"Midas" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyes to mark her horror, and Allen, made a gesture of exaggerated sympathy, which his sister took for more earnest than it was, and she said, scornfully, "I should like to see him literally rolling in gold. It must be like Midas. Do you mean that he sleeps on it, Jessie? ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but when the night comes, we take up a contrary sound instead. Then we rehearse Pygmalion,[1] whom his gluttonous longing for gold made a traitor and thief and parricide; and the wretchedness of the avaricious Midas which followed on his greedy demand, at which men must always laugh. Then of the foolish Achan each one recalls how he stole the spoils, so that the anger of Joshua seems still to sting him, here.[2] Then we accuse Sapphira with her husband; we praise the kicks that Heliodorus ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... be their Fool—I, dreamer of knightly dreams, aspirant to hero's fame! I craved their wonder; I had won their laughter. I had prayed for popularity; it had been granted to me—in this guise. Were the gods still the heartless practical jokers poor Midas ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... his father's wain had entered the city amidst the acclamations of the people, he had learned the value of power, and therefore, from his boyhood onward, power, always more power, was what he coveted. Also his peasant father had taught him that gold could buy power, and so Midas ever longed for more gold, that could buy him a place in the world that no descendant of a long race of kings should be able to contest. And from Olympus the gods looked down and smiled, and vowed that Midas should have the chance of realising ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... sung, when Midas' Ears began to spring, (Midas, a sacred person and a king) 70 His very Minister who spy'd them first, (Some say his Queen) was forc'd to speak, or burst. And is not mine, my friend, a sorer case, When ev'ry coxcomb perks them in my face? A. Good friend, forbear! you ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... time, there lived a very rich man, and a king besides, whose name was Midas; and he had a little daughter, whom nobody but myself ever heard of, and whose name I either never knew, or have entirely forgotten. So, because I love odd names for little girls, I choose ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... his pigs of lead, By crossing with some by Midas bred, Made a perfect mine of his piggery. And as for cattle, one yearling bull Was worth all Smithfield-market full Of the Golden Bulls ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... mourn'd the sordid fate To that melodious lyre assign'd, Beneath a tutor who so late With Midas and his rout combined By spiteful clamour to confound That very lyre's enchanting sound, Though listening realms ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... either immured by the British in the Tower of London, or in a German concentration camp as a spy. This inglorious interruption to the role he appeared to play while in the United States as a peripatetic Midas, setting plots in train by means of an overflowing purse, was due to an attempt to return to Germany on the liner Noordam in July, 1915. The British intercepted him at Falmouth, and promptly made him a prisoner of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... who frets at worldly strife Grows sallow, sour, and thin; Give us the lad whose happy life Is one perpetual grin: He, Midas-like, turns all to gold,— He smiles, when others sigh, Enjoys alike the hot and cold, And laughs through ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... up riches against the day of riches; if prosperity come, he will not enter poor into his inheritance; he will not slumber and forget himself in the lap of money, or spend his hours in counting idle treasures, but be up and briskly doing; he will have the true alchemic touch, which is not that of Midas, but which transmutes dead money into living delight and satisfaction. Etre et pas avoir—to be, not to possess—that is the problem of life. To be wealthy, a rich nature is the first requisite and money but the second. To be of a quick and healthy blood, to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sepulcher. Thus ornament is but the guiled shore To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word, The seeming truth which cunning times put on To entrap the wisest. Therefore, thou gaudy gold, Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee; Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge 'Tween man and man: but thou, though meager lead, Which rather threatenest than dost promise aught, Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence; And here choose I: ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... overture. Pitt and the Grenvilles are outrageous; the Duke of Newcastle disclaims his ambassador, and every body laughs. Sir George came hither yesterday, to expectorate with me, as he called it. Think how I pricked up my ears, as high as King Midas, to hear a Lyttelton vent his grievances against a Pitt and Grenvilles! Lord Temple has named Sir George the apostolic nuncio; and George Selwyn says, "that he will certainly be invited by Miss Ashe among the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... still spoke slowly, seeming to consider his words—"I should like to ask them why, for years now, they should have let a valuable property remain idle. Even if they have the wealth of Midas it is still a puzzle. No one is ever quite rich enough, you know, and down there is Tom ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... and insulted the Olympians. He got gold, so that whatsoever he touched became gold,—and he, with his long ears, was little the better for it. Midas had misjudged