"Midas" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... surcease from our maladjustments: If we are denied 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 burden of my every dream was food). Where ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of Gordium, an ancient town of Phrygia in Asia Minor, was preserved an old wagon, rudely built, and very primitive in structure. Tradition said that it had originally belonged to the peasant Gordius and his son Midas, rustic chiefs who had been selected by the gods and chosen by the people as the primitive kings of Phrygia. The cord which attached the yoke of this wagon to the pole, composed of fibres from the bark of the cornel tree, was tied into a knot so twisted and entangled that it seemed as if the fingers ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... whose tuneful and well measur'd song First taught our English music how to span Words with just note and accent, not to scan With Midas' ears, committing short and long; Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng, With praise enough for Envy to look wan; To after age thou shalt be writ the man, That with smooth air could'st ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... Midas story is taken from Bulfinch's Age of Fable, which is still one of the most valuable and interesting handbooks in its field. One who wishes simply good versions of the old myths without any of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... duties. Ours is a world in which life's most perfect gifts and sweetest blessings are little things. Take away love, daily work, sweet sleep, and palaces become prisons and gold seems contemptible. The classic poet tells of Kind [Transcriber's note: King?] Midas, to whom was offered whatsoever he wished, and whose avarice led him to choose the golden touch. But lo! his blessing became a curse. Rising to dress he found himself shivering in a coat with threads of gold. Going into his garden he stooped to breathe ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... "Comus" "may be considered as worthy of all the admiration with which the votaries have received it." But he makes peevish objections to its dramatic probability, finds its dialogues and soliloquies tedious, and unmindful of the fate of Midas, solemnly pronounces the songs—"Sweet Echo" and "Sabrina fair"—"harsh in their diction and not very musical in their numbers"! Of the sonnets he says: "They deserve not any particular criticism; for of the best it can only be said that they are not bad."[8] Boswell reports that, Hannah ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... There are two very old fragments of knowledge which indicate at least the possibility of a Western World of which the ancients had knowledge. There is a fragment, preserved from the fourth century before Christ, of a conversation between Silenus and Midas, King of Phrygia, in which Silenus correctly describes the Old World—Europe, Asia, and Africa—as being surrounded by the sea, but also describes, far to the west of it, a huge island, which had its own civilisation and its own laws, where the animals and the men were of twice ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... will have but the patience to lend me an ear; yet not such a one as you are wont to hearken with to your reverend preachers, but as you listen withal to mountebanks, buffoons, and merry-andrews; in short, such as formerly were fastened to Midas, as a punishment for his affront to the god Pan. For I am now in a humour to act awhile the sophist, yet not of that sort who undertake the drudgery of tyrannizing over school boys, and teach a more than womanish ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... 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 ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... of Infantine Hope, Unknown, mystic Felicity Sangrael of childish quest much sought, aethereal "Real Tea" Thy faintest tint of yellow on the milk and water pale Like Midas' stain on Pactolus, gives joy ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... be said 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 years only to count his wealth, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... How Virgil 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 ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... faithfully inherited that it is very instructive for us. It is true that there seems to be an exception in the case of a small family of South American apes. The small silky apes (Arctopitheca or Hapalidae), which include the tamarin (Midas) and the brush-monkey (Jacchus), have only five molars in each half of the jaw (instead of six), and so seem to be nearer to the eastern apes. But it is found, on closer examination, that they have three premolars, like all the western apes, and that only the ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... 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 of every ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... the heat of a green-house in Reggie's artistically ordered room. It was larger too than on the occasion of Geoffrey's visit; for the folding doors which led into a further apartment were thrown open. Two big fires were blazing; and old gold screens, glittering like Midas's treasury, warded off the draught from the windows. The air was heavy with fumes of incense still rising from a huge brass brazier, full of glowing charcoal and grey sand, placed in the middle of the floor. In one corner stood the Buddha table twinkling in the firelight. The miniature trees ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... come Quacks for the lame, the blind, the deaf, the dumb; Fools are their bankers—a prolific line, And every mortal malady's a mine. Each sly Sangrado, with his poisonous pill, Flies to the printer's devil with his bill, Whose Midas touch can gild his ass's ears, And load a knave with folly's rich arrears. And lo! a second miracle is thine, For sloe-juice water stands transformed to wine. Where Day and Martin's patent blacking roll'd, Burst from the vase Pactolian streams of gold; Laugh the sly wizards, glorying ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... 