"Charybdis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But the hero overcame this enchantress, and while in her land visited the realm of the departed and had interviews with the shades of the dead. He afterwards passed in safety through the frightful gulf of Scylla and Charybdis, and visited the wind-god AEolus, who gave him a fair wind home, and all the foul winds tied up in a bag. But the curious Greeks untied the bag, and the ship was blown far from her course. His followers afterwards killed the sacred oxen of the sun, for which they were punished ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... No, senor! What fifty men dared not have done, one woman did! a painted, patched, fucused, periwigged, bolstered, Charybdis, cannibal, Megaera, Lamia! Why did I ever go near that cursed Naples, the common sewer of Europe? whose women, I believe, would be swallowed up by Vesuvius to-morrow, if it were not that Belphegor is afraid of their making the pit itself too hot to hold him. Well, sir, she had all of mine and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... to be the site of constant whirlpools, such as Charybdis, the Maelstrom, and others. It ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... you might break your arm," cried Delia Guest, who hadn't the slightest scruple about telling a falsehood if she were going to have something to laugh at by the means. Poor Joy was between Scylla and Charybdis. (If you don't know what that means, go and ask your big brothers; make them leave their chess and their newspapers on the spot, and read you what Mr. Virgil has to say about it.) If she hung on she would wrench her arms; if she jumped, she should break them. She hung, screaming, as ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... 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 ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... the bar, roulette and faro tables, bright with varnish and gaudy with nickel trimmings, were waiting with invitations to feverish excitement. The room was a modern presentation of Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla, the bar, stimulated to the daring of Charybdis across the way, and Charybdis, the roulette, sent its winners to celebrate success, or its victims to deaden the pain ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... enough between the two, but after Dolf's arrival the kitchen department grew very hot and uncomfortable, and even the wary Dolf himself, skilled as he was in Lotharian practices, frequently had great difficulty in steering clear of both Scylla and Charybdis. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... champion of orthodoxy; but, if she declined, he was resolved none the less to afford his succor to any true friend of the Church that chose to request it. Timid and irresolute Catharine, who desired to steer clear of the Scylla of Spanish intervention quite as much as of the Charybdis of Huguenot supremacy, trembled for the security of her unballasted bark. But the watchful old man who sat on St. Peter's reputed seat was thrown into a paroxysm of delight. When the Ambassador Vargas handed him a copy of the message his master ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... 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 General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... men in the right place, it is the deep and wide tides of public opinion that largely shape events. The average Southern view of the negro, and the average Northern view of the "rebel," were the Scylla and Charybdis between which the ship of state ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... 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
... who has spread confusion amongst the ranks of the Knights, this public robber, this yawning gulf of plunder, this devouring Charybdis,[31] this villain, this villain, this villain! I cannot say the word too often, for he is a villain a thousand times a day. Come, strike, drive, hurl him over and crush him to pieces; hate him as we hate him; stun him with ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... Bull is a Spirit neither of heaven nor hell.... Has not the Christian Church, in its parts, surrendered itself to one or other of these simulations of the truth? ...How are we to avoid Scylla and Charybdis and go straight on to the very image ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... many were lost. The Zunis set apart a 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 ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... 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 to the preliminary fruit and cereal dishes ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... vulgar great Have bask'd in luxury, and lived in state! In Tuscan wilds now let them villas rear[68] Ennobled by the charity we spare. There let them warble in the tainted breeze, 75 Or sing like widow'd orphans to the trees: There let them chant their incoherent dreams, Where howls Charybdis, and where Scylla screams! Or where Avernus, from his darksome round, May echo to the winds the blasted sound! 80 As fair Alcyone,[69] with anguish press'd, Broods o'er the British main with tuneful breast, Beneath the white-brow'd cliff protected sings, Or skims the azure plain ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... 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 ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... 