"Croesus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to Mr. Rigby. This peer was a noble Croesus, acquainted with all the gradations of life; a voluptuary who could be a Spartan; clear-sighted, unprejudiced, sagacious; the best judge in the world of a horse or a man; he was the universal referee; a quarrel about a bet or a mistress was solved by him in a moment, and in a manner which satisfied ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... frantic excitement, and forgetful of everybody present) has to sing his praise to Venus, and I saw Tichatschek moving towards Elizabeth and addressing his passionate outburst to her, I thought of Schroder-Devrient's warning in very much the same way as Croesus must have thought when he cried, 'O Solon! Solon!' at the funeral pyre. In spite of the musical excellence of Tichatschek, the enormous life and melodic charm of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... with our love—there is a tenfold sweetness in the fruit we reap. And when fate compels us to leave our mountains we are pursued by restlessness. We know no peace, no home elsewhere. We do assume the airs of Victor Hugo's cretin when we are placed face to face with the riches of Croesus or ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... against Astyages and the fall of the Median empire—The early years of the reign of Nabonidus: revolutions in Tyre, the taking of Harran—The end of the reign of Alyattes, Lydian art and its earliest coinage—Croesus, his relations with continental Greece, his conquests, his alliances with Babylon and Egypt—The war between Lydia and Persia: the defeat of the Lydians, the taking of Sardes, the death of Croesus and subsequent legends relating to it—The submission of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... is a very important matter this eating, a man's fortune depends on his dinner. I should have been as rich as Croesus if I could only have eaten what I liked all my time; I am sure I should, now I come ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... much again at the theatre, without counting extras. Camusot will pay for my dresses as before. He is fond of me! We can live like Croesus on ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... early seventies. E'en as I write, Memory, with tender hand, pushes back the sombre curtain, and I see them now—that charmed circle; the poet with the brow of Jove and Minerva's lips; the rugged warrior at his side, with the dignity of Mars himself; perhaps some Croesus with his gold, drawn by the spell of Wisdom's enchantment into the magic circle; and this your humble disciple of Thucydides, sitting spellbound under the drippings of the sacred font, getting the material for these pages. That ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... without any sense of its personality, as the French use the word Barnum—for our crude young nation has the distinction of adding a verb to the French language, the verb to barnum—it is expressed in the well-known name Croesus. This is a standard—impossible to be reached perhaps, but a standard. If one may say so, the country is sown with seeds of Croesus, and the crop is forward and promising. The interest to us now in the observation of this phase of modern ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... attracting light bodies. Thales of Miletus, wisest of the Seven Sages, and father of Greek philosophy, explained this curious effect by the presence of a "soul" in the amber, whatever he meant by that. Thales flourished 600 years before the Christian era, while Croesus reigned in Lydia, and Cyrus the Great, in Persia, when the renowned Solon gave his laws to Athens, and Necos, King of Egypt, made war on Josiah, King of Judah, and after defeating him at Megiddo, dedicated the ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... Maria Child's reply to her husband when he wished he was as rich as Croesus: "At any rate, you are King of Lydia;" and Lucretia Mott's humorous comment when she entered a room where her husband and his brother Richard were sitting, both of them remarkable for their taciturnity and reticence: "I thought you must both ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... used in the East or garcon in French. If Silius knew the actual appellation assigned to the slave when bought and was disposed to be kindly, he accosted him by it, calling him "Syrian," or "Thracian," or "Croesus," or by his proper Greek or Egyptian name. The slave, unlike the Roman citizen, owned but one name, and the shorter ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... said I, "the game is up, and the whole scheme exploded. I would as soon undertake to evoke the ghost of Croesus." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... first Nye was paid the princely stipend of $5 a week for these letters. This was raised to $10, and when Field informed Nye that he was to receive $15 per letter, the latter promptly packed his grip and took the first train for Denver, to see what sort of a newspaper Croesus presided over the order-blank of the Tribune. When he appeared before Field he was whiskered like a western farmer and his head had not pushed its way through a thick growth of hair. He was altogether a different looking ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... had swung down behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the trees that bordered the Park wall had begun to trace their shadows on the marble fronts of the mansions across the way when Rose suddenly wheeled the gig containing Master Croesus and ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... Good teeth, very white. Square chin. Lovely smile that seemed to light up the room for everybody within hearing. Nose ideal. Mouth same. Voice aristocratic and reverberating with education. Age about thirty or thirty one. Rich as Croesus. Costume resembling the picture in the English novel the woman forgot and left here last summer. Well turned legs. Would ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... citadel of Meles, the palace fortress of the kings and the satraps. A frowning castle it was without, within not the golden-tiled palaces of Ecbatana and Susa boasted greater magnificence and luxury than this one-time dwelling of Croesus. The ceilings of the wide banqueting halls rose on pillars of emerald Egyptian malachite. The walls were cased with onyx. Winged bulls that might have graced Nineveh guarded the portals. The lions upbearing the throne in the hall ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... streets, and public edifices, but the progress which has been made clearly proves that the inhabitants were suffocated by a shower of hot ashes, and not destroyed by a sudden avalanche of lava and stones. The dwelling of Diomedes, who was the Croesus of Pompeii, was the first house disentombed. Its owner was found with a key in one hand and a bag of gold in the other. Behind him was a slave with his arms full of silver vessels, evidently trying to escape from the coming devastation when they were suddenly overwhelmed, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... in this room were without exception meant for the country residence of an American Croesus, who had taken a tremendous fancy to the young sculptor and his work and jealously tried to keep his creations from straying into another's possession. He looked upon himself as a Medici of the nineteenth century. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... seen to fumble in his waistband, and reward the useful man with one copper pie. A pie at present rates of exchange is worth about 47/128 of a farthing, and it is instructive to note that emergency, when it came, found this Croesus provided ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... taste than our modern folks exhibit; and everybody who saw Lady Clavering's reception rooms, was forced to confess that they were most elegant; and that the prettiest rooms in London—Lady Harley Quin's, Lady Hanway Wardour's, or Mrs. Hodge-Podgson's own; the great Railroad Croesus' wife, were not fitted up with ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... given him by Jesuit missionaries in China; his real name was K'ung-foo-tseu. He was born about 550 B.C., in the province of Loo, and was the contemporary of Belshazzar, of Cyrus, of Croesus, and of Pisistratus. It is claimed that Confucius was a descendant of one of the early emperors of China, of the Chow dynasty, 1121 B.C.; but he was simply of an upper-class family of the State of Loo, one of the provinces of the empire,—his father ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... is said to have been sent as an envoy by Croesus to Cyrus, and to have turned traitor. The name came ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... gives of the gifts that Croesus sent to the Oracle at Delphi is a splendid example of barbaric magnificence. First, the King offered up three thousand of every kind of sacrificial beast, and burned upon a huge pile couches coated with silver and gold, and golden goblets, and robes and vests of purple. Next he issued ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... be rich in gentle smiles and sunny: A jeweled soul exceeds a royal crown. The richest men sometimes have little money, And Croesus oft's ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... ought to restore the whole place," the organist said bitterly. "They would, if they had any sense of decency. They are as rich as Croesus, and would miss pounds less than most people would miss pennies. Not that I believe in any of this sanitary talk—things have gone on well enough as they are; and if you go digging up the floors you will only dig up pestilences. Keep the fabric together, make the ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... of Croesus! The whole transaction is but an affair of battered kermis, intrinsically not worth a moment's consideration; but it serves its purpose of affording an interesting insight into ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... her strength. From that time I knew that my fate with Mariuccia was sealed. I left them at midnight, begging the worthy Momolo to ask me again in two days' time, that we might rejoice together over our gains. On our way home my brother said I had either become as rich as Croesus or had gone mad. I told him that both suppositions were incorrect, but that Mariuccia was as handsome as ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Croesus the same death foresee, Raised in his vision on a lofty tree? 390 The wife of Hector, in his utmost pride, Dream'd of his death the night before he died; Well was he warn'd from battle to refrain, But men to death ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... there is an air of ingenuous innocence about him which makes it certain that he would crawl into a badger-hole if he met a pretty woman on the prairie. If further proof were wanted, he goes about in charge of a highly respectable British Croesus, one of the full-crusted elderly models of virtue they raise in Lancashire. The class is not obsolete. ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... and dinner must be made. There was plenty of bacon, and abundance of cabbages—eggs, ad infinitum—oaten and wheaten bread in piles—turkeys, geese, pullets, as fat as aldermen—cream as rich as Croesus—and three gallons of poteen, one sparkle of which, as Father Philemy said in the course of the evening, would lay the hairs on St. Francis himself in his most self-negative mood, if he saw it. So far so good: ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... fortunes. Nemesis was supposed to lie in wait particularly for the prudent; that is, for those whose caution rendered them accessible only to mere accidents; and her first altar was raised on the banks of the Phrygian AEsepus by Adrastus, probably the prince of that name who killed the son of Croesus by mistake. Hence the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... Aynunah Bay, Makna and Jebel Hassani, where he sketched, made plans, and collected metalliferous specimens. He returned to Egypt with native stories of ruined towns evidencing a formerly dense population, turquoise mines and rocks veined with gold. The Khedive in idea saw himself a second Croesus. These were the quarries, he held, whence Solomon derived the gold for the walls of the house of his God, his drinking vessels and his lion throne, but Colonel Gordon, when afterwards told of his scheme, smiled incredulously. As the hot season necessitated a delay of six months, Burton returned ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Apelles;" and with setting his hand to his mouth, whistled out somewhat, I know not what, which afterwards he swore was Greek. Trimalchio also when he mimicked the trumpets, looked on his minion and called him Croesus: Yet the boy was blear-eye'd, and swathing up a little black bitch with nasty teeth, and over-grown with fat, in green swadlingclouts, he set half a loaf on the table, which she refusing, he cram'd her with it: on which Trimalchio commanded ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... by an oracle, was conquered by Cyrus, king of Persia. Cyrus commanded a huge funeral pile to be erected upon which Croesus and fourteen Lydian youths were to be chained and burnt alive. When this was done, the discrowned king called on the name of Solon, and Cyrus asked why he did so. "Because he told me to call no one happy till death." Cyrus, struck with the remark, ordered the fire of the pile to be put ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... I would also have shared poor Langley's fate; but a strange destiny it is that protects me from death—a strange one indeed! He is gone, and I alone am now the Hermit of the Grand Canyon, a Croesus in wealth of gold, yet a fugitive from my fellow men. What a fate is mine, and how will it all end, ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... us in this way got a short holiday while awaiting the assizes, which I spent with my mother and sister, taking home with me the money I had been awarded as my share of the Saint Pierre's salvage, which had made me fancy myself a temporary Croesus. ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... descriptive faculties desert me before the marble and gold luxury of a modern palace, and its gorgeous splendour has no charm for me. The interest I felt was due to the man himself, and, most of all, to the connection existing between him and my own home. How came this American Croesus to be acquainted with the nomenclature, customs, and topography of my own country and language? How came the latter upon the lips of his five-year-old boy? In my childhood I had known a five-year-old boy, the ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... humanist, holds his theories lightly, glances with a somewhat blithe and naive inconsequence from [70] one view to another, not anticipating the burden of importance "views" will one day have for men. In reading him one feels how lately it was that Croesus thought it a paradox to say that external prosperity was not necessarily happiness. But on Coleridge lies the whole weight of the sad reflection that has since come into the world, with which for us the air is full, which the "children in the market-place" repeat to each ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... very ripe in experience of affairs, yet it has pleased my Most Serene and Gracious Master to send me, as one much devoted to your Royal Highnesses and ardently attached to all bearing the Italian name, on what is really a great mission.