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 ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... equally chaste and beautiful, with more variety and invention, more airiness and light. But why, among the Loves and Graces, does Apollo flay Marsyas?—and why may not the tiara still cover the ears of Midas? Cannot you, who detest kings and courtiers, keep away from them? If I must be with them, let me be in good humour and good spirits. If I will tread upon a Persian carpet, let it at least be ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... upon the innocent joy That trusts itself within thy reach. It may, Or may not, linger. Thou canst but destroy The winged wanderer. Let it go or stay. Love thou the rose, yet leave it on its stem. Think! Midas starved by turning all to gold. Blessed are those that spare, and that withhold; Because the whole ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... on the 23d of May] to write within six weeks or two months next ensuing, a book of stories made up of classical myths. The subjects are: The Story of Midas, with his Golden Touch; Pandora's Box; The Adventure of Hercules in Quest of the Golden Apples; Bellerophon and the Chimera; Baucis and Philemon; ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... "Merciful Midas, Bunny," said Henriette one morning as I was removing the breakfast-tray from her apartment. "Did you see the extent of Mr. Carnegie's benefactions in the published list ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... suggesting, with grave 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
... neighbourhood of Gordium in Phrygia. Here he was rejoined by Parmenio and by the new levies from Greece. Gordium had been the capital of the early Phrygian kings, and in it was preserved with superstitious veneration the chariot or waggon in which the celebrated Midas, the son of Gordius, together with his parents, had entered the town, and in conformity with an oracle had been elevated to the monarchy. An ancient prophecy promised the sovereignty of Asia to him ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... upon thy life—for dear repose of conscience, may all the gods forbid it should ever prove to have been an accident!—the family were seized and summarily disposed of, and their property confiscated. And inasmuch, O my Midas! as the action had the approval of our Caesar, who was as just as he was wise—be there flowers upon his altars forever!—there should be no shame in referring to the sums which were realized to us respectively from that source, for ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... as signifying that women have been and will be overcome by money. The story of Io's seduction by the bull shows that beauty may overcome the best of women. From Icarus we should learn that every man should not meddle with things above his compass, and from Midas, to avoid covetousness. As a Protestant he explains St. Christopher and St. George in ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... based)—an idea that is profoundly moral even if the tales are immoral. It is what may be called the flaw in the deed: the idea that, if I take my advantage to the full, I shall hear of something to my disadvantage. Thus Midas fell into a fallacy about the currency; and soon had reason to become something more than a Bimetallist. Thus Macbeth had a fallacy about forestry; he could not see the trees for the wood. He forgot that, though a place cannot be moved, the trees that grow on it can. ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... 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
... snows of yester-year! They have gone the way of their beautiful chariots with the elaborate armorial bearings and the tasselled hammercloth, the bewigged, cocked-hatted coachman, and the two gorgeous flunkies hanging on behind. Sir Gorgeous Midas has beaten the dukes in mere gorgeousness, flunkies and all—burlesqued the vulgar side of them, and unconsciously shamed it out of existence; made swagger and ostentation unpopular by his own evil example—actually improved ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... something too scurrilous and too apparently biased to be altogether 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 ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... with his rays, the good people of Sardes were all astir, going and coming, mounting or descending the marble stairways leading from the city to the waters of the Pactolus, that opulent river whose sands Midas filled with tiny sparks of gold when he bathed in its stream. One would have supposed that each one of these good citizens was himself about to marry, so solemn and important was ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... it, I think, to be an enchanted place, where every newly-arrived person became magically changed into a sort of Midas on a small scale; transforming everything he touched, if not into gold—the days of California were now over—at all events into Washington "eagles," or Mexican silver dollars, or even greenbacks, ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... their real and permanent operation, prejudicial to her industry, knowledge, and power. It would seem that the acquisition of the more precious metals, which may be likened to the power of converting every thing that is touched into gold, is to nations what it was to Midas,—a source of evil instead of good. Spain, having substituted the artificial stimulus of her American mines in the place of the natural and nutritive food of real industry, on which she fed during the dominion of the Moors, gradually fell off in commercial importance, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... it is light; such as thou heardest me record, when I addressed myself to the blessed Virgin. But when night comes, we take another tone. Then we denounce Pygmalion,[39] the traitor, the robber, and the parricide, each the result of his gluttonous love of gold; and Midas, who obtained his wish, to the laughter of all time; and the thief Achan, who still seems frightened at the wrath of Joshua; and Sapphira and her husband, whom we accuse over again before the Apostles; and Heliodorus, whom we bless the hoofs of the angel's horse for trampling;[40] ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... a food supply. When the side of the distended abdomen is tapped, the ant passes the 'honey' out of its mouth, and it is then eaten. Three species are known in Australia, Camponotus inflatus, Lubbock; C. cowlei, Froggatt; and C. midas, Froggatt. The aboriginal name of the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Lintot!" 'Lintot, dull rogue! will think your price too much:' "Not, sir, if you revise it, and retouch." All my demurs but double his attacks; At last he whispers, "Do; and we go snacks." Glad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door, Sir, let me see your works and you no more. 'Tis sung, when Midas' ears began to spring (Midas, a sacred person and a king), His very minister who spied them first (Some say his queen) was forced to speak, or burst. And is not mine, my friend, a sorer case, When every coxcomb perks them in my face? A. Good friend, forbear! you deal ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... till they almost fall from the petals; the air is full of warm fragrance from the wild-grape clusters; the grass is burning hot beneath the naked feet in sunshine, and cool as water in the shade. Diving from this overhanging beam,—for Ovid evidently meant that Midas ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... punishment, they added this, That he and Poverty should 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 toy, 480 ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... such conduct would be that of a fool, the conduct of impertinence, rather than of conceit; that it was not mine, and that since he pressed me so much I would tell him my reasons. They were, that since the fable of Midas, I had nowhere read, still less seen, that anybody had the faculty of converting into gold all he touched; that I did not believe this virtue was given to Law, but thought that all his knowledge was a learned trick, a new and skilful juggle, which put the wealth ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... the New rejoicing, Kindly beckoning back the Old, Turning, with the gift of Midas, All ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the great Enchanter's art, Whose magic fired your brain and stirred your heart, Whose touch, more potent than King Midas' gold, Wrought Tales of Tanglewood and Tales Twice Told, Whose Marble Faun and Mosses from the Manse Still hold the lasting colors of Romance; Who built 'for you the Hall of Fantasy Through whose bright portals ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... Midas dream is o'er; The golden tide of Commerce leaves thy shore, Leaves thee to prove the alternate ills that haunt [6] Enfeebling Luxury and ghastly Want; Leaves thee, perhaps, to visit distant lands, And deal the gifts ...
— Eighteen Hundred and Eleven • Anna Laetitia Barbauld
... The caller 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
... 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
... say that Domitian was not pious or admirable, but possessed with the disease of building, and turned everything into bricks and mortar, just as it is said Midas turned things into gold. So much ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... 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 ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... region having been the German Naturalists, Spix and Martius, and the Count de Castelnau when he descended the Amazons from the Pacific. Mr. Bates' account of the monkeys of the genera Brachyuyus, Nyctipithecus and Midas met with in this region, and the whole of the very pregnant remarks which follow on the American forms of the Quadrumana, will be read with interest by every one, particularly by those who pay attention to the important subject of geographical ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... man of the name of Lityerses, a bastard son of Midas, the King of Celaenae, in Phrygia, a man of a savage and fierce aspect, and an enormous glutton. He is mentioned by Sositheus, the tragic poet, in his play called 'Daphnis' or 'Lityersa'; where ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... faithfully 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 ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... 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 ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... even 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 of ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... a grimly humorous way, that in the matter of fame she had a sort of Midas touch; everything she did rebounded to her glory, now that the ball was once started rolling. And worst of all was the book that Edwin Langham had left for her, a beautiful copy of "The Desert Garden," bound in limp leather with gold ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... creature—and to save that simple soul from mischief I thought I would take the business on my own shoulders which are broader and stronger than his. I went boldly to work and offered the girl—more shame for me, I must say—the treasures of Midas; however, offering is one thing and accepting is another, and the child snapped me up and sent me to the right about—by Castor and Pollux! packed me off with my tail between my legs! My only comfort was that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... 