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 ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... opposite grounds at once. It is condemned for being pessimistic, it is blamed for being optimistic. From this position Chesterton deduces that it is the only rational religion, because it steers between the Scylla of pessimism and avoids the Charybdis of a facile optimism. Regarding presumably the early Church she has also kept from extremes. She has ignored the easy path of heresy, she has adhered to the adventurous road of orthodoxy. She has avoided the Arian materialism by dropping a Greek Iota; she ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... it scorches you with the flames you need not be ashamed of, and you always indulge in an honorable, an ingenuous love. Come, whatever is your case, trust it to faithful ears. Ah, unhappy! in what a Charybdis art thou struggling, O youth, worthy of a better flame! What witch, what magician, with his Thessalian incantations, what deity can free you? Pegasus himself will scarcely deliver you, so ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Scylla, with twelve limbs and six long necks, with a dog's head to each, ready each to seize a man out of every ship that passed; but it was safer to keep on her side than to go to the other cliff, for there a water-witch named Charybdis lived in a whirlpool, and was sure to suck the whole ship in, and swallow it up. However, for her husband Peleus' sake, Thetis and her sister Nereids came and guided ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... AEneas' eyes The straits of Sicily were seen to rise, When Palinurus from the helm descried The rocks of Scylla on his eastern side; While in the west, with hideous yawn disclosed, 500 His onward path Charybdis' gulf opposed: The double danger he alternate view'd, And cautiously his arduous track pursued. Thus, while to right and left destruction lies, Between the extremes the daring vessel flies; With terrible irruption bursting o'er The marble cliffs, tremendous surges roar; ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... 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 as I choose, but it will not avail me. A very agony of self-abasement will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... contrary too to every principal of gratitude and sound policy. In time, when passion shall have yielded to sober reason, the current may possibly turn; but, in the mean while, this government, in relation to France and England, may be compared to a ship between 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 that may follow ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... 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 ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... 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
... 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 war, and—" ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... of saying, concerning any boy whom he particularly liked, that he was not one of his especial chums, and that indeed he hardly knew why he had asked him; but he found he only fell on Scylla in trying to avoid Charybdis, for though the boy was declared to be more successful it was Ernest who was naught for not thinking more highly ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... amittere crevi, 150 Quam tibi fallaci supremo in tempore dessem. Pro quo dilaceranda feris dabor alitibusque Praeda, neque iniecta tumulabor mortua terra. Quaenam te genuit sola sub rupe leaena? Quod mare conceptum spumantibus expuit undis? 155 Quae Syrtis, quae Scylla rapax, quae vasta Charybdis? Talia qui reddis pro dulci praemia vita. Si tibi non cordi fuerant conubia nostra, Saeva quod horrebas prisci praecepta parentis, At tamen in vostras potuisti ducere sedes, 160 Quae tibi iocundo famularer serva ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... Scylla, leftward sits Charybdis fell, Who, yawning thrice, her lowest depths laid bare, Sucks the vast billows in her throat's dark hell, Then starward spouts the refluent surge in air. Here Scylla, gaping from her gloomy lair, The passing ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... this hour we had conversed little in French. One is naturally diffident at first; for if one musters courage to commence a conversation with propriety, the problem is how to escape a Scylla in the second and a Charybdis in the third sentence. Said one of our fair entertainers, "When I first began I would think of some sentence till I could say it without stopping, and courageously deliver myself to some guest or acquaintance." But it was like pulling the string of a shower bath. Delighted at my correct sentence, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... croupier—we used to call him Napoleon, from the way he took snuff from his waistcoat pocket, who was in the way of expressing a grave conviction that it was possible to make a capital living at Roulette, so long as you stuck to the colours, and avoided the Scylla of the numbers and the Charybdis of the Zero. By degrees, then, the shyness of the neophyte wears off. Perhaps in the course of his descent of Avernus, a revulsion of feeling takes place, and, horror-struck and ashamed, he rushes out of the Kursaal, determined to enter ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... from Scylla I had run into the jaws of Charybdis. I heard the elephant fall, and glanced round. Straight in front of me, and not fifteen paces away, were the other two bulls. They were staring about, and at that moment they caught sight of me. Then they came, the pair of them—came like thunderbolts, and from different angles. I had only ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... shall be given; and from him that hath not, the little that he hath shall be taken away". The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism. Such are the effects which must ever flow from an unmitigated exercise of the ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... 