"Scylla" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... 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
... of Naples in the morning twilight, after making an unsuccessful attempt to locate Scylla and Charybdis. If they ever existed, they must have disappeared. Vesuvius was now and then lighting up the clouds with its intermittent flame. But we had passed a most uncomfortable night, and the morning was wet and chilly. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... she, who had just given him such a proof of her interest and devotion. And—O poor dear Garth! O bold, brazen Nurse Rosemary!—he very naturally concluded she was making love to him. Jane felt herself between Scylla and Charybdis, and she took a very prompt ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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
... the 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. She turned ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... 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 ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... 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 to conceal from ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... spiral whorl which gathers into a lustrous precision, like that of a polished shell, the grasping force of a giant, you have the most vivid sight and embodiment of literally rampant energy; which the Greeks expressed in their symbolic Poseidon, Scylla, and sea-horse, by the head and crest of the man, dog, or horse, with the body of the serpent; and of which you will find the slower image, in vegetation, rendered both by the spiral tendrils of grasping or climbing plants, and the ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... the minuteness of the directions supplied by Ailie, to pilot himself in safety through the dark labyrinth of passages that led from the back-door to the little kitchen; but Henry was too well acquainted with the navigation of these straits to experience danger, either from the Scylla which lurked on one side in shape of a bucking tub, or the Charybdis which yawned on the other in the profundity of a winding cellar-stair. His only impediment arose from the snarling and vehement barking of a small cocking spaniel, once his own property, but which, unlike to ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... woman—and she disliked Mrs. Rawson something awful. They were always 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 ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... brought me to shore, and the remainder of the battle was fought out from the shingle. There was one rush of nearly a hundred yards, then the fish calmed down and answered to the winch, moving down, nevertheless, much too persistently to Scylla and Charybdis. ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... much for it in word and in deed. You have adhered to a lofty ideal and yet have been absolutely practical and, therefore, efficient, so that you are a perpetual example to young men how to avoid alike the Scylla of indifference and the Charybdis of efficiency for ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... 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
... might be that of a young lad now beginning his political career, or of one who had through life advocated abolition principles. He heaped reproaches on poor Virginia, whose position as the chief of the border States has given to her hardly the possibility of avoiding a Scylla of ruin on the one side, or a Charybdis of rebellion on the other. When he spoke as he did of Virginia, ridiculing the idea of her sacred soil, even I, Englishman as I am, could not but think of Washington, of Jefferson, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... 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 Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... loftiest stars I'll reach. "What are those rocks, they tell, which 'mid the waves "Meet in encounter? Fell Charybdis what,— "Hostile to ships, now sucking in the tide, "Now fierce discharging? What the savage bounds, "Which compass greedy Scylla 'mid the main "Sicilian? O'er the wide-spread ocean borne, "Him whom I love embracing; sheltering close "In Jason's bosom; clasp'd by him, no fear "My soul could harbor. Or if fear I felt, "For him alone I'd tremble; for my spouse. "Spouse, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... earthquakes occurred in 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 land which ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... 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 ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... had been rung up by the burglar, and the fact of my not having said a word about it would be directly damning to me, if in the end it did not incriminate us both. It made me quite faint to feel that we might escape the Scylla of our present peril and yet split on the Charybdis of circumstantial evidence. Yet I could see no middle course of conceivable safety, if I held my tongue another moment. So I spoke up desperately, with the rash resolution ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... 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 ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... montibus Libystinis Aut Scylla latrans infima inguinum parte Tam mente dura procreavit ac taetra, Vt supplicis vocem in novissimo casu Contemptam haberes ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... but most terrible of all is a passion-driven woman: Thestias, who burnt out the mystic brand that measured her son's life; Scylla, who robbed her father of his life-charm; another—but the woman who slew her warrior-chief it is meet for me to pass over in silence. Then there is the great Lemnian Crime, foremost of all crimes; yet this might well be compared to it; and as that race perished, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... 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 ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... teeth 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
... earliest dawn of the following morning we rambled through the streets. Breda was one of the last towns which got rid of its French garrison without a siege; it departed one night without beat of drum, and the Cossacks came in to breakfast, leaving the trembling inhabitants to doubt whether in escaping Scylla they were not approaching Charybdis. However, they behaved tolerably well. "Did they pillage?" said I to a Breda lady who travelled with us in the Diligence. "Oh non," she replied; "seulement quelque fois ils prenaient des choses sans payer." Thus a Cossack comes into ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... between the Scylla of Joyce's determination and the Charybdis of her people's perversity, sometimes lost his temper entirely, and could do nothing but anathematize them for a "pesky set of fools" right to their faces. So a part of the old buildings still ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... breach of school rules, and to rush out between dinner and afternoon school to pay her visit to the china shop. As she had said, it was a risky performance. If she were caught, she would be reported to Miss Roscoe, and the penalty would be severe. It seemed sailing 'twixt Scylla and Charybdis, but it was worth trying. The first difficulty was how to put on her outdoor things without anybody noticing. Girls kept strolling in and out of the dressing-room in the most tiresome manner and after waiting ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... 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
... unto the Pyramids, From Rhine to Manzanares Unfailingly the thunderstroke His lightning purpose carries; Bursts from Scylla to Tanais,— From one to the other sea. Was it true glory?—Posterity, Thine be the hard decision; Bow we before the mightiest, Who willed in him the vision Of his creative majesty Most grandly traced ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... my little Puritan," cried the Judge, "would not object. But do not fancy that in avoiding Scylla I must run upon Charybdis. Be sure I would not imitate the trim moustaches and peaked chins of those old dandies, Winthrop and Endicott. I prefer the full flowing style of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... thing, isn't it, to be living in a world darkened on one side by the servant question and on the other by the appendix, like Scylla and Charybdis?" ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... room from 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
... 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 marriage, between one man ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... he to them, "the moment is arrived, when the great decrees of destiny are to be fulfilled. Providence at length calls you, to become an independent people: one cry resounds from the Alps to the straits of Scylla, the independence of Italy. By what right would foreigners rob you of your independence, the first right, and the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... This is the Scylla's cave which men of science are preparing for themselves to be able to pounce out upon us from it, and into ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... pattern on the rim. The upper end of handle takes the form of a goddess—Scylla, or Diana with two hounds—ending in acanthus leaves below the waist. On the curved back of handle is a long leaf; the lower attachment is in the form of a mask, ivy-crowned maenad (?). Ntl. Mus., Naples, ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... 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
... 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 Antoninus, the stern Hildebrand, the infamous Borgia, the terrible ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... 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 ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... the 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
... the rocks of Scylla have you tried, Th' inhuman Cyclops and his den defied: What greater ills hereafter can you bear? Resume your courage and dismiss your care; An hour will come with pleasure to relate Your sorrows past as ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... current there among the Dutch colonists. Another instance is afforded by the chimaera, the solution of which enigma, as given by Ovid, is so fully substantiated by the very intelligent British officer who surveyed the Caramania a few years since. Scylla the sea monster, which devoured six of the rowers of Ulysses, M. Salverte, a recent compiler on the marvellous, is tempted to regard as an overgrown polypus magnified by the optical power of poetry, though we are disposed to give the credit to an alligator, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... river at its nearest point, though in the utter darkness it was not easy to direct our way with much precision. Raymond rode on one side and Henry on the other. We could hear each of them shouting that he had come upon a deep ravine. We steered at random between Scylla and Charybdis, and soon after became, as it seemed, inextricably involved with deep chasms all around us, while the darkness was such that we could not see a rod in any direction. We partially extricated ourselves ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Alwynn agreeing with every remark she made, and treating her with that pleased deference of manner which some middle-class people, not otherwise vulgar, invariably drop into in the presence of rank; a Scylla which is only one degree better than the Charybdis of would-be ease of manner into which others fall. If ever the enormous advantages of noble birth and ancient family, with all their attendant heirlooms and hereditary instincts of refinement, chivalrous feeling, and honor, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... of 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, where the family ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... him who eats solely for flavor—who never knows the sauce of hunger, or the deliciousness of a plain crust of bread. We must be on guard, saying, like the little daughter of a classical professor, "If Scylla doesn't get me Charybdis will." Flavor we must have, but not too much, not too many kinds at once, and not applied indiscriminately to foods which need them and foods which do not. The wise cook uses her arts to secure the proper nourishment of ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... very 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 chase of his ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... "'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 ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... an instant, or she will imagine that some dire calamity has befallen her knight, who, in hunting a siren, encountered Scylla or Charybdis. ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... tract, with 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
... 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 to stay with, at "Kussowlie," on our road up. Kalka was not HOT, but GRILLING, so that ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... to-night, Scylla," he said tauntingly, "though you left us early. There are dark circles under the eyes that looked kindly at the enemy ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... 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 azure ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... Wensleydale, is interesting as a piece of verbal criticism; showing, also, how a pilot in avoiding Scylla may easily run his bark into Charybdis, or how a writer, whilst objecting to a harmless 'firstly,' may ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... Syracuse and Panormus, crossed with the rest of the army from Messana to Rhegium (where the myths of the poets say Scylla and Charybdis were), and every day the people of that region kept coming over to him. For since their towns had from of old been without walls, they had no means at all of guarding them, and because of their hostility toward the Goths they were, as was natural, greatly ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... one end of the place, and the rain 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 ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... 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 sad-faced, ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... 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
