"Charybdis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reckoned among the sea deities. The Sirens resemble mermaids, having the faces of women, but bodies of flying fish. They are reported to be excellent songsters, that play on the Sicilian coasts, and tempt passengers on shore, where they sing them asleep and kill them. Scylla and Charybdis are two other sea monsters. Scylla is the daughter of Phorcys, and beloved by Glaucus, whom therefore the witch Circe by her enchantments turned into a rock, with dogs around her. Charybdis is a very ravenous ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... 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 and Charybdis. ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... till it smiled! I have oft heard My mother Circe with the Sirens three, Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades, Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs, Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul, And lap it in Elysium: Scylla wept, And chid her barking waves into attention, And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause. Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense, 260 And in sweet madness robbed it of itself; But such a sacred and home-felt delight, Such sober certainty of waking bliss, I never heard till now. I'll speak to her, And she shall be my queen.—Hail, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... ignore the lessons of history and launch boldly out upon the tempestuous sea of experimentalism—is one dangerous extreme, we must remember that it is not the only one. In avoiding Scylla we must not forget Charybdis. If we are to look ever to the past, to make no experiments, to become the bondslaves of precedent, then progress is at an end and society must petrify, retrograde or consume itself in fierce ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... 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 all the consequences which may follow as it ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... came to a narrow strait, on one side of which was Charybdis, a dread whirlpool from which no ship could escape, and on the other was the cave of Scylla, a monster having six snake-like heads, with each of which she seized a man from every passing ship. Choosing the lesser evil, the bold Ulysses sailed through the strait close to Scylla; and six poor wretches ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... interfere with politics, he had yet the prudence, ere he went out with Lord Kenmore In 1715, to convey his estate to trustees, in order to parry pains and penalties, in case the Earl of Mar could not put down the Protestant succession. But Scylla and Charybdis —a word to the wise—he only saved his estate at expense of a lawsuit, which again subdivided the family property. He was, however, a man of resolution. He sold part of the lands, evacuated the old castle, where the family ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... and that we do not desire what is right? Do you believe that we do not think about you, that we do not heed our duty, that we only eat to live, and live to rule? Would that it were so! But we, like you, follow the cadence, finding ourselves between Scylla and Charybdis: either you reject us or the government rejects us. The government commands, and he who ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... breath of a grave, their wordes like swordes of Turkes, that strive which shall dive deepest into a Christian lying bound before them. But for these barking and biting dogs, they are as well knowne as Scylla and Charybdis. ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... circulation, roll; circumrotation[obs3], circumvolution, circumgyration[obs3]; volutation[obs3], circination|, turbination[obs3], pirouette, convolution. verticity|, whir, whirl, eddy, vortex, whirlpool, gurge[obs3]; countercurrent; Maelstrom, Charybdis; Ixion. [rotating air] cyclone; tornado, whirlwind; dust devil. [rotation of an automobile] spin-out. axis, axis of rotation, swivel, pivot, pivot point; axle, spindle, pin, hinge, pole, arbor, bobbin, mandrel; axle shaft; gymbal; hub, hub of rotation. [rotation ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... hard to put his fears and feelings into satisfactory words. He was on dangerous seas, but he made his way doggedly on, between the Charybdis of reticence and the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... but to the outer sense not always. Virtues are often harsh to the ear—errors very sweet-voiced. The sirens did not sing out of tune. Better to stop one's ears than glide on Scylla or be merged into Charybdis." ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... entitled, "Destruction of the Bridges"; and (melancholy 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; Tennyson makes one an essential ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... appropriate costume for a matinee. One's toilet must be a delicate compromise between ball attire and full visiting dress, but Mademoiselle Melanie has hit the juste milieu; and succeeded in carrying me through all the perils of Scylla and Charybdis. Oh, dear! oh, dear!" (stamping her tiny slippered foot) "will that dress ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... 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 ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... of your 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 ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... 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 ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... secretary from 1865 to 1871, wisely directed the activities of the Association through the early period of the great awakening of the denomination, and kept it from going to pieces on the Scylla and Charybdis of creed and radicalism. He was followed at a most critical and difficult time by Rev. Rush R. Shippen, who continued to hold the office until 1881. The reaction succeeding the great prosperity that followed the close of the civil war brought ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... mentions their separation, as a circumstance beyond all doubt. The dangers which were supposed to beset mariners in their passage through the narrow strait which divides it from Italy, on one side of which was Sylla, and on the other Charybdis, sufficiently point out the ignorance and inexperience of the ancients in the construction and management ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... Decalogue have gone to dust, but it is more dangerous to attempt to control men by fictions. Better no chart whatever than one which shows no actually existing perils, but warns us against Scylla, Charybdis, and the Cyclops. If we are perfectly honest with ourselves we shall not find it difficult to settle whether we ought to do this or that particular thing, and we may be content. The new legislation will come naturally at the appointed time, and ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... colors of scriptural doctrine, we steer clear of the Scylla of Calvinism on the one hand, and also escape the Charybdis of Arminianism on ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... 