"Scylla" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have enjoyed, without doubt, unusual good fortune in having pursued the strict path of culture. You have sailed by Charybdis without being swallowed up by Scylla.[87] But my lot has been just ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... and sound policy? In time, when passion shall have yielded to sober reason, the current may possibly turn; but, in the meanwhile, this government, in relation to France and England, may be compared to a ship between the rocks of Scylla and Charybdis. If the treaty is ratified, the partisans of the French, or rather of war and confusion, will excite them to hostile measures, or at least to unfriendly sentiments; if it is not, there is no foreseeing ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... and the duke approached, superb, decorated, dignified, with the polished pallor as if the skin were a little too tight, which is the Charybdis of many who have avoided the Scylla of wrinkles. ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... because the stone tables of the Decalogue have gone to dust, but it is more dangerous to attempt to control men by fictions. Better no chart whatever than one which shows no actually existing perils, but warns us against Scylla, Charybdis, and the Cyclops. If we are perfectly honest with ourselves we shall not find it difficult to settle whether we ought to do this or that particular thing, and we may be content. The new legislation will come naturally at the appointed time, and it ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... hard-fought engagements—the defeats, plans, failures—the gloomy hours, days, when our Nationality seem'd hung in pall of doubt, perhaps death—the Mephistophelean sneers of foreign lands and attaches—the dreaded Scylla of European interference, and the Charybdis of the tremendously dangerous latent strata of secession sympathizers throughout the free States, (far more numerous than is supposed)—the long marches in summer—the hot sweat, and many a sunstroke, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... neither credit my success nor lament my failure, because they will consider me poaching on their manor. If I chronicle a big beet, they will bring forward one twice as large. If I mourn a deceased squash, they will mutter, "Woman's farming!" Shunning Scylla, I shall perforce fall into Charybdis. (Vide Classical Dictionary. I have lent mine, but I know one was a rock and the other a whirlpool, though I cannot state, with any definiteness, which was which.) I may be as humble and deprecating ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... in 90-82 B.C. In 63 the State escaped an economic catastrophe through the vigilance of Cicero and the alliance of the respectable classes under his leadership. In 49, and again in 48, it escaped a similar disaster through the good sense of Caesar and his agents, who succeeded in steering between Scylla and Charybdis by saving the debtors without ruining ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... are used ere now by evil ways to wend; O ye who erst bore heavier loads, this too the Gods shall end. Ye, ye have drawn nigh Scylla's rage and rocks that inly roar, 200 And run the risk of storm of stones upon the Cyclops' shore: Come, call aback your ancient hearts and put your fears away! This too shall be for joy to you remembered on a day. Through diverse haps, through many risks wherewith our way is strown, We get us ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... the more courageous passengers took hold, and we shot ahead, scudding rapidly along the dark shores, to the sound of the wild Maltese songs. At length, the promontory was gained, and the restless current, rolling down from Scylla and Charybdis, tossed our little bark from wave to wave with a recklessness that would have made any one nervous but an ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... persons held to labor in the slave States. Why is the language of the Constitution so guarded as not to have even the word 'slave' in it, and yet of such a character as not to interfere with local State legislation upon slavery? Simply to steer between the Charybdis of no union and the Scylla of the repudiation of the Declaration of Independence, teaching that all men are born free and equal, and that all have natural rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And yet, in the slave States, the interpretation ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... laid aside for the moment, and he repelled the intrusive thoughts which forced on his mind the image of, Amy, by saying to himself there would be time to think hereafter how he was to escape from the labyrinth ultimately, since the pilot who sees a Scylla under his bows must not for the time think of the more distant ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... you might break your arm," cried Delia Guest, who hadn't the slightest scruple about telling a falsehood if she were going to have something to laugh at by the means. Poor Joy was between Scylla and Charybdis. (If you don't know what that means, go and ask your big brothers; make them leave their chess and their newspapers on the spot, and read you what Mr. Virgil has to say about it.) If she hung on she would wrench her arms; if she jumped, she should break them. She hung, screaming, ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Scylla's cave which men of science are preparing for themselves to be able to pounce out upon us from it, and into which ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... through our reluctant hands "touchin' on and appertainin' to" the great City of Manhattan and its distinguished denizens. For our part, we have had enough of this painful task. And truly, we have never before undergone such trials in sailing between—but that Charybdis and Scylla allusion has been done to death. Indeed, we love America, and in the course of our present task, which we also love, we had to suffer Khalid's shafts to pass through our ken and sometimes really through our heart. But no more of this. Ay, we ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... might prove instructive to people who are not familiar with the inside of palaces; if I revealed some of the secrets I learnt, they might prove of interest to the statesmen of Europe. I intend to do neither of these things. I should be between the Scylla of dullness and the Charybdis of indiscretion, and I feel that I had far better confine myself strictly to the underground drama which was being played beneath the surface of Ruritanian politics. I need only say that the secret of my ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... Argonauts escaped. But the anger of the gods at this horrible murder led the voyagers in expiation a wearisome way homeward. For they sailed through the waters of the Adriatic, the Nile, the circumfluous stream of the earth, passed Scylla and Charybdis and the Island of the Sun, to Crete and AEgina and many lands, before the Argo rode once ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... man runs from Scylla to Charybdis! I was so intent on securing the disappearance of a single epithet that I accepted the rest of the advertisement and all that it involved without discussion. So it befell that the words "well-known connoisseur" ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... now, perhaps, impossible to ascertain with precision what Homer meant by the word krataiis, which he uses only here, and in the next book, where it is the name of Scylla's dam.—Anaides—is also of ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... way. Down they fared along the coast, past the isle of Capreae, then, leaving the Campanian main behind, cut the blue billows of the Tyrrhenian Sea; all that day and night, and more sail and oar swept them on. They flew past the beaches of Magna Graecia, then, betwixt Scylla and Charybdis, and Sicilia and its smoke-beclouded cone of AEtna faded out of view, and the long, dark swells of the Ionian Sea caught them. No feeble merchantman, hugging coasts and headlands, was Demetrius. He pushed his three barques ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... or its supernatural powers, are therefore opposite to the deities of Olympus. Hence their shape is changed, they can be even monstrosities, such as Polyphemus, the Laestrigonians, Scylla and Charybdis. Circe and Calypso are beautiful women, yet not natural women, in spite of their beauty; there is something superhuman about them, divine, though they be not Olympians. Shapes of wonder they all seem, unreal, yet in intimate connection with mankind. Moreover they ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... glad,"—great beads were on the prisoner's brow,—"but you do not realize the temptation. Have you never yourself been betwixt Scylla and Charybdis? Have I not vowed every false step should be the last? I fought against Lycon. I fought against Mardonius. They were too strong. Athena knoweth I did not crave the tyranny of Athens! It was not that which ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... was not required to talk, Kenneth had time to be curiously observant of many things in passing. Each camp was the fellow of its neighbor; a chaotic collection of hastily built bunk shanties, a mess tent for those who, shunning the pay-devouring Scylla of the contractors' "commissary," fell into the Charybdis of the common table, and always, Kenneth remarked, the camp groggery, with its slab-built bar, its array of ready-filled pocket bottles, and its ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... lays undue stress on outward forms, and fanaticism, which gives credit to preternatural impulses, and professes a particular kind of inspiration differing not at all from infallibility, are the Scylla and Charybdis, through which, over stormy waters or serene, we have to make our steady way. Both are equally intolerant, and both are condemned by the genius of Protestantism, the constitution of the Church, and the spirit of ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... sea of womens bloods, That when tis calmest, is most dangerous! Not any wrinkle creaming in their faces, 315 When in their hearts are Scylla and Caribdis, Which still are hid in dark and standing foggs, Where never day shines, nothing ever growes But weeds and poysons that no states-man knowes; Nor Cerberus ever saw the damned nookes 320 Hid with the veiles of womens vertuous lookes. But what a cloud of ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... "They struck me as rather wonderful, but liable to induce dreams of Scylla and Charybdis, of the Fata Morgana, and other inconvenient accidents of the deep. Fortunately I was too tired last night to be excursive in fancy, or I might have slept badly. You have gathered all the colours of the ocean and fixed them, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... asked Richling. "If you mix them, you avoid both necessities. You sail triumphantly between Scylla and Charybdis without so much ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... 101, was familiar. Minos, King of Crete, had laid siege to Megara, whose king, Nisus, had been promised invincibility by the oracles so long as his crimson lock remained untouched. Scylla, the daughter of Nisus, however, was driven by Juno to fall in love with Minos, her father's enemy; and, to win his love, she yields to the temptation of betraying her father to Minos. The picture of the girl when she had decided to ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... felt himself a thing of evil. But under those terrible eyes, that had searched hearts as others searched printed texts for interlinear meanings, he began to feel himself drawn into the wild waters between a Scylla of shame and a Charybdis of terror. Alas! Would this man believe his wretched tale of the trickery of others; of wanton, stubborn stupidity on the part ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... of the soul, like the composite creations of ancient mythology, such as the Chimera or Scylla or Cerberus, and there are many others in which two or more different natures are said to ...
— The Republic • Plato
... kings, her consuls, her emperors,—her legislators, her orators, her poets,—her popes,—all seemed to stalk solemnly past, one after one. There was the great Romulus; there was the proud Tarquin; there was Scylla with his laurel, and Livy with his page, and Virgil with his lay, and Caesar with his diadem, and Brutus with his dagger; there was the lordly Augustus, the cruel Nero, the beastly Caligula, the warlike Trajan, the philosophic ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... clattered freshly on the windows. The dawn heavily in clouds brought on the day, but not, alas! the mail; and it was long past five when the guard came galloping into the yard, upon a smoking horse, with all the wet bags lumbering beside him (like Scylla's water-dogs), roaring out that the coach was broken down somewhere near Dundee, and commanding another steed to be got ready for his transportation. The noise he made brought out the other two sleepy wretches that had been waiting like myself for places, and we ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... dress suits and new clothes in preparation for that convivial event. And they would have done so except for the fish (sailors) and the women (Highlanders), as they styled us, who, they said, were too much for them, combined I think with the Ladysmith sweet shop, which proved their Scylla ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... fond of the metaphor, taken from the vexed Sicilian Seas, of Scylla and Charybdis. The twin whirlpools threatened the affrightened mariner on either side. To avoid one he too hastily cast the ship to destruction in the other. Such is precisely the position that has been ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... proverb relating to the frying-pan and the fire. To clear himself, he must mention his suspicions of Jimmy, and also his reasons for those suspicions. And to do that would mean revealing his past. It was Scylla and Charybdis. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... art; but, because she had deceived him, he had added thereto this curse, that no one should believe her even speaking truth. And then she told them that the old crimes of the house should end in yet another crime; that there was one in the house, a woman to look at, but in truth a very Scylla, a monster of the sea. And at the last she declared plainly that they should see the King Agamemnon lying dead. But the curse was upon her, and they believed her not And then crying out that she saw a lioness that had taken a wolf to be her paramour, she cast away the ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... "metaphysics" of the neo-vitalist school, which the experimental study of development and regeneration soon brought into being. In 1895 he writes:—"The too simple mechanistic conception on the one hand, and the metaphysical conception on the other represent the Scylla and Charybdis, between which to sail is indeed difficult, and so far by few satisfactorily accomplished; it cannot be denied that with the increase of knowledge the seduction of the second has lately notably ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... heard the summons dread. The beldam, full of apprehension Lest oversleep should cause detention, Ran like a goblin through her mansion. Thus often, when one thinks To clear himself from ill, His effort only sinks Him in the deeper still. The beldam, acting for the cock, Was Scylla ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... enormous sums of money were taken. Then Boyton proceeded to Messina. Before leaving Naples, he had made up his mind to attempt the dreaded straits of that name, and dare the dangers of the noted whirlpools of Scylla and Charybdis. Every one cheerfully assured him that the attempt would result in death, for beside the dangers of the whirlpools, the straits were infested ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... escaped Scylla only to fall upon Charybdis. As she hurries along through the familiar streets, her plans are laid. She will go to Lucian Davlin's rooms; nobody will be there to dispute her possession for a day or two to come, and she has possessed herself of the keys, left behind ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Ellangowan to interfere with politics, he had yet the prudence, ere he went out with Lord Kenmore in 1715, to convey his estate to trustees, in order to parry pains and penalties in case the Earl of Mar could not put down the Protestant succession. But Scylla and Charybdis—a word to the wise—he only saved his estate at expense of a lawsuit, which again subdivided the family property. He was, however, a man of resolution. He sold part of the lands, evacuated the old cattle, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... weighing the same number of stone, and equally confident in the purity of her air as her neighbour, stood another female "Briton," with the come-into-my-parlour expression of countenance, regarding us as prey. Under the circumstances, exhausted nature gave in; though saved from Scylla, our destiny was Charybdis, and we accordingly surrendered ourselves to a wash, breakfast, and the Brahminee Bull. During the day, we had a visit from a friend and ex-brother officer, whom we had promised ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... OF, 24 m. long, and at its narrowest 21/2 broad; separates Sicily from the Italian mainland; here were the Scylla ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... a sea-nymph named Amphitrite, whom he wooed under the form of a dolphin. She afterwards became jealous of a beautiful maiden called Scylla, who was beloved by Poseidon, and in order to revenge herself she threw some herbs into a well where Scylla was bathing, which had the effect of metamorphosing her into a monster of terrible aspect, having twelve ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... Have bask'd in luxury, and lived in state! In Tuscan wilds now let them villas rear[68] Ennobled by the charity we spare. There let them warble in the tainted breeze, 75 Or sing like widow'd orphans to the trees: There let them chant their incoherent dreams, Where howls Charybdis, and where Scylla screams! Or where Avernus, from his darksome round, May echo to the winds the blasted sound! 80 As fair Alcyone,[69] with anguish press'd, Broods o'er the British main with tuneful breast, Beneath the white-brow'd cliff protected sings, Or skims ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... latest case of destitution I have heard of was the case of old Robert at the Oaks, cow-minder,—you remember him. He and old Scylla applied to Mr. Tomlinson for rations, pleading utter poverty. It turned out next day that Robert and Scylla's husband were in treaty for Mr. Fairfield's horse, at the rate of $350! They didn't allege inability to pay the price, but thought they would look around and see if they couldn't get ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... the dreadful force Of Boreas, that congeals the Cronian waves, Tumultuous enter with dire chilling blasts, Portending agues. Thus a well-fraught ship, Long sailed secure, or through the Aegean deep, Or the Ionian, till cruising near The Lilybean shore, with hideous crush On Scylla, or Charybdis (dangerous rocks!) She strikes rebounding; whence the shattered oak, So fierce a shock unable to withstand, Admits the sea; in at the gaping side The crowding waves gush with impetuous ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... asserted broadly that he had made up his mind that marriage would be good for him; but he had made up his mind, at least, to this, that it was no longer to be postponed without a balance of disadvantage. The Charybdis in the Close drove him helpless into the whirlpool of the Heavitree Scylla. He had no longer an escape from the perils of the latter shore. He had been so mauled by the opposite waves, that he had neither spirit nor skill left to him to keep in the middle track. He was almost daily at Heavitree, and did not attempt ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Calabria and Sicily. In February, the city of Casal Nuova was entirely swallowed up; and the Princess Gerace Grimaldi, with more than four thousand persons, perished in an instant. The inhabitants of Scylla, who, headed by their Prince, had descended from the rock and taken refuge on the sea-shore, were all washed away by an enormous wave, on its return from the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... many who have seen it have seen it only in the midst of danger and distress, the last strip of earth which their mortal eyes beheld! Think of the amount of suffering which a single strand has witnessed! The ancients would have represented it as a sea-monster with open jaws, more terrible than Scylla and Charybdis. An inhabitant of Truro told me that about a fortnight after the St. John was wrecked at Cohasset he found two bodies on the shore at the Clay Pounds. They were those of a man and a corpulent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... even hear me as I walked, the remembrance of my churlishness and that I must continue to practise the same ungrateful course or be dishonoured, put me beside my reason. I stood like a man between Scylla and Charybdis: What must she think of me? was my one thought that softened me continually into weakness. What is to become of us? the other which steeled me again to resolution. This was my first night of wakefulness and divided counsels, of which I was now to pass many, pacing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as well be thirty? There is little choice between Scylla and Charybdis. Twenty-nine is the hour of reckoning for every woman, ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... places at each end of the Firth were likened to the Scylla and Charybdis between Italy and Sicily, where, in avoiding one mariners were often wrecked by the other; but the dangers in the Firth were from the "Merry Men of Mey," a dangerous expanse of sea, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... deep, but you do not find these things to occur because you imagine them. Again, if we assume that what we think is identical with what is, then it must be impossible to think of what is not. But this is absurd; for we can think of such admittedly imaginary beings as Scylla and Chimaera, and multitudes of others. There is therefore no necessary relation between our thoughts and any realities; we may believe, but we cannot prove, which (if any) of our conceptions have relation to an external ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... was the town of Amarilla (pronounced Ah-ma-ree-ah). There were plenty of women and girls there, but Martha knew none of them well except the preacher's daughter, Scylla. Martha and Scylla were great friends. They saw each other as often as Martha could get time and permission to ride in to Amarilla. Scylla could seldom visit the ranch, for she was an invalid. When she had been a very little ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... 75-79, which imitates Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, ll. 427-450. Only Mirrha among these poems, however, makes specific acknowledgment of a debt to Shakespeare (see p. 177). Finally, Dom Diego's plangent laments at Ginevra's cruelty recall Glaucus' unrestrained weeping at Scylla's cruelty in Lodge's Scillaes Metamorphosis. But whereas the "piteous Nimphes" surrounding Glaucus weep till a "pretie brooke" forms,[29] "the fayre Oreades pitty-moved gerles" that comfort Dom Diego are loath to lose the "liquid ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... knowest how honoured in my heart is the hero, Aeson's son, and the others that have helped him in the contest, and how I saved them when they passed between the Wandering rocks, [1405] where roar terrible storms of fire and the waves foam round the rugged reefs. And now past the mighty rock of Scylla and Charybdis horribly belching, a course awaits them. But thee indeed from thy infancy did I tend with my own hands and love beyond all others that dwell in the salt sea because thou didst refuse to share the couch of Zeus, for all his desire. For ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... 