—The ancient legend is that the son of Croesus was completely dumb from his birth. When, however, he saw a soldier aiming a wound at his father, straightway he had the use of his tongue. No other is my predicament, feeling as I do my tongue loosened by those very recent and bloody wounds of Mother Church. A great mission surely ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the substance by means of which they might acquire freedom and independence. This is quite in the manner of Tacitus. The word iron was figuratively used by the ancients to signify military force in general. Thus Solon, in his well-known answer to Croesus, observed to him, that the nation which possessed more iron would be master of ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... delighted to think a daughter of mine is going to make such a splendid match. Why don't you speak to her, my dear?" addressing his wife, with some excitement. "Bless my soul,—Lady Challoner, my plain little Mattie Lady Challoner! Is it possible? Why, you were telling us, Archie, what a Croesus this Sir Henry was, and how he had just bought quite a fine ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... other, and said afterwards that it was Greek. Trimalchio himself then favored us with an impersonation of a man blowing a trumpet, and when he had finished, he looked around for his minion, whom he called Croesus, a blear-eyed slave whose teeth were very disagreeably discolored. He was playing with a little black bitch, disgustingly fat, wrapping her up in a leek-green scarf and teasing her with a half-loaf of bread which he had put on the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... his head. Seems Roarin' Rocks is a private joint, the summer place of this Mr. Hollister who's described by Ira as "richer'n Croesus"—whatever that might mean. Anyway, they're exclusive parties that don't encourage callers; for the only way of gettin' there is over a private road around the head of the bay, or by hirin' a ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... man more is expected in the way of pecuniary favors (and justly too), and consequently applications of all kinds are daily, I might say for the last few months almost hourly, made to me, and the fabled wealth attributed to me, or to Croesus, would not suffice to satisfy ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... rich man, a king. One day Croesus said to Solon, the philosopher, "Do you not think I am a happy man?" Solon answered, "Alas, I do not know, Croesus; that life is happy that ends well." A few years later when Croesus had lost his wealth, his kingdom, and his health, and had been deserted by those who in his days ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... know Edward—my only brother, ten years my senior, married to a rich mill-owner's daughter, and now possessor of the mill and business which was my father's before he failed. You are aware that my father-once reckoned a Croesus of wealth—became bankrupt a short time previous to his death, and that my mother lived in destitution for some six months after him, unhelped by her aristocratical brothers, whom she had mortally offended by her union with Crimsworth, the——shire manufacturer. At the ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... situation, he says, was certainly most disirable for us; but the generality of the inhabitants were so greedy of wealth, and so jealous of each other, that it would require the patience of Job, and the riches of Croesus, to satisfy them. He adds, that they say, of themselves, they are only to be governed by the ruling power's shooting all it's enemies, and bribing ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... was his friend Rodolphe changed into a Croesus, Marcel again set to work on his "Passage of the Red Sea," which had been on his easel nearly ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Harry had seen, and two dowagers with voluminous hoops and plenty of rouge, were on a visit to the Baroness when her nephew made his bow to her. She introduced the young man to these personages as her nephew, the young Croesus out of Virginia, of whom they had heard. She talked about the immensity of his estate, which was as large as Kent; and, as she had read, infinitely more fruitful. She mentioned how her half-sister, Madam Esmond, was called Princess Pocahontas in her own country. She ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is said to have been the friend and pupil of Arnold de Villeneuve, by whom he was instructed in all the secrets of alchymy. Tradition asserts of him, that he made great quantities of gold, and died as rich as Croesus. He was born at Cahors, in the province of Guienne, in the year 1244. He was a very eloquent preacher, and soon reached high dignity in the Church. He wrote a work on the transmutation of metals, and had a famous laboratory at Avignon. He issued ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... mind; and that he wishes to know from herself, by the mouth of a friend whom he can trust, whether she has changed hers. If she tells you that she has, I would not follow her farther though she were twice as rich as Croesus. I'm not hunting her for her money; but I am determined that Lord Cashel shall not make us both miserable by forcing her into a marriage with his ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... with relief, and though Rosa tried to look offended, she was forced to smile. "He's fat, I know," she admitted, "and he makes funny noises when he breathes; but he is richer than Croesus, and I ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... not do so in future. You will be beside me, Henry; the father and son together can offer a bold face to the world in spite of these crumbling walls. We can despise the dross of that vile Croesus, and keep the Rayleigh ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... thought to him that he was wealthy enough to buy every one of those close-ranged, bulky, window-lit mansions that faced him, if he chose. He could have matched gold, equipages, jewels, art treasures, estates and acres with any Croesus in this proud city of Manhattan, and scarcely have entered upon the bulk of his holdings. He could have sat at table with reigning sovereigns. The social world, the world of art, the fellowship of the elect, ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... affection by that righteousness—that truthfulness and justice—for which Isaiah in his grandest lyric strains has made them illustrious to all time; which Xenophon has celebrated in like manner in that exquisite book of his—the Cyropaedia. The great Lydian kingdom of Croesus—Asia Minor as we call it now—goes down before them. Babylon itself goes down, after that world-famed siege which ended in Belshazzar's feast; and when Cyrus died—still in the prime of life, the legends seem to say—he left a coherent and well-organised ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... 