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 and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 of Cromwell. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... 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 round ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... of the water. Whirling and boiling eddies burst as if from some subaqueous explosion; down currents are on one side of the canoe, and an up current on the other; now a cross stream at the bows and a diagonal one at the stern, with a foaming Scylla on your right and a whirling Charybdis on the left. But our nervousness gave way to admiration as our popero, or pilot, the sedate governor, gave the canoe a sheer with the swoop of his long paddle, turning it gracefully around the corner of a rock against which it seemed we must be dashed, and we felt ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... Matthew's, the church round the corner. She gave up all her time to church work and the care of the poor, and it wasn't her fault that the poor hated her. Between the Scylla of politics and the Charybdis of religion there was very little left for poor Barbara; she faded away under the care of an elderly governess who suffered from a perfect cascade of ill-fated love affairs; it seemed that gentlemen were always "playing with her feelings." But in all probability a too vivid imagination ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... raging Scylla on one hand as you go. His natural reply will be, Well, I will keep as far away from it as possible; I will keep close by the other side. But the rejoinder must be, No, you will be quite as ill off there; you will be in equal peril on the other side: there is Charybdis. What you have to do is to keep at a safe distance from each. In avoiding the one, do ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... thing!' and there was a heavy sincerity in his utterance, his pose, with his foot weightily upon the ground, being that of an honest man. 'But I do think you have the right of it. We, and the new faith with us, are between Scylla and Charybdis. For certain, our two paths do lie between divorcing the Queen and seeing you, great lords, who so well defend ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... 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 ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... is the knight or the squire so bold As to dive to the howling Charybdis below?— I cast in the whirlpool a goblet of gold, And o'er it already the dark waters flow; Whoever to me may the goblet bring, Shall have for his guerdon that gift of ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... unscrupulous adventuress who would turn the joke into earnest and sue him for breach of promise after they got home. To be sure, she looked as innocent as an angel, but it is a notorious fact that women are just the most dangerous in that guise. In escaping Scylla he had plunged headlong into Charybdis. He got up with a painful sense of indecision, walked toward the window, and concluded, after a moment's thought, that he could not, as a man of honor, withdraw from a bargain which he had himself proposed. It would be wiser to abide by it, and to trust to his ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... vale of Enna, where Proserpine was gathering flowers. Satan makes his way through fighting elements, like Argo between the Cyanean rocks, or Ulysses between the two Sicilian whirlpools, when he shunned Charybdis on the "larboard." The mythological allusions have been justly censured, as not being always used with notice of their vanity; but they contribute variety to the narration, and produce an alternate exercise of the ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... would prevail: all these things will drive the Communal Council into the right path—equal remuneration of all workers."[1234] The Fabians, like so many other Socialists, cannot apparently quite make up their mind whether to plunge into the Scylla of equal pay or into the Charybdis of unequal pay. Therefore they plunge alternately into the one ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... brings a sad remembrance of my voyage homeward to my mind. Off the coast of Sicily is a mighty whirlpool, which men call Charybdis, where Aeneas of old narrowly escaped shipwreck. When the tide goes down the whirlpool belches forth the fragments of ships which have been sucked down, and when it returns the abyss again ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... the rock's rough brow Looking down on the gulf so black, The waters which it had swallowed, now Charybdis bellowing rendered back; And, with a roar as of distant thunder, Foaming they burst from the ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... the fourth hollow, taking more of the woeful bank that gathers in the evil of the whole universe. Ah, Justice of God! Who heapeth up so many new travails and penalties as I saw? And why doth our sin so waste us? As doth the wave, yonder upon Charybdis, which is broken on that which it encounters, so it behoves ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... 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. I made mistakes. I had bad minutes: it needed all ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... without doubt, unusual good fortune in having pursued the strict path of culture. You have sailed by Charybdis without being swallowed up by Scylla.[87] But my lot ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... 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 cavern's blind recesses, thrusting forth her mouth and drawing ships upon the rocks. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... voracious fish, and makes a startling dash at 'Meg with the muckle mouth.'[10] Sharply did I strike the caitiff; whereat he rolled round disdainful, making a whirl in the water of prodigious circumference; it was not exactly Charybdis, or the Maelstrom, but rather more like the wave occasioned by the sudden turning of a man-of-war's boat. Being hooked, and having by this time set his nose peremptorily down the stream, he flashed and whizzed away ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... 