If anything can bring out the bitterness in two people, it’s divorce. The more heated a split, the harder that bitterness will be to work off. We see it every day from some of the visitors who come to our online divorce review site looking for the best path out of their marriage. To assist, we’ve put together a list of our favorite quotes on bitterness. Keep these in mind when you feel it start to take hold.

Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.

—Lewis B. Smedes

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds, they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

I know people who grow old and bitter. I want to keep making a fresh start. I don’t want them to defeat me. That would be suicidal.

—Robert Wyatt

When you hear the word ‘disabled,’ people immediately think about people who can’t walk or talk or do everything that people take for granted. Now, I take nothing for granted. But I find the real disability is people who can’t find joy in life and are bitter.

—Teri Garr

I suppose there are a lot of reasons to be jaded or sarcastic or bitter in life, but I hang on to the reasons why life is beautiful.

—Kelli O’Hara

If there were no night, we would not appreciate the day, nor could we see the stars and the vastness of the heavens. We must partake of the bitter with the sweet. There is a divine purpose in the adversities we encounter every day. They prepare, they purge, they purify, and thus they bless.

—James E. Faust

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

—Maya Angelou

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

If you’re ready to get a divorce, check out our online divorce reviews to see if an attorney or a DIY forms service is the right call for you. Good luck!