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 I will buy up this ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... Sears-Roebuck wonderbook. Anyway, he would make another note of it. What would it be like, he wondered, to have a million dollars to spend, and unlimited access to the Sears-Roebuck treasures. Picturing himself as such a Croesus, he innocently thought that his first act would be to take train for Chicago and inspect the warehoused accumulations of those princes of trade ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... insisted upon thinking that whatever I said was the wisest and the wittiest, and that whatever I did was the best. The simplest little jeu d'esprit of mine seemed to him wonderfully witty. Once, when he said, 'I wish for your sake, dear, I were as rich as Croesus,' I answered, 'You are Croesus, for you are king of Lydia.' How often he used to ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... case, when the Maori oracle was consulted as to the issue of a proposed war, it said: 'A desolate country, a desolate country, a desolate country!' The chiefs, of course, thought the other country was meant, but they were deceived, as Croesus was by Delphi, when he was told that he 'would ruin a great empire'. In yet another case, the Maoris were anxious for the spirits to bring back a European ship, on which a girl had fled with the captain. The Pakeha Maori was present at this seance, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... signore, I regret being obliged to break the ill news so abruptly; but this gentleman thought himself too poor to purchase my little bracelet, and it was necessary to inform him that he is suddenly made wealthy—not yet so great a Croesus as yourself, Signor Merreek, but ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... all her brother and sister servants to be a very Croesus for wealth; and wondrous tales were told of the money she had put by. But as she was certainly honest, and supposed to be very generous to certain poor relations in Dorsetshire, some of these stories were probably mythic. It was known, however, as a fact, ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... the better, for then he can immediately use his influence on his workmen. Come, let us go at once to Gotzkowsky, this Croesus of Berlin, who bought for our king three hundred thousand dollars' worth of pictures in Italy, without having been paid for them up to this day, and yet is able to take a contract for commissary stores to the ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... Gawtrey, laughing, "this is not the first time I have been paid by relations to break off the marriages I had formed. Egad! if one could open a bureau to make married people single, one would soon be a Croesus! Well, then, this decides me to complete the union between Monsieur Goupille and Mademoiselle de Courval. I had balanced a little hitherto between the epicier and the Vicomte. Now I will conclude matters. Do you know, Phil, I think you have ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... oriental ideal of unlimited wealth and power, enjoyed merely for its own sake, never appealed to their fine and lucid judgment. Nothing could better illustrate this point than the anecdote related by Herodotus of the interview between Solon and Croesus, King of Lydia. Croesus, proud of his boundless wealth, asks the Greek stranger who is the happiest man on earth? expecting to hear in reply his own name. Solon, however, answers with the name of Tellus, the Athenian, giving his reasons in ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... in a way that would have roused the envy of an invalid Croesus, if he could have seen him; and he drank floods of ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... free prisoners, and relieve all poor distressed souls that wanted means; religiously done. I deny not, but to what purpose? Suppose this were so well done, within a little after, though a man had Croesus' wealth to bestow, there would be as many more. Wherefore I will suffer no [650]beggars, rogues, vagabonds, or idle persons at all, that cannot give an account of their lives how they [651]maintain themselves. If they be impotent, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Jennie. "Why, Jimmie, he's as rich as Croesus, and he's always hated women as much as ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... Constance," he said. "I have told her so, and—and she cares for me. I am not a Croesus like Calmady. But I am not a pauper. I have enough to keep a wife in a manner suitable to her position, and my own. When my Uncle Ulick Decies dies—which I hope he'll not hurry to do, since I am very fond ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... veto, to be a genuine novel, they asked for a new Greek romance, and Julian read to them from Herodotus about the rise and fall of empires, and "Strange stories of the deaths of kings." One of his stories was the famous one of Croesus, and the irony of his fate, and the warning words of Solon, all of which, rendered into quaint rich English, struck Cyril so much, that, mingling up the tale with reminiscences of Longfellow's "Blind Bartimeus," he produced, with much modesty at the breakfast-table next morning, the ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... sitting down to the same kind of dinner with a choice of red or white wine and the menu was that of an average French household. I recall this and other staff dinners, in contrast to costly plate and rich food in a house where a gold Croesus with diamond eyes and necklace should have been on the mantelpiece as the household god, with the thought that even war is a good thing if it centers ambition on objects other than individual gain. Without knowing it, Joffre, Castelnau, Foch, ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... heart was to ride on the tricycle of a rich little boy who lived across the street. But the pampered youth jeered at her pleadings and exultingly rode up and down before her. Billy saw and bided his time till the small Croesus was alone. He nabbed him, chucked him in a chicken-coop and stood guard for an hour while Sada ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... WANT to go flying over hill and dale, like a tumbleweed? I haven't had warm feet in a week and I weep salt tears when I see a bed. But I'm no Croesus; I've got to hustle. I think I've landed something finally." He told of Tom and Jerry's offer, but failed ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... I walked across the street with him to his office and got the letter which was to make me, half starved and homeless, rich as Croesus, it seemed ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... which have outlived their usefulness and should be pensioned off, are "Sweet as sugar," "Bold as a lion," "Strong as an ox," "Quick as a flash," "Cold as ice," "Stiff as a poker," "White as snow," "Busy as a bee," "Pale as a ghost," "Rich as Croesus," "Cross as a bear" and a great many more far too numerous ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... Wood and brought to the British Museum. In connexion with the pillars, which are adorned with archaic reliefs, a fragmentary inscription has been found, recording that they were presented by King Croesus, as indeed Herodotus informs us. This temple was burned on the day on which Alexander the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... the nature of the raw products you employ; and, when you are asked to buy a patent, you shall not have the slightest means of judging whether the inventor is an impostor who is contravening the elementary principles of science, or a man who will make you as rich as Croesus. ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... discourse with Croesus, some think not agreeable with chronology; but I cannot reject so famous and well-attested a narrative, and, what is more, so agreeable to Solon's temper, and so worthy his wisdom and greatness of mind, because, forsooth, it does not agree with some chronological canons, which thousands ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... whole village happy, fifty-five thousand francs—and stuffed them into the pocket of his coat. But a millionaire's lavishness can only be compared with his eagerness for gain. As soon as a whim or a passion is to be gratified, money is dross to a Croesus; in fact, he finds it harder to have whims than gold. A keen pleasure is the rarest thing in these satiated lives, full of the excitement that comes of great strokes of speculation, in which these dried-up hearts have ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... United States—she whom the American aborigines might call the "Girl-Anxious-to-be-Married." What right-minded man in any circle of British society has not shuddered at the open pursuit of young Croesus? Have not our novelists and satirists reaped the most ample harvest from the pitiable spectacle and all its results? A large part of the advantage that American society has over English rests in the comparative absence of this phenomenon. Man there does not and cannot bear himself as the cynosure ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Before his death.—Ver. 135. This was the famous remark of Solon to Croesus, when he was the master of the opulent and flourishing kingdom of Lydia, and seemed so firmly settled on his throne, that there was no probability of any interruption of his happiness. Falling into the hands of Cyrus the Persian, and being condemned to be burnt alive, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Western empire, and had become a fugitive eastward of the Caspian Gates, escaping captivity at the hands of Alexander only to perish by those of the satrap Bessus. All antecedent historical parallels—the ruin and captivity of the Lydian Croesus, the expulsion and mean life of the Syracusan Dionysius, both of them impressive examples of the mutability of human condition—sank into trifles compared with the overthrow of this towering Persian colossus. The orator AEschines exprest the genuine sentiment of a Grecian spectator when ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... apparel much after the fashion; his means will not suffer him to come too nigh. They afford him mock-velvet or satinisco, but not without the college's next lease's acquaintance. His inside is of the self-same fashion, not rich; but as it reflects from the glass of self-liking, there Croesus is Irus to him. He is a pedant in show, though his title be tutor, and his pupils in a broader phrase are schoolboys. On these he spends the false gallop of his tongue, and with senseless discourse tows ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... precious baby drest? In a robe of the East, with lace of the West, Like one of Croesus's issue— Her best bibs were made Of rich gold brocade, And the others of ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... always followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us—I know not the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew R—— is supposed to have, to purchase it. And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of that pretty insipid half-Madona-ish chit of a lady ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the Lyndon property had I not been making a private purse for myself; and who believe that, even in my present painful situation, I have hoards of gold laid by somewhere, and could come out as a Croesus when I choose. I never raised a shilling upon Lady Lyndon's property but I spent it like a man of honour; besides incurring numberless personal obligations for money, which all went to the common stock. Independent of ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the patron saint of the students for years when it came to bail. He used to say he had all the fun of being a doctor and getting called out nights without having to try to collect any fees. Frank was no Croesus those days and I've seen him go bail for fifteen students at one hundred dollars apiece, when his total assets amounted to a dress suit, three hundred and forty-five photographs and his next ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... the most memorable in the records of the human species; and his character is well worthy of the minutest investigation. By this name we are brought at once within the limits of history properly so called. He lived in the time of Cyrus and Darius Hystaspes, of Croesus, of Pisistratus, of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, and Amasis, king of Egypt. Many hypotheses have been laid down respecting the precise period of his birth and death; but, as it is not to our purpose to enter into any lengthened discussions of that sort, we will adopt ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... back to common-sense," cries she. "What were we talking of? The marriage of Maurice to this little plebeian—this little female Croesus. Well, what of ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... man! A Scotchman, richer than Croesus, one McDruggy, fresh from Canton, with a million of opium in each pocket, denouncing corruption, and bellowing ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... darlint? The blessing of God be on you for those words—and you to be such a fine lady! It always was a fine lady ye were, with such a family and such a bringin' up. And now ye've married a rich man, as is right and proper. If it's rich as Croesus he was, he'd be none ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... speed, and take a pleasure to turn things upside down. Ascend, if thou wilt, but with this condition, that thou thinkest it not an injury to descend when the course of my sport so requireth. Didst thou not know my fashion? Wert thou ignorant how Croesus, King of the Lydians, not long before a terror to Cyrus, within a while after came to such misery that he should have been burnt had he not been saved by a shower sent from heaven?[103] Hast thou forgotten how Paul piously bewailed the calamities of King Perses his prisoner?[104] What other ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... the assistant prosecutor, "look at the audience, in the front row, the third from the right . . . a face like an actor's . . . that's the local Croesus. He has a fortune ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... return to Ternate in a week or two more, but this grand capture determined me to stay on till I obtained a good series of the new butterfly, which I have since named Ornithoptera croesus. The Mussaenda bush was an admirable place, which I could visit every day on my way to the forest; and as it was situated in a dense thicket of shrubs and creepers, I set my man Lahi to clear a space all round it, so that I could easily get at any insect that might visit ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... whom she has chosen to marry, and whom I hate with all my heart, is richer than ever Croesus was; but nevertheless Laura ought to have her own money. She ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... that any one event in its annals (always excepting the birth of the hereditary prince) had been looked for with so anxious a curiosity as the opening of the last will and testament left by Van der Kabel. This Van der Kabel may be styled the Haslau Croesus; and his whole life might be termed, according to the pleasure of the wits, one long festival of god-sends, or a daily washing of golden sands nightly impregnated by golden showers of Danae. Seven ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Found at Mycaene. And yet Nature's self Works in this wise; upon a blade of grass, Or what small note she lends the woodland thrush, Lavishing endless patience. He was born Artist, not artisan, which some few saw And many dreamed not. As he wrote no odes When Croesus wedded or Maecenas died, And gave no breath to civic feasts and shows, He missed the glare that gilds more facile men— A twilight poet, groping quite alone, Belated, in a sphere where every nest Is emptied of its music and its wings. Not great his gift; yet we can poorly spare ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in vain tried variety of advice, recovered her voice in an instant, on some alarm as she was dancing at an assembly. Was this owing to a greater exertion of volition than usual? like the dumb young man, the son of Croesus, who is related to have cried out, when he saw his father's life endangered by the sword of his enemy, and to have continued to speak ever afterwards. Two young ladies in this complaint seemed to be cured by electric ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... said D'Artagnan to himself; "he calls that being as poor as Job! If I had them I should think myself as rich as Croesus." Then aloud: ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... from India, and what English lady is this, married to a growling old Scotch Croesus with great flaps of ears? Can this ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... are there for her who is racking her brains on the ways and means to provide as sumptuous an entertainment of oysters and Champagne at her next party as her richer neighbor, or to compass that great bargain which shall give her a point-lace set almost as handsome as that of Mrs. Croesus, who has ten ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Rakshasas, and Gandhamadana accompanied by many Yakshas and Gandharvas and many Rakshasas wait upon the lord of treasures. The virtuous Vibhishana also worshippeth there his elder brother the lord Kuvera (Croesus). The mountains of Himavat, Paripatra, Vindhya, Kailasa, Mandara, Malaya, Durdura, Mahendra, Gandhamadana, Indrakila, Sunava, and Eastern and the Western hills—these and many other mountains, in their personified forms, with Meru ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Croesus, having received from the Pythoness, this answer, that by passing the river Halys, he would destroy a great empire, he understood it to be the empire of his enemy, whereas he destroyed his own. The oracle consulted by Pyrrhus, gave him an answer, which might be equally understood of the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... advised, they are worth the thousands he paid; but this ewe lamb that he got for nothing always gives him a secret exaltation in his own eyes. He seems to have credited to himself personally merit to the amount of what he should have paid for the picture. Then there is Mrs. Croesus, at the party yesterday evening, expatiating to my wife on the surprising cheapness of her point-lace set. "Got for just nothing at all, my dear!" and a circle of admiring listeners echoes the sound. "Did you ever hear anything like it? I never heard of such ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... mean, as if you had everything to buy. Besides, I look upon Mason as a sort of Croesus. What on earth has he got to do with his money? And then as to time;—upon my word I don't understand what a man means when he says he has not got time ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... a little silvery laugh; "you forget my dear Bella. Read it up again, and you will see that Croesus was once conquered by Cyrus. What ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... at once into Romance; he intends to preserve the memory of the wonderful deeds of Greeks and Barbarians, the cause of their quarrel being the abductions of women, Io, Europe, Medea, Helen. A more recent aggressor was Croesus, King of Lydia, who attacked the Greek seaboard. The earlier reigns of Lydian kings are recounted in a series of striking narratives. Gyges was the owner of the famous magic ring which made its possessor ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... at home. For seventy years peace and industry have had their way among us with less interruption and under more favourable conditions than in any other country on the face of the earth. The wealth of Croesus was nothing to [210] that which we have accumulated, and our prosperity has filled the world with envy. But Nemesis did not forget ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... rest, the quiet of the heart, The travel's ease, the still night's fere was he, And of our life in earth the better part; Riever of sight, and yet in whom we see Things oft that [tyde] and oft that never be; Without respect, esteeming equally King Croesus' pomp ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... still better, from Chaucer. Chaucer's Monk's Tale is a series of what he calls 'tragedies'; and this means in fact a series of tales de Casibus Illustrium Virorum,—stories of the Falls of Illustrious Men, such as Lucifer, Adam, Hercules and Nebuchadnezzar. And the Monk ends the tale of Croesus thus: ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... replied Pillichody, feigning to brush away a tear. "He was my friend, and I would rather banish him from my memory. The sight of your beauty transports me so, that, by the treasures of Croesus! I would rather have you without a crown than the wealthiest widow ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Croesus, King of Lydia, dreamed that he saw his son slain by an iron weapon, and though by every means he strove to avert this doom from him, yet thus it happened, for his son was slain by the hand of the man who seemed least of all likely to ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... the service of Mammon, that ye may leave to your sons, the overgrown wealth which usually proves a legacy of withering curses, while you neglect to train them up in those habits of stern morality and steady industry, and noble self-reliance, without which the wealth of Croesus would be but a despicable portion! Think of it, as you contrast its results in the bitter experience of thousands, with the happier influences under which so many of our noblest men in Church and State, have been nurtured and developed, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... which Poetry rules with an enchanted sceptre is the land of reverie and day-dream,—a land of fancy, in which genius builds for itself castles at once radiant and, for the time, real; in which the beggar is a king, the poor man a Croesus, the timid man a hero: this is the fairy-land of the imagination. Among Wordsworth's poems are a number called Poems of the Imagination. He wrote learnedly about the imagination and fancy; but the truth is, that of all the great poets,—and, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... this subject with the following story told by Herodotus:(127)—Adrastus, having slain his brother, flees to the court of Croesus. There he becomes as a son to Croesus and a brother to Atys, Croesus' son. This Atys Adrastus has the terrible misfortune to slay, thereby incurring a three-fold pollution. He has brought down upon himself the triple wrath of Zeus Katharsios, Ephestios, and Hetaireios: he has ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... was going to her daughter, and asked Mrs. Reeves to intercede in her behalf. "Now, Mrs. Smith, I'll make a bargain with you. There is a rich widower on the big boat, and he's got lots of niggers and money. I'll give him to you if you'll go on that boat; and, I tell you, he's rich as Croesus." I had to enter somewhat into these familiarities, and told her I would not think of being so selfish as ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... account, as well as to see the world, Solon set out upon his travels, in the course of which he went to Egypt to the court of Amasis,[4] and also paid a visit to Croesus at Sardis. Croesus received him as his guest, and lodged him in the royal palace. On the third or fourth day after, he bade his servants conduct Solon over his treasuries and show him all their greatness and magnificence. When he had seen them all, and so far as time allowed inspected ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... face for her fortune, many a bright-eyed, laughing belle has gone out to seek sorrow and misery. The world is full of them, they are rolling in easy carriages up and down the thoroughfares of life, each a pampered and dearly bought idol of some powerful old Croesus, whom to love would be to outrage every principle of nature and worthy sentiment, and, therefore, to live upon milk and honey and be clad in the finest of purple, beauty will sanction her own destruction, living a loveless life, ever haunted ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... the cheap estimation in which every one seemed to hold her adopted child. "My own sister's," she insisted, with an emphasis which seemed to imply that she had a whole family of half-sisters. "Though we now earn our bread as singers, we have seen better days; and in these hard times Croesus to-day may be Irus to-morrow. As for us, Karnis did not dissipate his money in riotous living. It was foolish perhaps but it was splendid—I believe we should do the same again; he spent all his inheritance in trying to reinstate ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Croesus, Darius, The Alexandran, Iulius Csar. Newly enlarged By William Alexander, Gentleman of the Princes priuie Chamber. Carmine dij superi placantur, carmine manes. London Printed by Valentine Simmes for Ed: ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... Thesaurochrysonicocraesides)—Ver. 290. This is a name made up of several Greek words, and seems to mean "a son of Croesus, abounding in treasures of gold," in allusion to Croesus, the wealthy king of Lydia. The author indulges in similar pleasantry in the ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... ground alone, and the operatives have earned much more money in the mills than was possible on the farms. In comparatively few cases does one man, or one family, own a controlling interest in a mill. The ownership is usually scattered in small holdings, and there is seldom a Croesus to excite envy. This wide ownership has had its effect upon the general attitude of the more influential citizens and hindered the ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... It is possible in religious life, as in social, to live in a fool's paradise. But what more comfort could a man desiderate than is given by the Holy Spirit? The Christian may be poor and deformed, but God loves him all the same as if he were rich as Croesus, and in form had the symmetry of the Apollo Belvidere. He may be tried as silver is tried in the fire, but the Lord will sit as the refiner, and not suffer him to be tried above what ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... "and one played by a man with beggary staring him straight in the face, and yet to hear you talk one would think you were a Croesus! You mortgaged this house to get ready money, did you not?" He was not sure, but this was no time in which to ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... got a French fellow sleeping around here somewhere," he cries, as Armand signals the sanctum is unlocked. "He always turns up if any one but HIMSELF tries to steal anything. He's got a patent on that," laughs the "Croesus ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... paid the bill due by his brother to Mr. Wilkinson, there was outstanding some family unsettled claim from which the two brothers might, or might not, obtain some small sums of money. Sir Lionel, when much pressed by the city Croesus, had begged him to look to this claim, and pay himself from the funds which would be therefrom accruing. The city Croesus had done so: a trifle of two or three hundred pounds had fallen to Sir Lionel's lot, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... periods, by the towering height of the tumulus. Those of the Chinese and of Thibet have only a few metres of elevation. Farther to the west the dimensions increase; the tumulus of the king Alyattes, father of Croesus, in Lydia, was six stadia, and that of Ninus was more than ten stadia in diameter. In the north of Europe the sepulchre of the Scandinavian king Gormus and the queen Daneboda, covered with mounds of earth, are three hundred metres broad, and ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... poor, and driven in his poverty to rather questionable straits? Had not he been abject in his petition for office,—and in what degree were such petitions less disgraceful than a request for money which had been hopelessly expended on an impossible object, attempted at the instance of the great Croesus who, when asked to pay it, had at once acknowledged the necessity of doing so? Could not Mr. Finn remember that he himself had stood in danger of his life before a British jury, and that, though he had been, no doubt properly, acquitted of the crime ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... for the girl, and fresh strength for the boy. The meadow would heal them, the mountain might save, Won't you give them a chance on the moor, by the wave? Why, of course! You have only to know, Punch to ask, And you'll jump at the job as a joy, not a task! Come, delicate dame, City CROESUS rotund, And assist Mrs. JEUNE'S "Country Holiday Fund!" Mr. Punch asks, for her, your spare cash, and will trouble you To send it to Thirty-seven, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... imagination invented stories of great virtue or guilt to account for the prosperity or calamity.[7] The Greek notion of the Nemesis was an inference from observation of good and ill fortune in life. Great popular interest attached to the stories of Croesus and Polycrates. The latter, after all his glory and prosperity, was crucified by the satrap of Lydia. Croesus had done all that man could do, according to the current religion, to conciliate the gods and escape ill fortune. He was ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... The Croesus of Goldbanks stood warming himself with his back to the grate, as smug and dapper a little man as could be found within a ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... the cup of life as though they had indeed but to-day and to-morrow in which to live and enjoy. Have they no shadows, too, no secrets? They seem so harmless, yet if the great white truth shone down, might one not find a murderer there, a dying man who knew his terrible secret, yonder a Croesus on the verge of bankruptcy, a strong man playing with dishonor? But those are the things of the other world which we do not see. The men look at us to-night and they envy you because you are with me. The women envy me more because I have emeralds upon my neck and shoulders for which they ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... small foundation for the extravagant stories with which malecontent pamphleteers amused the leisure of malecontent squires. In such stories Montague played a conspicuous part. He contrived, it was said, to be at once as rich as Croesus and as riotous as Mark Antony. His stud and his cellar were beyond all price. His very lacqueys turned up their noses at claret. He and his confederates were described as spending the immense sums ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... you think of Chios, and of celebrated Lesbos? What of neat Samos? What of Sardis, the royal residence of Croesus? What of Smyrna, and Colophon? Are they greater or less than their fame? Are they all contemptible in comparison of the Campus Martius and the river Tiber? Does one of Attalus' cities enter into your wish? Or do you admire Lebedus, through a surfeit of ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... off to-morrow morning," observed Robert. "You have no time to make inquiries about the mysterious Croesus. You must really make the ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shares went in small amounts—$10 and $25 and $50, and a good many $2 and $3 lots. And the bald and inviolate cranium of President Atterbury shines with enthusiasm and demerit, while Colonel Tecumseh Pickens, the rude but reputable Croesus of the West, consumes so many apples that the peelings hang to the floor from the mahogany garbage chest that ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... hard at my book, perhaps too hard. It will be very big, and I am become most deeply interested in the way facts fall into groups. I am like Croesus overwhelmed with my riches in facts, and I mean to make my book as perfect as ever I can. I shall not go to press at soonest ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Should CROESUS greet you with a smile, A "bromide" will record the fact; Should STREPHON help you o'er a stile, The film will take him in the act. Yet this renown, if truth be said, Is fame they'd rather be without; Nor, I assure you, will they wed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... and Latin scholar, rich as Croesus and simple in his habits as Ochiltree,—passionately fond of travel,—as well read, I will undertake to say, in the literature of travel in Egypt, Arabia, Syria, and Turkey, as any other man twenty-five years old in Europe or America,—full of facts, strong in mind, deep In heart, religious, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Deacon and his son-in-law held frequent consultations. "This Mr. King is rich as Croesus," said the Deacon; "and if he thinks his wife owes a debt to Tulee, he'll be willing to give a round sum for her children. I reckon you can make a better bargain with him than you could in ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... frequently combine the vile trade of procuress with the ostensible trade of fortune-telling. When the girl is drawn to this den, the trump card offered her is, of course, the young gentleman, rich as Croesus and handsome as Adonis, with whom she is to fall in love. He is generally described with considerable minuteness, and the time and place of meeting foretold. This may be fictitious, and it is fortunate for her if it is so. Rut the seeress too frequently needs ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... certain state ordinances, by which their monarchs were enjoined to marry their own sisters; and, as Asia Minor was overrun by them at the time when Croesus was conquered by Cyrus, it is possible that the story of Byblis and Caunus may have originated in the disgust which the natives felt for their conquerors, and as a covert reproach to them for sanctioning alliances of so incestuous a nature. While Ovid enters into details ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... disease to a crisis, and force it outward so as to obtain a chance to cure it—for it cannot always be cured. You see, monsieur, that I am disinterested. If this lady were of great importance, a Baronne de Nucingen, or any other wife or daughter of a modern Croesus, this cure would bring me one hundred—two hundred thousand francs; in short, anything I chose to ask for it. However, it is only a trifling ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... gave to its possessor before this wonderful institution was brought to bear, may be told by a few instances of divers epochs. There is a tale of a man who was supposed to have discovered the treasures of Croesus, in the treasury—such as is shown now at Mycenae and Orchomenos as the treasuries of old. The hero of the tale having discovered the crypt and its hoard, built another, and spent half of his life ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... A travelling man goes out of town leaving a stray dime or nickel here and within an hour it is in this boy's pocket. I have talked to banker Walker of him. He trembles lest his vaults become too small to hold the wealth of this young Croesus. The day will come when he will buy the town and put it ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... to the city for material and patterns, and had priced hand-made lingerie in the shops. When she came back with an itemised report, Barbara had clapped her hands in glee, for she saw the wealth of Croesus looming up ahead. She had soon learned, however, that she must keep far below the city prices if she would tempt the horde of Summer visitors who came, yearly, to the hotel. At times, she thought that Aunt Miriam must have been ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... all to anything and sure I had the right to everything, to consume food, to wear out clothes, to wear out servants. In return I gave—nothing. Not a thing. But I've waked up. Earth—good, black earth—you are greater than Mrs. Butterfly Croesus and all her brood; because ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... can but expect bold adventures. The discovery and exploration of the New World and the defeat of the Spanish Armada had now made England monarch of sea and land. The imagination of the people was aroused, and tales of a wealth like that of Croesus came from mariners who had sailed the seven seas, and were willingly believed by an excited audience. Indeed the nations stood ready with open-mouthed wonder to accept all stories, no matter how marvelous ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... a subject! They shall be ready in an hour!" cried Trip, in whose imagination Parnassus was a raised counter. He had in a teacup some lines on Venus and Mars which he could not but feel would fit Thalia and Croesus, or Genius and Envy, equally well. "In one hour, sir," said Triplet, "the article shall be executed, and ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... his ten thousands. Within the last hundred years, stories about China and Bantam, which ought not to have imposed on an old nurse, were gravely laid down as foundations of political theories by eminent philosophers. What the time of the Crusades is to us, the generation of Croesus and Solon was to the Greeks of the time of Herodotus. Babylon was to them what Pekin was to the French academicians of the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the usual Australian style. Now and again he looked at his recruiting figures and smiled. "Five hundred men in three days," he mused. "Not bad for you, Sam; and good stuff at that"—for Sam was a judge of men. He was a squatter and as rich as Croesus. His big, bony frame spoke of strength, while his eye and face told the tale of shrewdness and resource. He was forty, and successful. Three hundred miles of land was chartered as his own. His sheep were counted in thousands, and his ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... stately brow, Where partial nature hath already bound A brighter circlet—radiant beauty's own— I had been proud to see thee proud of it, So for the donor thou hadst ta'en the gift, Not for the gift ta'en him. Could I have poured The wealth of richest Croesus in thy lap, I had been blest to see thee scatter it, So I was still thy ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles |