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 the family and not for her fame ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... monarchs —to fall below Demosthenes or Cicero Chances, most disastrous Chaos is come again Charge, Chester, charge Chapel, the devil builds a Charities that soothe Charity shall cover the multitude of sins Charm, no need of a remoter Charmer, t' other dear, away Charmers sinner it Charybdis, your mother Chasteneth, whom the Lord loveth, he Chatham's language Chatterton, marvelous boy Chaucer, nigh to learned Cheated, pleasure of being Cheek, feed on her damask —, that I might touch, that —upon her hand —, he that loves a rosy Cheek, iron tears down Pluto's ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... from one end of the Conference to the other, and after he receives it he is liable to find himself among a people, who had rejected him in the canvass, and now only acquiesce in the decision from sheer necessity. But if he escape Scylla in this particular, he is certain to drive upon Charybdis in another. Granting that his relations and labors may be acceptable, he falls upon the inevitable necessity of devoting his time and labor, during the vigor and strength of his days, for a meager compensation, and then pass into old age, and its attendant infirmities, ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... amain: So shall Charybdis wear a grace, Grim Aetna laugh, the Lybian plain Take roses to her shrivell'd face. This orb—this round Of sight and sound— Count it the lists that God hath built For haughty ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... other day to Alfred Coppard, who has steered more successfully than most English story writers away from the Scylla and Charybdis of the modern artist. He told me that he had been reading several new novels and volumes of short stories by contemporary American writers with that awakened interest in the civilization we are framing which is so noticeable among English ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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 as long as she dared for the ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... of persons held to labor in the slave States. Why is the language of the Constitution so guarded as not to have even the word 'slave' in it, and yet of such a character as not to interfere with local State legislation upon slavery? Simply to steer between the Charybdis of no union and the Scylla of the repudiation of the Declaration of Independence, teaching that all men are born free and equal, and that all have natural rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... Fates allotted life and death, and three Furies (Eumenides or Erinnyes) avenged crime, especially murder and unnatural crimes. The Gorgons were three sisters, with hair entwined with serpents. A single gaze upon them chilled the beholder to stone. Besides these there were Scylla and Charybdis, sea-monsters that made perilous the passage of the Sicilian Straits, the Centaurs, the Cyclops, Cerberus, the watch-dog of Hades, and a ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... 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 lived in their decadence as a mouse (said an old farmer) ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Charybdis, With limestone which ribb'd is; A touch from a pebble might seam her; Made a curtsey to Scylla, As the Turks say, "Bismillah," 'Twas a very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... 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 Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... and 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 so easy to make, so difficult ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... 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 ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... the two MSS. before us, as has to pass through our reluctant hands "touchin' on and appertainin' to" the great City of Manhattan and its distinguished denizens. For our part, we have had enough of this painful task. And truly, we have never before undergone such trials in sailing between—but that Charybdis and Scylla allusion has been done to death. Indeed, we love America, and in the course of our present task, which we also love, we had to suffer Khalid's shafts to pass through our ken and sometimes really through our heart. But no more of this. Ay, we ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the war news from the stern of our boat to the bridge of the next astern, the Virginian. The news is flashed at night by the lamps—short and long flashes. The news is picked up by wireless on the flagship, the Charybdis, at the head of our line and signaled back ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... this for the keen-eyed young instructor! On the one hand was the Scylla of Mr. Brainerd and on the other was the Charybdis of Mr. Furbush. Lucky was he who could sail safely past the two; and he was a wise young instructor who determined to follow ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... in 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 ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... new dangers, for on one side of them seethed and foamed the whirlpool of Charybdis, whilst on the other towered the mighty rock whence the monster Scylla swooped down upon unfortunate mariners; but here the goddess Hera came to their assistance, and sent to them the sea-nymph Thetis, who guided them safely through these ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... Herb declared. "You remember about Scylla and Charybdis, the two fabled monsters that used to alarm the old chaps hundreds and hundreds of years ago; but which turned out to be a dangerous rock and a big sucker hole, called a whirlpool? That's what ails this old inlet, I guess. The currents suck hard; ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... being so near each other that it would be impossible for the Athenians to cruise against them and command the strait. The strait in question consists of the sea between Rhegium and Messina, at the point where Sicily approaches nearest to the continent, and is the Charybdis through which the story makes Ulysses sail; and the narrowness of the passage and the strength of the current that pours in from the vast Tyrrhenian and Sicilian mains, have rightly given it ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... 