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 toward the Goths ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... rather easy in avoiding Scylla to fall into Charybdis." She had spent her winter in endeavoring to avoid Charybdis. Just because it had not been Edna who was John's ideal was no sign that the Princess did not exist, either already selected, as Edna's lover had ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... the Scylla of local neglect and the Charybdis of centralized jobbery. At first the settler was burdened with the task of clearing roughly the road in front of his own land, but the existence of vast tracts of Clergy Reserves, or other grants exempt from clearing duties, made this an ineffective ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... had also so unaccountably disappeared. Nor had this threatening state of the atmosphere the counterbalancing advantage of storm and tempest to drive them onward through the narrow waters of the Sinclair, and enable them, by anticipating the pursuit of their enemies, to shun the Scylla and Charybdis that awaited their more leisure advance. The wind increased not; and the disappointed seamen remarked, with dismay, that their craft scarcely made more progress than at the moment when ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the contrary[2]." And Sir William Harcourt, in September, 1863, declared: "Among all Lord Russell's many titles to fame and to public gratitude, the manner in which he has steered the vessel of State through the Scylla and Charybdis of the American War will, I think, always ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... it for 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 ...
— A Christmas Story - Man in His Element: or, A New Way to Keep House • Samuel W. Francis
... she not as well be thirty? There is little choice between Scylla and Charybdis. Twenty-nine is the hour of reckoning for every woman, ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... of Norway, resembles most other things that bear, seductively, external comeliness, and carry an antidote unseen. The bay is a whirlpool. Our hyperboreal Palinurus was perfectly acquainted with this modern Charybdis, and used every stratagem of which he was master, to escape it; but the wind being light, left the cutter to the mercy of the current. Nearly three hours the yacht did nothing else but revolve, as if she were fixed on a pivot, and not all the united ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... 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, and ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... his return trip from Messina to Naples he wrote at the sight of Scylla and Charybdis: "These two natural curiosities, standing so far apart in reality and placed so close together by the poet, have furnished men with an opportunity to abuse the fables of the bards, not remembering that the human imaginative faculty when it would represent objects as important always imagines ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... about an axis, turning aound an axis, circulation, roll; circumrotation^, circumvolution, circumgyration^; volutation^, circination^, turbination^, pirouette, convolution. verticity^, whir, whirl, eddy, vortex, whirlpool, gurge^; 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 and translation together] helix, helical ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the world to tremble; or as the vehement Demosthenes, when used to thunder against king Philip; yet we are not quite certain whether it was the power of eloquence alone persuaded the men to enter voluntarily, or whether being seated between the two rocks of Scylla and Charybdis, it was indifferent to them which they dashed upon; however this was, all but one of them entered (though with sad hearts) without being pressed, which we make no doubt the lieutenant attributed to ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... she made, and treating her with that pleased deference of manner which some middle-class people, not otherwise vulgar, invariably drop into in the presence of rank; a Scylla which is only one degree better than the Charybdis of would-be ease of manner into which others fall. If ever the enormous advantages of noble birth and ancient family, with all their attendant heirlooms and hereditary instincts of refinement, chivalrous feeling, and honor, become in future years a mark for scorn (as already ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... the metaphor, taken from the vexed Sicilian Seas, of Scylla and Charybdis. The twin whirlpools threatened the affrightened mariner on either side. To avoid one he too hastily cast the ship to destruction in the other. Such is precisely the position that has been reached at the present crisis in the course of human progress. ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... 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 ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... 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, after our first visit, we left the Church, All the night had we ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... this detailed knowledge of every foot of the Ellesmere Land and Grant Land coasts, combined with Bartlett's energy and ice experience, that enabled us to pass four times between this arctic Scylla and Charybdis. ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... executed one or two throws, there comes me a 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 like ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... 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
... not, or else considers it a poor, mean-spirited, creeping baseness, 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 doubled the Cape ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... this, Sandie thrust all his strength upon the tiller and kept the lugger straight 'twixt Scylla and Charybdis. ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... 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 ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... formerly called Trinacria, from its triangular shape, is separated from Italy by the Straits of Messina, which are seven miles across. In these straits were the ancient Scylla and Charybdis, long regarded as objects of terror; but now, owing to the improved state of navigation, they are of little consequence, and have ceased to excite fears in the hearts of the poor mariners. The chief towns of Sicily are Messina, Palermo, and Syracuse. In the middle of this island stands ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... road for this stage was something less bad, our driver was not a Tolly; in avoiding some Charybdis or other, he let his leaders slip down a bank about eight feet deep, whither, but for the good temper and steady backing of the wheel-horses, we should have followed: as it was, we managed to pick out our cattle, and got off with a couple ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... or imaginary old lady who had got the metaphor of Scylla and Charybdis a little confused. Wishing to describe a ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Lady Jane! it was to escape the attentions of a far less dangerous detrimental, and a far less ineligible one, that she had brought her daughter with her all the way to Riffrath—"from Charybdis to Scylla," as we used to say at Brossard's, putting the cart before ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... mud-hole, from which, perhaps, you were obliged to extricate your carriage by the help of a lever in the shape of a rail taken from some farmer's fence by the roadside. You are no sooner freed from this Charybdis, than you fall into Scylla, formed by half a mile of corduroy-bridge, made of round logs, varying from nine to fifteen inches in diameter, which, as you may suppose, does not make the most even surface imaginable, and over which you are jolted in the roughest style ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... keen. The thought of her in the next room, the thought that she might even hear me as I walked, the remembrance of my churlishness and that I must continue to practise the same ungrateful course or be dishonoured, put me beside my reason. I stood like a man between Scylla and Charybdis: What must she think of me? was my one thought that softened me continually into weakness. What is to become of us? the other which steeled me again to resolution. This was my first night of wakefulness and divided counsels, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the things that the whole 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 ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... 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 the Charybdis ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... see Etna, Scylla, Charybdis, and the tombs of the Norman Kings at Palermo; surprised, as you may imagine, to find that there wasn't a stroke nor a notion of Norman work in them. They are, every atom, done by Greeks, and are as pure Greek as the temple of AEgina; ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... passage between Sicily and the coast of Italy. On one side there are some frightful rocks, over which the sea roars like thunder. They are called the rocks of Scylla, and if a ship gets on them she is dashed to pieces in a quarter less than no time. On the other side is the awful whirlpool of Charybdis, which draws ships from miles towards it, and sucks them under the water like straws; so I've heard say, but, as I've not seen it done, I can't vouch for the truth of the story. If you keep on one side you've a chance of being cast away on the rocks; if ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... jobbery that 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 ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... 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
... now, a world war had ended. Then, as now, half the world was prostrated by the wounds of fratricidal strife. As Washington said: "The whole world was in an uproar," and he added that the task "was to steer safely between Scylla and Charybdis." The problem, then as now, was not only to make "the world safe for democracy," but to make democracy, for which there is no alternative, safe for the world. The thirteen colonies in 1787, while small and relatively unimportant, were, however, a little world in themselves, ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... in his heart that the young men of the house were out of the way; he did not want his little Molly to be passing from Scylla to Charybdis; and, as he afterwards scoffed at himself for thinking, he had got an idea that all young men were wolves in ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... runs from Scylla to Charybdis! I was so intent on securing the disappearance of a single epithet that I accepted the rest of the advertisement and all that it involved without discussion. So it befell that the words "well-known connoisseur" ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... 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
... those that are aimless and unoccupied. Apart from all considerations of right and wrong, one of the first conditions of a happy life is that it should be a full and busy one, directed to the attainment of aims outside ourselves. Anxiety and Ennui are the Scylla and Charybdis on which the bark of human happiness is most commonly wrecked. If a life of luxurious idleness and selfish ease in some measure saves men from the first danger, it seldom fails to bring with it the second. No change of scene, no multiplicity of selfish pleasures will in the long run enable them ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... to our ministers, beyond any other class of citizens perhaps, a peculiarly trying time. How they are to escape the Scylla of cowardice and the contempt of all free and true men on the one hand, and the Charybdis of pride and self-will and scorn of other men's opinions and wishes on the other, is no easy dilemma to our ministers. Some happily constituted and happily circumstanced ministers manage to get through life, and even ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... Just now coming up Great Russell Street I loitered outside a print shop. There they were as usual—Hogarth's Idle and Virtuous Apprentices. The idle apprentice is certainly Scylla, but is not the virtuous apprentice just as much Charybdis? Is he so greatly preferable? Is not the right thing somewhere between the two? And does not the art of good living consist mainly in a fine perception of when to edge towards the idle and when ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... conflicting motions 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 ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... frightened! 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
... chains, and let us go free—even without a roof over our heads or a pound in our pockets." And there is a third section—the party which, as Newman said, attempts to steer between the Scylla of Aye and the Charybdis of No through the channel of no meaning, and this section cries for some reform which shall abolish the cynical mockery of the Conge d'Elire, and secure to the Church, while still established and endowed, the self-governing rights of a Free Church. ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... satisfy the palate of him who eats solely for flavor—who never knows the sauce of hunger, or the deliciousness of a plain crust of bread. We must be on guard, saying, like the little daughter of a classical professor, "If Scylla doesn't get me Charybdis will." Flavor we must have, but not too much, not too many kinds at once, and not applied indiscriminately to foods which need them and foods which do not. The wise cook uses her arts to secure ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... 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 ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... dread. The beldam, full of apprehension Lest oversleep should cause detention, Ran like a goblin through her mansion. Thus often, when one thinks To clear himself from ill, His effort only sinks Him in the deeper still. The beldam, acting for the cock, Was Scylla for Charybdis' rock. ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... 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 ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... 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 ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... which he may allow himself in translating. Is he to adhere rigidly to a literal rendering of the original text, or is paraphrase permissible, and, if permissible, within what limits may it be adopted? In deciding which of these courses to pursue, the translator stands between Scylla and Charybdis. If he departs too widely from the precise words of the text, he incurs the blame of the purist, who will accuse him of foisting language on the original author which the latter never employed, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... weeks Mrs. Reed had been threatening to cut his hair. The boys said, "Sissy, why don't your mother put your hair up in curl papers?" It looked so dreadful when it was first cut that Charles always spent these weeks between Scylla and Charybdis. He knew all about the rock and the whirlpools. But something had been happening all the time, even to this Saturday afternoon, when all the silver had to be scoured. Mr. Reed inspected his son as he sat at the supper-table. He had a rather poetical appearance with ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... every lake's and every river's side The nymphs and Naiads teach Equality; In voices gently querulous they ask, "Who would with aching head and toiling arms Bear the full pitcher to the stream far off? Who would, of power intent on high emprise, Deem less the praise to fill the vacant gulf Then raise Charybdis upon Etna's brow?" Amid her darkest caverns most retired, Nature calls forth her filial elements To close around and cruel that monster VOID: Fire, springing fierce from his resplendent throne, And Water, dashing the devoted wretch ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... has sprung up in the hearts of all her 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 ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... arrival. I even progressed so far as to get up the dance. I described the room, the decorations, and the band. I had Osborne dressed and waiting, with Bonetti also dressed and waiting on the other side of the room, Scylla and Charybdis all over again, but by no possibility could I force Miss Andrews to appear. Why it was, I do not pretend to be able to say—she may have known that Bonetti was there, she may have realized that I was trying to force Osborne upon her; but ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... asked a quiet voice at his ear; and he turned to look straight in the eyes of Rewa Gunga, who had leaned forward to read over his shoulder. Just for one second he hovered on the brink of quick defeat. Having escaped the Scylla of the dancing women, Charybdis waited for him in the shape of eyes that were pools of hot mystery. It was the sound of his own voice that brought him back to the world again and saved ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... between Scylla and Charybdis. He could scarcely escape being wrecked on the rocks of his own falsehood. The enemies who always surround a royal favorite were not long in surmising the truth, and lost no time in acquainting Edgar with their suspicions. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... about Naples, 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
... the Argonauts approached 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 ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... first impulse was to run him through, and I drew my sword half from its scabbard with that purpose. But he was not the sort of a man upon whom I could use my blade. He was hardly more than a boy—a wild, half-crazed fanatic, whose reason, if he had ever possessed any, had been lost in the Charybdis of his zeal. He honestly thought it was his duty to insult persons who apparently disagreed with him. Such a method of proselyting is really a powerful means of persuasion among certain classes, and it has always been used by men who have successfully ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... you are damn'd both by father and mother; thus when I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into Charybdis, your mother; well, you ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... 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 lived in their decadence, as a mouse (said ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... "Whichever you choose—Scylla or Charybdis—" said Sir Charles in his most dulcet tones, "this is probably the last time you and I will ever speak together. There have been passages between us in the past, which, in the light of after event, I cannot but ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... 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 it. The people have been stirred to this extreme ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... to be one 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 not want to ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... 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 ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... 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 the door, locked it, if possible, on the ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... of his Associate, and stumbles upon the French Camp, where he finishes his Military Career XX He prepares a Stratagem, but finds himself countermined— Proceeds on his Journey, and is overtaken by a terrible Tempest XXI He falls upon Scylla, seeking to avoid Charybdis. XXII He arrives at Paris, and is pleased with his Reception XXIII Acquits himself with Address in a Nocturnal Riot XXIV He overlooks the Advances of his Friends, and smarts severely for his Neglect XXV He bears ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... of Jews the physical or Semitic characters are apparent to the eye even of the uninitiated Gentile. In the Jewish people we see Nature steering one of her cargoes of differentiated humanity between the Scylla and Charybdis of the modern sea of industrial civilization. And race instinct ...
— Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View • Arthur Keith
... 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 ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... 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
... invitation to me for the next afternoon, I thought of those pilots whose dangers have come down to us from distant times through the songs of ancient poets. The narrow and tempestuous channel between Scylla and Charybdis bristled unquestionably with violent problems, but with none, I should suppose, that called for a nicer hand upon the wheel, or an eye more alert, than this steering of your little trireme to a successful marriage, between one man who believed himself to be ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... his mind already that if he should be freed of the murder charge, he would only have escaped Scylla to go to wreck on Charybdis. For it was a twenty to one bet that Jerry would go to Whitford with the story of his attempt to hire the gang leader ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... was a blood feud. It was not Sir Wilfrid's intention to make the feud his own or even to agree to it being carried on by Sir Richard. He took for minister of finance, W. S. Fielding, who justified his choice by successfully steering the budget bark between Scylla and Charybdis for fourteen years in succession before the whirlpool finally sucked him down. Where Laurier went outside his following for colleagues he had equally definite ends ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... time at Heavitree. It should not perhaps be asserted broadly that he had made up his mind that marriage would be good for him; but he had made up his mind, at least, to this, that it was no longer to be postponed without a balance of disadvantage. The Charybdis in the Close drove him helpless into the whirlpool of the Heavitree Scylla. He had no longer an escape from the perils of the latter shore. He had been so mauled by the opposite waves, that he had neither spirit nor skill left to him ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... 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) lives under ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... pronounced than I, as his biographer, could wish. The small matter which I have chronicled under the heading of "A Study in Scarlet," and that other later one connected with the loss of the Gloria Scott, may serve as examples of this Scylla and Charybdis which are forever threatening the historian. It may be that in the business of which I am now about to write the part which my friend played is not sufficiently accentuated; and yet the whole train of circumstances is so remarkable that I cannot bring myself to omit ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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
... 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 ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... a little rest and refreshment 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, far from being satisfied, became more than ever desirous of knowledge. ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... experimental study of development and regeneration soon brought into being. In 1895 he writes:—"The too simple mechanistic conception on the one hand, and the metaphysical conception on the other represent the Scylla and Charybdis, between which to sail is indeed difficult, and so far by few satisfactorily accomplished; it cannot be denied that with the increase of knowledge the seduction of the second has lately notably increased" ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... iv. p. 114 with some better readings. This iron statue meetly do we place To thee, world-wasting king, than brass more base; For all the death, the penury, famine, woe, That from thy wide-destroying avarice flow, This fell Charybdis, Scylla, near to thee, This fierce devouring Anastasius, see; And tremble, Scylla! on thee, too, his greed, Coining thy brazen deity, may feed. But Lydus, with no uncommon inconsistency in such writers, proceeds to paint the character of Anastasius as endowed with ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... enjoyed, without doubt, unusual good fortune in having pursued the strict path of culture. You have sailed by Charybdis without being swallowed up by Scylla.[87] But my lot has been ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... have taught us how to climb some mountains, but here we have to construct our ladders, for anyone less sure of foot than the chamois or the mountain sheep must stay at the bottom of the falls. Scylla and Charybdis are stationary now, and the gaping chasm has swallowed us upward, where we reach an opening into a wide park, a veritable fairyland. On the top of one of those ponderous laminations tilted edgewise is the king of the gnomes of the new glen. We call ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... about the great English rebellion. 'Pride's Purge,' the 'elective kingship without a veto of the 'New Model,' and the merciless mystification of Bradshaw, tell their own story. Steering to avoid the Scylla of Strafford, the luckless Parliamentarians ran the ship of State full into the Charybdis 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
... 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, manifestation, or name of God; God being called the Father, as Creator of the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... mean, WE had more trouble keeping peace between them than we did between any of the rest of the Aiders," corrected Pollyanna, a little breathless from her efforts to steer between the Scylla of her father's past commands in regard to speaking of church quarrels, and the Charybdis of her aunt's present commands in regard to speaking of ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... bestirred themselves, however, she was got round and filled on the opposite tack, just in time to clear the rocks. Spike breathed again, but his head was still full of the boat. The danger he had just escaped as Scylla met him as Charybdis. The boatswain again roared to go about. The order was given as the vessel began to pitch in a heavy swell. At the next instant she rolled until the water came on deck, whirled with her stern down the tide, and her bows rose ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 Wykliffe ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... name 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 House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... 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 of 1100 ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... flashing 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 from ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... Charybdis, for I was led to one of the sitting-out places. So stupidly ignorant was I in the ways of balls that I did not realize that we should be practically alone, or I would have remained glued to the ballroom. However, before I ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... would only have been a choice of evils, a progress from Scylla to Charybdis: not so to our Colonel. On coming up to the surface after his first dip, he found that swimming would not save him; so he quietly emptied out the water contained in the Umbrella, seated himself upon it, and sailed triumphantly into the harbour, ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... of trial. The well we look into is very deep. The stars are not very bright. It is hard to find our way, but the pilot has a good nerve. I know the trouble that Ulysses had with Scylla and Charybdis. ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... Gap Charybdis gives you another tremendous rolling in blowing weather, and the expanse of Lake Ontario is seen to the left, with the tortuous bay of Quinte again to the right; this arm of the lake being made for fifty or sixty miles more by the fertile district of Prince ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... scene of horror forms, And here Charybdis fills the deep with storms. When the tide rushes from her rumbling caves, The rough rock roars; tumultuous boil ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... gayly, "what a miserable lot you have chosen for yourself. You have fallen from Scylla into Charybdis, my poor youth." ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach |
