Take the bitter with the sweet

1. Accept life's misfortunes as well as its joys.

Idioms and Phrases

Accept adversity as well as good fortune, as in Although he got the job, he hadn't counted on having to work with Matthew; he'll just have to take the bitter with the sweet. This idiom uses bitter for “bad” and sweet for “good,” a usage dating from the late 1300s. It was first recorded in John Heywood's 1546 proverb collection. For a synonym, see take the rough with the smooth.

Example Sentences

"The point of the bankruptcy process is to take the bitter with the sweet," he said.

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“It didn’t come, but it will come, so you’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet.”

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One must take the bitter with the sweet, of course – and perhaps some would take a world with Citizens United and Janus so long as they can have Roe and Obergefell too.

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“Haven’t our cases rejected” the proposition that one has to “take the bitter with the sweet?”

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He asked Christopher M. Kise, a lawyer for Greene’s Energy, whether his position was that “you’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet.”

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