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 each party from introducing novel opinions, and requiring them to adhere to such explications ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... days in which to return to Babbiano, or to abandon all hope of his crown, of which the people will send the offer then to you at Aquila, where you are believed to be. So now, my dear lord, you have the tyrant at your mercy, tossed between Scylla and Charybdis. Yours it is to resolve how you will act; but I rejoice in being the one to send you word that your presence at Roccaleone and your stubborn defence of the fortress has not been vain, and that presently you are to reap the well-earned reward of ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... children." This passage is of peculiar interest as it shows the source of what Mrs. Stowe loves to call the "Christ-worship" which characterized the religion of the younger Beechers. Writing at the age of seventeen, when her soul was tossing between Scylla and Charybdis, Harriet says: "I feel that I love God,—that is, that I love Christ"; and in 1876, writing of her brother Henry, she says, "He and I are Christ-worshippers, adoring him as the Image of the Invisible God." Her son refers us to the twenty-fourth ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... natures. He is the cosmic unity of opposites. His person is the cosmic relation. In that person the lower term of the relation has true being and full value. Thus the Church steered a middle course between the Scylla of co-existence and the Charybdis ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... to escape from realities—that was his maxim. He puzzled his contemporaries. But we can now locate him with absolute certainty. He personifies the Revolt from Reason. SURTOUT, MON AMI, POINT DE ZELE. He talks about the Scylla of Atheism and the Charybdis of Christianity—a state of mind which, by the way, is not conducive to bold navigation. He was always wavering between the two in an attitude of suburban defiance, reconciling what is irreconcilable by extracting funny analogies all round for the edification of "nice people" like himself. Oh, very ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... But I had had my youthful passion and my tragic disappointment, as you know: I had looked far enough into what Thackeray used to call the cryptic mysteries, to save me from the Scylla of dissipation, and yet preserved enough of natural nature to keep me out of the Pharisaic Charybdis. My devotion to my legal studies had already brought me a mild distinction; the paternal legacy was a good nest-egg for the incubation of wealth,—in short, I was a fair, respectable "party," desirable to the humbler mammas, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... it is the fear of death, and not the desire of life, that makes the foolish person to hang to the body, clinging to it, as Odysseus did to the fig-tree from fear of Charybdis that ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Sir Wilfrid's intention to make the feud his own or even to agree to it being carried on by Sir Richard. He took for minister of finance, W. S. Fielding, who justified his choice by successfully steering the budget bark between Scylla and Charybdis for fourteen years in succession before the whirlpool finally sucked him down. Where Laurier went outside his following for colleagues he had equally definite ends ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... hope that it might generally be carried out. What this system was, I never clearly understood; but, of course, none of us had any objections. This circumstance gave an additional impetus to the shares, and they once more went up. I was, however, too cautious to plunge a second time in to Charybdis, but M'Corkindale did, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... that honor was what kept me from her? Such honor as a man feels when he knows that he is poised between a Scylla and a Charybdis of ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... the way he took snuff from his waistcoat pocket, who was in the way of expressing a grave conviction that it was possible to make a capital living at Roulette, so long as you stuck to the colours, and avoided the Scylla of the numbers and the Charybdis of the Zero. By degrees, then, the shyness of the neophyte wears off. Perhaps in the course of his descent of Avernus, a revulsion of feeling takes place, and, horror-struck and ashamed, he rushes out of the Kursaal, determined to enter its portals no more. Then he temporizes; ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... was written for the stage. It was on approaching his subject to study it that the author recognized, or thought that he recognized, the impossibility of procuring the performance of a faithful reproduction of it on our stage, in the exceptional position it now occupies, between the academic Charybdis and the administrative Scylla, between the literary juries and the political censorship. He was required to choose: either the wheedling, tricky, false tragedy, which may be acted, or the audaciously true drama, which is prohibited. The first was not worth the trouble of writing, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... situation. The room had two doors—one opening upon the platform from which we had just come, and now guarded by an officer; the other leading to the opposite platform, and there stood the custom-house officer receiving and inspecting the passports. It was indeed Scylla and Charybdis. If I attempted to pass the officer without a passport, I was undone; if I remained until all the other passengers had passed out, I was undone. For an instant I felt as if I had better give up the unequal contest. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... depth and truth of the proverb relating to the frying-pan and the fire. To clear himself, he must mention his suspicions of Jimmy, and also his reasons for those suspicions. And to do that would mean revealing his past. It was Scylla and Charybdis. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... 20. "My Charybdis conducted me to the barracks where a lot of undisciplined philosophers were discussing the parceling out of land.... The ringleader was a round-headed, long-nosed and bulky individual with a shaggy beard and dirty uniform.... I knew him in an instant, but he did not recognize me ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... Nicholas the Fish bade them good-bye, jumped overboard, and continued his voyage. The end of this poor man was very sad. The king, being seized with an insane desire to know something about the depths of the terrible gulf of Charybdis, offered Nicholas a golden cup if he would dive down and explore them. He dived accordingly, remained below nearly an hour, and brought back a glowing account of the wonders and horrors of the seething whirlpool. The king, ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... appeared—"the Ebers boys" and she thought that would be the end of her; but instead of attacking her we fell upon the boys, who turned upon us, and drove them away, she escaping betwixt Scylla and Charybdis. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... number of people in your generation. You have done 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 ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... 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
... veins. Whether this intimacy might drift into something closer, compelling him to take a reef in his sails, never troubled him. It was not the first time that he had steered his craft between the Scylla of matrimony and the Charybdis of scandal, and he had not the slightest doubt of his being able ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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, or the much-lied-about maelstrom. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... RATHBONE'S Peter was an effective study, avoiding Scylla of the commonplace and Charybdis of the mawkish—no mean feat. A young man with a future, I dare hazard; with a gift of clear utterance, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... wrong, and always wrong. It is the case of my poor absent-minded friend over again. It was quite clear that his clothes wanted changing, but he put on the wrong suit. It was evident that Hogarth's verdict on Johnson wanted revising, but he rushed from Scylla to Charybdis. It was manifest that the Maltese view of Paul needed correcting, but they swung, like a pendulum, from one ludicrous extreme to the opposite. In each case, the hero reappears, wearing the wrong clothes. In each case he only makes himself ridiculous. If my mind wants ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... his return from the shades to Circe's island, the precautions given him by that Goddess, his escape from the Sirens, and from Scylla and Charybdis; his arrival in Sicily, where his companions, having slain and eaten the oxen of the Sun, are afterward shipwrecked and lost; and concludes the whole with an account of his arrival, alone, on the mast of his vessel, at ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... Richling. "If you mix them, you avoid both necessities. You sail triumphantly between Scylla and Charybdis without so much as ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... he, in his rough way, 'than risk Scylla and Charybdis; and so would you judge, were the bowels of my good ship stored with your wealth, as they are, it may be, with that of some of your friends. The Roman merchant likes not that narrow strait, fatal to so many, but prefers the open sea, though the voyage be longer. But with this wind—once ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... world contains; with whom for my husband I shall 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 ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... sprinkles drop by drop Oil on the cabbages himself:—you'd stop Your nose to smell it:—vinegar, I own, He gives you without stint, and that alone. Well, betwixt these, what should a wise man do? Which should he copy, think you, of the two? 'Tis Scylla and Charybdis, rock and gulf: On this side howls the dog, on that the wolf. A man that's neat in table, as in dress, Errs not by meanness, yet avoids excess; Nor, like Albucius, when he plays the host, Storms at his slaves, while giving each his post; Nor, like poor Naevius, carelessly ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... there would be time to think hereafter how he was to escape from the labyrinth ultimately, since the pilot who sees a Scylla under his bows must not for the time think of the more distant dangers of Charybdis. ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... sign, 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 ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... transported me in a canoe, and landed me at Morattico. During the passage I kept a sharp lookout up and down the wide river for Yankee gunboats, fearing that even if I should escape Scylla I might fall into Charybdis; and indeed some of the marauding bluecoats had but recently departed ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... We're all upon honour, you know, So out with your tale!—Gracious powers! Is it so? Poor fellow! Your lot has gone sadly amiss, When you fell into such a Charybdis as this! ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... by Circe of the two monsters Scylla and Charybdis. We have already met with Scylla in the story of Glaucus, and remember that she was once a beautiful maiden and was changed into a snaky monster by Circe. She dwelt in a cave high up on the cliff, from whence she was accustomed ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... for being pessimistic, it is blamed for being optimistic. From this position Chesterton deduces that it is the only rational religion, because it steers between the Scylla of pessimism and avoids the Charybdis of a facile optimism. Regarding presumably the early Church she has also kept from extremes. She has ignored the easy path of heresy, she has adhered to the adventurous road of orthodoxy. She has avoided the Arian materialism by dropping a Greek Iota; she has not succumbed to Eastern influences, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... 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, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... a real or imaginary old lady who had got the metaphor of Scylla and Charybdis a little confused. Wishing to describe a perplexing situation, ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... unimaginable touch of disease, the unrest of madness, made Caligula the genius of insatiable appetite; and his martyrdom was the torment of lust and ennui and everlasting agitation. The accident of empire tantalised him with vain hopes of satisfying the Charybdis of his soul's sick cravings. From point to point he passed of empty pleasure and unsatisfying cruelty, for ever hungry; until the malady of his spirit, unrestrained by any limitations, and with the right medium for its development, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... had seized Pompey's property he rejoiced like some stage-actor who in a play is as poor as Poverty, and then suddenly becomes rich. All his wine, the great weight of silver, the costly furniture and rich dresses, in a few days where were they all? A Charybdis do I call him? He swallowed them all like an entire ocean!" Then he accuses him of cowardice and cruelty in the Pharsalian wars, and compares him most injuriously with Dolabella. "Do you remember how Dolabella fought for you in Spain, when you were getting drunk ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... accepted tenets of pagan mythology and theogony was heresy), and hurled its anathemas against the heretic. Olympus, in the eyes of the Church, still existed, and Zeus, the man-god, still quaffed the sacred ambrosia in its shady groves. The Sirens still sang their entrancing songs, while Scylla and Charybdis were ever stretching out eager arms toward unwary mariners. Gigantic one-eyed Cyclops, with Polyphemus as their leader, still patrolled the shores of Sicily, and kept their "ever-watchful eyes" ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... to steer clear of Scylla and keep out of Charybdis but to do what by the common use of the word we are allowed; viz., to take Modifications with such breadth of signification that it will apply to meaning and to use, as well as to form. Primarily, of course, it meant inflections, used to mark changes ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... morality off the same card in another; 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 doctrine of our strict responsibility; free grace with a ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... well that he had to steer his ship 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 it matters little what he was technically, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... with the Sirens three, Amid'st the flowry-kirtl'd Naiades Culling their Potent hearbs, and balefull drugs. Who as they sung, would take the prison'd soul, And lap it in Elysium, Scylla wept, And chid her barking waves into attention. And fell Charybdis murmur'd soft applause: Yet they in pleasing slumber lull'd the sense, 260 And in sweet madnes rob'd it of it self, But such a sacred, and home-felt delight, Such sober certainty of waking bliss I never heard till now. Ile speak to her And she shall be my ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... it was to escape the attentions of a far less dangerous detrimental, and a far less ineligible one, that she had brought her daughter with her all the way to Riffrath—"from Charybdis to Scylla," as we used to say at Brossard's, putting the cart before the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... the spoil of the fishers, the shrimps are delicate to the palate, and the marbles will endure as long as this rock itself. The rock lasts, and the sea. The most ancient memory here is of them, for this is the shore of Charybdis. It is stated in Sallust and other Latin authors, as well as by writers throughout the Middle Ages, that all which was swallowed up in the whirlpool of the straits, after being carried beneath the sea for miles, was finally cast up on the beach ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... day in each year which they spent among the graves of their dead, communing with their spirits, and bringing them presents—a kind of All-souls-day. (Dorman, "Prim. Superst.," p. 35.) The Stygian flood, and Scylla and Charybdis, are found among the legends of the Caribs. (Ibid., p. 37.) Even the boat of Charon reappears in ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... which had flown out of his hand, puts it hard aweather in order to escape from such dangerous vicinity; but no sooner does he do so, than he finds he is flying from Scylla to Charybdis. To leeward is a turtle about forty feet wide, and a serpent quite as long, with an enormous and hideous head peering from ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... "And cultur'd arts; and Jason for my spouse, "For whom all earth's possessions were too small "To change. His spouse become, supremely blest, "Dear to the gods, the 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 ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... been 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; Bertie felt ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... clothes in preparation for that convivial event. And they would have done so except for the fish (sailors) and the women (Highlanders), as they styled us, who, they said, were too much for them, combined I think with the Ladysmith sweet shop, which proved their Scylla with Colenso as their Charybdis. ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... dishes than is usually offered in any except our very largest hotels. This is especially to be desired at breakfast. Without going to the American extreme of fifty or a hundred dishes to choose from, some intermediate point short of the Scylla of sole and the Charybdis of ham and eggs might surely be found. There is probably more pig-headed conservatism than justified fear of expense in the reluctance to follow this most excellent "American lead." The British tourist in the United States takes so kindly ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... beldam, full of apprehension Lest oversleep should cause detention, Ran like a goblin through her mansion. Thus often, when one thinks To clear himself from ill, His effort only sinks Him in the deeper still. The beldam, acting for the cock, Was Scylla for Charybdis' rock. ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... was the fact of the ship having been carried so providentially through such a narrow opening, without coming to grief on the Scylla on the one hand, or being dashed to pieces against the Charybdis on the other. ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... few tips from Jacinthe," ruminated Garnet. "She was Captain the last year she was at school, so she ought to know. You see, we've to steer between Scylla and Charybdis. We mustn't push ourselves forward too violently, or they'll call us cheeky, but on the other hand, if we're content to take a back seat, we may stay there for the rest of the term. Comprenez vous? It's a matter of seizing one's chance. I've an idea floating about in my ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... Dawnay's draft, or is it in my message, or does it lie stillborn in some cable unwritten? God knows—I don't! But one thing at least is true:—to steer a course between an optimism that deprives us of support and a pessimism that may wreck the whole enterprise, there indeed is a Scylla and Charybdis problem, a two-horned dilemma, or whatever words may best convey the notion of ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... heart well ought I to bewail, That ever dark in torment, night by night, Toward my death with wind I steer and sail; [E] For which upon the tenth night if thou fail With thy bright beams to guide me but one hour, 125 My ship and me Charybdis ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... man's admiration of her, she believed less than was avowed. And Fred, exacting much, was too inexperienced to understand her. They were drifting apart, I thought; but in avoiding Scylla, had I not plunged into Charybdis? ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Colchians give up the pursuit (452-551).—The Argonauts sail along the Eridanus into the Rhone, and reach the abode of Circe in Italy (552-684).—Jason and Medea are purified by Circe: the Argonauts pass the isle of the Sirens, Scylla, Charybdis, and the Planctae (685-981).—Arrival among the Phaeacians: here other Colchians reclaim Medea, and, to prevent her surrender, her marriage with Jason is celebrated (982-1169).—Departure of the Argonauts, who are driven by a storm on to the Syrtes: they carry Argo on their ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... stress on outward forms, and fanaticism, which gives credit to preternatural impulses, and professes a particular kind of inspiration differing not at all from infallibility, are the Scylla and Charybdis, through which, over stormy waters or serene, we have to make our steady way. Both are equally intolerant, and both are condemned by the genius of Protestantism, the constitution of the Church, and the spirit of ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... that sporting Athens—Corinth, perhaps, we should say—Melton Mowbray. Melton was then unknown to fame, but, as if inspired by that furor venaticus which now inspires all who come within twenty miles of this Charybdis of the chase, Bess here let out in a style with which it would have puzzled the best Leicestershire squire's best prad to have kept pace. The spirit she imbibed through the pores of her skin, and the juices of the meat she had champed, seemed to have ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... modern skill, strengthens its claims. Here then the Newtonian vacuum is no longer a void. If we get over this difficulty, by attributing to this medium a degree of tenuity almost spiritual, we shall run upon Scylla while endeavoring to shun Charybdis. Light and heat come bound together from the sun, by the same path, and with the same velocity. Heat is therefore due also to an excitement of this attenuated medium. Yet this heat puts our atmosphere in motion, impels onward the waves of the sea, wafts our ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... the little man. "O 'Sblood! A pirate!" He swung to the Colossus who followed him—"A damned pirate, van der Kuylen. Rend my vitals, but we're come from Scylla to Charybdis." ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... success nor lament my failure, because they will consider me poaching on their manor. If I chronicle a big beet, they will bring forward one twice as large. If I mourn a deceased squash, they will mutter, "Woman's farming!" Shunning Scylla, I shall perforce fall into Charybdis. (Vide Classical Dictionary. I have lent mine, but I know one was a rock and the other a whirlpool, though I cannot state, with any definiteness, which was which.) I may be as humble and deprecating ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... once more to Aeaea. There he tarried but a little time, till Circe had told him all the dangers that beset his way. Many a good counsel and crafty warning did she give him against the Sirens that charm with their singing, and against the monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, and the Clashing Rocks, and the cattle of the Sun. So the king and his men set out from the ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... Panurge, Friar John damns himself here as black as buttermilk for the nonce. Oh, what a good friend I lose in him. Alas, alas! this is another gats-bout than last year's. We are falling out of Scylla into Charybdis. Oho! I drown. Confiteor; one poor word or two by way of testament, Friar John, my ghostly father; good Mr. Abstractor, my crony, my Achates, Xenomanes, my all. Alas! I drown; two words of testament ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... glittering bark of this brilliant amateur in the art of letters is not invariably steered with equal dexterity of hand between the Scylla and Charybdis of paradox and platitude, it is impossible that in its course it should not once and again touch upon some point worth notice, if not exploration. Even that miserable animal the "unattached writer" may gratefully and respectfully ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... plight to the capital of Prussia, which you left a few weeks since with such foolish hopes of victory. You ought to have listened in time to reason, and not to the siren voice of the queen, who, in a manner so disastrous to Prussia, inveigled all the young men to plunge into the Charybdis of ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... the dreaded thirteenth tee, which, with the returning fourteenth, forms the malignant Scylla and Charybdis of the course. There is nothing to describe the thirteenth hole. It is not really a golf-hole; it is a long, narrow breathing spot, squeezed by the railroad tracks on one side and by the river on the other. Resolute and fearless golfers often cut them out entirely, nor are ashamed to acknowledge ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... mighty minstrelsy. No breath Thy deep composure stirred, no fin, no oar; Like beauty newly dead, so calm, so still, So lovely, thou, beneath the light that fell From angel-chariots sentinelled on high, Reposed, and listened, and saw thy living change, Thy dead arise. Charybdis listened, and Scylla; And savage Euxine on the Thracian beach Lay motionless: and every battle ship Stood still; and every ship of merchandise, And all that sailed, of every name, stood still." ROBERT POLLOK: Course of Time, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... unhampered in either body or mind. She must know the hygiene of childhood and the psychology of children's clothes. For the growing girls there must be a proper recognition of the growing interest in adornment, avoiding the Scylla of vanity on one hand and the Charybdis of unhappy consciousness of being "different from the other girls" on the other. For the sons there must be careful provision for the athletic life so dear to the boy, together with due recognition of the approaching dignities ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... CHARYBDIS was a rapacious woman, a female robber, who, it is said, stole the oxen of Hercules, for which she was thunder-struck by Jupiter, and turned into a whirlpool, dangerous to sailors. This whirlpool was situated ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... 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 ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... awesome 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
... 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, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... the individuality of the personages themselves very generally prevents that monotony from being even felt. The stories are never tame; and, what is more remarkable, they seldom or never have the mere extravagance which in mediaeval, at least as often as in other, writing, plays Scylla to the Charybdis of tameness. Moreover, they have, as no other division of mediaeval romance has in anything like the same measure, the advantage of the presence of interesting characters of both sexes. Only the Arthurian story ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... altogether unworthy of his imitation, and best befitted with ineffable contempt. He neither dreads the contact of the baker—the Scylla of the metropolitan peripatetic, nor yet shuns the dire collision of the chimney-sweep—his Charybdis. Try to pass him as he walks leisurely on, making the solid earth ring with his bold tread, and you will experience more difficulties in the attempt than did that famous admiral, Bartholomew Diaz, when he first ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... the classical story of Scylla and Charybdis, the former a maiden changed by Circe into a hideous sea-monster, who threw herself into the sea and became a rock, the latter changed by Jupiter into a foaming whirlpool. Vessels which avoided the rock of Scylla were oft-times prone to fall into ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... 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 Vargas handed him a copy of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... in what store thou heap'st New pains, new troubles, as I here beheld, Wherefore doth fault of ours bring us to this? E'en as a billow, on Charybdis rising Against encountered billow dashing breaks; Such is the dance this wretched race must lead Whom more than elsewhere numerous ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... heresy. In a letter of 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
... for the 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 by scrambling, cart and all, through a shallow ravine. We came next to a steep ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... not delay an instant, or she will imagine that some dire calamity has befallen her knight, who, in hunting a siren, encountered Scylla or Charybdis. Good ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... in 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
... had still another kick in him. He had one last scheme up his sleeve. Looking out on a changing world, it was the popular novelties which had the last fascination for him. The Skating Rink, like another Charybdis, had all but entangled him in its swirl as he pushed painfully off from the rocks of Throttle-Ha'penny. But he had escaped, and for almost three years had lain obscurely in port, like a frail and finished bark, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... of Arts, never at a loss for authorities or original ideas, often even illuminating intellectual problems by some happy analogy with the problems of his trade, and rarely grounding on either the Scylla of overbearing conceit or the Charybdis of foolish humility. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... Temple of Solomon; and what else either of Antiquity, or worth observation. Lastly, Italy described, and the Islands adjoining; as Cyprus, Crete, Malta, Sicilia, the olian Islands; Of Rome, Venice, Naples, Syracusa, Mesena, tna, Scylla, and Charybdis; and other places of Note. Illustrated with Fifty Graven Maps and Figures. The Seventh Edition. London, Printed for John Williams Junior, at ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... vortex where the waters are continually rushing round. In rivers they are very common, from various accidents, and are usually of little consequence. In the sea they are more dangerous, as the classical Charybdis, and the celebrated Maelstrom and Saltenstrom, both on ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... wilderness, Owen Dugdale had probably never heard of the kindred terrors that used to lie in wait for the bold mariners of ancient Greece—the rock and the whirlpool known as Scylla and Charybdis—if they missed being impaled upon the one they were apt to be engulfed in the other—and yet here in the rapids of this furious Saskatchewan feeder he was brought face to face with a proposition exactly similar ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... 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
... the Charybdis of fiction-writing may both be avoided. The realists gain nothing by hooting at the abuses of romance; and the romantics gain as little by yawning over realism at its worst. "The conditions"—to use a phase ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... 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
... the waters of the great stream furrowed out a channel; but the obstructing rocks, so far from being worn away, remain as permanent obstacles to steam navigation and are a cause of frequent shipwrecks. Yet, undeterred by dangers that eclipse Scylla and Charybdis, the laborious Chinese have for centuries past carried on an immense traffic through this perilous passage. In making the ascent their junks are drawn against the current by teams of coolies, tens or hundreds ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... dreaded President, but it was evident that I had made as absurd a demand as if I had asked for the nose off his respectable face. He referred me to the Governor at the State House, and I backed out, leaving him no doubt to regret that such mild maniacs were left at large. Here was a Scylla and Charybdis business: as if a President wasn't trying enough, without the Governor of Massachusetts and the hub of the hub piled on top of that. "I never can do it," thought I. "Tom will hoot at you if you don't," whispered ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... peace between them than we did between any of the rest of the Aiders," corrected Pollyanna, a little breathless from her efforts to steer between the Scylla of her father's past commands in regard to speaking of church quarrels, and the Charybdis of her aunt's present commands in regard to speaking ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter |
