56 Quotes About Overcoming Bitterness

In the journey of life, bitterness can become a burdensome companion, often lingering in the shadows of our experiences. It is a natural human emotion, one that can be triggered by betrayal, disappointment, or loss. However, overcoming bitterness is essential for personal growth and mental well-being. Embracing forgiveness, understanding, and resilience can transform negative feelings into positive ones, facilitating a more fulfilling life. In this blog post, we delve into a curated collection of inspiring quotes that illuminate the path to overcoming bitterness, offering wisdom and insight from those who have walked this journey before us. Let these words of encouragement be a guiding light as you navigate the complexities of releasing resentment and embracing peace.

1. “Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.” - Maya Angelou

2. “The fiercest anger of all, the most incurable,Is that which rages in the place of dearest love.” - Euripides

3. “There is no disappointment so numbing...as someone no better than you achieving more.” - Joseph Heller

4. “I envied these women I saw before me, their beauty still intact. Life has its revenge of life. Untimely death is the secret of eternal youth.” - Shan Sa

5. “The moon in all her immaculate purity hung in the sky, laughing at this world of dust. She congratulated me for my carefully considered maneuvers and invited me to share in her eternal solitude.” - Shan Sa

6. “And there, in that phrase, the bitterness leaks again out of my pen. What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could I would write with love, but if I could write with love I would be another man; I would never have lost love.” - Graham Greene

7. “It weren’t too loo long before I seen something in me, had changed. A bitter seed was planted inside of me. And I just didn’t feel so, accepting, anymore.” - Kathryn Stockett

8. “There is only one way of victory over the bitterness and rage that comes naturally to us--To will what God wills brings peace.” - Amy Carmichael

9. “Any time you are with anyone or think of anyone you must say to yourself: I am dying and this person too is dying, attempting the while to experience the truth of the words you are saying. If every one of you agrees to practice this, bitterness will die out, harmony will arise.” - Anthony de Mello

10. “Part of the problem with the word 'disabilities' is that it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walk or do other things that many of us take for granted. But what of people who can't feel? Or talk about their feelings? Or manage their feelings in constructive ways? What of people who aren't able to form close and strong relationships? And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives, or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love? These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities.” - Fred Rogers

11. “Was I bitter? Absolutely. Hurt? You bet your sweet ass I was hurt. Who doesn't feel a part of their heart break at rejection. You ask yourself every question you can think of, what, why, how come, and then your sadness turns to anger. That's my favorite part. It drives me, feeds me, and makes one hell of a story.” - Jennifer Salaiz

12. “I want to say somewhere: I've tried to be forgiving. And yet. There were times in my life, whole years, when anger got the better of me. Ugliness turned me inside out. There was a certain satisfaction in bitterness. I courted it. It was standing outside, and I invited it in.” - Nicole Krauss

13. “The rain fluctuates between drizzle and torrential. It messes with your mind. It makes you think things will always be like this, never getting better, always letting you down right when you though the worst was over.” - Susane Colasanti

14. “Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our souls, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives.” - Paulo Coelho

15. “Better to forget, better to let go of the bitterness. I say bitterness is only good in medicine, or if you fry bitter gourd with egg, then it's dlicious. I told Lan-Lan many times, we have only one life, it's important to kua kwee, to look spaciously. Not keep the eyes so narrowed down to the small dispairs.Those people who say forgive and forget, I say they not right. Not so simple. I say, find right medicine. Bitterness must be just right for problem. Then swallow it, think of good things can do when no longer sick.” - Lydia Kwa

16. “Ah, how many Marahs have been sweetened by a simple, satisfying glimpse of the Tree and the Love which underwent its worst confict there. Yes, the Cross is the tree that sweetens the waters. 'Love never faileth.” - Jim Elliot

17. “Everythin' seems ter happen ter you, doesn' it?” - J.K. Rowling

18. “Few other griefs amid the ill chances of this world have more bitterness and shame for a man's heart than to behold the love of a lady so fair and brave that cannot be returned.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

