Take the bitter with the sweet

Cultural

Accept life's misfortunes as well as its joys.

take the bitter with the sweet Idioms

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

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

“I haven’t heard nothing about anything. That’s OK. I have no complaints. I take the bitter with the sweet. I take the good with the bad. I take the ups with the downs. I’m resilient. I was born to coach. That’s my gift. I was put on this earth to coach. That’s the reason I went to college.”

From Los Angeles Times

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

From Reuters

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

From Washington Times

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.

From The Guardian

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

From Washington Post

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023