the celestial music-tones; Midas had insulted Apollo and the gods: the gods gave him his wish, and a pair of long ears, which also were a good appendage to it. What a truth in these ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... "Hotel Midas," Johnny crisply directed, and jumped into the tonneau, whereupon the chauffeur touched one finger to her bonnet, and the ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... record of the existence of large double Roses in Asia by Herodotus, who tells us, that in a part of Macedonia were the so-called gardens of Midas, in which grew native Roses, each one having sixty petals, and of a scent surpassing ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... and the gleaming purity of large pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with the earth, yielded up her mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make a profit on it. Be the original commodity what it might, it was gold within his grasp. It might be said of him, as of Midas in the fable, that whatever he touched with his finger immediately glistened, and grew yellow, and was changed at once into sterling metal, or, which suited him still better, into piles of coin. And, when Mr. Gathergold had become so very rich that it would have taken him a hundred years ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... Texts, p. 51 f. With the god's apparent subterfuge in the third of these supposed versions Sir James Frazer (Ancient Stories of a Great Flood, p. 15) not inaptly compares the well-known story of King Midas's servant, who, unable to keep the secret of the king's deformity to himself, whispered it into a hole in the ground, with the result that the reeds which grew up there by their rustling in the wind proclaimed it to ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... rusty nail, wherewith to etch their story, on their dungeon wall; though they dig in the earth and bury their secret, as one buried his of old—that same secret still; for it is still those EARS—those 'ears' that 'Midas hath' which makes ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... there lived a very rich King whose name was Midas, and he had a little daughter whom he loved very dearly. This King was fonder of gold than of anything else in the whole world: or if he did love anything better, it was the one little daughter who played so ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... as a child's. "Agreed!" she cried. "You and the minister and Diccon Demon shall lay your muskets across your knees, and Angela shall witch you into stone with her old, mad, heathen charms. And then—and then—I will gather more gold than had King Midas; I will dance with the hamadryads; I will find out Oberon and make ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... always kiss; 470 And to this day is every scholar poor: Gross gold from them runs headlong to the boor. Likewise the angry Sisters, thus deluded, To venge themselves on Hermes, have concluded That Midas' brood shall sit in Honour's chair, To which the Muses' sons are only heir; And fruitful wits, that inaspiring[25] are, Shall, discontent, run into regions far; And few great lords in virtuous deeds shall joy But be surpris'd with every garish ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... it is not art, that it is not even an amenity, should not blind us to the fact that it is an honest article. I admit that the man who produces it satisfies a vulgar and unprofitable taste; so does the very upright tradesman who forces insipid asparagus for the Christmas market. Sir Georgius Midas will never care for art, but he will always want a background; and, unless things are going to change with surprising suddenness, it will be some time before he is unable to get what he wants, at a price. However splendid and vital the new movement may ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... humble let me live and die, Nor long for Midas' golden touch; If Heaven more generous gifts deny, I shall not miss them much,— Too grateful for the blessing lent Of simple tastes ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... laugh at instructions; representatives think they have made a good bargain when they exchange the barren approval of constituencies for the smile of one whom a lucky death, perhaps, has converted into the Presidential Midas of the moment; and in a nation of adventurers, success is too easily allowed to sanctify a speculation by which a man sells his pitiful self for a better price than even a Jew could get for the Saviour of the world. It cannot be too often repeated, that the only responsibility ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... I know, to preach to boys. And yet, sometimes, a man must speak his heart; even, like Midas' slave, to the reeds by the river side. And I had so often, fishing up and down full many a stream, whispered my story to those same river-reeds; and told them that my Lord the Sovereign Demos had, like old Midas, asses' ears in spite of all his gold, that I thought ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... wonderful Australasia where our colonists now have the shaping of their destinies in their own hands, amid the yet unexplored amplitude of a land where "in the softest and sweetest air, and in an unexhausted soil, the fable of Midas is reversed; food does not turn to gold, but the gold with which the land is teeming converts itself into farms and vineyards, into flocks and herds, into crops of wild luxuriance, into cities whose recent origin is concealed and ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... power, influence, or love by society or by individuals, we can obtain these desiderata in our dreams. We can possess in dreams the things which we cannot have by day. In sleep the poor man becomes a Midas, the ugly woman handsome, the childless woman surrounded by children, and those who in daily life live upon a crust in their dreams dine like princes (after living upon canned goods for two months in the Dry Tortugas, the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... accompanied by their guide, one day longer, were to push on as speedily as possible to the wonderful creek, while the others would return to Nome. Here they were to rest quietly until the two had made fast their stakes on Midas, and also returned to the city for supplies. In the meantime, the ones to reach the latter place first were to give out the news of the discovery of a magnificent new section, the center of which was a gold-bearing creek of amazing richness. Here was a chance ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... place for gilded pictures and glowing generalities but that place is not in the directions for planting and care. These directions should be practical, precise and detailed, with no implications of Midas returns from a half acre grove. Every grower of nut trees knows that problems and troubles continue to arise which tax his knowledge and experience. How much more baffling such difficulties are to the layman who is just embarking on the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... Phrygian town of Gordium. The primitive king, Gordius, was originally a poor husbandman, upon the yoke of whose team, as he tilled the field, an eagle perched. He consulted the augurs to explain the curious portent, and was told that the kingdom was destined for his family. His son was Midas, offspring of a maiden of prophetic family. Soon after, dissensions breaking out among the Phrygians, they were directed by an oracle to choose a king, whom they should first see approaching in a wagon. Gordius and his son Midas were ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... twenty-four, and fairly good-looking, and not as conceited as men generally are at that age. Personally, I prefer them older, but he evidently approves of me, and that is soothing to the feelings. Julias, surnamed "Midas," is only twelve, and a most amusing character. I asked Lorna and Wallace how he got his nickname, as we sat together over a fire in the old schoolroom the first night. They laughed, and Wallace said—(of course, I call him ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... baser type a man blights his sensibilities, minifies his present enjoyment, and destroys his prospect for a full measure of happiness by and by. With but one interest his happiness is insecure; for when that fails or ceases to satisfy he has nothing on which to rely. Midas craves for gold, and when he gets it his senses become as metallic as the object of his affection. Therefore, if we are of this type, simply seeking the Golden Fleece for what it will net us in dollars and cents, we are not ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... converted into a suitable home for the poor woman and her five children. Would not that be more just and fair than to leave the mother and her five little ones languishing in a garret, while Sir Gorgeous Midas sat at his ease in an empty mansion? Besides, good Sir Gorgeous would probably hasten to do it of his own accord; his wife will be delighted to be freed from half her big, unwieldy house when there is no longer a staff of servants to ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... that hourly speaks within us' is never silent. Like Signor Benedick, it 'will still be talking.' We can scarcely let our eyes dwell upon an object—nay, not even upon a gridiron or a toothpick—but it seems to be transmuted as by the touch of Midas into gold. Our facts accordingly adopt upon occasions a very singular shape. We are not nice to a shade. A trifle here or there never stands in our way. We regard a free play of fancy as the privilege ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... she has never published. Shelley contributed to this the exquisite fable of Arethusa and the Invocation to Ceres.—Among the Nymphs gathering flowers on Enna were two whom she called Ino and Uno, names which I remember in the Dialogue were irresistibly ludicrous. She also wrote one on Midas, into which were introduced by Shelley, in the Contest between Pan and Apollo, the Sublime Effusion of the latter, and ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... it should act effectually in this sense, it would tend to make France another California, where there would be a great deal of cash to spend, and nothing to buy. It is the very same system which is represented by Midas. ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... and ably day by day, year by year, and yet never being free from certain financial anxieties, if not financial needs; while his neighbor, who is neither very learned nor able, nor yet in any wise remarkable in his moral development, is living much after the fashion of Midas, whose touch turned everything to gold. But is gold the ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... bids us attain perfection, not by striving to do dazzling deeds, but by making our experience divine; it tells us that the Christian hero will ennoble the humblest field of labor; that nothing is mean which can be performed as duty; but that religious virtue, like the touch of Midas, converts the humblest call ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Between 1908 and 1913, developing for their own profit the iron industry of our country, they helped in the production of the cannons whose fire is now sweeping the German lines. Such a man was the fabled Midas of antiquity, King Midas of the golden touch.... Do not suppose them to entertain hidden but far-reaching designs. They are men of short views. Their aim is to pile up as much wealth as they can, ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... curious to look back on the fatal and universal prevalence of Gold-worship recorded in the history of our race, from the period when Midas became its victim, and the boy chased the rainbow to find the pot of treasure at its foot, to the days when the alchemist offered his all a burnt-sacrifice on the altar; until we reach the present time, when, although the manner of its worship has changed, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... of him, as of [v]Midas in the fable, that whatever he touched with his finger immediately glistened, and grew yellow, and was changed at once into coin. And when Mr. Gathergold had become so rich that it would have taken him a hundred ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... interesting paper in the Ulster Archaeological Journal, vol. vii. p. 334, on the remarkable correspondence of Irish, Greek, and Oriental legends, where the tale of Labhradh Loinseach is compared with that of Midas. Both had asses' ears, and both were victims to the loquacious ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... for the Spanish treasure—"hard food for Midas"—that threw its jaundiced glory about the cradle of George the Fourth; what is that to the promise of plenty, augured by the natal day of our present Prince? Comes he not on the ninth of November? Is not his advent glorified ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... this house we were informed was an old miser whose passion for accumulating wealth reduced him into almost as unfortunate a state as Midas, who, according to the fable, having obtained the long-desired power of turning every thing he touched to gold, was starved by the immediate transmutation of all food into that metal the instant ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... no Midas; he's a wit; he understands eating and drinking well: Poeta coquus, the heathen philosopher could ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... York Four Hundred) "comes mixed"; dip in where you will and you bring up all sorts of fish. In England if you go into educated society, you are likely to meet almost exclusively educated people—or at least people with the stamp of educated manners. Sir Gorgius Midas is not of course inexorably barred from the society of duchesses. Her Grace of Pentonville must have met him frequently. But in America the duchesses have to rub shoulders with him every day. And—which ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... still. In this realm at least, a heritage from his mother, seemingly untrodden by the foot of man, the woman at his side was his. From Holdfast over the spruces to Sawanec in the blue distance he was lord, a domain the wealth of which could not be reckoned in the coin of Midas. He turned to her as they flew down the slope, and she averted her face, perchance perceiving in that look a possession from which a woman shrinks; and her remark, startlingly indicative of the accord between them, lent a no less startling ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... horses at a little creek that was already skimmed with ice, and unwrapped a package of sandwiches on his knee and offered me one, I broke loose. Silence may be golden, but even old King Midas got too big a dose of gold, once upon a time, ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... enthusiasm was gone from Merrihew's heart. Since Kitty evinced a desire to avoid him, the world grew charmless; and the fortune of Midas, cast at his feet, would not have warmed him. On the way over to the hotel, however, he whistled bravely and jingled the golden largess in his pockets. He bade good night to Hillard and sought his room. Here he emptied his pockets on the table and built ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... idle. Those were the days of many of our greatest railway operators, daring, able, enthusiastic men, who had the rare gift of imparting confidence to their followers and the public, and realized the fable of King Midas, whose touch transmuted all things into gold. Their careers were those of conquest and accumulation, like that of Napoleon; and, like him, they underwent, with few exceptions, their retreats from Russia and their Waterloos. Of such were Jacob Little, Daniel Drew, Anthony Morse, ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... the religion of their sovereign. The acquisition of new proselytes gratified the ruling passions of his soul, superstition and vanity; and he was heard to declare, with the enthusiasm of a missionary, that if he could render each individual richer than Midas, and every city greater than Babylon, he should not esteem himself the benefactor of mankind, unless, at the same time, he could reclaim his subjects from their impious revolt against the immortal gods. A prince who had studied human nature, and who possessed the treasures of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... name and country thou wouldst know, In Phrygia yet my father is a king, Gordius, the son of Midas, rich enow In corn and cattle, golden cup and ring; And mine own name before I did this thing Was called Adrastus, whom, in street and hall, The slayer of his brother men ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... fingers of his'n!" How could Mrs. Saggs speak of them so? They were heroic, effectual fingers. Theirs was something far greater than the Midas touch—they transmuted the ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... dozen crows, smear their feet with glue, tie a ball of Indian twine to the ankle of every bird, then liberate them. Some are certain to fly into the crater and try to scrape the glue off in the sand. Then," I added, triumphantly, "all we have to do is to haul in our birds and detach the wealth of Midas from their ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... of Juventian youths the flowret fair Not of these only, but of all that were Or shall be, coming in the coming years, Better waste Midas' wealth (to me appears) On him that owns nor slave nor money-chest 5 Than thou shouldst suffer by his love possest. "What! is he vile or not fair?" "Yes!" I attest, "Yet owns this man so comely neither slaves nor chest My words disdain thou or accept ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... the irresistible energy and momentum of wealth as wealth, men said that fortune favored him from the outset. It was only a half-truth, but it sufficed to account for what was really a campaign of conquest. Grierson's touch was Midas-like, turning all things to gold; and even in Wahaska there were Mammon worshippers enough to hail him as a public benefactor whose wealth and enterprise would shortly make of the overgrown village a town, and of the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Midas (we read) with wond'rous art of old, Whate'er he touch'd, at once transformed to gold; This modern statesmen can reverse with ease, Touch them with gold, they'll turn ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... a story told of Silenus, who, when taken prisoner by Midas, is said to have made him this present for his ransom; namely, that he informed him(74) that never to have been born, was by far the greatest blessing that could happen to man; and that the next best thing was, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... as she will want to impart her secret," answered the priest. "Who whispered to the earth, 'Midas has long ears'?" ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... historian of the Four Ages appears as something more of a dramatic poet: his work has more of form and maturity, with no whit less of spontaneity and spirit, simplicity and vivacity. The framework or setting of these five acts, in which Midas and Apuleius play the leading parts, is sustained with lively and homely humor from induction to epilogue: the story of Psyche is thrown into dramatic form with happier skill and more graceful simplicity by Heywood than afterward by Moliere and Corneille; though there is here nothing comparable ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... land; where titles were held only by physical possession of the premises? During the long winter of their absence, ice had held their treasure inviolate, but with the warming summer the jewel they had fought for so wearily would lie naked and exposed to the first comer. The Midas lay in the valley of the richest creek, where men had schemed and fought and slain for the right to inches. It was the fruit of cheerless, barren years of toil, and if they could not guard ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... in a disorderly way of the riches which are here gratuitously offered—not the riches of Midas and Pymalion, because mother Nature does not refuse food to her children even if they are profaners of that wonderful temple of her fecundity—it is right that I should now draw your attention to two great friends of travellers in the forest. One is the bamboo and the other ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... was my humble slave, Has now enslaved its master; And fast as flows its Midas-wave, My ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... was not mistaken. The engraving was of the eight-hundred-ton yacht Idalia, belonging to "that prince of good fellows, Midas of the money market, and society's pink ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... innocent game of 'catch-questions' in the ordinary way, and when I get a turn myself. But if I've got to pay every time, and the stakes are to be my earthly happiness plus my future existence—why, I don't play. There was the case of Midas; a nice, shabby trick you fellows played off upon him! making pretence you did not understand him, twisting round the poor old fellow's words, just for all the world as though you were a pack of Old Bailey lawyers, trying to trip up a witness; I'm ashamed of the lot of you, and I tell you so—coming ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... undercurrent of strife for social honor, the corrugated brow of envy, the pomp and circumstance of spilled riches—ah! here was where his shoe would pinch him the most. For Hermia Challoner was wealthy beyond the touch of Midas. If the Westport house or her taste in automobiles had not been green in his memory, it only remained to him to view the stately splendor of the Challoner mansion up town to be reminded that his vagabond companion of a week rightfully ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... Midas, whose touch made gold, and of the virgin under whose feet sprang roses; but Zero's heels and toes were armed with more precious influences. They left a diamond way, where they slid,—a hundred and fifty miles of diamond, half a mile wide and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... the parchment's protected under-surface. The same three hundred years that have made over Europe and made English America have, as it were, filled in the rhythmic pauses between their giant heart-beats by ripening Dr. Holmes's wine and touching with Midas caress these parchment bindings! ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... he marched two stages—ten parasangs—to Thymbrium, a populous city. Here, by the side of the road, is the spring of Midas, the king of Phrygia, as it is called, where Midas, as the story goes, caught the satyr by drugging the spring with wine. From this place he marched two stages—ten parasangs—to Tyriaeum, a populous ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... to the flight of time. Years? we have seen so many of them that they make no great impression upon us. What! is it ten years since young Midas first came to the counting-room, asking humbly for an entry-clerk's place—he who is now the head of the firm? Bless us! it seems like yesterday. Is it ten years since we first put on that coat? Why, it must be clean out of the fashion ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... she said. "Do you not think I understand and know you—and your quaint English ways? But imagine how silly it is. I am quite aware that you have ample money to provide me with a feast of Midas—all of gold—if necessary, and you shall some day, if you really wish. But to stop over paltry sums of francs, to destroy the thread of our conversation and thoughts—to make it all banal and everyday! That is what I won't have. Dmitry is there for nothing else but to eviter ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... masses of purple and crimson clouds high about him, cuddling his fat cheeks against their soft folds till, a Midas, he turned them to gold at the touch. Those farther away gloomed jealously at the favoritism of their lord, and huddled closer together—the purple for rage, perhaps; and the crimson ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... natural instincts. If it happen to fall out, contrary to your expectation, that she hath more mind to a brave young fellow that's a Prentice, whose parts and humor she knows, then she hath in a Plush Jacketted or gilt Midas; then make your selves joyfull in the several examples that you have of others, who being so married, have proved to be the best Matches; of which examples multiplicities are at large prostrated to your view in the Theater of Lovers. So ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... represents a man abounding in wealth, but whose appetite was so insatiable, even at the ambrosial feast of the gods, that it ultimately doomed him to eternal unsatisfied thirst and hunger in Tartarus. The same truth crops out in the legend of Midas, who found himself starving while his touch converted all ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... represent the reeds. You know the story of King Midas's barber, who found out that his royal master had the ears of an ass beneath his hyacinthine curls. So the barber, in default of a Mr. Wynne, went to the reeds that grew on the shores of a neighbouring lake, and whispered to them, "King Midas has the ears of an ass." But he repeated it so often ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Cressy had begun to show the authentic Midas touch. Only the little Carlotta stood between him and sheer, sordid money grubbing. And even she was an excuse for the getting of always more and more wealth. He told himself Carlotta should be a veritable princess, ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... pretend, and I know it will be impossible for me, by any pleading of mine, to reverse the judgment, either of AEsop's cock, that preferred the barleycorn before the gem; or of Midas, that being chosen judge between Apollo, president of the Muses, and Pan, god of the flocks, judged for plenty; or of Paris, that judged for beauty and love against wisdom and power; or of Agrippina, occidat matrem, modo imperet, that preferred empire ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... unpeopled tracts from the Mississippi to the Pacific, and to exploiting the hitherto neglected or unknown natural resources of the country. Every year science furnished new methods of converting nature's products into man's wealth. Chemistry, the doubtful science, Midas-like, turned into gold every thing that it touched. There were not native workers enough, and so a steady stream of foreign immigrants flocked over from abroad. They came at first to better their own fortunes by sharing in the unlimited American harvests. Later, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... of great paintings adorns the house of the Honourable Midas Bond, and every year adds a new treasure to his collection. He knows how much they cost him, and he keeps the run of the quotations at the auction sales, congratulating himself as the price of the works of his well-chosen artists rises in the scale, and the value of ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... crushed with horror at such a crime. He was even more horrified at the arrogance of the guilty Praetorians and at their shameless effrontery in offering the Imperial Purple to the highest bidder and in, practically, selling the Principiate to so bestial a Midas as Didius Julianus, who, of all the senators, seemed most to misbecome the Imperial Dignity and who had nothing to ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... stand as commonplaces and proverbs of wealth and luxury. The magnificence of Pelops imparts lustre even to the brilliant dreams of the mythologist. The name of Croesus, King of Lydia, whom I have already had occasion to mention, goes as a proverb for his enormous riches. Midas, King of Phrygia, had such abundance of the precious metals, that he was said by the poets to have the power of turning whatever he touched into gold. The tomb of Mausolus, King of Caria, was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... fresh; glades yet unsear'd by hand Of Midas-finger'd Autumn, massy-green; Bird-haunted nooks between, Where feathery ferns, a fairy palmglove, stand, An English-Eastern band:— While e'en the stealthy squirrel o'er the grass Beside me to the beech-clump dares to pass:— In this still precinct of the happy dead, The sanctuary ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... considerable number of Diptera, or two-winged flies, that closely resemble wasps and bees, and no doubt derive much benefit from the wholesome dread which those insects excite. The Midas dives, and other species of large Brazilian flies, have dark wings and metallic blue elongate bodies, resembling the large stinging Sphegidae of the same country; and a very large fly of the genus Asilus has black-banded wings and the abdomen tipped with rich ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... O Midas! your ears are long! What! will you never understand that disparity of wages and the right of increase are one and the same? Certainly, St. Simon, Fourier, and their respective flocks committed ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... was the determining factor at this crisis. Seeing in myself an embryonic Raphael, I had a habit of preserving all kinds of odds and ends as souvenirs of my development. These, I believed, sanctified by my Midas-like touch, would one day be of great value. If the public can tolerate, as it does, thousands of souvenir hunters, surely one with a sick mind should be indulged in the whim for collecting such souvenirs as come within his reach. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... exquisite and costly decoration! what gold and glass! what Sevres and Dresden! But the more I admired the beautiful works of art, the more I thought of the enthusiasm and devotion of the artist, the more I was touched by the grace and delicacy of color and form around me; and the more I heard Midas talk, the more clearly I saw that he did not see, or feel, or understand anything of the real value and significance of his own entourage. The more beautiful it was, the more plainly it displayed his total ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... followed, Hamilton Burton saw much of Edwardes and that very directness of gaze, that level glance which concealed nothing and evaded nothing became to him at first a small annoyance, and then a constantly aggravated irritation. His star of Destiny rode at its zenith. Every venture turned under his Midas hand to gold and increased power. He mounted to succeeding heights until it seemed that like Alexander he must soon brood over the smallness of the world's opportunity. Colossal mergers grouped themselves into structures of stupendous strength. His pride was bloated with successes, ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... gleamed joyously in the sunlight. He gave a little cry of delight as he let them run in a shining stream from hollowed hand to hollowed hand, and contemplated their jingle and glitter with the delight of a new Midas. But the first thought that welled up in his heart to welcome this ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... before the Queen by the same children, on Shrove Tuesday, 1584; his "Endimion, the man in the moone," played before the Queen "at Greenwich on Candlemass day at night, by the chyldren of Paules"; "Gallathea," played on New Year's Day; "Midas," performed on Twelfth Night, also before the ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... alive to the fact that his days were numbered. But he went about the business with the sagacity of an old dog who has been kicked hard by some one who was not his master. Instead of proclaiming himself to be the Midas-like Joseph Grimwell, he appeared before his son and daughters, as poor old Joseph Hooper, their long lost father, as poor—nay, even poorer than when he went away, for he had lost the rugged health that was his only possession at the ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... a trustworthy authority. He seems to have been the type of gossip (still to be met in London clubs) who can always tell with circumstance how the duchess came to have a black baby, and the exact composition of the party at which Midas played at 'strip poker.' But he was, like many of his kind, an amusing enough companion for the idle moment, and his description of Dr Forman is probably fairly ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... Spanish wisdom, that all the frogs of the river, becoming infected with his spirit, would adopt his style of speech and croak only pasquinades. The contemptibleness of the assailant made him the more dreaded. Did not the very reeds tell the fatal secret about King Midas? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... durch ein glas, Vermeinet mehr reichtum zu haben, Dan Midas und Crsus besass; Ja grosser frsten gunst und gaben, 10 Dienst mpter, glck und herrlichkeit Tritt ich zu grund ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... good reason to cover his ears, like King Midas," went on the priest, with a cheerful simplicity which somehow seemed rather flippant under the circumstances. "I can quite understand that it's nicer to cover them with hair than with brass plates ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... It amused him to be buying three pounds of potatoes and a pound of chopped meat and a package of macaroni, and to be counting Hunt's pennies—remembering those days when he had been a personage to head waiters, and had had his table reserved, and with a careless Midas's gesture had left a dollar, or five, or twenty, for the ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... laughed and waved his hand in dismissal of the topic. "Well, Mr. Corliss," he went on, shifting to a brisker tone, "I have come to make my fortune, too. You are Midas. Am I of sufficient ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... asked Yorke, carelessly shading his eyes, as though from the westering sun, which Midas-like, was turning every thing it touched in that ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... donations that Russell was (not) constantly making to philanthropic objects, with the result that the gentle comedian was pestered with applications for money for all sorts of institutions. In order to provide Russell with the means to bestow unlimited largess, Field endowed him with the touch of Midas. He would report that the matchless exponent of "Shabby Genteel" bought lead mines, to be disappointed by finding tons of virgin gold in the quartz. Like Bret Harte's hero of Downs Flat, when Russell dug for water his luck was so contrary that he struck diamonds. When he ordered oysters ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson |
