection in the creature, and, therefore, he is not disappointed when he does not find it. ... I know we who are young beginners in grace think ourselves qualified to reform the whole Christian church. We drag her before us, and condemn her straightway; but when our virtues become more mature, I trust we shall not be more tolerant of evil, but we shall be more tolerant of infirmity, more hopeful for the people of God, and certainly less arrogant in our criticisms.

Bitterness and resentment are a bottomless well. They can only be healed by the phenomenon of someone else's sorrow rising to your level of pain... it never happens - save yourself endless hurt.

Beware of those who speak negatively about everything and everybody. A negative person will never say a positive thing about you.

They grew up, moulded by the harsh or kindly pressure of their fellows, to be either well nurtured, generous, sound, or mentally crippled, bitter, unwittingly vindictive.

He__ thought it would be the right thing to say, but she scoffed a little_ and that, more than anything__ore than the prospect of having his ribs crushed in or his face pulled off or his neck stretched on a rope__cared him out of his wits.

Hitler not from a woman is born, but from the men bitterness.(Hitler n'est pas né d'une femme, - Mais de l'amertume des hommes)