... 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 ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... 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 Ambassador ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... the rough Field of Mars XIX He puts himself under the Guidance of his Associate, and stumbles upon the French Camp, where he finishes his Military Career XX He prepares a Stratagem, but finds himself countermined— Proceeds on his Journey, and is overtaken by a terrible Tempest XXI He falls upon Scylla, seeking to avoid Charybdis. XXII He arrives at Paris, and is pleased with his Reception XXIII Acquits himself with Address in a Nocturnal Riot XXIV He overlooks the Advances of his Friends, and smarts severely for his Neglect XXV He ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... 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 fact and which ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... 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
... 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 ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... reach the stars with my head. Why 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 if I fear anything, for my husband alone will I fear. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... contrast!) simultaneously we hear of constructive energy in the same direction, on the Italian peninsula,—an engineer having submitted to Victor Emmanuel proposals for throwing a bridge across the Straits of Messina, "binding Scylla to Charybdis, and thus clinching Italian unity with bonds of iron." Bonds of nationality, in more than a physical sense, indeed, are bridges: even cynical Heine found an endeared outlook to his native Rhine on the bastion of a familiar bridge; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... was saying such things as these, and about to say still more, Scylla left the God. He was enraged, and, provoked at the repulse, he repaired to the marvellous court of Circe, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... 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 ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of the terrible night, I tried to appear calm, and took refuge behind my newspaper in order to collect my ideas and interpose a screen between myself and the critical stare of my fellow- passenger. Alas! it was avoiding Scylla only to fall into Charybdis. The first words ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... Virgil, possibly a somewhat timid sailor. The name, however, given to the place by the Greek colonists who founded it, Scylletium, is thought by some to contain an allusion to dangers of the coast similar to those which were typified by the barking dogs of the not far distant Scylla. ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... 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 British tourist in the United States takes ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... induced the Lairds of 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, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... sailing between 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. Confirmation ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... 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 ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... whistling round the 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 ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... spoke the 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 in ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... who have,—this is your safe man and the hope of the Church; this is what the Church is said to want, not party men, but sensible, temperate, sober, well-judging persons, to guide it through the channel of no meaning, between the Scylla and Charybdis of Aye and No.'[4] The writer then thought that such a type could not endure, and that the Church must become more real. On the contrary, her reality is more phantom-like now than it was then. She is the sovereign pattern and exemplar ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... embayed town so named you have the choice of a cross-road to Messina, (twenty-four miles;) but who would abridge distance and miss the celebrated straits towards which we are rapidly approaching, or lose one hour on land and miss the novelties of volcanic islands, and the first view of Scylla and Charybdis? It is but eight o'clock, but the awning has been stretched over our heads an hour ago. As to breakfast—the meal which is associated with that particular hour of the four-and-twenty to all well regulated minds and stomachs—it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Miss Andrews at a dance at the Ocean House the day after his arrival. I even progressed so far as to get up the dance. I described the room, the decorations, and the band. I had Osborne dressed and waiting, with Bonetti also dressed and waiting on the other side of the room, Scylla and Charybdis all over again, but by no possibility could I force Miss Andrews to appear. Why it was, I do not pretend to be able to say—she may have known that Bonetti was there, she may have realized that I was trying to force Osborne upon her; but whatever it was that enabled her to ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... 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 of ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... 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 shall long remember ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... Scylla and Charybdis!" soliloquized the discomfited Tom, as he wiped the perspiration from his face—"Where the d—l does he think I am to find the $50,000 he wants, unless he first gives them to me? I never heard of so unreasonable ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 as ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... Educated, as we shall see hereafter, first in this school. Turner gave the hackneyed composition a strange power and freshness, in his Glaucus and Scylla. [Ruskin.] ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... 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
... 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" were deleted; but that H. Loudon Dodd became manager ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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, ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... 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, ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... 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
... 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 their ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... 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, is at ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... fluctuated between the 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, made this an ineffective ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... 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
... 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
... approached, had also so unaccountably disappeared. Nor had this threatening state of the atmosphere the counterbalancing advantage of storm and tempest to drive them onward through the narrow waters of the Sinclair, and enable them, by anticipating the pursuit of their enemies, to shun the Scylla and Charybdis that awaited their more leisure advance. The wind increased not; and the disappointed seamen remarked, with dismay, that their craft scarcely made more progress than at the moment when ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... 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
... 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... running through his mind already that if he should be freed of the murder charge, he would only have escaped Scylla to go to wreck on Charybdis. For it was a twenty to one bet that Jerry would go to Whitford with the story of his attempt to hire the gang ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... narrow and dangerous channel, avoiding Hobbism on the one side and tender consciences on the other. Each generation of State Churchmen has the same task. The channel remains to-day just as it ever did, with Scylla and Charybdis presiding over their rocks as of old. Hobbes's Leviathan appeared in 1651, and in 1670 both his philosophy and his statecraft were fashionable doctrine. All really pious people called Hobbes an Atheist. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... ills not ignorant; far more Than these ye suffered, and to these as well Will Jove give ending, as he gave before. Ye know mad Scylla, and her monsters' yell, And the dark caverns where the Cyclops dwell. Fear not; take heart; hereafter, it may be These too will yield a pleasant tale to tell. Through shifting hazards, by the Fates' decree, To Latin shores we steer, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... 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 ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... 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
... 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 day: Selfishness hero-mask'd; stage-tricks of the shabby-sublime; ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... 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 woman. The man had thick boots on, though his head ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... always!" the captain said, banging his fist 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 second ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... 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
... bard of Ascra given, Wherewith in singing he was wont to draw Time-rooted ash-trees from the mountain heights. With these the birth of the Grynean grove Be voiced by thee, that of no grove beside Apollo more may boast him." Wherefore speak Of Scylla, child of Nisus, who, 'tis said, Her fair white loins with barking monsters girt Vexed the Dulichian ships, and, in the deep Swift-eddying whirlpool, with her sea-dogs tore The trembling mariners? ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... returned in a frigate to the Piraeus they were not allowed to land. Otho appealed to the representatives of the powers, who refused to support him against the nation, and he and his queen took refuge on board H.M.S. Scylla, and left ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... said the trooper, "as Roanoke has the heels of you greatly; and flying from Scylla, you were liable to encounter Charybdis. Those woods and rocks cover the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... with that nation, and contrary, too, to every principle of gratitude 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 ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... struck with the sarcophagi. Here are three Etruscan sarcophagi, two of alabaster, and one in peperino. On all three are recumbent female figures, and in front of the first the hunt of the Calydonian boar; of the second, Scylla; and of the third, a bas-relief representing Achilles dragging Penthesilea from her chariot. On this shelf also are, a bas-relief showing Luna encompassed by the signs of the Zodiac, and a sun-dial supported by the claws and heads of lions. Turning now to the upper shelf, the visitor ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... she not as well be thirty? There is little choice between Scylla and Charybdis. Twenty-nine is the hour of reckoning for every ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... liberties or to protect 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
... perilously near upon Tritheism, and his book was publicly censured by the Convocation of the University of Oxford. On the other hand, Dr. Wallis, Professor of Geometry, and the famous Dr. South, published treatises against Dr. Sherlock, which, while avoiding the Scylla of Tritheism, ran dangerously near to the Charybdis of Sabellianism. Like all his writings, South's treatise was racy, but violently abusive, and such irritation and acrimony were engendered, that the Royal authority was at last exercised in restraining ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... 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 champanye .lxx. thousand. And after in the cyte he slewe thre thousand ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... these people. On my way home, I overtook two of my daily suppliants, who were going to the house in search of me, and meat, flannel, rice, and sugar, as the case might be; they were both old and infirm-looking women, and one of them, called Scylla, was extremely lame, which she accounted for by an accident she had met with while carrying a heavy weight of rice on her head; she had fallen on a sharp stake, or snag, as she called it, and had never recovered the injury she had received. She complained ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... we 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 were consistent ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... which is hypocritical and deceitful as sin, dazzling and alluring as a poisonous flower, dangerous and deadly as Scylla and Charybdis, of the ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... instantly took my part, and as there were only two women who hadn't been snubbed by her—Mrs. Tudor Carstairs and Mrs. Sanderson-Spear—I was simply overwhelmed with unsolicited advice and undesirable attention. Indeed, it was all I could do to steer a dignified course between that uncompromising Scylla, Blakely's mother, and the compromising Charybdis of my self-elected champions. But I managed it, somehow. Dad bought me a stunning big automobile in Los Angeles, and Blakely taught me how to run it; then, Blakely was awfully fond of golf; and ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... 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 ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope |
