"Scylla" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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? or how he told Of the changed limbs of Tereus- what a feast, What gifts, to ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... true light before the world, and I with many another one am very grateful for it. Among all Lord Russell's many titles to fame and to public gratitude, the manner in which he has steered the vessel of the State through the Scylla and Charybdis of the American War will, I think, always stand conspicuous.... Now I am going to ask a great favour. I saw at Minto a copy of verses written for the summer-house at Pembroke Lodge, of which I formed the highest opinion. May I ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... 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
... 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 his will for ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... right 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; ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... himself, and, on arriving, finds to his 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 then have made for ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... my heart is the hero, Aeson's son, and the others that have helped him in the contest, and how I saved them when they passed between the Wandering rocks, [1405] where roar terrible storms of fire and the waves foam round the rugged reefs. And now past the mighty rock of Scylla and Charybdis horribly belching, a course awaits them. But thee indeed from thy infancy did I tend with my own hands and love beyond all others that dwell in the salt sea because thou didst refuse to share the ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... 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
... in the endeavour to find in Twentieth Century English a precise equivalent for a Greek word, phrase, or sentence there are two dangers to be guarded against. There are a Scylla and a Charybdis. On the one hand there is the English of Society, on the other hand that of the utterly uneducated, each of these patois having also its own special, though expressive, borderland which we name 'slang.' But all these salient angles (as a professor of fortification might say) ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... You had this potency in no slight degree when neither your heart nor your brain was very active. You will find that it will increase with time, and if you are wise it will be greater when you are sixty than at present. If you avoid the Scylla of vanity on the one hand, and the Charybdis of selfishness on the other, and if the sympathies of your heart keep pace with a cultivated mind, you will steadily grow in social influence. I believe it for this reason: A weak ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... 24 m. long, and at its narrowest 21/2 broad; separates Sicily from the Italian mainland; here were the Scylla and Charybdis of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... blood feud. It was not Sir Wilfrid's intention to make the feud his own or even to agree to it being carried on by Sir Richard. He took for minister of finance, W. S. Fielding, who justified his choice by successfully steering the budget bark between Scylla and Charybdis for fourteen years in succession before the whirlpool finally sucked him down. Where Laurier went outside his following for colleagues he had equally definite ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... of destitution I have heard of was the case of old Robert at the Oaks, cow-minder,—you remember him. He and old Scylla applied to Mr. Tomlinson for rations, pleading utter poverty. It turned out next day that Robert and Scylla's husband were in treaty for Mr. Fairfield's horse, at the rate of $350! They didn't allege inability to pay ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... seemed bent on estranging the neutral on whose assistance we were in the end to rely for victory in the war. It needed all the resources of an unpopular wisdom and diplomacy to steer between the Scylla of alienating friends by our blockade and the Charybdis of being, in Mr. Asquith's words, "strangled in a network of juridical niceties." The Germans came to our aid with a colossal crime. On 7 May the passenger-ship Lusitania was torpedoed off the south coast of Ireland with the loss ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... 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 by the ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... visited them in April, 1817, describes the remains of a noble villa of the first century, with mosaic pavements, fountains, statuary, candelabra, and frescos. The pictures of Pasiphae, Canace, Phaedra, Myrrha, and Scylla, which are now in the Cabinet of the Aldobrandini Marriage, in the Vatican Library, were discovered in one of the bedrooms of the villa. Other works of art, now exhibited in the third compartment of the Galleria dei Candelabri, were found in the peristyle. An exact description ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... and without doubt his better nature and his good taste would have prevailed. But when fate threw Berene Dumont in his way, and circumstances brought about his close associations with her for many months, there seemed but one way of escape from the Scylla of his desires, and that was to the Charybdis of a marriage with ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... not only comely and genteel, but whose minds are replenished and adorned with all virtue." Socrates replied: "But my method forbids to use violence, and I am of opinion that all men fled from the wretch Scylla, because she detained them by force: whereas the Syrens did no violence to any man, and employed only their tuneful voices to detain those who passed near them, so that all stopped to hear, and suffered themselves to be insensibly charmed by the music of their songs." "Be sure," said Critobulus, ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... the peak is a dark cloud that passeth not away 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 head three rows of teeth, ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... 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
... image of the soul, like the composite creations of ancient mythology, such as the Chimera or Scylla or Cerberus, and there are many others in which two or more different natures are said to ...
