"Tantalus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to rain outright. However, yesterday there were showers enough to supply us well with their beneficent outpouring. As to the new cistern, it seems to be bewitched; for, while the spout pours into it like a cataract, it still remains almost empty. I wonder where Mr. Hosmer got it; perhaps from Tantalus, under the eaves of whose palace it must formerly have stood; for, like his drinking-cup in Hades, it has the property of filling itself forever, and never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... premises in Prince's Street. And from that moment Lucy's horizon had changed, her ambitions had hardened and narrowed; she had begun to be impatient with her husband, first, that he could not make her rich faster, then, after their Tantalus gleam of wealth, that he would put mysterious and provoking obstacles in the way of their ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... men's faces, hast not thou One shaft of all thy sudden seven that pierced Seven through the bosom or shining throat or side, All couched about one mother's loosening knees, All holy born, engrafted of Tantalus? But if toward any of you I am overbold That take thus much upon me, let him think How I, for all my forest holiness, Fame, and this armed and iron maidenhood, Pay thus much also; I shall have no man's love For ever, and no face of children born Or feeding lips upon ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... he who with his golden lyre Hath moved the gates that never move, While the dead folk repeat his dirge of love? The rolling stone no more doth tire Swart Sisyphus on yonder hill; And Tantalus with water slakes his fire; The groans of mangled Tityos are still; Ixion's wheel forgets to fly; The Danaids their urns can fill: I hear no more the tortured spirits cry; But all find ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... proceeded to examine every object in the room. So far as I could see, there was nothing at all unusual about the place. The room was in exactly the same condition as I had observed it hundreds of times before when I had dropped in for a smoke and a chat. On the table, beside the lamp, was a tantalus and a glass, and a half empty syphon. The glass had been used and the ash on the floor, beside an armchair, showed that a cigar had accompanied the drink. A pair of slippers lay on the hearth rug as if ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... As regards myself I should do myself an injury by being silent, for my heart is like an overloaded beast of burden and talking will relieve it. Ah! Publius, my fate to-day is that of the helpless Tantalus, who sees juicy pears bobbing about under his nose and tempting his hungry stomach, and yet they never let him catch hold of them, only look-in there dwells Irene, the pear, the peach, the pomegranate, and my thirsting heart is consumed with longing for her. You may ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... There was Tantalus, plagued for his great sins, standing up to the chin in water, which he can never taste, but still as he bows his head, thinking to quench his burning thirst, instead of water he licks up unsavoury dust. ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... known anything like it before. It was no new thing to Claudius, yet he thought it unfair. There was a long discussion as to the punishment he ought to endure. Some said that Sisyphus had done his job of porterage long enough; Tantalus would be dying of thirst, if he were not relieved; the drag must be put at last on wretched Ixion's wheel. But it was determined not to let off any of the old stagers, lest Claudius should dare to hope for any such relief. It was agreed that some new punishment must be devised: ...
— Apocolocyntosis • Lucius Seneca
... from the lack of proper food, raiment and shelter. One of their number whose name will not appear in history, published a book, entitled "True Civilization an Immediate Necessity." Surely enough true civilization is and always has been an immediate necessity: a necessity like the feast of Tantalus: but how is it to be realized? The purest saints and noblest statesmen have struggled and died in despair in the attempt to elevate humanity a single inch above the condition in which ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... cannot wait and watch this Robin Hood Dangle the fruit of Tantalus before me, Then eat it in my sight! I have borne enough! He gave me like a fairing to my brother In Sherwood Forest; and I now must watch him, A happy bridegroom with the happy bride, Whose lips I meant ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... gave the famished wretch six ounces of bread and a can of water. He strapped one prisoner up in the pillory for twenty-four hours, and directed him to be fed in it. This prisoner had a short neck, and the cruel collar would not let him eat, so that the tortures of Tantalus were added to crucifixion. The earnest beast put a child of eleven years old into a strait-waistcoat for three days, then kept him three days on bread and water, and robbed him of his bed and his gas for fourteen days. We none of us know the meaning of these little punishments so vast beyond our ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... christian measure to his customers, was now a thriving man. When they again inspected the larder, they saw the same spirit, but woefully reduced in size, and in vain attempting to reach at the full plates and bottles, which stood around him; starving, in short, like Tantalus, in the midst of plenty. Honest Heywood sums up ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... with indolence and indifference. At present they seem to be in a very lamentable condition, and such as the poets have given us but a faint notion of in their descriptions of the punishment of Sisyphus and Tantalus. For what can be imagined more tormenting, than to seek with eagerness, what for ever flies us; and seek for it in a place, where it is impossible it can ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... may be collected from the sentiments of Socrates. The poets inculcated a belief in Tartarus and Elysium. They have drawn a picture of Tartarus in the most gloomy and horrific colors, where men, who had been remarkable for impiety to the gods, such as Tantalus, Tityus and Sisyphus, were tormented with a variety of misery ingeniously adapted ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... thought to send for you. You must go do a message for us now: 'Tis nothing but to woo a wench, which you Can do. You must not woo her for yourself, But me. Tell her, I sit and pine like Tantalus; And, if you can, strain forth a tear for me. Tell her she shall be honoured in my love, And bear a child that one day may be king. Bid her not stand on terms, but send me word, Whether she be resolved to love ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... long, looking down, his hands clasped about his knees, drinking with old Tantalus. But the reverie ended as it always did—in action. There was nothing for it but the claim. Success there ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... contribute to render life agreeable, or that a God who has created all things, every object the most desirable to the nourishment and health of man, should nevertheless forbid him their use? The Christian religion appears to doom its votaries to the punishment of Tantalus. The most part of the superstitions in the world have made of God a capricious and jealous sovereign, who amuses himself by tempting the passions and exciting the desires of his slaves, without permitting them the gratification of the one or the enjoyment of the ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... without another word. Like Tantalus, the tempting fruit had been within reach, and his evil destiny had come in to dash it from his lips. Was it wonderful if he felt disposed to give it up and in sheer ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... to this tragic entertainment, this feast of Tantalus. The few left on the pension-list, the poor remnants that had escaped, were they paid by his administratrix and deputy, Munny Begum? Not a shilling. No fewer than forty-nine petitions, mostly from the widows of the greatest and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... traveller who had returned from Hades where he had conversed with Tantalus and with others of the shades. They all agreed that for the first six, or perhaps twelve, months they disliked their punishment very much; but after that, it was like shelling peas on a hot afternoon in July. They began by discovering (no doubt long after the fact had been apparent enough to ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... TANTALUS. A proud king, who suffered in Hades the agonies of hunger and thirst, with food and drink always in sight, but always ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... you, Bishop, observation has taught me all the shades and delicate gradations of that difference. We women no more mistake the latter for the former, than the gods who declined to turn cannibal when they went to dine with Tantalus, and were offered a fricassee ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... The trees which crowned the mountains, the green fields, the banana-trees which surrounded the dwellings, all combined to charm our senses with an inexpressible delight; but the sea broke violently on the shore, and, like Tantalus, we were obliged to devour with our eyes what was completely beyond ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... mythology is not very safe. Charon welcomes the harper, "because he was desirous of the unaccustomed sound"; all sufferings cease at the melody of the harp; the wheel of Ixion ceases to turn; the hunger of Tantalus is appeased; the vulture ceases to torment King Tityus; and the ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... prey'd, Scooping his entrails; nor sufficed his hands To fray them thence; for he had sought to force 710 Latona, illustrious concubine of Jove, What time the Goddess journey'd o'er the rocks Of Pytho into pleasant Panopeus. Next, suff'ring grievous torments, I beheld Tantalus; in a pool he stood, his chin Wash'd by the wave; thirst-parch'd he seem'd, but found Nought to assuage his thirst; for when he bow'd His hoary head, ardent to quaff, the flood Vanish'd absorb'd, and, at his feet, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... it is, wretchedly insipid, you would pity and I dare say despise me. But I know the treasures of the Bible; I love and adore them. I can see the Well of Life in all its clearness and brightness; but when I stoop down to drink of the pure waters they fly from my lips as if I were Tantalus. ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... breast and cried and agonized; the executioner said to the woman, a mother and a nurse, 'Abjure!' giving her her choice between the death of her infant and the death of her conscience. What say you to that torture of Tantalus as applied to a mother? Bear this well in mind sir: the French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its wrath will be absolved by the future; its result is the world made better. From its most terrible blows there comes forth a caress for the human race. I abridge, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... reckon you'd like to see the boss? Well, he's comin' right on over. Just now he's eatin' a mess o' bacon and beans and cawfee, over to the camp. My Gawd, that's good cawfee, too. Like to have some, eh?" But Wade refused to play Tantalus to the lure of this temptation and kept silent. ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... feasting their eyes upon the glorious prospect that was gradually unfolding itself before them. To achieve this result I had to expend the very last drop of water that could be coaxed from the breaker; and as I did so I realised to the full what the torments of Tantalus must have been. Not a drop had passed my own lips during the previous twelve hours, and to witness the ecstasy with which the others absorbed the precious liquid was almost more than I could endure ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... meant, That when a man casteth his eyes on the vain and soone fading beauty of the world, consenting thereto in his minde, hee seemeth to bee turned into a brute beast, and so to be slain by the inordinate desire of his owne affects. By Tantalus that stands in the midst of the floud Eridan, having before him a tree laden with pleasant apples, he being neverthelesse always thirsty and hungry, betokeneth the insatiable desires of covetous persons. The fables of Atreus, Thiestes, Tereus ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... substantial feature of the insubstantial world of shades. Sappho still sighs there for love of her maiden companions, the plectrum of Alcaeus sounds its chords only to songs of earthly hardships by land and sea, Prometheus and Tantalus find no surcease from the pangs of torture, Sisyphus ever rolls the returning stone, and the ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... story of the juniper tree reminds us of the Tantalus story and the meal of Thyestes. Demeter (or Thetes) ate a shoulder of the dismembered Pelops, who was set before the gods by his father Tantalus, and the shoulder, after he was brought to life again, was replaced by an ivory one. In a story from the northeastern Caucasus, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... human existence has its moments of fate, when the apples of the Hesperides hang ready upon the bough, but, alas! how few are wise enough to pluck them. The decision of an hour may open to us the gates of the enchanted garden where are flowers and sunshine, or it may condemn us, Tantalus-like, to reach evermore after some far-off and unattainable good. I dreamed that the clock of fate had struck the hour for me, that I had found my mission on earth, and that henceforth the "Peace be still" of the Master ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... 3] pronounces Seagriff, his eyes fixed upon them as eagerly as were those of Tantalus on the forbidden water, "an' every skin of 'em worth a mint o' money. Bad luck!" he continues, in a tone of spiteful vexation. "A mine o' wealth, an' no chance to work it! Ef we only had the ship by us now, we could put a good thousan' dollars' worth o' thar pelts into ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... he asked, looking at her with the wistful eyes of Tantalus gazing at the luscious fruits which the wrathful winds wafted ever ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... each individual his own peculiar adventures. Vossius refers the adventure of Niobe, the daughter of Phoroneus, to Jupiter Apis, the king of Argos, who reigned about B.C. 1770; and that of Danae to Jupiter Proetus, who lived about 1350 years before the Christian era. It was Jupiter Tantalus, according to him, that carried off Ganymede; and it was Jupiter, the father of Hercules, that deceived Leda. He says that the subject of the present Fable was Jupiter Asterius, who reigned about B.C. 1400. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the feasting hall, where we found the "ticket men" washed but unfed. All told, there must have been nearly seven hundred of us who sat down—not to meat or bread, but to speech, song, and prayer. From all of which I am convinced that Tantalus suffers in many guises this side of the infernal regions. The adjutant made the prayer, but I did not take note of it, being too engrossed with the massed picture of misery before me. But the speech ran something like this: "You will ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... but snarl upon snarl escaped his panting throat. The public delighted in him. They loved to see the ferocious brute maddened by these tortures, beside which the agony of Tantalus was but the misery ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... no word so dreadful to relate, nor suffering, nor heaven-inflicted calamity, the burden of which human nature may not be compelled to bear. For Tantalus, the blest, (and I am not reproaching his fortune, when I say this,) the son of Jupiter, as they report, trembling at the rock which impends over his head, hangs in the air, and suffers this punishment, as they say indeed, because, although being a ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... go on talking all night, even about the events of an exciting day, and one by one our friends rolled themselves up in their coats and went off to sleep. And how the unfortunates on sentry-go envied them! That was an infliction which Tantalus escaped, but it might well compare with those which have caused his name to be embodied in ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... likewise they have sometimes appeared doctrines too high and solemn to be taught," rejoined Plato: "Often when I have attempted to clothe them in language, the airy forms have glided from me, mocking me with their distant beauty. We are told of Tantalus surrounded by water that flows away when he attempts to taste it, and with delicious fruits above his head, carried off by a sudden wind whenever he tries to seize them. It was his crime that, being admitted to the assemblies of Olympus, he brought away the nectar and ambrosia ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... the Inside; forbidden by Sir Lakshman, but secretly applied, when flagrant obstinacy demanded drastic measures. So neither Dyan nor his grandfather had suspected that Aruna, for days together, had suffered the torment of Tantalus—food set before her so mercilessly peppered that a morsel would raise blisters on her lips and tongue; water steeped in salt; the touch of the 'fire-stick' applied where her skin was tenderest; not to ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... but the hues and outlines of the pageant; the real knowledge, the recreative power induced by familiar love, the assimilation of its soul and substance,—all the true value of such a revelation,—is wanting; and he remains a poor Tantalus, hungrier than before he had tasted this ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... room, with a loft above; the barn was a makeshift of poles, badly chinked, and showing through the crevices what scanty store there was of corn and pumpkins. A black-and-white work-ox, that had evidently no deficiency of ribs, stood outside of the fence and gazed, a forlorn Tantalus, at these unattainable dainties; now and then a muttered low escaped his lips. Nobody noticed him or sympathized with him, except perhaps the little girl, who had come out in her sun-bonnet to help her brother bring in the fuel. He gruffly accepted her company, a little ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... 'Moreover I beheld Tantalus in grievous torment, standing in a mere and the water came nigh unto his chin. And he stood straining as one athirst, but he might not attain to the water to drink of it. For often as that old man stooped down in his eagerness to drink, so often the water ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... And now the same gan so to scorch and glow As in plain terms (yet cunningly) he craved it. Love always makes those eloquent that have it. She, with a kind of granting, put him by it And ever, as he thought himself most nigh it, Like to the tree of Tantalus, she fled And, seeming lavish, saved her maidenhead. Ne'er king more sought to keep his diadem, Than Hero this inestimable gem. Above our life we love a steadfast friend, Yet when a token of great worth we send, We often kiss it, often ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... spirit tantalus and cigar-box with his wonted deliberation; and on reaching the drawing-room found her absorbed in contemplation of Dick's portrait, hands clasped behind her, the unbroken lines of her grey-green dress lending height and dignity ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... Nem. x. 114: (ll. 1-6) 'Straightway Lynceus, trusting in his swift feet, made for Taygetus. He climbed its highest peak and looked throughout the whole isle of Pelops, son of Tantalus; and soon the glorious hero with his dread eyes saw horse-taming Castor and athlete Polydeuces both hidden within a ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... maiden of seventeen summers, who must have suffered the torments of Tantalus during the night, and who only wishes for a pretext to shew that she has forgiven her sister, turns round, and covering her sister with kisses, confesses that she has not closed her eyes through ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... discern Whales flesh from lumps of earth, nor know the slippery skin of a Whale from the vpper part of the ground: with out doubt they are woorthy to haue Munster for a Pilot. Verily in this place (as likewise before treating of the land-miracles of Island) he gathereth fruits as they say, out of Tantalus his garden, and foloweth hard after those things which will neuer and no where be found, while he endeuoureth to proule here and there for miracles, perusing sea and land to stuffe vp his history where notwithstanding he cannot hunt out ought but ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... surveyed the people with haughty looks. "What folly," said she, "is this!—to prefer beings whom you never saw to those who stand before your eyes! Why should Latona be honored with worship, and none be paid to me? My father was Tantalus, who was received as a guest at the table of the gods; my mother was a goddess. My husband built and rules this city, Thebes, and Phrygia is my paternal inheritance. Wherever I turn my eyes I survey the elements of my power; nor is my form and presence unworthy ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... very fair accountant. She has found out that the girl cannot eat figs and candies in a year to the amount of sixty thousand florins, so she is not over-willing to part with her at all. But I am not going to play the Tantalus for years, and run the risk of having the girl snatched from me by some jackanapes or rascal ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... comes to the rich and the poor alike, and comes once for all; but remember, Acheron could not be bribed by gold to ferry the crafty Prometheus back to the sunlit world. Tantalus, too, great as he was above all mortals, went down to the kingdom of the dead, never to return. Remember, too, that, although death is inexorable, yet he is just; for he brings retribution to the rich for their wickedness, and gives the poor eternal ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... galloped on, in the hopes that she might be driven still nearer; but, as we thought she was approaching, the current swept her away again into the middle of the stream. It was a melancholy exemplification of the story of Tantalus. There were those poor famished men floating down a river in the midst truly of plenty—for where can be found more fertile regions!—and yet they were unable to procure a mouthful of food to appease the ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... contrast with that mighty advance which would be accomplished by the association of the working class. Of what avail are all the hoarded wealth and all the fruits of civilization if they exist for only a few, and if the majority of the human race always remains the Tantalus who reaches in vain for these fruits! Worse than Tantalus—for he at least had not produced the fruits for which his parched lips were condemned to pant in vain! This, the mightiest advance of culture which history could know, would justify the helpful intervention of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... drink of the Tantalus cup of bliss I could read in these traces of love stricken by the thunderbolt remorse—in this visible presentment of a life of luxury, extravagance, and riot. There were faint red marks on her young ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... had been excessively impious, personally offending Zeus, condemned by his direct indignation to a severe expiation in Tartarus. The insulted deity wreaks his vengeance on the tired Sisyphus, the mocked Tantalus, the gnawed Tityus, and others. Afterwards we meet the statement that condign retribution is always inflicted for the two flagrant sins of perjury and blasphemy. Finally, we discern a general prevalence ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... there surely is a moment when Tantalus rebels, crosses his arms, and defies hell, throwing up his part of the eternal dupe. That is what I shall come to if anything should thwart my plan; if, after stooping to the dust of provincial life, prowling like a starving tiger round these tradesmen, these ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... and old age or death closes the play. Often the appetite remains, when vitality fails, and Faust rejuvenated, would run the same gauntlet again. The pity of it is that thousands of these victims of either satiety or Tantalus seem never to dream that there are other values, or anything else, or ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... veil. He who might have looked upon Josiana nude would have perceived her outlines only through a surrounding glory. She would have shown herself without hesitation to a satyr or a eunuch. She had the self-possession of a goddess. To have made her nudity a torment, ever eluding a pursuing Tantalus, would have been ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... who were eating, and well-nigh suffocated by the odor of food, the Comte and Comtesse de Breville and Monsieur and Madame Carre-Lamadon endured that hateful form of torture which has perpetuated the name of Tantalus. All at once the manufacturer's young wife heaved a sigh which made every one turn and look at her; she was white as the snow without; her eyes closed, her head fell forward; she had fainted. Her husband, beside himself, implored the help of his neighbors. No one ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... having gazed and sighed a long time at his study window, from whence he might discern the barges and boats about the Blackfriars stairs, suddenly brake out into a great distemper, and sware that his enemies had on purpose brought her majesty thither to break his gall in sunder with Tantalus's torments, that when she went away he might see death before his eyes; with many such like conceits. And, as a man transported with passion, he sware to Sir George Carew that he would disguise himself, and get into a pair of oars to ease his mind but with ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... trust would be easier were it not for the terror lest God's plans involve us in fearful things from which we shrink. We have heard so much of the trials He sends; of the gifts of Tantalus He keeps forever in our sight but just beyond our reach; of the blessings He actually bestows upon us only to snatch them away when we have come to love them most—we have heard so much of this that we are often ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... said to be In Acheron, the deep, they all are ours Here in this life. No Tantalus, benumbed With baseless terror, as the fables tell, Fears the huge boulder hanging in the air: But, rather, in life an empty dread of Gods Urges mortality, and each one fears Such fall of fortune as may chance to him. Nor eat the vultures into Tityus Prostrate in Acheron, nor can they find, Forsooth, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... to living in European fashion. Very well. Ah Chun gave her a European mansion. Later, as his sons and daughters grew able to advise, he built a bungalow, a spacious, rambling affair, as unpretentious as it was magnificent. Also, as time went by, there arose a mountain house on Tantalus, to which the family could flee when the "sick wind" blew from the south. And at Waikiki he built a beach residence on an extensive site so well chosen that later on, when the United States government condemned it for fortification ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe, All in one moment, and so near the brink; But Fate withstands, and, to oppose th' attempt, Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards The ford, and of itself the water flies All taste of living wight, as once it fled The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on In confused march forlorn, th' adventurous bands, With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast, Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found No rest. Through many a dark and dreary vale They passed, and many a region dolorous, O'er ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... enumerate as many as I can remember of the words which have by this method been introduced into our language. To begin with mythical antiquity—the Chimaera has given us 'chimerical', Hermes 'hermetic', Tantalus 'to tantalize', Hercules 'herculean', Proteus 'protean', Vulcan 'volcano' and 'volcanic', and Daedalus 'dedal', if this word may on Spenser's and Shelley's authority be allowed. Gordius, the Phrygian king who tied that famous 'gordian' knot which Alexander ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... this comedy of passion with wonderful energy. One day, when the royal barge, passing down to Gravesend, crossed below his window, he raved and stormed, swearing that his enemies had brought the Queen thither 'to break his gall in sunder with Tantalus' torment.' Another time he protested that he must disguise himself as a boatman, and just catch a sight of the Queen, or else his heart would break. He drew his dagger on his keeper, Sir George Carew, and broke the knuckles of Sir Arthur Gorges, because he said they were restraining ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... rather!" he said, the classic name of Ariadne suggesting the idea that the pseudonym of Tantalus might well ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... King, and the old spear laid low That Tantalus wielded when the world was young. Aegisthus hath his queen, and reigns among His people. And the children here alone, Orestes and Electra, buds unblown Of man and womanhood, when forth to Troy He shook his sail and left them—lo, the boy Orestes, ere Aegisthus' hand could fall, Was stolen ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... a laurel wreath on the brow of a genius she hitches a plough to his shoulders and holds a Tantalus ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... 'Le philosophe sans le savoir.' And now it has added, 'Le philosophe sans le vouloir,' and you have stumbled on him. What a life for an aged man! Fortunatus ille senex qui ludicola vivit. Tantalus handcuffed and glowering over a gambling-table; ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... or tease: "Tantalus," according to the poets, an ancient king of Phrygia, who was made to stand up to the chin in water with fruit hanging over his head, but from whom both receded ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... I, with enthusiasm. "Of all vices, indiscriminate hospitality is the most pernicious. It allows us neither conversation nor dinner, and realizing the mythological fable of Tantalus, gives us starvation in the midst ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
