All 4 Uses of
Midas
in
The Fallacy of Success
- We must not have King Midas represented as an example of success; he was a failure of an unusually painful kind.†
*King Midas = Greek mythology: the greedy king with the power to turn everything he touched into gold
- It was his barber (if I remember right) who had to be treated on a confidential footing with regard to this peculiarity; and his barber, instead of behaving like a go-ahead person of the Succeed-at-all-costs school and trying to blackmail King Midas, went away and whispered this splendid piece of society scandal to the reeds, who enjoyed it enormously.†
- The Greeks enshrined it in the story of Midas, of the 'Golden Touch.'†
- Unfortunately, however, Midas could fail; he did.†
Definitions:
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(1)
(Midas) Greek mythology: the greedy king of Phrygia who Dionysus gave the power to turn everything he touched into gold
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(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much less commonly, Midas can refer to other people, places, or things with that name.