"Tantalus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... revenues, and, among her other accomplishments, my aunt is a 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 ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... as to present the full face to the beholder (Fig. 43). But we shall better understand our subject if I recount as concisely as possible the story of Niobe, which, as you know, is a Grecian myth. Niobe was the daughter of Tantalus, and was born on Mount Sipylus. When a child Niobe played with Lato, or Latona, who afterward married the great god Jupiter, or Zeus. Niobe became the wife of Amphion, and had a very happy life; she was the mother of seven sons and seven daughters, and all ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... phone bell rang, and my state of mind became agonizing. It was maddening to think that someone, a friend, was virtually within reach of me, yet actually as far removed as if an ocean divided us! I tasted the hellish torments of Tantalus. I cursed fate, heaven, everything; I prayed; I sank into bottomless depths of despair and rose to dizzy pinnacles of hope, when a footstep sounded on the landing and a thousand wild possibilities, vague possibilities of rescue, poured into ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... he locked up 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 ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... another with amazing dexterity and smoked them with half a dozen Titanic breaths. His was a single-track mind. He loved the girl, and he bore the sign of his love on his face. He wanted her desperately; it was a hunger like that of Tantalus, too keen to be ever satisfied. Yet, still more than he looked at the girl, he, also, stared into the distance. He, also, ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... of the rock, the Tantalus of the fable, man, plunged in this world of woe with his lips thirsty for happiness, stretches out his hand to pluck the bitter Dead-Sea fruits of this earth. With his profound instincts of the Infinite, his craving ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Tantalus, as the old Greek fable tells us, was King of Lydia. Being invited by Jupiter to his table, he heard secrets which he afterwards divulged. To divulge a secret is to make it vulgar, or ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... places a laurel wreath on the brow of a genius she hitches a plough to his shoulders and holds a Tantalus cup ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... Resentment gorged his throat. It was unfair—so damned unfair. He had no business coming here. He should have stayed on Beta or at least on a human world where he would never have met Copper. He loved her, but he couldn't have her. It was Tantalus and Sisyphus rolled into one unsightly package and fastened to his soul. With a muttered curse he rose to his feet, and as he did he stopped—frozen—staring at Copper as though he had never ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... meal in the 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, a chamois ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... flourishing state to which, as they alleged, they had all belonged long ago on the slopes of Mount Sipylos, between the valley of the Hermos and the Gulf of Smyrna. The traditional capital of this kingdom was Magnesia, the most ancient of cities, the residence of Tantalus, the father of Niobe and the Pelopidae. The Leleges rise up before us from many points at the same time, but always connected with the most ancient memories of Greece and Asia. The majority of the strongholds on the Trojan coast belonged to them—such as Antandros and Gargara—and Pedasos on the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... be taken not to confound Attalus with Tantalus,—a blunder which, as Villani observes, [Footnote: Cron. Lib. I. c. vii.] is often committed by ignorant chroniclers. But Tantalus, as we all very well know, was the son of Jupiter, and grandson of Saturn. Now we are quite sure that Noah never married a daughter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... there was a whisky decanter, taken from the tantalus-stand on the sideboard, and one glass. That, by the by," I added, "looked as though only ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... the classical people had a gloomy Calvinism of their own time. True, as early as Homer, we hear of the shadowy existence of the souls, and of the torments endured by the notably wicked; by impious ghosts, or tyrannical, like Sisyphus and Tantalus. But when we read the opening books of the "Republic," we find the educated friends of Socrates treating these terrors as old-wives' fables. They have heard, they say, that such notions circulate among the people, but they seem never for a moment to have themselves ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... will become quite fluent on the subject, for there is nothing that should cause a fat burgher, accustomed to good living, to open his heart more than a total lack of the victuals which he can see and smell. Did you ever hear the story of an ancient gentleman called Tantalus? These old fables have a wonderful way of adapting themselves to the needs and circumstances of ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the Frenchmen were deprived of their usual amusement of admiring the ladies, and being admired in return, not a boat having made its appearance. They often remarked, with the characteristic vivacity of their nation, that they were placed in the situation of Tantalus,—so many beauties in view, without the ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... 