Gold

Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold.

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from Latin: aurum "gold") and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny metal and the most malleable and ductile metal known. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. It has been a valuable and highly sought-after precious metal for coinage, jewelry, and other arts since long before the beginning of recorded history.

Sourced

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 325-26.

• You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns—you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!
  • William Jennings Bryan, Democratic Convention (July 9, 1896).

• A thirst for gold,
  The beggar's vice, which can but overwhelmThe meanest hearts.
  • Lord Byron, The Vision of Judgment, Stanza 43.

• And yet he hadde "a thombe of gold" pardee.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Prologue, line 563.

• Every honest miller has a golden thumb.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Old saying.

• For gold in phisik is a cordial;
  Therefore he lovede gold in special.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Prologue, line 443.

• Gold begets in brethren hate;
  Gold in families debate;
  Gold does friendship separate;
  Gold does civil wars create.
  • Abraham Cowley, Anacreontics, Gold, line 17.

• What female heart can gold despise?
  What cat's averse to fish?
  • Thomas Gray, On the Death of a Favorite Cat.

• That is gold which is worth gold.
  • George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1651).

• Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
  Bright and yellow, hard and cold.
  • Thomas Hood, Miss Kilmansegg, Her Moral.

• Aurum per medios ire satellites
  Et perrumpere amat saxa potentius
  Ictu fulmineo.
  • Stronger than thunder's winged force
    All-powerful gold can speed its course;
    Through watchful guards its passage make,
    And loves through solid walls to break.
  • Horace, Ode XVI, Book III, line 12. Francis' translation.

• The lust of gold succeeds the rage of conquest;
  The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless!
  The last corruption of degenerate man.
  • Samuel Johnson, Irene, Act I, scene 1.

• L'or donne aux plus laids certain charme pour plaire,
  Et quo sans lui le reste est une triste affaire.
  • Gold gives to the ugliest thing a certain charming air,
    For that without it were else a miserable affair.
  • Molière, Sganarelle I.

• Aurea nunc vere sunt specula; plurimus auro
  Venit honos; auro conciliatur amor.
  • Truly now is the golden age; the highest honour comes by means of gold; by gold love is procured.
  • Ovid, Ars Amatoria, Book II. 277.

• Not Philip, but Philip's gold, took the cities of Greece.
  • Plutarch, Life of Paulus Æmilius, quoted as a common saying, referring to Philip II of Macedon.

• What nature wants, commodious gold bestows;
  'Tis thus we cut the bread another sows.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essay, Epistle III, line 21.

• L'or est une chimère.
  • Gold is a vain and foolish fancy.
  • Scribe and Delavigne, Robert le Diable, Chapter I, scene 7.

• How quickly nature falls into revolt
  When gold becomes her object!
  For this the foolish over-careful fathers
  Have broke their sleep with thoughts, their brains with care,
  Their bones with industry:
  For this they have engrossed and pil'd up
  The canker'd heaps of strange-achieved gold;
  For this they have been thoughtful to invest
  Their sons with arts and martial exercises.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II (c. 1597-99), Act IV, scene 5, line 66.

• Thou that so stoutly hast resisted me,
  Give me thy gold, if thou hast any gold;
  For I have bought it with an hundred blows.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III (c. 1591), Act II, scene 5, line 79.

• Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,
  The signet of its all-enslaving power
  Upon a shining ore, and called it gold;
  Before whose image bow the vulgar great,
  The vainly rich, the miserable proud,
  The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings,
  And with blind feelings reverence the power
  That grinds them to the dust of misery.
  But in the temple of their hireling hearts
  Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn
  All earthly things but virtue.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab (1813), Part V, Stanza 4.

• Quid non mortalia pectora cogis,
  Auri sacra fames?
  • Accursed thirst for gold! what dost thou not compel mortals to do?
  • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), III. 56.