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Scylla   Listen
noun
Scylla  n.  A dangerous rock on the Italian coast opposite the whirpool Charybdis on the coast of Sicily, both personified in classical literature as ravenous monsters. The passage between them was formerly considered perilous; hence, the saying "Between Scylla and Charybdis," signifying a great peril on either hand.






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"Scylla" Quotes from Famous Books



... therefore, that we must steer between Scylla and Charybdis, or that we are in a first-class educational dilemma. This conviction is strengthened by the reflection that there is no escape from fairly facing the situation. Having once put our hand to the plow we can not look back. The common school course has greatly ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... accompanied the movements of the earth: all the forces of nature were in activity, and it seemed as if all its laws were suspended, and the last hour of created things at hand. In the meantime, the sea between Scylla, Charybdis, and the coasts of Reggio and Messina, was raised many fathoms above its usual level; overflowing its banks, and then, in its return to its channel, carrying away men and beasts. By these means, two thousand persons lost their lives on Scylla alone, who were either congregated on ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous

... Take England with many high virtues, and yet a low Catholicism. It seems to me that John Bull is a spirit neither of heaven nor hell.... Has not the Christian Church, in its parts, surrendered itself to one or other of these simulations of the truth?... How are we to avoid Scylla and Charybdis and go straight on to the very image of Christ?" ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... scruple, cavillation, and objection; breeding for the most part one question as fast as it solveth another; even as in the former resemblance, when you carry the light into one corner, you darken the rest; so that the fable and fiction of Scylla seemeth to be a lively image of this kind of philosophy or knowledge; which was transformed into a comely virgin for the upper parts; but then Candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris: so the generalities of the schoolmen are for a while good and proportionable; but then when you descend ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... holes calculated to appal the timid and confound the brave. We made two efforts to reach this Church from the eastern side; once in the night time, during which, and particularly when within 100 yards of the building, we had to beat about mystically between Scylla and Charybdis, and once at day time, when the utmost care was necessary in order to avoid a mild mishap amid deep side crevices, cart ruts two feet deep, lime heaps, and cellar excavations. We ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... from it, no, not in summer time or harvest. This rock no man could climb, even though he had twenty hands and feet, for it is steep and smooth. In the midst of this cliff is a cave wherein dwelleth Scylla, the dreadful monster of the sea. Her voice is but as the voice of a new-born dog, and her twelve feet are small and ill-grown, but she hath six necks, exceeding long, and on each a head dreadful to behold, and in each ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church

... that company which is hypocritical and deceitful as sin, dazzling and alluring as a poisonous flower, dangerous and deadly as Scylla and Charybdis, of the company ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... 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 of ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... court, after hearing the objections of dissenting creditors, would doubtless have proved a beneficial reform, but the act of 1849 proceeded on a very different principle. Instead of reforming, it practically abolished judicial control. By avoiding Scylla it fell into Charybdis. To give any majority of creditors the power to release a debtor from his obligations to non-assenting creditors without full disclosure of his affairs, and without any exercise ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... sports, he fell a victim to the suspicion of AEgeus, the King of Athens, who caused him to be slain, either by waylaying him on the road to Thebes, or by sending him against the Marathonian bull. In his sorrow and righteous anger, Minos, who had already conquered Megara by the treachery of Scylla, raised a great fleet, and levied war upon Athens; and, having wasted Attica with fire and sword, he at length reduced the land to such straits that King AEgeus and his Athenians were glad to submit to the hard terms which were asked of them. The demand ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... 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

... 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 to stay with, at "Kussowlie," ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... 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 ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... himself:—you'd stop Your nose to smell it:—vinegar, I own, He gives you without stint, and that alone. Well, betwixt these, what should a wise man do? Which should he copy, think you, of the two? 'Tis Scylla and Charybdis, rock and gulf: On this side howls the dog, on that the wolf. A man that's neat in table, as in dress, Errs not by meanness, yet avoids excess; Nor, like Albucius, when he plays the host, Storms at his slaves, while giving each his post; Nor, like poor Naevius, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... it smil'd: I have oft heard My mother Circe with the Sirens three, Amid'st the flowry-kirtl'd Naiades Culling their Potent hearbs, and balefull drugs. Who as they sung, would take the prison'd soul, And lap it in Elysium, Scylla wept, And chid her barking waves into attention. And fell Charybdis murmur'd soft applause: Yet they in pleasing slumber lull'd the sense, 260 And in sweet madnes rob'd it of it self, But such a sacred, and home-felt delight, Such sober certainty ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... 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

... 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 the water like straws; so I've heard say, but, as I've not seen it done, I can't vouch for the ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... through war and conquest, and would change every thing in his mother's empire, for the mere satisfaction of knowing that the change was his own work. Oh, what would become of Austria if I were not by, to keep him within bounds? It will task all my genius to steer between the Scylla of a bigoted, peace-loving empress, and the Charybdis of this reckless emperor; to reconcile their antagonisms, and overrule their prejudices. Maria Theresa is for peace and a treaty with the Porte, who has lately been a good-natured, harmless neighbor—Joseph thirsts ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... drama of Fate! what motley pageantries rise On the stage of this make-shift world! what irony silenced in sighs! In the strait beneath Etna for as the waves ebb, and Scylla betrays The monster below, foul scales of the serpent and slime,—could we gaze On Tyranny stript of her tinsel, what vision of dool and dismay! Terror in confidence clothed, and anarchy biding her ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... same moment two quite different impulses, is necessarily always in a zigzag or a curve. That is to say that at every erotic moment her action is the resultant of the combined force of her desire (conscious or unconscious) and her modesty. She must sail through a tortuous channel with Scylla on the one side and Charybdis on the other, and to avoid either danger too anxiously may mean risking shipwreck on the other side. She must be impenetrable to all the world, but it must be an impenetrability not too obscure for ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... Scylla and Charybdis. Consisting of Observations upon the Causes, Course, and Consequences of the Late Civil War in the United States. By H. S. FOOTE. New ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... which he may allow himself in translating. Is he to adhere rigidly to a literal rendering of the original text, or is paraphrase permissible, and, if permissible, within what limits may it be adopted? In deciding which of these courses to pursue, the translator stands between Scylla and Charybdis. If he departs too widely from the precise words of the text, he incurs the blame of the purist, who will accuse him of foisting language on the original author which the latter never employed, with the ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... Jane! it was to escape the attentions of a far less dangerous detrimental, and a far less ineligible one, that she had brought her daughter with her all the way to Riffrath—"from Charybdis to Scylla," as we used to say at Brossard's, putting the cart before ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... is 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 ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... power. They promise pleasure, but never give it. They nourish in no wise; but slay by slow death. And whereas they corrupt the heart and the head, instead of merely betraying the senses, there is no recovery from their power; they do not tear nor scratch, like Scylla, but the men who have listened to them are poisoned, and waste away. Note that the Sirens' field is covered, not merely with the bones, but with the skins, of those who have been consumed there. They address themselves, in the part of the song which Homer gives, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... This passage is of peculiar interest as it shows the source of what Mrs. Stowe loves to call the "Christ-worship" which characterized the religion of the younger Beechers. Writing at the age of seventeen, when her soul was tossing between Scylla and Charybdis, Harriet says: "I feel that I love God,—that is, that I love Christ"; and in 1876, writing of her brother Henry, she says, "He and I are Christ-worshippers, adoring him as the Image of the Invisible God." Her son refers us to the twenty-fourth ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... all recollect the classical story of Scylla and Charybdis, the former a maiden changed by Circe into a hideous sea-monster, who threw herself into the sea and became a rock, the latter changed by Jupiter into a foaming whirlpool. Vessels which avoided the rock of Scylla ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... inner room with his back to the empty grate. No,—Lord Alfred had not been there. 'Nor Mr Grendall?' The senior understrapper knew that Melmotte would have asked for 'his Secretary,' and not for Mr Grendall, but for the rumours. It is so hard not to tumble into Scylla when you are avoiding Charybdis. Mr Grendall had not been there. Indeed, nobody had been there. 'In fact, there is nothing more to be done, I suppose?' said Mr Melmotte. The senior understrapper thought that there was nothing more ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... Pietro, 197; captures a Spanish brig, ib.; obtains information of the arrival of a reinforcement under Sir R. Curtis off Cadiz, 199; captures a Spanish vessel from Genoa, ib.; joins Admiral Nelson with the reinforcement, 201; his remarks upon the "Scylla and Charybdis" celebrated by the ancients, 203; upon different volcanoes, ib.; upon the Bay of Naples, 204; his account of Mount Strombolo, ib.; of a pilot and his crew, 205; of "Brydone's Travels through Sicily and Malta," ib.; of the city ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross

... passage on a flood tide. As everybody bestirred themselves, however, she was got round and filled on the opposite tack, just in time to clear the rocks. Spike breathed again, but his head was still full of the boat. The danger he had just escaped as Scylla met him as Charybdis. The boatswain again roared to go about. The order was given as the vessel began to pitch in a heavy swell. At the next instant she rolled until the water came on deck, whirled with her stern down the tide, and her bows rose as if ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... consternation. At one time they were borne with dreadful velocity among tumultuous breakers; at another, hurried down boisterous rapids. Now they were nearly dashed upon the Hen and Chickens (infamous rocks! more voracious than Scylla and her whelps!); and anon they seemed sinking into yawning gulfs, that threatened to entomb them beneath the waves. All the elements combined to produce a hideous confusion. The waters raged—the winds howled—and as they were hurried along several of the astonished ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... we had conversed little in French. One is naturally diffident at first; for if one musters courage to commence a conversation with propriety, the problem is how to escape a Scylla in the second and a Charybdis in the third sentence. Said one of our fair entertainers, "When I first began I would think of some sentence till I could say it without stopping, and courageously deliver myself to some guest or acquaintance." ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... comyn wele A knyght ought also to be mercifull and pyetous For ther is 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 ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton

... difficulties of this complex case. Yet here, too, there may be some trace of compensation. If the reader has been drawn into the whirlpools of the political Charybdis, he might not even in far worthier hands than mine have escaped the rocky headlands of the ecclesiastic Scylla. For churches ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... the depths with his trident, as with a ladle, and roused the whirlwind, and a good deal more (enough to raise a storm of itself),—when suddenly there came a black squall which nearly capsized the boat. The poet was extremely ill, and disgorged such an avalanche of minstrelsy (Scylla, Charybdis, the Cyclops, all came up bodily), that I had no difficulty in preserving a few snatches. I should like to know, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... of orthodoxy; but, if she declined, he was resolved none the less to afford his succor to any true friend of the Church that chose to request it. Timid and irresolute Catharine, who desired to steer clear of the Scylla of Spanish intervention quite as much as of the Charybdis of Huguenot supremacy, trembled for the security of her unballasted bark. But the watchful old man who sat on St. Peter's reputed seat was thrown into a paroxysm of delight. When the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... some use. The piece chosen was to illustrate a proverb, and was entirely new. It was as unexceptionable as it was amusing; the most severe critic could have found no fault with its morality or with its moral, which turned on the eagerness displayed by young girls nowadays to obtain diplomas. Scylla and Charybdis was its name. Its story was that of a young bride, who, thinking to please a husband, a stupid and ignorant man, was trying to obtain in secret a high place in the examination at the Sorbonne—'un brevet superieur'. The husband, disquieted ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... and subjectivities, and such mysterious words; at such moments I am like an old war-horse, who, though he will rush on levelled lances, shudders and sweats with terror at a boy rattling pebbles in a bladder; and I feel altogether dizzy, and dread lest I should suffer some such transformation as Scylla, when I hear awful words, like incantations, pronounced over me, of which I, being no sage, understand nothing. But tell me now, Alcibiades, did the opinion ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley

... 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 castle, where ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... now, a world war had ended. Then, as now, half the world was prostrated by the wounds of fratricidal strife. As Washington said: "The whole world was in an uproar," and he added that the task "was to steer safely between Scylla and Charybdis." The problem, then as now, was not only to make "the world safe for democracy," but to make democracy, for which there is no alternative, safe for the world. The thirteen colonies in 1787, while small and relatively unimportant, were, however, a little ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... bounced by Charybdis, With limestone which ribb'd is; A touch from a pebble might seam her; Made a curtsey to Scylla, As the Turks say, "Bismillah," 'Twas a very close shave for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... and flourishing farms. 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 ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... 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 Colenso ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne

... consternation that a great deal more work is expected of him than he is prepared to do. What course, then, Reverend Jones or Brown, does he take? He proceeds to do as much work as will steer him safely between the, ah—I may say, the Scylla of punishment and the Charybdis of being considered what my, er—fellow-pupils euphoniously term a swot. That, I think, is all this morning. Good day. Pray do not trouble to rise. I will find my way out.' I should ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... on opposite grounds at once. It is condemned for being pessimistic, it is blamed for being optimistic. From this position Chesterton deduces that it is the only rational religion, because it steers between the Scylla of pessimism and avoids the Charybdis of a facile optimism. Regarding presumably the early Church she has also kept from extremes. She has ignored the easy path of heresy, she has adhered to the adventurous road of orthodoxy. She has avoided the Arian materialism by dropping a Greek Iota; ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... moral, political, and religious, the proper thing is to walk neither on the left nor the right side, but somewhere about the middle. Say to the ship-master, You are to sail through a perilous strait; you will have the raging Scylla on one hand as you go. His natural reply will be, Well, I will keep as far away from it as possible; I will keep close by the other side. But the rejoinder must be, No, you will be quite as ill off there; you will ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... its members to leave the butchering of aristocrats to take its course. He sought information at the Captain's hands, but the officer was reticent to the point of curtness, and so, their anxiety but little relieved, since it might seem that they had but escaped from Scylla to be engulfed in Charbydis, the aristocrats at Bellecour spent the night in odious suspense. Those that were tending the wounded had perhaps the best of it, since thus their minds were occupied and saved the torture ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... abound, O Shade," I cried, "What wonder men are 'Mugwumps?'" Then my guide Laughed low. "The aesthetic villa Finds Shopdom's zeal on its fine senses jar; Yet the Mugwumps Charybdis stands not far From the Machine-man's Scylla. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various

... declared. "You remember about Scylla and Charybdis, the two fabled monsters that used to alarm the old chaps hundreds and hundreds of years ago; but which turned out to be a dangerous rock and a big sucker hole, called a whirlpool? That's what ails this old inlet, I guess. The currents suck ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... folktales due to this cause would leave unexplained the prominence of the bird myth in the sacred rites, and leave the present hypothesis, in this regard, on a par with that of post-phratriac dissemination, in respect of probability. On the other hand we have the Scylla of tribal property in land, an idea so firmly rooted in our own day in the minds of the Australians as to make wars of conquest unthinkable to them, and to transform the practical part of their intertribal feuds into mere raids. If, therefore, investigation showed that the central and eastern ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... 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 the soldiery does not disturb ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... "'twixt Scylla and Charybdis". To toll the bell seemed their only chance of escape, and to do so they must certainly mount into the square room where the rope was hanging. On the one hand was the prospect of spending some time in a building which was rapidly growing darker ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... litterateur, plunge into the history of Letters or of Arts, never at a loss for authorities or original ideas, often even illuminating intellectual problems by some happy analogy with the problems of his trade, and rarely grounding on either the Scylla of overbearing conceit or ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... upon the plan of saying, concerning any boy whom he particularly liked, that he was not one of his especial chums, and that indeed he hardly knew why he had asked him; but he found he only fell on Scylla in trying to avoid Charybdis, for though the boy was declared to be more successful it was Ernest who was naught for not thinking ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... Love, and 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 once again? ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... the materialists and the "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 ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... tempestuous sea bellow so loud, when the Northern blast dashes it, with its foaming waves between Scylla and Charybdis; nor Stromboli, nor Mount Etna, when their sulphurous flames, having been forcibly confined, rend, and burst open the mountain, fulminating stones and earth through the air together with the ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... 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 feet, six heads with six long necks, and ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... the bar, roulette and faro tables, bright with varnish and gaudy with nickel trimmings, were waiting with invitations to feverish excitement. The room was a modern presentation of Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla, the bar, stimulated to the daring of Charybdis across the way, and Charybdis, the roulette, sent its winners to celebrate success, or its victims to deaden the ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... see that honor was what kept me from her? Such honor as a man feels when he knows that he is poised between a Scylla and a Charybdis ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... fond Roscoe to Scylla the fair, As he gaz'd on her charms, with a love-soothing care: Hear now the last wish, that fondly I sigh, I'll conquer in love, or ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah

... from Jacinthe," ruminated Garnet. "She was Captain the last year she was at school, so she ought to know. You see, we've to steer between Scylla and Charybdis. We mustn't push ourselves forward too violently, or they'll call us cheeky, but on the other hand, if we're content to take a back seat, we may stay there for the rest of the term. Comprenez vous? It's a matter of seizing one's ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... and the individuality of the personages themselves very generally prevents that monotony from being even felt. The stories are never tame; and, what is more remarkable, they seldom or never have the mere extravagance which in mediaeval, at least as often as in other, writing, plays Scylla to the Charybdis of tameness. Moreover, they have, as no other division of mediaeval romance has in anything like the same measure, the advantage of the presence of interesting characters of both sexes. Only the Arthurian story can approach them here, and that leaves still an element ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... Fableland, 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 ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... my muse, the man who, after the time of the destruction of Troy, surveyed the manners and cities of many men." He meditates not [to produce] smoke from a flash, but out of smoke to elicit fire, that he may thence bring forth his instances of the marvelous with beauty, [such as] Antiphates, Scylla, the Cyclops, and Charybdis. Nor does he date Diomede's return from Meleager's death, nor trace the rise of the Trojan war from [Leda's] eggs: he always hastens on to the event; and hurries away his reader in the midst of interesting circumstances, no ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... jutting points, the dashing of the waters, and the cries of one of the most timid of our followers, who to save himself from wet feet had mounted an overladen pony, and was now in imminent danger both of Scylla and Charybdis, added to the interest of the picture; but, occasionally, the reverberation caused by the fragments of rock, which, detaching themselves from the upper regions, came tumbling down, not far from where we stood, warned us not to dwell upon the spot. We took the ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem

... 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 of the Constitution is such, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... fear, Rei," said the Wanderer, "as it is doomed so shall I die and not otherwise. Never shall it be told," he murmured in his heart, "that he who stood in arms against Scylla, the Horror of the Rock, turned back from any form of fear or ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... under 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

... this would only have been a choice of evils, a progress from Scylla to Charybdis: not so to our Colonel. On coming up to the surface after his first dip, he found that swimming would not save him; so he quietly emptied out the water contained in the Umbrella, seated himself upon it, and sailed triumphantly ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster

... believe that we do not think about you, that we do not heed our duty, that we only eat to live, and live to rule? Would that it were so! But we, like you, follow the cadence, finding ourselves between Scylla and Charybdis: either you reject us or the government rejects us. The government commands, and he who commands, ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... the isle of the Sirens, and to have myself tied to the boat that I might not leap into the ocean to go to the beautiful maidens who sang so entrancingly. We therefore escaped without adding our bones to those on the isle of the Sirens, and came next to Scylla and Charybdis. Charybdis is a frightful whirlpool. The sailor who steers too far away in his anxiety to escape it, is seized by the six arms of the monster Scylla and lifted to her cavern to be devoured. We avoided Charybdis; but as we looked down into the abyss, pale with fear, six of my ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... 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

... All other considerations must be 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 ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... cottage and its shelter, are not for him. He is only passing by, happy yet wistful, far untravelled horizons are alluring him, the great city is drawing him to herself and will slay him one day in her den, as Scylla ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang

... two opinions, claiming and disclaiming, saying and in the next breath again unsaying. The Oxford student being asked for the doctrine of the Anglican Church on good works, knew the rocks and whirlpools among which an unwary answer might involve him, and steering midway between Scylla and Charybdis, replied, with laudable caution, 'a few of them would not do a man any harm.' It is scarcely a caricature of the prudence of the Articles. And so at last it has come to this with us. The soldier can raise a column to his successful general; the halls of the law courts ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... 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 ...
— The Republic • Plato

... Plato. From this communion Britain was cut off. Her shores were, to the polished race which dwelt by the Bosphorus, objects of a mysterious horror, such as that with which the Ionians of the age of Homer had regarded the Straits of Scylla and the city of the Laestrygonian cannibals. There was one province of our island in which, as Procopius had been told, the ground was covered with serpents, and the air was such that no man could inhale it and live. To this desolate region the spirits of the departed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... 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 Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... and rosebud lips, whose honied wealth the zephyr sips, But bait the lair Where fickle fair, Like Scylla, wreck men's ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... a golden hair of King Nisus. Scylla promised to deliver the city into the hands of Minos, and cut off the talismanic lock of her father's head ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... lamentable thing!' and there was a heavy sincerity in his utterance, his pose, with his foot weightily upon the ground, being that of an honest man. 'But I do think you have the right of it. We, and the new faith with us, are between Scylla and Charybdis. For certain, our two paths do lie between divorcing the Queen and seeing you, great lords, who so well ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... but also the Lydian River of Pactolus all transmuted into Gold, and how Midas Mygdonius washed himself in the same. Likewise those candid Rivals of this Art, shall in a serious order behold the Bathing-place of naked Diana, the Fountain of Narcissus and Scylla walking in the Sea, without garments, by reason of the most fervent Rayes of Sol: partly also the Blood of Pyramus and Thisbe, of it self collected, by the help of which, white Mulberries are tinged into Red; partly also the Blood of Adonis, by the descending Goddess Venus transformed ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius

... taught us how to climb some mountains, but here we have to construct our ladders, for anyone less sure of foot than the chamois or the mountain sheep must stay at the bottom of the falls. Scylla and Charybdis are stationary now, and the gaping chasm has swallowed us upward, where we reach an opening into a wide park, a veritable fairyland. On the top of one of those ponderous laminations tilted edgewise is the king of the gnomes of the new glen. ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... morning, to belong to this frontierless world of nature, to be coaxed into flower by the sun, to be a strand in some unknown design, how much better than the weary steering of your life between the Scylla of your ardent futile longings and the Charybdis of some ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... you written?" asked a quiet voice at his ear; and he turned to look straight in the eyes of Rewa Gunga, who had leaned forward to read over his shoulder. Just for one second he hovered on the brink of quick defeat. Having escaped the Scylla of the dancing women, Charybdis waited for him in the shape of eyes that were pools of hot mystery. It was the sound of his own voice that brought him back to the world again and saved ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... for him than Salisbury. If it were not so trite, we would say he had fallen from Scylla upon Charybdis; or, if it were not vulgar, we might assert him to have fallen from the frying-pan into the fire; we will simply say, that not finding his father's wife at all agreeable, and having a remote suspicion that she might be tempted to put something that ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... to the axletree in a mud-hole, from which, perhaps, you 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 style ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... Scylla of local neglect and the Charybdis of centralized jobbery. At first the settler was burdened with the task of clearing roughly the road in front of his own land, but the existence of vast tracts of Clergy Reserves, or other grants exempt from clearing duties, ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton

... of 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 ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... 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

... doing that the non-combatants were placed between two fires. They had to serve two masters in carrying out the instructions of proclamations diametrically opposed to each other. The man who was ingenious enough to act a double part, who could steer clear of Charybdis and Scylla, alone evaded trouble. There were, however, not many who succeeded in pleasing or duping both parties for any ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... reign of the Pretender. If the landed man spoke for the Church, the Whig speculator raised the shout of "No Popery!" The war had transformed parties into factions, and the ministry stood between a Scylla of a peace-at-any-price, on the one side, and a Charybdis of a war-at-any-price on the other; or, if not a war, then a peace so one-sided that it would be almost ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... 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 ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... 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, and dolphins, and all the herds ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley

... imagines, nothing wrong! "Say, Muse, the Man, who, after Troy's disgrace, In various cities mark'd the human race!" Not flame to smoke he turns, but smoke to light, Kindling from thence a stream of glories bright: Antiphates, the Cyclops, raise the theme; Scylla, Charibdis, fill the pleasing dream. Nec reditum Diomedis ab interitu Meleagri, Nec gemino bellum Trojanum orditur ab ovo: Semper ad eventum festinat; et in medias res, Non secus ac notas, auditorem rapit: et quae Desperat ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace

... once knew a croupier—we used to call him Napoleon, from the way he took snuff from his waistcoat pocket, who was in the way of expressing a grave conviction that it was possible to make a capital living at Roulette, so long as you stuck to the colours, and avoided the Scylla of the numbers and the Charybdis of the Zero. By degrees, then, the shyness of the neophyte wears off. Perhaps in the course of his descent of Avernus, a revulsion of feeling takes place, and, horror-struck and ashamed, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... Scylla and Charybdis. He could scarcely escape being wrecked on the rocks of his own falsehood. The enemies who always surround a royal favorite were not long in surmising the truth, and lost no time in acquainting Edgar with their suspicions. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... to-night, Scylla," he said tauntingly, "though you left us early. There are dark circles under the eyes that looked kindly at the enemy of ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... thought is essentially excentric and sophisticated, being largely based on two inherited blunders, which a truly progressive philosophy would have to begin by avoiding, thus leaving Kant on one side, and weathering his philosophy, as one might Scylla or Charybdis. The one blunder was that of the English malicious psychology which had maintained since the time of Locke that the ideas in the mind are the only objects of knowledge, instead of being the knowledge of objects. ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... other. Every test applied to it by the refinements of modern skill, strengthens its claims. Here then the Newtonian vacuum is no longer a void. If we get over this difficulty, by attributing to this medium a degree of tenuity almost spiritual, we shall run upon Scylla while endeavoring to shun Charybdis. Light and heat come bound together from the sun, by the same path, and with the same velocity. Heat is therefore due also to an excitement of this attenuated medium. Yet this heat puts our atmosphere in motion, impels onward the waves ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... to find sorrow in his house.' On returning to the Isle Aeaean, Odysseus was warned by Circe of the dangers he would encounter. He and his friends set forth, escaped the Sirens (a sort of mermaidens), evaded the Clashing Rocks, which close on ships (a fable known to the Aztecs), passed Scylla (the pieuvre of antiquity) with loss of some of the company, and reached Thrinacia, the Isle of the Sun. Here the company of Odysseus, constrained by hunger, devoured the sacred kine of the Sun, for which offence they were punished by a shipwreck, ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... him in "Regulus," but not understanding French was but mildly interested. "Ah," said Talma in the account by James Kenney printed in Henry Angelo's Pic Nic, "I was not very happy to-night; you must see me in 'Scylla.'" "Incidit in Scyllam," said Lamb, "qui vult vitare Charybdiro." "Ah, you are a rogue; you are a great rogue," was Talma's reply. Talma had bought a pair of bellows with Shakespeare's head on it. Lamb's belief in the authenticity of this portrait was misplaced, as ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... 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, where the water was always ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... social superiors, and not care to know you; in which case, of course, you would only be letting yourself in for a needless snubbing. In fact, in this modern England of ours, this fatherland of snobdom, one passes one's life in a see-saw of doubt, between the Scylla and Charybdis of those two antithetical social dangers. You are always afraid you may get to know somebody you yourself do not want to know, or may try to know somebody who does not ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... 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

... Scylla's cave which men of science are preparing for themselves to be able to pounce out upon us from it, and ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... oar; Like beauty newly dead, so calm, so still, So lovely, thou, beneath the light that fell From angel-chariots sentinelled on high, Reposed, and listened, and saw thy living change, Thy dead arise. Charybdis listened, and Scylla; And savage Euxine on the Thracian beach Lay motionless: and every battle ship Stood still; and every ship of merchandise, And all that sailed, of every name, stood still." ROBERT POLLOK: Course of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... 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" were deleted; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Trojans coasted round the south of Sicily, instead of trying to pass the strait between the dreadful Scylla and Charybdis, and just below Mount Etna an unfortunate man came running down to the beach begging to be taken in. He was a Greek, who had been left behind when Ulysses escaped from Polyphemus' cave, and had made his way to the forests, where he had lived ever since. They had just taken him ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... say that I know not what mountains[11] are reported to arise in the midst of the waves, and that Charybdis, an enemy to ships, one while sucks in the sea, at another discharges it; and how that Scylla, begirt with furious dogs, is said to bark in the Sicilian deep? Yet holding him whom I love, and clinging to the bosom of Jason, I shall be borne over the wide seas; embracing him, naught will I dread; or ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... from one end of the Conference to the other, and after he receives it he is liable to find himself among a people, who had rejected him in the canvass, and now only acquiesce in the decision from sheer necessity. But if he escape Scylla in this particular, he is certain to drive upon Charybdis in another. Granting that his relations and labors may be acceptable, he falls upon the inevitable necessity of devoting his time and labor, during the vigor and strength of his days, for a meager compensation, and then pass into old ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... was realized for some charity,—I forget what,—and the affair was voted highly successful. The next day, the 28th, we were creeping towards our harbor through one of those dense fogs which are more dangerous than the old rocks of the sirens, or Scylla and Charybdis, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the interests of the people. We long ago got at the truth about the great English rebellion. 'Pride's Purge,' the 'elective kingship without a veto of the 'New Model,' and the merciless mystification of Bradshaw, tell their own story. Steering to avoid the Scylla of Strafford, the luckless Parliamentarians ran the ship of State full into the Charybdis ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... 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 chance, through peril lies our way To Latium, where the fates ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke

... metrical considerations incline recent critics to the belief that it is from the hand of an almost contemporary imitator who had caught the Virgilian manner with great accuracy. The Ciris, another piece of somewhat greater length, on the story of Scylla and Nisus, is more certainly the production of some forgotten poet belonging to the circle of Marcus Valerius Messalla, and is of interest as showing the immense pains taken in the later Augustan age to continue the Virgilian tradition. The third poem, the Moretum, ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... withal, she was never sure of his opinion of her. Having little 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 plunged ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... The room had two doors—one opening upon the platform from which we had just come, and now guarded by an officer; the other leading to the opposite platform, and there stood the custom-house officer receiving and inspecting the passports. It was indeed Scylla and Charybdis. If I attempted to pass the officer without a passport, I was undone; if I remained until all the other passengers had passed out, I was undone. For an instant I felt as if I had better give up the unequal contest. The forces of the enemy were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... of the Father was the fountain from which that of the Son and Spirit was derived. This was fixed as Orthodox at the Council of Nice, A.D. 325, and was the beginning of Orthodoxy in the Church. It was a middle course between Scylla and Charybdis, which were represented on the one side by Arius, who maintained that the Son was created out of nothing; and by Sabellius on the other hand, who maintained that the Son was only a mode, manifestation, or name ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... Liberals. He was pale and pasty, and suffered from indigestion. Mrs. Flint was tall, thin and severe, and a great helper at St. Matthew's, the church round the corner. She gave up all her time to church work and the care of the poor, and it wasn't her fault that the poor hated her. Between the Scylla of politics and the Charybdis of religion there was very little left for poor Barbara; she faded away under the care of an elderly governess who suffered from a perfect cascade of ill-fated love affairs; it seemed that gentlemen were always "playing with her feelings." But in all ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... and of ruling provinces. As propraetors they will seek to gain the love and vote of their soldiers; discipline will become relaxed, and the basest instead of the noblest passions of the troops be appealed to. We may have civil wars again, like those of Marius and Scylla, and Anthony and Brutus. I hate the intrigues of Rome, and loathe the arts of the demagogue, and to this our generals will descend. Therefore I shall soon apply for service in Britain again. Muro approves, ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... the strength of their lungs. It must have been very like the boat-race Virgil describes in the fifth book of the Aeneid. There was the "huge Chimaera" the "mighty Centaur" and possibly even the "dark-blue Scylla" with their modern counterparts of Gyas, Sergestus, and Cloanthus, bawling just as lustily as doubtless those coxswains of old shouted; no one, however, struck on the rocks, as we are told the unfortunate "Centaur" did. Still the little mahogany-built ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... between Scylla and Charybdis Between two perilous alternatives, which cannot be passed without falling victim ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... thought of her in the next room, the thought that she might 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 like a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson



Words linked to "Scylla" :   Greek mythology, mythical being



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