2, 'Eques Romanus es et ad hunc ordinem tua te perduxit industria.' Ibid. 31, 9, 'Quo modo, inquis, isto pervenitur? Non per Poeninum Graiumve montem, nec per deserta Candaviae, nec Syrtes tibi nec Scylla aut Charybdis adeundae sunt, quae tamen omnia transisti ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... do? We can only escape the Scylla of calling everything by one name, and recognising no individual existences of any kind, by falling into the Charybdis of having a name for everything, or by some piece of intellectual sharp practice like that of the shrewd but unprincipled Ulysses. If we ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... saw it he groaned, and struck his hands together. And 'Little will it help us,' he cried, 'to escape the jaws of the whirlpool; for in that cave lives Scylla, the sea-hag with a young whelp's voice; my mother warned me of her ere we sailed away from Hellas; she has six heads, and six long necks, and hides in that dark cleft. And from her cave she fishes for all things which pass by—for sharks, and seals, ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... fact, had become so critical, and the bank manager's demeanour so unpropitious, that in the previous year more than once the dawn had found her trying to decide between the Scylla of the thankless post of lady companion to some wealthy parvenu on the Riviera, and the Charybdis of raising money enough to allow her to harbour paying guests in the no-man's-land of ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... pronounced than I, as his biographer, could wish. The small matter which I have chronicled under the heading of "A Study in Scarlet," and that other later one connected with the loss of the Gloria Scott, may serve as examples of this Scylla and Charybdis which are forever threatening the historian. It may be that in the business of which I am now about to write the part which my friend played is not sufficiently accentuated; and yet the whole train of circumstances is so remarkable that I cannot bring myself ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... all heard of the dreadful passage between Sicily and the coast of Italy. On one side there are some frightful rocks, over which the sea roars like thunder. They are called the rocks of Scylla, and if a ship gets on them she is dashed to pieces in a quarter less than no time. On the other side is the awful whirlpool of Charybdis, which draws ships from miles towards it, and sucks them under ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... the wilderness, Owen Dugdale had probably never heard of the kindred terrors that used to lie in wait for the bold mariners of ancient Greece—the rock and the whirlpool known as Scylla and Charybdis—if they missed being impaled upon the one they were apt to be engulfed in the other—and yet here in the rapids of this furious Saskatchewan feeder he was brought face to face with a proposition exactly similar ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... that his name was given to the day of the week held sacred to Ares, which is even now known as Tuesday or Tiu's day. Like Ares, Tyr was noisy and courageous; he delighted in the din of battle, and was fearless at all times. He alone dared to brave the Fenris wolf; and the Southern proverb concerning Scylla and Charybdis has its counterpart in the Northern adage, "to get loose out of Laeding and to dash out of Droma." The Fenris wolf, also a personification of subterranean fire, is bound, like his prototypes the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... on his desk. "The area of action, the battle plan may be the same but this time we've got General Fyfe as an observer and Dolliver Wims as a participant and, if I can manage to squeeze the day successfully past that Scylla and Charybdis, I'll promise not to devour any more ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... to put his fears and feelings into satisfactory words. He was on dangerous seas, but he made his way doggedly on, between the Charybdis of reticence and the Scylla of ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... was dreadful: it foamed and dashed over the rocks with a tremendous spray, like breakers on a lee-shore, threatening destruction to whatever approached it. You would have thought, by the confusion it caused in the river and the whirlpools it made, that Scylla and Charybdis, and their whole progeny, had left the Mediterranean and come and settled here. The channel was barely twelve feet wide, and the torrent in rushing down formed traverse furrows which showed how near the rocks ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... wrong side of the wall, on a lee shore, on the rocks. at stake, in question; precarious, critical, ticklish; slippery, slippy; hanging by a thread &c. v.; with a halter round one's neck; between the hammer and the anvil, between Scylla and Charybdis, between a rock and a hard place, between the devil and the deep blue sea, between two fires; on the edge of a precipice, on the brink of a precipice, on the verge of a precipice, on the edge ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... rival,—even Her whose witch-face I had slighted, and therefore was doom'd in that place To roam, and had roam'd, where all horrors grew rank, Nine days ere I wept with my brow on that bank; Her name be not named, but her spite would not fail To our love like a blight; and they told me the tale Of Scylla,—and Picus, imprison'd to speak His shrill-screaming woe through ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... in avoiding Scylla to fall into Charybdis." She had spent her winter in endeavoring to avoid Charybdis. Just because it had not been Edna who was John's ideal was no sign that the Princess did not exist, either already selected, as Edna's lover had been, or else still ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... shall be given; and from him that hath not, the little that he hath shall be taken away.' The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism. Such are the effects which must ever flow from an unmitigated exercise ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... this detailed knowledge of every foot of the Ellesmere Land and Grant Land coasts, combined with Bartlett's energy and ice experience, that enabled us to pass four times between this arctic Scylla ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... glad in his heart that the young men of the house were out of the way; he did not want his little Molly to be passing from Scylla to Charybdis; and, as he afterwards scoffed at himself for thinking, he had got an idea that all young men were wolves in ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... restless gusty Jealousies and wintry sea of revellings, whither am I borne? and the rudders of my spirit are quite cast loose; shall we sight delicate Scylla ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... Straits of Messina and passed between the classic rock of Scylla on the Calabrian coast, and the whirlpool of Charybdis at the point of the promontory of Faro, which forms the end of the famous "Golden Sickle" enclosing the Bay ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... of its spangled nights is like a Scylla of a thousand heads, each head a menace. Glancing from his cab window one such midnight, an inarticulate expression of that fear must have crept over and sickened Mr. Herman Loeb. He reached out and placed his enveloping hand over ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... became a Presbyterian minister. The whites were buried on a hill just north of the pioneer Joel Cardwell home (1937 Siegfired Smiths'). Rose was married to Uncle Henry Collins, and they lived on the place of Mrs. Louise Whitworth and Scylla Bailey. These white women willed their tiny farm to Rose Collins because of her kindness to them in ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... door that led to the veranda and the door that led to the music-room—between Charybdis and Scylla, as it were, for she knew he would follow her whichever way she went. ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... friends! for ours is strength Has brooked the test of woes; O worse-scarred hearts! these wounds at length The gods will heal, like those. You that have seen grim Scylla rave, And heard her monsters yell, You that have looked upon the cave Where savage Cyclops dwell, Come, cheer your souls, your fears forget; This suffering will yield us yet A pleasant tale to tell. Through ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... as the Scylla and Charybdis—the two extremes to be avoided—the Anglican Church hoped to attain the safe and golden mean by steering between these opposites, and find, in this via media course, the path ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... fight—I mean, father had—that is, I mean, WE had more trouble keeping peace between them than we did between any of the rest of the Aiders," corrected Pollyanna, a little breathless from her efforts to steer between the Scylla of her father's past commands in regard to speaking of church quarrels, and the Charybdis of her aunt's present commands in regard to speaking of ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... and that despotism, arising from a centralization of power in the national government on one hand, and anarchy, incident to the instability of democracy—"the levelling spirit of democracy" denounced by Gerry as "the worst of political evils"—on the other, were the Scylla and Charybdis between which the republic would, in the opinion of their opponents, be placed, with almost a certainty ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Canadian manufacturers there was a blood feud. It was not Sir Wilfrid's intention to make the feud his own or even to agree to it being carried on by Sir Richard. He took for minister of finance, W. S. Fielding, who justified his choice by successfully steering the budget bark between Scylla and Charybdis for fourteen years in succession before the whirlpool finally sucked him down. Where Laurier went outside his following for colleagues he had equally definite ends ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... not pretty to-night, Scylla," he said tauntingly, "though you left us early. There are dark circles under the eyes that looked kindly at the ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... current of the stream into the sea; and then, keeping near land, I would coast the beauteous shores and sunny promontories of the blue Mediterranean, pass Naples, along Calabria, and would dare the twin perils of Scylla and Charybdis; then, with fearless aim, (for what had I to lose?) skim ocean's surface towards Malta and the further Cyclades. I would avoid Constantinople, the sight of whose well-known towers and inlets belonged to another state ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... secular arms an immense elm Reareth a crowd of branches, aneath whose lofty protection Vain dreams thickly nestle, clinging unto the foliage on high: And many strange creatures of monstrous form and features Stable about th' entrance, Centaur and Scylla's abortion, And hundred-handed Briareus, and Lerna's ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... was on his return trip from Messina to Naples he wrote at the sight of Scylla and Charybdis: "These two natural curiosities, standing so far apart in reality and placed so close together by the poet, have furnished men with an opportunity to abuse the fables of the bards, not remembering that the human imaginative faculty when it would represent objects ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... answer to the note, which was from Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael and contained an invitation to me for the next afternoon, I thought of those pilots whose dangers have come down to us from distant times through the songs of ancient poets. The narrow and tempestuous channel between Scylla and Charybdis bristled unquestionably with violent problems, but with none, I should suppose, that called for a nicer hand upon the wheel, or an eye more alert, than this steering of your little trireme to a successful ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... were obliged to extricate your carriage by the help of a lever in the shape of a rail taken from some farmer's fence by the roadside. You are no sooner freed from this Charybdis, than you fall into Scylla, formed by half a mile of corduroy-bridge, made of round logs, varying from nine to fifteen inches in diameter, which, as you may suppose, does not make the most even surface imaginable, and over which you are jolted in the roughest ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... gain me the friendship of those whose persons are not only comely and genteel, but whose minds are replenished and adorned with all virtue." Socrates replied: "But my method forbids to use violence, and I am of opinion that all men fled from the wretch Scylla, because she detained them by force: whereas the Syrens did no violence to any man, and employed only their tuneful voices to detain those who passed near them, so that all stopped to hear, and suffered themselves to be insensibly charmed by the music of their songs." "Be sure," ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... home, Odysseus crosses each water; Through Charybdis so dread; ay, and through Scylla's wild yells, Through the alarms of the raging sea, the alarms of the land too,— E'en to the kingdom of hell leads him his wandering course. And at length, as he sleeps, to Ithaca's coast fate conducts him; There he awakes, and, with grief, knows ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Leopold, gayly, "what a miserable lot you have chosen for yourself. You have fallen from Scylla into ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Whirling and boiling eddies burst as if from some subaqueous explosion; down currents are on one side of the canoe, and an up current on the other; now a cross stream at the bows and a diagonal one at the stern, with a foaming Scylla on your right and a whirling Charybdis on the left. But our nervousness gave way to admiration as our popero, or pilot, the sedate governor, gave the canoe a sheer with the swoop of his long paddle, turning it gracefully around the corner of a rock against which it seemed we must be dashed, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... glad to avail herself of his arm, seeing that Mr. Slope was hovering nigh her. In striving to avoid that terrible Charybdis of a Slope she was in great danger of falling into an unseen Scylla on the other hand, that Scylla being Bertie Stanhope. Nothing could be more gracious than she was to Bertie. She almost jumped at his proffered arm. Charlotte perceived this from a distance and triumphed in her heart; Bertie felt it and was encouraged; Mr. Slope saw it and glowered ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... it might justify its traditions and find employment for its spears. Often and often he must have been sorely puzzled to find excuses wherewithal to put it off. Indeed his position was both awkward and dangerous: on the one hand was Scylla in the shape of the English Government, and on the other the stormy and uncertain Charybdis of his clamouring regiments. Slowly the idea must have began to dawn upon him that unless he found employment for the army, which, besides being ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... Mary to order anything without an advance notice, for otherwise she was forced to start her little bark through the Scylla and Charybdis of 'fire island,' namely, 'The fire's too low, marm;' or 'I've just put ...
— A Christmas Story - Man in His Element: or, A New Way to Keep House • Samuel W. Francis
... or imaginary old lady who had got the metaphor of Scylla and Charybdis a little confused. Wishing to describe a perplexing situation, this ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... nothynge y't maketh a knyght so renomed as is whan he sauyth the lyf of them that he may slee/ For to shede and spylle blood is the condicion of a wylde beste and not the condicion of a good knyght Therfore we rede that scylla that was Duc of the Romayns wyth oute had many fayr victoyres agaynst the Romayns wyth Inne that were contrayre to hym/ In so moche that in the batayll of puylle he slewe .xviii. thousand men/ And in champanye ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... asserts itself to the end of races. There are two separate civilizations in this land, destined some day to come in fearful conflict; and the wars of Scylla, of the Jews themselves, shall be outdone in the horror and persistence of that strife of partners—I will not say brothers—for there is no brotherhood of blood between South and North, of which Clay and Calhoun stand forth to my mind as distinct types. No union of the red ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... our experience of a social state which is still at sixes and sevens; of a civilisation so imperfectly developed and organised that the majority does nothing save under compulsion, and the minority does nothing to any purpose; and where that little boy's Scylla and Charybdis all work and all play is effectually realised in a nightmare too terrible and too foolish, above all too wakingly true, to be looked at in the face without flinching. One wonders, incidentally, how any creature ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... dishes than is usually offered in any except our very largest hotels. This is especially to be desired at breakfast. Without going to the American extreme of fifty or a hundred dishes to choose from, some intermediate point short of the Scylla of sole and the Charybdis of ham and eggs might surely be found. There is probably more pig-headed conservatism than justified fear of expense in the reluctance to follow this most excellent "American lead." The ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... of grief the hollow chest; A fiery frost, a flame that frozen is with ice, A heavy burden light to bear, a virtue fraught with vice; It is a worldlike peace, a safety seeing dread, A deep despair annexed to hope, a fancy that is fed, Sweet poison for his taste, a port Charybdis like, A Scylla for his safety, though a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... weeks Mrs. Reed had been threatening to cut his hair. The boys said, "Sissy, why don't your mother put your hair up in curl papers?" It looked so dreadful when it was first cut that Charles always spent these weeks between Scylla and Charybdis. He knew all about the rock and the whirlpools. But something had been happening all the time, even to this Saturday afternoon, when all the silver had to be scoured. Mr. Reed inspected his son as he sat at the supper-table. ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... RATHBONE'S Peter was an effective study, avoiding Scylla of the commonplace and Charybdis of the mawkish—no mean feat. A young man with a future, I dare hazard; with a gift of clear utterance, and sensibility and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... It seemed possible that the change of food, from salt provisions to the fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables of Timor—a change by which I hoped to banish every appearance of scurvy, might have had an influence in producing the disease; and if so, it was avoiding Scylla to fall upon Charybdis, and was ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... At the east end of the Isle of Tanti are the Lower Gap and the Brothers, two rocky islets famous for black bass fishing and for a deep rolling sea, which makes a landsman very sick indeed in a gale of wind. After passing this Scylla, the bay, an arm rather of Lake Ontario, becomes very smooth and peaceable for several miles, until you leave the pleasant little village of Bath, where is one of the first churches erected by the English settlers in Western Canada, ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... politics, he had yet the prudence, ere he went out with Lord Kenmore In 1715, to convey his estate to trustees, in order to parry pains and penalties, in case the Earl of Mar could not put down the Protestant succession. But Scylla and Charybdis —a word to the wise—he only saved his estate at expense of a lawsuit, which again subdivided the family property. He was, however, a man of resolution. He sold part of the lands, evacuated the old castle, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... faith in the firmness of any man's admiration of her, she believed less than was avowed. And Fred, exacting much, was too inexperienced to understand her. They were drifting apart, I thought; but in avoiding Scylla, had I not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... obedience. The priest and the king—that means you, and me, and the Princess my neighbour; and, in a word, the interests of all honest people personified. There, my friend, just be so good as to belong to your party, you that might be its Scylla if you had the slightest ambition that way. I know nothing about politics myself; I argue from my own feelings; but still I know enough to guess that society would be overturned if people were always calling ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Lafayette, in the dusk of the evening, as he returns, successful with difficulty at Vincennes: Sansculotte Scylla hardly weathered, here is Aristocrat Charybdis gurgling under his lee! The patient Hero of two Worlds almost loses temper. He accelerates, does not retard, the flying Chevaliers; delivers, indeed, this or the other hunted Loyalist of quality, but rates him in bitter words, such as the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the colors of scriptural doctrine, we steer clear of the Scylla of Calvinism on the one hand, and also escape the Charybdis of Arminianism on ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... down Of darkness till it smiled! I have oft heard My mother Circe with the Sirens three, Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades, Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs, Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul, And lap it in Elysium: Scylla wept, And chid her barking waves into attention, And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause. Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense, And in sweet madness robbed it of itself; But such a sacred and home-felt delight, Such sober certainty ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... foreigners from the country, dismiss the Greek mercenaries, and instead of taking counsel from the Greeks, would hearken only to the commands of the priesthood. But in this, as you must see yourself, the prudent Egyptians had guessed wide of the mark in their choice of a ruler; they fell from Scylla into Charybdis. If Hophra was called the Greeks' friend, Amasis must be named our lover. The Egyptians, especially the priests and the army, breathe fire and flame, and would fain strangle us one and all, off hand, This feeling on the part of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which it had been threatened from the outset, and which it had been ever trying to avoid. We may say that there were two dangers which constantly impended over the Roman Empire from its inauguration by Augustus to its redintegration by Diocletian—a Scylla and Charybdis, between which it had to steer. The one was a cabinet of imperial freedmen, the other was a military despotism. The former danger called forth, and was counteracted by, the creation of a civil service ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various |