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 ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... your keeper pineth, Yet like to Tantalus doth see his food. Skip you and leap, no bright Apollo shineth, Whilst I bewail my sorrows in yon wood, Where woeful Philomela doth record, And sings with notes of sad and dire lament The tragedy wrought by her sisters' lord; I'll bear a ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... a deep channel through rocky mountains, destitute of brooks or springs. Its banks were so high and precipitous, that there was rarely any place where the travellers could get down to drink of its waters. Frequently they suffered for miles the torments of Tantalus; water continually within sight, yet fevered with the most parching thirst. Here and there they met with rainwater collected in the hollows of the rocks, but more than once they were reduced to the utmost extremity; and some of the men had recourse ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... 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 of Pelops. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... 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 face, signs of the fineness ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... perpendicular rocks sending back the heat till the fort felt like an oven, and the poor fellows lying wounded under the doctor's care suffered terribly, panting in the great heat as they did, feeling the pangs of Tantalus, for there, always glittering before their eyes in the pure air, were the mountain-peaks draped in fold upon fold of the ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... box to the negro, only there is no hope at the bottom. The wretchedness of his fate is not a little increased by being a constant witness of the unbounded freedom enjoyed by others: the slave's labor must necessarily be like the labor of Sisiphus; and here the torments of Tantalus are added. ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... often extinguishes passion. This woman was his, and Eugene recognized that not until then had he loved her; perhaps love is only gratitude for pleasure. This woman, vile or sublime, he adored for the pleasure she had brought as her dower; and Delphine loved Rastignac as Tantalus would have loved some angel who had satisfied his hunger and quenched the burning thirst ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... his arm round Jane as she swayed uncertainly. He half carried her into the library, and laid her on the leather couch. From a tantalus on the table he poured out a few drops of brandy, and forced her to drink them. With a sigh she sat up, her ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... Tantalus' gold is all such Lamias hold; 'tis Devil's dice such Mammon vassals throw; A sordid fever fires each fool-believer in the gross glitter, the unholy glow. Vile is your Dagon! Circe's venomed flagon embruted less than ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... passage of Pindar's first ode, which gives us the key to the right interpretation of the power of sculpture in Greece. You remember that I told you, in my Sixth Introductory Lecture (Sec. 151), that the mythic accounts of Greek sculpture begin in the legends of the family of Tantalus; and especially in the most grotesque legend of them all, the inlaying of the ivory shoulder of Pelops. At that story Pindar pauses,—not, indeed, without admiration, nor alleging any impossibility in the circumstances themselves, but doubting the careless hunger of Demeter,—and ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... rich to boot, might have exhibited himself in some traveling booth, for he was an hermaphrodite; do you understand? an hermaphrodite. And his whole life was one of long, incessant torture, of physical and moral suffering, which was more maddening than that which Tantalus endured on the banks of the river Acheron. He had nearly everything of the woman about him; he was a ridiculous caricature of our sex, with his shrill voice, his large hips, his bust concealed by a loose, wide coat, his cheeks, his chin, and upper lip without a vestige of hair, and he ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Alfred, whose 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
... what seemed the bitterest memories of all. It was the thought of that first too fragile happiness which slowly but implacably merged into discontent, still hidden and tacit, but none the less evident. That interregnum of peace had been a Tantalus-like taste of a draught which he all along knew was to be denied him. Yet, point by point, he recalled their first quiet and hopeful weeks in England, when their old ways of life seemed as far away as the America they had left behind, when they still had unbounded faith in themselves and in the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... delighted to expend on their virginal sweethearts whether in public or in private. He cannot help thinking, however, that the man who lavishes kisses and caresses on a woman whose virginity he retains is putting himself somewhat in the position of Tantalus. But this new refinement of tender chastity, which came as a delicious discovery to the early Christians who had resolutely thrust away the licentiousness of the pagan world, was deeply rooted, as we discover from the frequency with which the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Tantalus lay far out on a spiral arm, well away from the main stream of traffic that flowed through the galaxy. It was a fair planet boasting an equable climate, at least in the tropic zone. But as yet the population ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... cook has managed, by that occult secret of her own, to get the locked tantalus open and it isn't consequently convenient or possible to have any dinner at home, you remain calm, and break it to your lord on the telephone, for can he not feast royally—yet economically—at the club? And when you are ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... why That ancient story of Prometheus chain'd? The vulture—the inexhaustible repast Drawn from his vitals? Say what meant the woes By Tantalus entail'd upon his race, And the dark sorrows of the line of Thebes? Fictions in form, but in their substance truths— Tremendous truths!—familiar to the men Of long past times; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... 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. Diodorus Siculus tells us that he was the son of Teutamus, who, having ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... shawl? I feel as if I should die if I don't get there," for the hour was late, and the time for closing the registry lists was near at hand. To have lost this opportunity would have placed her in the position of a second Tantalus, the cup withdrawn just as it touched her lips. But she was in time, and the important act of registering accomplished, she had but to possess her soul in patience until the following Tuesday. Who shall say how long the two intervening ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... they must," said Mr. Ratler. "Lord de Terrier wants nothing better, but it is rather hard upon poor Daubeny. I never saw such an unfortunate old Tantalus." ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... '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 ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... and along the western shores of the N'yanza, are so notoriously great that it is worthy of serious attention. My reluctance to return may be easier imagined than described. I felt as much tantalised as the unhappy Tantalus must have been when unsuccessful in his bobbings for cherries in the cherry-orchard, and as much grieved as any mother would be at losing her first-born, and resolved and planned forthwith to do everything that lay in my power ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... their brave men, whom they call heroes and demi-gods; and to the souls of the wicked, the region of the ungodly, in Hades, where their fables relate that certain persons, such as Sisyphus, and Tantalus, and Ixion, and Tityus, are punished; which is built on this first supposition, that souls are immortal; and thence are those exhortations to virtue and dehortations from wickedness collected; whereby good men are bettered in the conduct of ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... the great antiquity of Troy, proclaimed to be the mother of Rome; the love of home of the Lydians; the first names and settlements of the Tyrrhenians; the Sardinians and Etrurians being of the same descent; the divine origin of Tantalus and Theseus; and the Amazons being the founders of some of the cities in Asia (IV. 55 ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... draw forth at the faucet, so much shall I tun in at the bung. Thus shall the barrel remain inexhaustible; it hath a lively spring and perpetual current. Such was the beverage contained within the cup of Tantalus, which was figuratively represented amongst the Brachman sages. Such was in Iberia the mountain of salt so highly written of by Cato. Such was the branch of gold consecrated to the subterranean goddess, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... illustrious blood of Douglas, but which in his veins is sullied with illegitimacy. Paint him the ruthless, the daring, the ambitious—so nigh greatness, yet debarred from it; so near to wealth, yet excluded from possessing it; a political Tantalus, ready to do or dare anything to terminate his necessities and assert ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... many most beautiful engravings on wood and on copper; on wood, after Tiziano, many landscapes, a Nativity of Christ, a S. Jerome, and a S. Francis; and on copper the Tantalus, the Adonis, and many other plates, which have been engraved by Giulio Bonasone of Bologna, together with some others by Raffaello, by Giulio Romano, by Parmigiano, and by all the other masters whose drawings he has ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... lover, went in quest of her. He took with him his lyre, and played such exquisite music that all hell was amazed. Ixion forgot his labors at the wheel, the daughters of Danaus ceased from their hopeless task, Tantalus forgot his thirst, even Pluto smiled, and, for the first time in the history of hell, the eyes of the Furies were wet with tears. As it was with the lyre of Orpheus, so it is to-day with the great harmonies of Science, which are rescuing from the prisons of superstition the torn and bleeding ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... a tantalus containing brandy and whisky on the sea-chest. It is of no importance to us, however, since the decanters were full, and it had ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not being able to afford the expense attendant on a longer residence. Thus it has been with me through life. Fortune has again and again thrown the means of success in my way, but they have always been like the waters of Tantalus—alluring but to escape from my grasp the moment I approached ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... goodly Agamemnon bosts, 545 The glorie of the stock of Tantalus, And famous light of all the Greekish hosts; Under whose conduct most victorious, The Dorick flames consum'd the Iliack posts. Ah! but the Greekes themselves, more dolorous, 550 To thee, O Troy, paid penaunce for ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... a minute," cried the girl; and she ran off, leaving the young sailor in the position of that mythical gentleman Tantalus, ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... blunt soldier who had never before been kept at the distance of Tantalus by an Indian girl who took his gifts. On her brown neck a silver necklace of his shone richly, and in her braided hair corals of the sea gleamed red. While others had fled to the altars for prayers,—and sprinkled sacred ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the drama belongs to that heroic house whose tragic history was among the most terrible and the most familiar to a Greek audience. Tantalus, the founder of the family, for some offence against the gods, was suffering in Hades the punishment which is christened by his name. His son Pelops was stained with the blood of Myrtilus. Of the two sons of the next generation, Thyestes seduced the wife of his brother Atreus; ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... momentous calmly hast thou spoken. Him nam'st thou ancestor whom all the world Knows as a sometime favorite of the gods? Is it that Tantalus, whom Jove himself Drew to his council and his social board? On whose experienc'd words, with wisdom fraught, As on the language of an ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... his comrade had spent $5,000, and traveled half way around the world for those sheep, that is in brief the story of how the cup of Tantalus was given them by the Russians, actually at their goal! As spoil-sports, those Russian officers were the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... contemplation, prospection[obs3], lookout; prospect, perspective, horizon, vista; destiny &c. 152. suspense, waiting, abeyance; curiosity &c. 455; anxious expectation, ardent expectation, eager expectation, breathless expectation, sanguine expectation; torment of Tantalus. hope &c. 858; trust &c. (belief) 484; auspices &c. (prediction) 511; assurance, confidence, presumption, reliance. V. expect; look for, look out for, look forward to; hope for; anticipate; have in prospect, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... false, false as those feastings wild Of Tantalus, and gods that tare a child. This land of murderers to its gods hath given Its own lust. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... death—which, endured through long clinging years, would be a burden to itself, and a joy to no one. Oh, how bitter! Wherefore must the craving after happiness, after enjoyment, burn like an eternal thirst in the human soul, if the assuaging fountain, Tantalus like——? ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... shall not be serv'd like Tantalus any more: he was doom'd to behold; and, beholding, to wish and languish for the tempting draught, in vain: but a better doom awaits the happy Harriet;—what she desires is not thus interdicted, but will soon ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... torment 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 when ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... antiquity, the shadows whereof are in the Poets, in the description of torments and pains, next unto the crime of rebellion, which was the giants offence, doth detest the crime of futility, as in Sisyphus and Tantalus. But this was meant of particulars. Nevertheless, even unto the general rules and discourses of policy and government, [it extends; for even here] there is due a reverent handling.' And after having ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... votes and so prevent the passage of the measure over his veto. But the "toll-gate question" remained for several years to perplex statesmen and cause long debates, while Congress made appropriations directly for the repair of the Cumberland Road. Monroe had made public improvements the fruit of Tantalus to the hungry people by suggesting in his veto message that he would have no objection to such enterprises being undertaken by the National Government provided an amendment were added to the Constitution permitting such action. It was ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... 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
... by stokkes and by stones, And by the goddes that in hevene dwelle, 590 Or elles were him levere, soule and bones, With Pluto king as depe been in helle As Tantalus!' What sholde I more telle? Whan al was wel, he roos and took his leve, And she to souper com, ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... 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 him from the ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... drew an armchair for me to the fire, and we all three sat down to chat in the cosiness of the sombre little book-lined den. Bain, the old butler, who had known me almost since childhood, placed the tantalus, a syphon and glasses near my elbow, and at Phrida's invitation I poured myself out a drink and lit ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... drawing-room as an artist puts his signature to a completed masterpiece, so that when you look around upon the furniture, the silver, the cut glass, the clocks, the engagement tablets, and the tantalus stands, the offerings of the rich whose names you have long ago forgotten, then you will confess to yourself in a burst of thankfulness to your fairy godmother that all this would never have been yours if it had not been ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... people 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 seemed to know what ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... concerned, however, the effort was in vain; for the moment that sleep stole upon my exhausted frame visions of lakes and springs, murmuring brooks and sparkling fountains of cool, delicious, fresh water arose before me, and I suffered all the agonies of the mythical Tantalus. ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... lived long enough to know that an interest by a woman in a man—especially a man beyond the beaten track of her observation—did not necessarily mean that she might marry him if he asked her. And yet—oh, Tantalus! here she was beside him, for one afternoon again his very own, their two souls ringing with the harmony of whirling worlds in sunlit space. He sought refuge in thin thought; he strove, in oblivion, to drain ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sad and beautiful story of Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, and wife of Amphion, king of Thebes, we have another instance of the severe punishments meted out by Apollo to those who in any way incurred his displeasure. Niobe was the proud mother of seven sons and seven daughters, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... beheld in vain: Like Tantalus, who in the realms below Sees blushing fruits, which to increase his pain, When he attempts to eat, his taste forego. O Venus! give me more, or let me drink Of Lethe's ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... decided on some exquisite method of punishing me. Something like the punishment they gave Tantalus when he—" ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... disporting themselves in its pellucid wave; some making the valley vocal with their melodious warblings, and others filling it with harsh, stridulous cries. Burning with thirst, and faint from fatigue, he will fix his gaze on the glistening water, to be tortured as Tantalus, and descry the cool shade, without being able to rest his ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... appetition[obs3], appetence[obs3], appetency[obs3]; sharp appetite, keenness, hunger, stomach, twist; thirst, thirstiness; drouth, mouthwatering; itch, itching; prurience, cacoethes[Lat], cupidity, lust, concupiscence. edge of appetite, edge of hunger; torment of Tantalus; sweet tooth, lickerish tooth[obs3]; itching palm; longing eye, wistful eye, sheep's eye. [excessive desire for money] greed &c. 817a. voracity &c. (gluttony) 957. passion, rage, furore[obs3], mania, manie|; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... not that I feel right to indulge in the despondency which, in spite of all reason to the contrary, creeps over me when I think of returning. I know the feelings of Tantalus perfectly. All my prospects in regard to the Telegraph are bright and encouraging, and so they have been for months, and they still continue to be so; but the sober now is that I am expending and not acquiring; it has, as yet, been all outgo and no income. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... his lyre he played. Tantalus—who, for his crimes, had been condemned to stand up to his neck in water and yet never be able to assuage his thirst—Tantalus heard, and for a while did not strive to put his lips toward the water that ever flowed away from him; Sisyphus—who ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... he said, the classic name of Ariadne suggesting the idea that the pseudonym of Tantalus might well be applied ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... one?" he asked, looking at her with the wistful eyes of Tantalus gazing at the luscious fruits which the wrathful winds wafted ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... Safe, easy, and untroubled stores produce; He who scorns these, and needs will drink at Nile, Must run the danger of the crocodile; And of the rapid stream itself which may, At unawares bear him perhaps away. In a full flood Tantalus stands, his skin Washed o'er in vain, for ever dry within; He catches at the stream with greedy lips, From his touched mouth the wanton torment slips. You laugh now, and expand your careful brow: 'Tis finely said, but what's ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... struggle? Didst thou not tell me that even by pouring wine before the threshold, and calling on the name of some Grecian deity, thou didst fear thou wert incurring penalties worse than those of Tantalus, an eternity of tortures more terrible than those of the Tartarian fields? Didst thou not tell me this? I wondered, I could not comprehend; nor, by Hercules! can I now: but I was thy son, and my sole task was to compassionate ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... brother Tank. I suppose his real name is Thaddeus, or Tantalus, or something like it; I never knew, and I never liked him well enough to ask. Tank was a black-eyed little runt whom none of the boys liked, a grasping cuss, younger than Jim, and as selfish as ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... that, surrounded by people who were eating, suffocated by the fragrant odor of the viands, the Count and Countess de Breville and Monsieur and Madame Carre-Lamadon suffered the agonies of that torture which has ever been associated with the name of Tantalus. Suddenly the young wife of the cotton manufacturer gave a deep sigh. Every head turned towards her; she was as white as the snow outside, her eyes closed, her head fell forward—she had fainted. Her husband, distraught with fear, implored assistance of the whole company. All lost ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the piteous tale I've heard men tell Of Tantalus' doomed child, Chained upon Siphylus' high rocky fell, That clung like ivy wild, Drenched by the pelting rain and whirling snow, Left there to pine, While on her frozen breast the tears aye flow— Her fate ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... a seven-leagued-boot-power of travel, could have anticipated the last great exploit of our generals, whose energies thus far, have been devoted to the achieving of a 'masterly inactivity.' The 'forward movement' has receded and receded, like the cup of Tantalus, but the backward movement came suddenly upon us, like a ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... him all that elder lovers know; And now the same gan so to scorch and glow, As in plain terms, yet cunningly, he crave 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, sav'd 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 and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... Nay, to speak plainer, he sets up a stony semblance of a man, void of all sense and common feeling of humanity. And much good to them with this wise man of theirs; let them enjoy him to themselves, love him without competitors, and live with him in Plato's commonwealth, the country of ideas, or Tantalus' orchards. For who would not shun and startle at such a man, as at some unnatural accident or spirit? A man dead to all sense of nature and common affections, and no more moved with love or pity than if he were ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... turned as it were, kingfisher, swooping about like the kite. There were two species of Laridae, neither of which I had seen before, several small Tringae, the very long red shanked bird, Hematopus? the metallic Tantalus, common, jack-snipe, and hosts of Budytes, which were busily employed flying and flitting about after insects. Edolius occurs at Kooner as well as here. The number of birds is small certainly, although the trees, etc. are now in full leaf: no new birds seem to have come in, except the dove, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... rather as the reflection of human passions than as moral retributions by the gods. Thus, Tan'talus, placed up to his chin in water, which ever flowed away from his lips, was tormented with unquenchable thirst, while the fruits hanging around him constantly eluded his grasp. The story of Tantalus is well told by ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... by the assembly of people not of his class, and the unwonted experience of being waited upon by a man with a long shirt-front. He grew red; he made the clumsiest and most futile efforts to transport the meat to his plate; food was there before him, but, like a very Tantalus, he was forbidden to enjoy it. Observing with all discretion, I at length saw him pull out his pocket handkerchief, spread it on the table, and, with a sudden effort, fork the meat off the dish into this receptacle. The waiter, aware by this time ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... endeavour to 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 ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... little mills for the amusement of Menie while she was a child. One draught of it would have been worth all the diamonds of the East, which of late he had worshipped with such devotion; but that draught was denied to him as to Tantalus. ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... scatter fire, Like Jason, when he sought the fleece of gold, Or change from man to beast three years entire, As King Nebuchadnezzar did of old; Or else have times as shameful and as bad As Trojan folk for ravished Helen had; Or gulfed with Proserpine and Tantalus Let hell's deep fen devour him dolorous, With worse to bear than Job's worst sufferance, Bound in his prison-maze with Daedalus, Who could wish evil ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 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 ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... unbroken, and she had kept her oath of uncompromising enmity with fearful perseverance. Petitions, expostulations, prayers, threats, had been all in vain to procure one smile, one word, one glance of compliance or forgiveness. And the fate of Dr. Grimshaw, with his unwon bride, was like that of Tantalus. And now the inconceivable tortures of jealousy were about to be added to his other torments, for this man now sitting by his side, and basking in the sunshine of her smiles, was the all-praised Adonis who had won her ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... hurrying mother to her distant goal. The groaning trees, tossed by the tempest, flung off showers of half-frozen flakes, that falling on her flaming cheeks failed to cool the fever of her suspense, while the yielding snow beneath her feet became a tantalus path, delaying her advance, and seeming to make more ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... still he was insatiate and unappeased. Her husband's suspicions meanwhile had been aroused. She spent so much money in occult ways that he had been impelled to ask her father what he thought L—— was doing with so much money. Fettered thus, with the torments both of Prometheus and Tantalus—the vulture gnawing at her vitals, and the lost joys mocking her out of reach—she had at last in sheer desperation been driven to request her father to procure her the assistance of a ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... fine array" William Blake The Flight of Love Percy Bysshe Shelley "Farewell! If ever Fondest Prayer" George Gordon Byron Porphyria's Lover Robert Browning Modern Beauty Arthur Symons La Belle Dame Sans Merci John Keats Tantalus—Texas Joaquin Miller Enchainment Arthur O'Shaughnessy Auld Robin Gray Anne Barnard Lost Light Elizabeth Akers A Sigh Harriet Prescott Spofford Hereafter Harriet Prescott Spofford Endymion Oscar Wilde "Love is a Terrible Thing" Grace Fallow ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... beautify another's monument. Once, I remember, a Western capitalist was persuaded to make a great gift to McGraw. He made it with conditions, and for a while our hopes blazed high and with exceeding fury. The collegiate Gothic quadrangles were within our reach, as near to us as the grapes to Tantalus. A half-million dollars was promised us if we raised a like sum within a year. Doctor Todd tried to effect a compromise by accepting two hundred thousand dollars outright, but the philanthropist did not believe in making beggars of institutions by surfeiting them with ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... is often brought out in their detachment reports. These reports reveal not only men of ability and insight, but throw light on the kind of people these Police in the north had to guide. Sergeant Frank Thorne, for instance, was in charge at a place called Tantalus. The man who gave that name to the elusive mining prospects of the region had a sense of humour and the fitness of things. Thorne says, "Hundreds of people landed at Tantalus en route to the new White Horse diggings. Most of these people had been misinformed as to ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... go into further details. The conversation had assumed proportions which would have bored Prometheus on his rock, which would have driven Tantalus to distraction, and which would have impelled Ixion to seek relaxation in the simple but instructive dialogues of Herr Ollendorff, rather than submit to the greater evil of listening to our talk. We had sat at table for ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... is y^is of Fate & y^e alter'd gods! That I, who mighte nott gett to see Her when to See was to Hope, muste nowe daylie have Her in my Sighte, stucke lyke a fayre Apple under olde Tantalus his Nose.—Goinge downe to y^e Hotell to-day, for to gett me some Tobackoe, was made aware y^t y^e Ffrench familie had hyred one of y^e Cottages round-abouts.—'Tis a goodlie Dwellinge Without—Woude I coude speake with as much ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... you-bless your eyes! Our country is now suffering the direst of calamities, compared with which the punishment of Tarantulus" (we suppose our correspondent meant Tantalus) "was nice, and the agony of a dyspeptic ostrich in a junk shop is a condition to be coveted. We are in the midst of plenty, but we can't get anything that seems to suit. The supply of old man is practically ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... This is the twentieth year of sodden waiting. Fighting by land and sea and soldier's work, As hot as heart could wish,—boy generals,— Wars on all hands, in Holland, France, and Spain, With military honors falling thick;— And I, a Tantalus set in a lake of thirst, Up to my neck in battles all about, Without the power ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... through Italy; and shall, therefore, leaving my companions in Switzerland, take a servant to accompany me, and return hither, and hence to Rome for the autumn, perhaps the winter. I should always suffer the pain of Tantalus thinking of Rome, if I could not see it more thoroughly than I have as yet even begun to; for it was all outside the two months, just finding out where objects were. I had only just begun to know them, when I was obliged to ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... quiet, not considering themselves a match for the enemy. Meanwhile the Athenians landed, and instantly advanced with all their forces and took Thyrea. The town they burnt, pillaging what was in it; the Aeginetans who were not slain in action they took with them to Athens, with Tantalus, son of Patrocles, their Lacedaemonian commander, who had been wounded and taken prisoner. They also took with them a few men from Cythera whom they thought it safest to remove. These the Athenians determined ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... at the shaft that reached, vertical and sheer, high, high over their heads. And a curse like that of Tantalus was theirs. For, far at the top, slanting in through some off-shooting passage, there was sunlight. It was unmistakable in its ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... Tantalus, of Prometheus, or of Sisyphus are but the types of what his shall be. Let him try to hang, drown, stab himself—his ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... 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, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... fifteenth the name of Buonaparte was officially struck from the list of general officers on duty, "in view of his refusal to proceed to the post assigned him." It really appeared as if the name of Napoleon might almost have been substituted for that of Tantalus in the fable. But it was the irony of fate that on this very day the subcommittee on foreign affairs submitted to the full meeting a proposition to send the man who was now a disgraced culprit in great state and with a full suite to take service at Constantinople ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of very pale and anxious faces (I really must except my own, for my face never looked anxious till I thought of marrying, or pale till I took to scribbling), the possessors of which were experiencing a little the torment of Tantalus. The palisades, those graves of sand, turned into a rich compost by the ever-recurring burial, were directly under the windows, and the land-breeze came over them, chill and dank, in palpable currents, through the jalousies, into the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... school-girl's examination paper:—"Question. What do you know of Tantalus? Answer: Tantalus suffered from continual hunger and thirst ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... of his labour produced little effect upon the reddleman. He had stood in the shoes of Tantalus, and seemed to look upon a certain mass of disappointment as the natural preface to all realizations, without which preface they would give cause ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... out at sea were a raging impatience to Paul, in which he learnt to understand all the torments of Tantalus. To know and feel her near, and yet not to be allowed to get to her! It ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... nails and tearing one's hair and then she'd laugh and kiss her hand and run away with my sister into her bedroom. And they'd both laugh. She understood the value of being a woman, did Violet. And she didn't let herself go cheap—I used to get the key of the tantalus and cart a whole decanter of whisky to bed to get over it. If she'd just have let ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... want to know precisely the state I am in, read the account of the Myth of Tantalus, beginning at 20—p. 24 and going ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... the fates would have it, came lumbering down one of those monster timber rafts; and it was a full half hour before Stangrave could get across, having suffered all the while the torments of Tantalus, as he watched the boat sweep round to the pier, and discharge its freight, to be scattered whither he knew not. At last he got across, and went in chase to the nearest hotel: but they were not there; thence to the next, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... pal!" he thought regretfully. The floating timbers became well-nigh intolerable; he kept asking himself if he could swim to land, but, knowing his weakness from long fasting, he curbed his impatience. His eyes grew tired with staring at the longed-for spot; he suffered the torments of Tantalus, and finally could endure them no longer. So making his clothes into a bundle, he tied them around his neck ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... 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 me, yea or no. If she say no, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... TANTALUS, king of Phrygia, was the son of Jupiter and Plota. Whether it was for this cause, the violation of hospitality, or for his pride, his boasting, his want of secrecy, his insatiable covetousness, his ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... days Don Gregorio and Lantanas have been enduring agony great as ever tortured Tantalus. It has made fearful inroad on their strength—on their frames. Both are reduced almost to skeletons; cheekbones protruding, eyes sunken in their sockets. Were the cords that confine them suddenly taken off, they would sink ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... her as a mystery; as Tantalus thirsting for the fruit which hangs ever beyond the reach, I know her; as a woman who is not what she seems, always masked, with or without the cambric. Know her?" with ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... blotter, a rack for telegram forms and stationery, and a wastepaper basket, standing out in the hall near the sideboard, and a lady's worktable, with two chairs at it, towards the other side of the lounge. The writing table has also two chairs at it. On the sideboard there is a tantalus, liqueur bottles, a syphon, a glass jug of lemonade, tumblers, and every convenience for casual drinking. Also a plate of sponge cakes, and a highly ornate punchbowl in the same style as the keramic display in the pavilion. Wicker chairs and little bamboo tables with ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... this torment, which is that of Tantalus. This is my last night on earth. After one final effort, our Mother shall have her child again—the Adriatic ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... universal history, then, to be regarded as unattainable? Are all the grandest and most interesting problems which offer themselves to the geological student essentially insoluble? Is he in the position of a scientific Tantalus—doomed always to thirst for a knowledge which he cannot obtain? The reverse is to be hoped; nay, it may not be impossible to indicate the source whence help ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... beseech you, are you afraid of the three-headed Cerberus in the shades below, and the roaring waves of Cocytus, and the passage over Acheron, and Tantalus expiring with thirst, while the water touches his chin; ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... no, I've many a prologue yet to say, To which he can't tack on his bottle of oil. Pelops, the son of Tantalus, while driving ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... times hopeless. His suffering, his despair, his resignation and final triumph are embodied in it. It is a subtle analysis of some of the deep problems of life. The history of his own mental state is depicted here. If we consider his malady in its bearing on his life, we have the story of Tantalus told again. Here was a man whose thoughts translated themselves into splendid tone-pictures which the orchestra was to portray. With the mental equipment to create a new era in his art, the medium by which he could apprehend his works ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... we should obtain shelter for the night. Our first day's dinner was some cold meat and bread, eaten in a wood, our horse eating his oats by our side; and we made drinking-cups, in Indian fashion, of birch-tree bark—cups of Tantalus, properly speaking, for very little of the water reached our lips. While engaged in drawing some from a stream, the branch on which I leaned gave way, and I fell into the water, a mishap which amused my companions so much that they could not ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird |
