golden touch

plural golden touches

1. idiomaticSynonym of Midas touch (“the ability to achieve financial reward (or, more generally, success) easily and consistently”).

   What if the precogs have somehow lost their golden touch and their predictions are no longer impeccable? What if some errors of commission, or some errors of omission, have slipped in? How can we know that they haven't?

   2011, Peter Murphy, “Public Relations Guide for New Precrime Officers”, in D. E. Wittkower, editor, Philip K. Dick and Philosophy: Do Androids have Kindred Spirits? (Popular Culture and Philosophy; 63), Chicago; La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Company, →ISBN, section 03.2 (Track-record Evidence Establishes Guilt), page 212

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   In fine, his [Nathaniel Hawthorne's] golden touch is as unfailing as was that of Midas, and transmutes whatever he lays hand upon. [...] [H]e so transforms incidents and transactions of the most trivial character, as to render them grand, pathetic, or grotesque. [...] His golden touch, we would then say, imposes no superficial glitter, but brings out upon the surface, and concentrates into luminous points, the interior gilding, which is attached to the meanest objects and the lowliest scenes by their contact with the realm of sentiment, emotion, and spiritual life.

   1853 January, “Art. VIII.—1. The House of the Seven Gables; a Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1851. 16mo. pp. 344. 2. The Blithedale Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1852. 16mo. pp. 288. [book review]”, in The North American Review, volume LXXVI, number CLVIII, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, […], →ISSN, →OCLC, pages 228–229

   On May 8, 1945—V.E. Day—John Hersey won the Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, A Bell for Adano. Twenty years later, with the appearance of his eleventh book, White Lotus, he has been told that while he once aspired to have a silver tongue, he has been given instead a golden touch; that instead of writing literature for all time, he has written books that make the Book-of-the-Month Club. Hersey should not have been discouraged by such remarks.

   1966, David Sanders, “John Hersey: War Correspondent into Novelist”, in Ray B[roadus] Browne, Donald M. Winkelman, Allen Hayman, editors, New Voices in American Studies, West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Studies, published April 1968, →OCLC, page 49

   "He's something of a whiz-kid in City matters, you know. The golden touch, in a modest kind of way." He looked around his sitting-room, as if to say there were golden touches and golden touches. "As a matter of fact that happens to be my form of bingo too. So we've been … thrown together, on occasion."

   1986, Robert Barnard, Political Suicide (Collins Crime Club), London: Collins, →ISBN; republished New York, N.Y.: Scribner, 2014, →ISBN

   The extension [of the Toronto Street Railway's Avenue Road streetcar line] was not only convenient, it also added considerably to the value of Benvenuto and the property around it. When it came to railways, [William] Mackenzie had all of the Scotsman's golden touch.

   1996, F. R. Berchem, “Northward Growth (1875–1914)”, in Opportunity Road: Yonge Street 1860 to 1939, Toronto, Ont.: Natural Heritage/Natural History, →ISBN, page 78

   [John] Hammond had high expectations for [Bob] Dylan. After all, he had a reputation to maintain. He had a lot riding on Dylan—not the least that he wanted to prove to the executives at Columbia that he still had the golden touch.

   2011, June Skinner Sawyers, “I is Someone Else”, in Bob Dylan: New York (MusicPlace Series), Berkeley, Calif.: Roaring Forties Press, →ISBN, page 33

   Synonyms: Midas touch