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 ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... continued to fish up plate, bullion, and dollars, as plentifully as ever, till their provisions grew short. Then, as they could not feed upon gold and silver any more than old King Midas could, they found it necessary to go in search of food. Phips returned to England, arriving there in 1687, and was received with great joy by the Albemarles and other English lords who had fitted out the vessel. Well they might rejoice; for they took ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... that he could play more skilfully on his flute of seven reeds (the syrinx or Pan's pipe), than Apollo on his world-renowned lyre, a contest ensued, in which Apollo was pronounced the victor by all the judges appointed to decide between the rival candidates. Midas, king of Phrygia, alone demurred at this decision, having the bad taste to prefer the uncouth tones of the Pan's pipe to the refined melodies of Apollo's lyre. Incensed at the obstinacy and stupidity of the Phrygian king, Apollo punished him by giving him the ears of an ass. ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... 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 recommend him except ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... who prudently embraced the religion of their sovereign. The acquisition of new proselytes [49] 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. [50] A prince ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... founder of whom, Gyges, murdered and dethroned the last of the Heraclidae; and with a new dynasty seems to have commenced a new and less Asiatic policy. Gyges, supported by the oracle of Delphi, was the first barbarian, except one of the many Phrygian kings claiming the name of Midas, who made votive offerings to that Grecian shrine. From his time this motley tribe, the link between Hellas and the East, came into frequent collision with the Grecian colonies. Gyges himself made war with Miletus and Smyrna, and even captured Colophon. With Miletus, indeed, the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... the sons of Temenos had passed over it, began to flow with such great volume of water that the horsemen became unable to pass over. So the brothers, having come to another region of Macedonia, took up their dwelling near the so-called gardens of Midas the son of Gordias, where roses grow wild which have each one sixty petals and excel all others in perfume. In these gardens too Silenos was captured, as is reported by the Macedonians: and above the gardens is situated a mountain called Bermion, which is inaccessible ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... crowned with blessings, in the far-off days, Like Midas, Mynwy's monarch touched the earth, Wrought golden plenty where once reigned a dearth, And raised an ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... watered the 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, if ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... the irony of fate stepped in and took a hand in Chadwick Champneys's affairs. The man who had hitherto been a failure, the man whose touch had seemed able to wither the most promising business sprouts, found himself suddenly possessed of the Midas touch. He couldn't go into anything that didn't double in value. He wasn't able to fail. Let him buy a barren bit of land in Texas, say, and oil would presently be discovered in it; or a God-forsaken ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... old 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
... he must 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 ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the power To Midas given of old To touch a flower And leave the petals gold, I then might touch thy face, Delightful boy, And leave a ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... Craig dumped the wealth out on the table - stacks of genuine bills, gold coins of two realms, diamonds, pearls, everything portable and tangible all heaped up and topped off with piles of counterfeits awaiting the magic touch of this Midas to ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... 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, to die very ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... by the Thracian women; on which, a serpent, which attacks his face, is changed into stone. The women are transformed into trees by Bacchus, who deserts Thrace, and betakes himself to Phrygia; where Midas, for his care of Silenus, receives the power of making gold. He loathes this gift; and bathing in the river Pactolus, its sands become golden. For his stupidity, his ears are changed by Apollo into ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... 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 Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... 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 orange, so as exactly to resemble ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... McDonogh School. Mead. Measuring. Meat. Medicine (folk). Melted butter. Member of society (child). Memnon. Memory. "Men-women." Mercury. Mere-patrie (la). "Merry Month" (May). Messages. Messenger-bird. Messerin. Metamorphoses. Metempsychosis. [Greek: Maetris]. Metropolis. Midas. Midnight. Midsummer. Milk. "Milk and Honey." Milk-tree. Milky Way. Mimicry. Mind-goddess. Minds (children's). (parents'). Minerva. Miniatures. "Ministering Children's League." Miracles. Mishosha. Mississippi. Mistress. Mock pig-hunting. tobacco. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... 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 is worth noting—their husbands also ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... 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
... 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. Among the odds and ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... may be merely a matter of better nerves, of less sensitive temperament, of more abounding vitality; but there are many of the weakest and most sensitive among those who have learned that better way; they can turn everything into happiness as Midas turned everything into gold. It is surprising, looking through such a one's eyes, to see how full life is of delight. Yet in the same situations there may be room for endless complaint if "every grief is entertained that's offered." It all depends on the attitude taken. In trouble one man ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... be as long as those of Midas, Or stand out salient from either side as A close-cropped ARRY's, at right angles set To his flat jowl, we cannot settle, yet; But in one thing, at least, a score they'll chalk— They will not hear the stuff ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... "Hotel Midas," Johnny crisply directed, and jumped into the tonneau, whereupon the chauffeur touched one finger to her bonnet, and the machine ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... called him, and then he came hopping out; but he merely did this as a concession to his master's weakness, and soon returned again to his own grave pursuits: peering into the straw with his bill, and rapidly covering up the place, as if, Midas-like, he were whispering secrets to the earth and burying them; constantly busying himself upon the sly; and affecting, whenever Barnaby came past, to look up in the clouds and have nothing whatever on his mind: in ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... 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 merrily beside her ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... 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 at best Yet ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... be trusted to the death; a man without his price, incorruptible, with whom a secret, say, would be as safe as if buried in the grave. He would not give it even to the wind, and no reed on his land would whisper 'Midas has ass's ears.'" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... all the 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
... Frontal, Fr., a frontlet, or forehead band.—Cotgrave. A frontlet is mentioned as part of a woman's dress in Lyly's "Midas," 1592: "Hoods, frontlets, wires, cauls, curling-irons, periwigs, bodkins, fillets, hair laces, ribbons, rolls, knotstrings, glasses," &c. See also Mr Steevens's note on "King ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... that speak they will, though they have but a 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 ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... 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
... Mister Midas, take your millions And the glitter of your gold! Life has treasures where the heart is That have never yet been told! There are sweeter things to cherish, There's song of earth and sky, That are only faintest whispers ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... 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 that you do herein yet find ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... wife and family already. Neither of them knew anything at all about him. He might be a battered old traveller, or an Anglo-Indian nabob, or a needy haunter of Continental pensions, or a convict just emerged from a term of penal servitude. He might be as rich as Midas, or as poor as a church-mouse. But on one thing Austin was determined—Aunt Charlotte must be saved from herself, if necessary. They wanted no interloper in their peaceful home. And he, Austin, would go forth into the world, wooden leg and ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... Midas touch life's sullen grays Are thrilled to sudden gold; as some far gleam From wings of Helios athwart thy dream Irradiates for thee earth's darksome ways. Wild woodland voices ripple thro' thy lays; Sweet silvern ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... 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. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is "pleasantly situated," though even to-day it seems out of the world and out of the way. One must go far to find so satisfying a view as that from the old Mansion House porch across the mile of shining water to the Maryland hills' crowned with trees glorified by the Midas-touch of frost. The land does lie "high" and "dry," but we must take exception to the word "healthy." In the summer and fall the tidal marshes breed a variety of mosquito capable of biting through ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... 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 want ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... immensely rich; a man of prodigious enterprise; a Midas without the ears, who turned all he touched to gold. He was in everything good, from banking to building. He was in Parliament, of course. He was in the City, necessarily. He was Chairman of this, Trustee of that, President of the other. The weightiest of men had said to projectors, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Corinthians, (though in truth this treasury does not belong to the State of the Corinthians, but is that of Kypselos the son of Aetion). 12 This Gyges was the first of the Barbarians within our knowledge who dedicated votive offerings at Delphi, except only Midas the son of Gordias king of Phrygia, who dedicated for an offering the royal throne on which he sat before all to decide causes; and this throne, a sight worth seeing, stands in the same place with the bowls of Gyges. This gold and silver ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... adjudge a musical contest between Pol and Pan. He decides in favor of Pan, whereupon Pol throws off his disguise, appears as the god Apollo, and, being indignant at the decision, gives Midas "the ears of an ass."—Kane O'Hara, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... ones that Midas touched, Who failed to touch us all, Was that confiding prodigal, The ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... critics who change everything that comes under their hands to gold, but to this privilege of Midas they join sometimes ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... about old King Midas have a thruppence worth of truth in them, it might be his father's ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... mineral wealth of France. 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
... not know this vision, that it is so hard—so dreadfully hard—to win. And he used to say that this power is infinite, that it depends only upon how much one wants it; and that he who possessed it had the gift of King Midas, and turned all things that he touched to gold. That is real madness to me, Arthur, and will not let me be still; and yet I know that it cannot ever die in me; for whenever there is an instant's weakness there flashes over me again the fearful thought of David, that he is ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... And place it here! here, all ye heroes, bow! "This, this is he, foretold by ancient rhymes: Th' Augustus born to bring Saturnian times. Signs following signs lead on the mighty year! See! the dull stars roll round, and reappear. See, see, our own true Phoebus wears the bays! Our Midas sit Lord Chancellor of plays! On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ! Lo! Ambrose Philips is preferr'd for wit! See under Ripley rise a new Whitehall, While Jones' and Boyle's united labours fall: While Wren with sorrow to the grave ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... inhabitant of 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 it touched his lips. The late possessor ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... dreaming states of the brain in one point—that whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer itself to my dreams, so that I feared to exercise this faculty; for, as Midas turned all things to gold that yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so whatsoever things capable of being visually represented I did but think of in the darkness, immediately shaped themselves into ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... personage of marked influence and authority; and, especially, you could feel just as certain that he was opulent as if he had exhibited his bank account, or as if you had seen him touching the twigs of the Pyncheon Elm, and, Midas-like, transmuting them ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... existence was fully understood. The Greeks enshrined it in the story of Midas, of the 'Golden Touch.' Here was a man who turned everything he laid his hands upon into gold. His life was a progress amidst riches. Out of everything that came in his way he created the precious metal. 'A foolish legend,' said the ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... "you have known me twenty-five years, and you know that I am a man of my word. If ever a malevolent word from you regarding my wife should come to my ears, I shall elongate yours to such a degree that those of King Midas will be ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... marked out his duty, aided his faith, and determined his action. The sign which I seek is somewhat similar. Money is not everything. It is not by any means the main thing. Midas, with all his millions, could no more do the work than he could win the battle of Waterloo, or hold the Pass of Thermopylae. But the millions of Midas are capable of accomplishing great and mighty things, if they be sent about ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Mrs. Midas shows a righteous zeal In preaching self-control at every meal, She never in her stately home forgets To cater freely for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... shore To a most dangerous sea: the beautious scarfe Vailing an Indian beautie; In a word, The seeming truth which cunning times put on To intrap the wisest. Therefore then thou gaudie gold, Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee, Nor none of thee thou pale and common drudge 'Tweene man and man: but thou, thou meager lead Which rather threatnest then dost promise ought, Thy palenesse moues me more then eloquence, And here choose I, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... themselves into the bottom; whence the words odontes and dentes are frequently taken for anchors in the Greek and Latin poets. The invention of the teeth is ascribed by Pliny to the Tuscans; but Pausanias gives the credit to Midas, king of Phrygia. Originally there was only one fluke or tooth, whence anchors were called eterostomoi; but a second was added, according to Pliny, by Eupalamus, or, according to Strabo, by Anacharsis, the Scythian philosopher. The anchors ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... as her, heart's content. The merest trifle which had the slightest connexion with the other, could not be passed over without a minute description, without abundant repetitions and exclamations. Love, like Midas, transforms every thing it touches into gold, and, alas! often perishes, like Midas, for want ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Did ever a lawyer have such a piece of luck? Here was a little fellow who had invented a brilliant scheme to get away with other people's money and had carried it through successfully—more than successfully, beyond the dreams of even the most avaricious criminal, and then, richer than Midas, had handed over the whole jolly fortune to another for the other's asking, without even taking a scrap of paper to show for it. More than that, he had then voluntarily extinguished himself. Had Ammon not chuckled he would not have been Bob Ammon. The money was stolen, to be ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... 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 ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... is not my science. If you should claim to descend in a direct line from King Midas ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... our fishing proceeded energetically but without bringing up any rarities. Our dragnet was filled with Midas abalone, harp shells, obelisk snails, and especially the finest hammer shells I had seen to that day. We also gathered in a few sea cucumbers, some pearl oysters, and a dozen small turtles that we saved ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... 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
... '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, ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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. ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... use of the legend of Midas, in his Wife of Bath's Tale, he makes, not Midas's minister, but his queen, tell the mighty secret—and thus secures another hit at ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... of Greece, had one very droll legend. Midas, king of the Bryges, at the foot of Mount Bermion, had a most beautiful garden, full of all kinds of fruit. This was often stolen, until he watched, and found the thief was old Silenus, the tutor of Bacchus. Thereupon he filled with wine the fount where Silenus was used to drink ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... commonplace life; you must, anyway, live your life: resolve that by God's grace you will live it nobly. You cannot alter the outward form of your life,—you will probably be surrounded by very commonplace household duties, and worries, and jars,—but you can be like King Midas, whose touch turned the most common things to gold. We have it in our power, as Epictetus tells us, to be the gold on the garment of Life, and not the mere stuff of which Fate weaves it. We can choose whether we will live a king's life or a slave's: Marcus ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... Talk of Midas, Croesus, Delphic treasures! they were all nothing to Timon and his wealth; why, the Persian King could not match it. My spade, my dearest smock-frock, you must hang, a votive offering to Pan. And now ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... 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 city. Here he halted three ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... 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 deal in dang'rous things. 75 I'd never name ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... that you will be astonished. The man must know the secret of Midas, of turning stones ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in hierogliphicall figures. A briefe of the golden calf (the world's idol). The golden ass well managed, and Midas restored to reason. Written by J. Rod, Glauber, and Jehior, the three principles or originall of all things. Published by W.C., Esquire, 8vo. Lond. Printed for William Cooper, at the Pellican, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... and on which thou turn'dst To me for comment, is the general theme Of all our prayers: but when it darkens, then A different strain we utter, then record Pygmalion, whom his gluttonous thirst of gold Made traitor, robber, parricide: the woes Of Midas, which his greedy wish ensued, Mark'd for derision to all future times: And the fond Achan, how he stole the prey, That yet he seems by Joshua's ire pursued. Sapphira with her husband next, we blame; And praise the forefeet, that with furious ramp Spurn'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... 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
... ways. But there remained one rule of the wearer of cap and bells that I had not played. That was the Seeker after Buried Treasure. To few does the delectable furor come. But of all the would-be followers in the hoof-prints of King Midas none has found a pursuit so ...
— Options • O. Henry
... 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
... of which it consisted were full of meat. There was no descriptive reporting; but what could be more expressive than the announcement of a marriage in such terms as these:—"On Tuesday se'n-night, Squire Brown of Bumpkin Hall was married to Miss Matilda Midas of Halifax, a handsome young lady with ten thousand pounds to her dowry"? We are much more florid nowadays, but by no means so precise. The leader-writer did not spread himself abroad a hundred years ago. Indeed, soon after the Leeds ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... engravers, and etched a Judgment of Midas. Round the room of a tavern in Drury Lane, where was held a club of virtuosi, he painted a Bacchanalian procession, and presented the house ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... and Stella" Philip Sidney Silvia William Shakespeare Cupid and Campaspe John Lyly Apollo's Song from "Midas" John Lyly "Fair is my Love for April's in her Face" Robert Greene Samela Robert Greene Damelus' Song of His Diaphenia Henry Constable Madrigal, "My Love in her attire doth show her wit" Unknown On Chloris Walking ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... always ready to give an answer when she is asked why she did so and so; but a certain forward-talking half-brother of hers, Sincerity, that amphibious gentleman, who is so ready to perk up his obnoxious sentiments unasked into your notice, as Midas would his ears into your face uncalled for. But I despair of doing anything by a letter in the way of explaining or coming to explanations. A good wish, or a pun, or a piece of secret history, may ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... had bestowed beauty and fortune and accomplishments on her, and sent dashing cavaliers to seek her hand when she came to the romance-reading age. Friends and social pleasures were hers at will when the lonely desert life grew irksome. Whatever was dull the Midas touch of her imagination made golden, so now it was easy to close her eyes and conjure up a make-believe chum that for the time was as ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... 