19. “But you can't start. Only a baby can start. You and me - why, we're all that's been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that's us. This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can't start again. The bitterness we sold to the junk man - he got it all right, but we have it still. And when the owner men told us to go, that's us; and when the tractor hit the house, that's us until we're dead. To California or any place - every one a drum major leading a parade of hurts, marching with our bitterness. And some day - the armies of bitterness will all be going the same way. And they'll all walk together, and there'll be a dead terror from it.” - John Steinbeck

20. “A bitter man needs to place his troubles on the front of his tongue so that they taste sweeter.” - Jay Wickre

21. “Die Bücher habe ich nach und nach gekauft von dem Geld, das ich mir Stundengeben verdiente. Viele davon antiquarisch, alle Klassiker zum Beispiel, ein Band kostete eine Mark und zwanzig Pfennig in steifem, blauem Leinen. Ich habe sie vollständig gekauft, denn ich war gründlich, bei ausgewählten Werken traute ich den Herausgebern nicht, ob sie auch das Beste genommen hatten. Deshalb kaufte ich mir "Sämtliche Werke". Gelesen habe ich sie mit ehrlichem Eifer, aber die meisten sagten mir nicht recht zu. Um so mehr hielt ich von den anderen Büchern, den moderneren, die natürlich auch viel teurer waren. Einige davon habe ich nicht ganz ehrlich erworben, ich habe sie ausgeliehen und nicht zurückgegeben, weil ich mich von ihnen nicht trennen mochte.[…]Ich bin aufgeregt; aber ich möchte es nicht sein, denn das ist nicht richtig. Ich will wieder diese stille Hingerissenheit, das Gefühl dieses heftigen, unbenennbaren Dranges verspüren, wie früher, wenn ich vor meine Bücher trat. Der Wind der Wünsche, der aus den bunten Bücherrücken aufstieg, soll mich wieder erfassen, er soll den schweren, toten Bleiblock, der irgendwo in mir liegt, schmelzen und mir wieder die Ungeduld der Zukunft, die beschwingte Freude an der Welt der Gedanken wecken; – er soll mir das verlorene Bereitsein meiner Jugend zurückbringen.” - Erich Maria Remarque

22. “They had painted a lady leaning her arms on the sill of the window. This lady was waiting for a husband. Her flesh was slack and she was some forty-five years old. Perhaps she had been waiting since she was fifteen. A rose and mauve lady that had not yet gathered her flesh and her beauty into dark clothes, and still waited, like a rose stripped of its petals, with her faded colors and her artificial smile, bitter as a grimace.” - Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio

23. “There's nothing deeper than love. In fairy tales, the princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life,the princesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs.” - Paulo Coelho

24. “That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them.” - A.S. Byatt

25. “Tension, in the long run, is a more dangerous force than any feud known to man.” - Criss Jami

26. “It is okay of talking about the past, as long as there's no bitterness and anger. It only gives you a heart attack. It won't change the past either.” - Ann Marie Aguilar

27. “Bitter words normally evaporate with the moisture of breath, after a quarrel. In order to become permanent, they require transcribers, reporters, complicit black hearts.” - Barbara Kingsolver

28. “Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, halfway down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waves swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad.” - Virginia Woolf

29. “There’s no such thing as a bitter person who keeps the bitterness to himself.” - Erwin W. Lutzer

30. “No," I say. "I didn't know that," and as I say it I feel flooded with bitterness at all the things Ingrid kept secret from me.” - Nina LaCour

31. “No, I am not bitter, I am not hateful, and I am not unforgiving. I just don't like you.” - C. JoyBell C.

32. “Bitterness is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.” - John Ortberg Jr.

33. “He’d thought it would be the right thing to say, but she scoffed a little… and that, more than anything—more than the prospect of having his ribs crushed in or his face pulled off or his neck stretched on a rope—scared him out of his wits.” - V.S. Carnes

34. “I know I am flaky, I accept that—and I know, as well, that I can mangle the good king’s English like no one else in my or the next ten governesses’ acquaintances, but that will not prevent me from speaking! I may not be as wise as you in the ways of the world, I may not have wounds that run as deeply or scars to wear upon my chest like medals of valor, but at least I don’t retreat and hide the moment a soul comes within reach of my fingers!” - V.S. Carnes

35. “Parables, yes. We here are to lead life with woe. Tasting bitter.” - Lynne Sharon Schwartz

36. “Up from behind a sand dune close beside her rose the form of her enemy Bitterness. He did not come any nearer, having learned a little more prudence, and was not going to make her call for the Shepherd if he could avoid it, but simply stood and looked at her and laughed and laughed again, the bitterest sound that Much-Afraid had heard in all her life.” - Hannah Hurnard

37. “Stir not the bitterness in the cup that I mixed for myself,' said Denethor. 'Have I not tasted it now many nights upon my tongue, foreboding that worse lay in the dregs?” - J.R.R. Tolkien

38. “There should be no bitterness or hate where the sole thought is the welfare of the United States of America. No man can occupy the office of President without realizing that he is President of all the people.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt

39. “I believe you did not have a happy life.I believe you were cheated.I believe your best friends were loneliness and misery.I believe your busiest enemies were anger and depression.I believe joy was a game you could never play without stumbling.I believe comfort, though you craved it, was forever a stranger.I believe music had to be melancholy or not at all.I believe no trinket, no precious metal, shone so bright as your bitterness.I believe you lay down at last in your coffin none the wiser and unassuaged.Oh, cold and dreamless under the wild, amoral, reckless, peaceful flowers of the hillsides.” - Mary Oliver White Heron Rises Over Blackwater

40. “Valentine's Day is just a capitalist scam, designed to make people currently in a relationship spend unnecessary money in a fruitless attempt to ensure undying love and devotion. For those of us not in a relationship, Valentine's Day is simply added pressure to identify ourselves within the context of a romantic relationship, whipping us into a frenzy that only the presence of our soul mates can relieve.” - Heather Hepler

41. “...I lost my illusions in a black rain of bitterness - now what do you see in my eyes? How can you still love me? How can I be tender? ...” - John Geddes

42. “What is love for, if not to intensify our affections—both in life and death? But, O, do not be bitter. It is tragically self-destructiveto be bitter.” - John Piper

43. “A mindset of gratitude lifts the veil of bitterness and allows you to see beauty and possibility.” - Steve Maraboli

44. “Noble disappointment, noble self-denial are not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring bitterness. It is one thing to enter the kingdom of heaven maim; another to maim yourself and stay without.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

45. “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.” - Alain De Botton

46. “Do…you…have…a…hard…time…finding…Steve’s dick?” she enunciated, enjoying Mary’s extreme discomfort. “He’s big as a fuckin’ house so I imagine it might be a bit of a problem.” The New Jersey accent that was still there after more than fifteen years in the south, resurfaced in her aggravation.” - A.T. Hicks

47. “When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshiping. When such a thing is threatened, your anger is absolute. Your anger is actually the way the idol keeps you in its service, in its chains. Therefore if you find that, despite all the efforts to forgive, your anger and bitterness cannot subside, you may need to look deeper and ask, ‘What am I defending? What is so important that I cannot live without?’ It may be that, until some inordinate desire is identified and confronted, you will not be able to master your anger.” - Timothy Keller

48. “Jack laughed behind him, a mirthless sound from a man who had been on the wrong end of life's ironies too many times.” - R.D. Ronald

49. “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.” - Charles H. Spurgeon

50. “I'm pretty lost in becoming all this frost. Bitter, like Winter. Strung-out like a string of pearls.” - Ashly Lorenzana

51. “Without love everything can be nothing. Does that make me want to love? No. For me, Ignorance is still better than martyrdom.” - Ira N. Barin

52. “Pam was a struggling artist who made everyone's life difficult. She only wore black and after becoming acquainted with her I couldn't decide if this was a deliberate fashion choice or whether it was physically impossible for any color to escape from the gravitational pull of her dark and bitter personality.” - Bob Smith

53. “For a cup brimful of sweet water cannot spill even one drop of bitter water, however suddenly jolted.” - Amy Carmichael

54. “Nothing makes a smart man stupid like a thirst for vengeance.” - Elementary

55. “Why, that is why the gods made whores for imps like me.” - George R.R. Martin

56. “Cynicism is one of the terrible obstacles to progress.” - Bryant McGill