— The Republic • Plato
... of its spangled nights is like a Scylla of a thousand heads, each head a menace. Glancing from his cab window one such midnight, an inarticulate expression of that fear must have crept over and sickened Mr. Herman Loeb. He reached out and placed his enveloping hand over ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... hit 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 ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... 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
... were on the prisoner's brow,—"but you do not realize the temptation. Have you never yourself been betwixt Scylla and Charybdis? Have I not vowed every false step should be the last? I fought against Lycon. I fought against Mardonius. They were too strong. Athena knoweth I did not crave the tyranny of Athens! It was not that which drove ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... especially (which is a rather large implement for the mouth), not to allow even the clogging influences of cabinet pudding to induce him to give his spoon too much leeway; as in all etiquette of the table, the spoon has its difficulties and dangers. Particularly has the soup-spoon its Scylla and Charybdis, and if a careless eater make a hissing sound as he eats his soup, the well-bred diner-out looks ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... find his home, Odysseus crosses each water; Through Charybdis so dread; ay, and through Scylla's wild yells, Through the alarms of the raging sea, the alarms of the land too,— E'en to the kingdom of hell leads him his wandering course. And at length, as he sleeps, to Ithaca's coast fate ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... exclude foreigners from the country, dismiss the Greek mercenaries, and instead of taking counsel from the Greeks, would hearken only to the commands of the priesthood. But in this, as you must see yourself, the prudent Egyptians had guessed wide of the mark in their choice of a ruler; they fell from Scylla into Charybdis. If Hophra was called the Greeks' friend, Amasis must be named our lover. The Egyptians, especially the priests and the army, breathe fire and flame, and would fain strangle us one and all, off hand, This feeling on the part of the soldiery does not disturb ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... soldier's friend. He is the exercise of the exchange, the honour of credit, the observation of time, and the understanding of thrift. His study is number, his care his accounts, his comfort his conscience, and his wealth his good name. He fears not Scylla, and sails close by Charybdis, and having beaten out a storm, rides at rest in a harbour. By his sea-gain he makes his land purchase, and by the knowledge of trade finds the key of treasure. Out of his travels he makes his discourses, and from his eye ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... upheaved by vast force, when either country was one and undivided; the ocean burst in between, cutting off with its waves the Hesperian from the Sicilian coast, and with narrow tide washes tilth and town along the severance of shore. On the right Scylla keeps guard, on the left unassuaged Charybdis, who thrice swallows the vast flood sheer down her swirling gulf, and ever again hurls it upward, lashing the sky with water. But Scylla lies prisoned in her ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... Scylla and whirlpool of Charybdis, known to the ancients as two sea-monsters, near the Straits of Messina, next claimed his attention. Let us see how Ulysses ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... pretty sum 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)
... 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/ ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... number of stone, and equally confident in the purity of her air as her neighbour, stood another female "Briton," with the come-into-my-parlour expression of countenance, regarding us as prey. Under the circumstances, exhausted nature gave in; though saved from Scylla, our destiny was Charybdis, and we accordingly surrendered ourselves to a wash, breakfast, and the Brahminee Bull. During the day, we had a visit from a friend and ex-brother officer, whom we had promised to stay with, at "Kussowlie," on our road up. ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... March 14, accompanying the copy of his Propositions which Eck sent to the Emperor, he refers to Luther as the domestic enemy of the Church (hostis ecclesiae domesticus), who has fallen into every Scylla and Charybdis of iniquity; who speaks of the Pope as the Antichrist and of the Church as the harlot; who has praise for none but heretics and schismatics; whom the Church has to thank for the Iconoclasts, Sacramentarians, New Hussites, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... 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 the time when, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... 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 ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... physical training of women. It is very difficult to give good advice without being irritating, and almost impossible to be at once didactic and delightful; but Lady Bellairs manages very cleverly to steer a middle course between the Charybdis of dulness and the Scylla of flippancy. There is a pleasing intimite about her style, and almost everything that she says has both good sense and good humour to recommend it. Nor does she confine herself to those broad generalisations on morals, which are ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... who performed special services to the greater gods, like the Horae; and monsters, offspring of gods, like the gorgons, chimera, the dragon of the Hesperides, the Lernaean hydra, the Nemean lion, Scylla and Charybdis, the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... hands of people who were nearer akin to them than Christians and allied to them, at least, by the bond of common enmity to Spain and common suffering at the hands of Spaniards. The two heretics stood in stolid apathy, realizing that with them it was but a case of passing from Charybdis to Scylla, and that they had as little to hope for from heathen as from Christian. One of these was a sturdy bowlegged fellow, whose garments were little better than rags; his weather-beaten face was of the colour of mahogany and his eyes of a dark blue under tufted eyebrows that once had been red—like ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... with a few books, provisions, and my dog, embark in one of these and float down the current of the stream into the sea; and then, keeping near land, I would coast the beauteous shores and sunny promontories of the blue Mediterranean, pass Naples, along Calabria, and would dare the twin perils of Scylla and Charybdis; then, with fearless aim, (for what had I to lose?) skim ocean's surface towards Malta and the further Cyclades. I would avoid Constantinople, the sight of whose well-known towers and inlets belonged to another state of existence from ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... things in this complicated scene would be to fill a book, and enough pre-Raphaelites are already browsing there. Giving due attention to particulars in their places, we must yet give effects in sweeping strokes, steering as best we can between the Scylla of didactic details and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... 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 from ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... now, perhaps, impossible to ascertain with precision what Homer meant by the word krataiis, which he uses only here, and in the next book, where it is the name of Scylla's dam.—Anaides—is also of ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... MARABOUTS 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
... order most uncommon among 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 also of falling ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... sea as I had been during the agitated hours 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 which met my ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... paint those years, with all their scenes?—the hard-fought engagements—the defeats, plans, failures—the gloomy hours, days, when our Nationality seem'd hung in pall of doubt, perhaps death—the Mephistophelean sneers of foreign lands and attaches—the dreaded Scylla of European interference, and the Charybdis of the tremendously dangerous latent strata of secession sympathizers throughout the free States, (far more numerous than is supposed)—the long marches in summer—the hot sweat, and many a sunstroke, as on the rush to Gettysburg in '63—the night battles ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... through a 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. Technically he was nothing of the sort, but ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... past the isle of Capreae, then, leaving the Campanian main behind, cut the blue billows of the Tyrrhenian Sea; all that day and night, and more sail and oar swept them on. They flew past the beaches of Magna Graecia, then, betwixt Scylla and Charybdis, and Sicilia and its smoke-beclouded cone of AEtna faded out of view, and the long, dark swells of the Ionian Sea caught them. No feeble merchantman, hugging coasts and headlands, was Demetrius. He pushed his three barques boldly forward toward ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... 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 first good, of ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... 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
... a scene of direful 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, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... 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 perpetrate ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... with the 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 senseless ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... 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
... a chariot coursing over the deep, but you do not find these things to occur because you imagine them. Again, if we assume that what we think is identical with what is, then it must be impossible to think of what is not. But this is absurd; for we can think of such admittedly imaginary beings as Scylla and Chimaera, and multitudes of others. There is therefore no necessary relation between our thoughts and any realities; we may believe, but we cannot prove, which (if any) of our conceptions have relation to an external fact and which ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... 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. We call him Pharaoh. ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... the week held sacred to Ares, which is even now known as Tuesday or Tiu's day. Like Ares, Tyr was noisy and courageous; he delighted in the din of battle, and was fearless at all times. He alone dared to brave the Fenris wolf; and the Southern proverb concerning Scylla and Charybdis has its counterpart in the Northern adage, "to get loose out of Laeding and to dash out of Droma." The Fenris wolf, also a personification of subterranean fire, is bound, like his prototypes the Titans, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... 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 ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... found assembling at Perth, listening, with arms in their hands, to the sermons of John Knox, pulling down the remaining monasteries, and subscribing additional covenants. Is it surprising, then, that she found it difficult to steer her course between the rocks of Scylla and the whirlpools of Charybdis? If misfortunes ultimately overtook her, the wonder unquestionably ought to be, not that they ever arrived, but that they should have been guarded against ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... but never, if the devil can help it, never both in one and the same pulpit; never both in one and the same sermon; and never both in one and the same minister. You have all heard of the difficulty the voyager had in steering between Scylla and Charybdis in the Latin adage. Well, the true preacher's difficulty is just like that. Indeed, it is beyond the wit of man, and it takes all the wit of God, aright to unite the doctrine of our utter inability with the companion ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... both be deemed dear to the Gods, and shall 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, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... ordinary events of my daily life at this time, they might prove instructive to people who are not familiar with the inside of palaces; if I revealed some of the secrets I learnt, they might prove of interest to the statesmen of Europe. I intend to do neither of these things. I should be between the Scylla of dullness and the Charybdis of indiscretion, and I feel that I had far better confine myself strictly to the underground drama which was being played beneath the surface of Ruritanian politics. I need only say that the secret of my imposture defied detection. ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... this, Sandie thrust all his strength upon the tiller and kept the lugger straight 'twixt Scylla ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... accounted himself between Scylla and Charybdis, and when that evening Green's messenger found him, he gnashed his teeth in rage at having to allow this chance to pass, at being forced to temporize until he should be less parlously situated. He returned Mr. Green an ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... 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 by scrambling, cart and all, through a shallow ravine. We came next ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... But the anger of the gods at this horrible murder led the voyagers in expiation a wearisome way homeward. For they sailed through the waters of the Adriatic, the Nile, the circumfluous stream of the earth, passed Scylla and Charybdis and the Island of the Sun, to Crete and AEgina and many lands, before the Argo rode once more ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Ennobled by the charity we spare. There let them warble in the tainted breeze, 75 Or sing like widow'd orphans to the trees: There let them chant their incoherent dreams, Where howls Charybdis, and where Scylla screams! Or where Avernus, from his darksome round, May echo to the winds the blasted sound! 80 As fair Alcyone,[69] with anguish press'd, Broods o'er the British main with tuneful breast, Beneath the white-brow'd cliff protected sings, Or skims ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... between 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
... 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 of Messina, 206; obtains intelligence ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... Mary to order anything without an advance notice, for otherwise she was forced to start her little bark through the Scylla and Charybdis of 'fire island,' namely, 'The fire's too low, marm;' or 'I've just put on ...
— A Christmas Story - Man in His Element: or, A New Way to Keep House • Samuel W. Francis
... real or imaginary old lady who had got the metaphor of Scylla and Charybdis a little confused. Wishing to describe a perplexing ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... for some kind of official document which would prove to all officials with whom I might come in contact that I had no illicit designs. My request was granted, and I was furnished with the necessary documents; but I soon found that in seeking to avoid Scylla I had fallen into Charybdis. In calming official suspicions, I inadvertently aroused suspicions of another kind. The documents proving that I enjoyed the protection of the Government made many people suspect that I was an emissary of the gendarmerie, and greatly impeded me in ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... the Spirit, was essentially the same, but that the divinity 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, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... good-day. The English biographer has long felt that, if in writing his man's biography he wrote down anything that could by possibility offend any man, he had written wrong.' The biographer, as Mr Froude found out for a commentary on all this, is placed between a Scylla and Charybdis, between what is due to the subject, and what is expected by the public. If something is left out of the portrait, the likeness will be imperfect; if the anxiety or the inquisitiveness of readers to know private details is left ungratified, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... 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 ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... montibus Libystinis Aut Scylla latrans infima inguinum parte Tam mente dura procreavit ac taetra, Vt supplicis vocem in novissimo casu Contemptam haberes a! nimis ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... Cronian waves, Tumultuous enter with dire chilling blasts, Portending agues. Thus a well-fraught ship, Long sailed secure, or through the Aegean deep, Or the Ionian, till cruising near The Lilybean shore, with hideous crush On Scylla, or Charybdis (dangerous rocks!) She strikes rebounding; whence the shattered oak, So fierce a shock unable to withstand, Admits the sea; in at the gaping side The crowding waves gush with impetuous rage, Resistless, overwhelming; ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... 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 ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... also the ancient statue of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus; the statues of a sphinx, a hippopotamus, a crocodile, an elephant, and others, which had represented a triumph over Egypt; the monster of Scylla and others; most of which were probably executed before the time ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... 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 ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... He announced that the "Scylla" of Rotgans was to be given, followed by "Chloris," with something else as a close. Holsma had already returned, bringing Walter the assurance that it was all ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... 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 ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... made the following remarks in his preface: "In making a selection of this kind one sails between Scylla and Charybdis—the hackneyed and the strange. I have done my best to steer clear of both these rocks.'' A leader-writer in a morning paper a few months ago made the same blunder when he wrote: "As a matter of fact, Mr. Gladstone was bound to bump against either Scylla or Charybdis.'' It ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... don't, you might break your arm," cried Delia Guest, who hadn't the slightest scruple about telling a falsehood if she were going to have something to laugh at by the means. Poor Joy was between Scylla and Charybdis. (If you don't know what that means, go and ask your big brothers; make them leave their chess and their newspapers on the spot, and read you what Mr. Virgil has to say about it.) If she hung on she would wrench her arms; if she jumped, she should break them. ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... affected. It seemed possible that the change of food, from salt provisions to the fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables of Timor—a change by which I hoped to banish every appearance of scurvy, might have had an influence in producing the disease; and if so, it was avoiding Scylla to fall upon Charybdis, and was ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... mind,—her kings, her consuls, her emperors,—her legislators, her orators, her poets,—her popes,—all seemed to stalk solemnly past, one after one. There was the great Romulus; there was the proud Tarquin; there was Scylla with his laurel, and Livy with his page, and Virgil with his lay, and Caesar with his diadem, and Brutus with his dagger; there was the lordly Augustus, the cruel Nero, the beastly Caligula, the warlike Trajan, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... 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, ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... 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 ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... enormous sums of money were taken. Then Boyton proceeded to Messina. Before leaving Naples, he had made up his mind to attempt the dreaded straits of that name, and dare the dangers of the noted whirlpools of Scylla and Charybdis. Every one cheerfully assured him that the attempt would result in death, for beside the dangers of the whirlpools, the straits were infested ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... rears; Heaves up huge ABYLA on Afric's sand, Crowns with high CALPE Europe's saliant strand, Crests with opposing towers the splendid scene, 330 And pours from urns immense the sea between.— —Loud o'er her whirling flood Charybdis roars, Affrighted Scylla bellows round his shores, Vesuvio groans through all his echoing caves, And Etna thunders o'er ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... 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 want ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... 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
... 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 ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing |