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 ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... things"—he 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 Tiddler's ground ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... 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. It was the same with ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... wooded by-ways of this despised domain that Challis Wrandall and Sara, the earthly daughter of Midas, met and loved and defied all things supernal, for matches are made in heaven. Their marriage did not open the gates of Nineveh. Sebastian Gooch's paradise was more completely ostracised than it was before the disaster. The Wrandalls spoke of it ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... know, to preach to boys. And yet, sometimes, a man must speak his heart; even, like Midas's 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' ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... ancestors would have called them, culled from club-rooms and orchestras—chorus singers—first and second violoncellos—double basses—and clarionets—who ate his cold mutton, and drank his punch, and praised his ear. He sate like Lord Midas among them. But at the desk Tipp was quite another sort of creature. Thence all ideas, that were purely ornamental, were banished. You could not speak of any thing romantic without rebuke. Politics were excluded. A newspaper was thought too refined and abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... prospectus with eager eyes, and Nevitt poured forth strange music as he read, music like the murmur of the stream of Pactolus. It was an inspiring strain; the violin seemed to possess the true Midas touch; gold flowed like water in liquid rills from its catgut. Guy finished, and rose, and dipped a pen in the ink-pot. "All right," he said low, half hesitating still. "I'll give you an order to sell out at once, and I'll fill up this application ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... the long, dark corridors of Whitehall, was known to no one save those two. For Elizabeth had a strong, masculine soul; she needed no confidant to share her secrets; and Thomas Seymour had feared even, like the immortal hair-dresser of King Midas, to dig a hole and utter his secret therein; for he knew very well that, if the reed grew up and repeated his words, he might, for these words, lay his head ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... from the scenes of his exploits, being 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 war after ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... blazed, and people complimented profusely (criticizing sotto voce), and envied openly; and when I bowed myself out at last, I felt like Sir Peter Teazle on quitting Lady Sneerwell's: 'I leave my character behind me.' Mamma was charmed with me, and Mr. Silas Midas looked proud possession, as if he had in his vest pocket a bill of sale to every pound of my white flesh,—and Mr. Erle Palma smiled as benignly as some cast-iron statue of Pluto, freshly painted white, and glistening ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... 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 ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... The main crux of this passage is "fit quantity of | | syllables." Quantity in such a context suggests syllabic | | length; and one recalls the sonnet to Lawes— | | | | not to scan | | With Midas' ears, committing short and long. | | | | But, on the other hand, Mr. Robert Bridges has made it | | almost if not quite certain that Milton counted syllables, | | and therefore the phrase would ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... to the gallows, "There," he said, "but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford". When the rich man, entering his club, sees some wretched tatterdemalion, slouching on the pavement, there, he may say, goes Sir Gorgius Midas, but for—what? I am here and he there, he may say, because I was the son of a successful stock-jobber, and he the son of some deserted mother at the workhouse. That is the cause, but is it a reason? Suppose, as is likely ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the sunset peaks, And cities on the sea behold Whose walls are glass, whose gates are gold, Whose turrets, risen in an hour, Dazzle between the sun and shower, Whose sole inhabitants are kings Six cubits high with gryphon's wings And beard and mien more glorious Than Midas or Assaracus; Though priests in many a hill-top fane Lift anguished hands—and lift in vain— Toward the sun's shaft dancing through The bright roof's square of wind-swept blue; Though 'cross the stars nightly arise ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... joined by new forces. The city of Celaenae; the plain of Caystrus, where the soldiers demand their arrears of pay, which Cyrus discharges with money received from the queen of Cilicia. The town of Thymbrium; the fountain of Midas. Cyrus enters Cilicia, and is met at Tarsus by Syennesis, the king of ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... me no Midas; he's a wit; he understands eating and drinking well: Poeta coquus, the heathen philosopher could tell ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... wise, 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' ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley |
