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Barbarian   /bɑrbˈɛriən/   Listen
Barbarian

noun
1.
A member of an uncivilized people.  Synonym: savage.
2.
A crude uncouth ill-bred person lacking culture or refinement.  Synonyms: boor, churl, Goth, peasant, tike, tyke.






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"Barbarian" Quotes from Famous Books



... Torn from her home. Ruthlessly dragged, perhaps, from her evening devotions, by the hands of a relentless barbarian. Could she forgive him? ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... dishes better than Gashleigh, with her stupid old-world devices of laurel-leaves, parsley, and cut turnips! Why, there was not a dish served that day that was not covered over with skewers, on which truffles, crayfish, mushrooms, and forced-meat were impaled. When old Gashleigh went down with her barbarian bunches of holly and greens to stick about the meats, even the cook saw their incongruity, and, at Truncheon's orders, flung the whole shrubbery into the dust-house, where, while poking about the premises, you may be ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray

... diaper patterns, also touched with color. Borders are not broad; and circular forms, except in the arches, are seldom used. Romanesque was a barbaric art at the best, and has the usual virtue of the barbarian,—a directness of attack at the problem in hand and a simplicity in treating it which is ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various

... almost conquered him. He thought perhaps such a fierce little barbarian might even find it better to eat bitter bread with her own than to wander out ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... to those who came to China by sea, while along the coast-line, facing to the eastward, the ports were sealed against foreign intrusion. Commerce between China and the outer world was hampered by many restrictions, and only its great profits kept it alive. But once fairly established, the barbarian merchants taught the slow-learning Chinese that the trade brought advantage to all engaged in it. Step by step they pressed forward, to open new ports and extend commercial relations, which were not likely to be discontinued, if only a little time ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... ammunition came out of dark places, as they are ever sure to come when the war-trumpet sounds. All seems peace, but suddenly, at the wild call, the latent barbarian in human nature springs up and is ready; and the cruder the arms, the fiercer the temper ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... principal ingredient of primitive religious emotion everywhere. To the savage and barbarian, religion is not a consolation and a blessing, but a terror. Du Chaillu says of the equatorial Africans (103) that "their whole lives are saddened by the fears of evil spirits, witchcraft, and other kindred superstitions under which they labor." Benevolent deities, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... Caesar's policy to create a solitude and call it peace. That policy Rome abandoned. Otherwise, that is if she had continued to turn the barbarians into so many dead flies, their legs in the air, there would be no barbarian now on the throne of Prussia. There would be no Prussia, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... the case that men, in departing from what was savage, have lost that which was natural; and in their ascent from the rude have left behind that which was essential to the highest civilization. In escaping from the nakedness of the barbarian, they have sometimes carried dress to an extreme of art which renders it untrue to nature and productive of manifold evils. In ascending from the simple and rude gastronomy of the savage, they have brought the art of cookery to such an excess of luxury ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... have been but casually studied; the civilised mind is apt to see, in savage seances, nothing but noisy buffoonery. We have shown that there is a more serious belief involved, and we have adduced cases in which white men were not unconscious of the barbarian spell. It also appears that the now recognised phenomena of hypnotism are the basis of the more serious savage magic. The production of hypnotic trances, perhaps of hypnotic hallucinations, is a piece of knowledge which savages possessed (as they were acquainted with quinine), while ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... survival from another field of science, consider the art of the French cave men. The archaeologist finds in the caverns bones of various mammals, teeth of cave bear, and antlers of reindeer carved with animal figures. The art is good for a barbarous people, but it is certainly barbarian art. The range of designs is quite great: horses, bears, mammoths, reindeer, are among the figures. The people who did this work were an artistic people. To carve and represent animal forms was almost ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various

... cultivated lands, she has not always been man's slave, subject, inferior, dependent, under all forms of government and religion; and, furthermore, it is not true that there has been such a marvellous change in her character as is implied in this statement. Where man is a bigot and a barbarian, there, alas! woman is still a harem toy; where man is little more than a human clod, woman is to-day a drudge in the field; where man has hewn the way to governmental and religious freedom, there woman has become a leader of thought. The unity of race progress is strikingly ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... the lodge was crowded almost to suffocation by eager spectators; now a dance, of the peculiar Indian kind; now some solemn ceremony to propitiate the spirits who were supposed to rule the weather, the crops, the hunting, and all the interests of barbarian life. ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... works, heard his laughter in the ripple of the stream, his voice in the thunder-storm and saw his anger in the writhen bolt, to the present age of skepticism, where he can see his Creator nowhere; and, blinder than his barbarian ancestors—knowing more of processes but less of principles—protests that Force is the only Demiurgus, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... by nature cruel, like the tigers. The barbarian, and the tool of the tyrant, and the civilized fanatic, enjoy the sufferings of others, as the children enjoy the contortions of maimed flies. Absolute Power, once in fear for the safety of its tenure, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines; The grey moss drapes us like sages, and closer we lock our lines, And deeper we clutch through the gelid gloom where never ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service

... horrible is night! ...There the shout Of battle, the barbarian yell, the bray Of dissonant instruments, the clang of arms, The shriek of agony, the groan of death, In one wild uproar and continuous din, Shake the still air; while overhead, the moon, Regardless of the stir of this low world, Holds on her ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... To leave Rome will fill me with barbarian complacency. I don't pretend to have a ray of sentiment about Rome. It's a palimpsest Rome, a watering-place written over the antique, and I haven't taken to it as a poet should I suppose. And let us speak the truth above all things. I am strongly a creature of ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... Rome to all the municipal towns to put Marius to death as soon as they found him. After some consultation they resolved to obey it, and sent a Cimbrian slave to carry out their orders. The room in which the old general was confined was dark; and, to the frightened barbarian, the eyes of Marius seemed to dart forth fire, and from the darkness a terrible voice shouted out, "Man! durst thou slay C. Marius?" The barbarian immediately threw down his sword, and rushed out of the house, exclaiming, "I can not kill C. Marius!" Straightway there was a revulsion of feeling ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... something should be done about it. It is too serious a matter. We are all more or less responsible to the people he is to govern. We cannot, in justice to them, allow him to continue under the—er—influences that now seem to surround him. He'll—he'll grow up to be a barbarian. For Heaven's sake, my lords, let us consider the Prince's future—let us ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... the late fray at Russi, a town not far from this. It is exactly the fact of Romeo and Giulietta—not Romeo, as the Barbarian writes it. Two families of Contadini (peasants) are at feud. At a ball, the younger part of the families forget their quarrel, and dance together. An old man of one of them enters, and reproves the young men for dancing with the females ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... after having been placed with much pomp and ceremony on the top of the finest pagoda in Burmah (Shway Dagohu, the gilded spire of which rises as high as St. Paul's Cathedral), should be surmounted and surrounded by the most commonplace articles of the conquering 'barbarian hordes.' ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... people to know. There was always some tempest in a teapot over the latest machinations of their enemies. And then there was the whole dead mass of people who sponged upon them and toadied to them; and finally the barbarian hordes outside the magic circle of their acquaintance—some specimens of whom came up every day for ridicule. They had big feet and false teeth; they ate mush and molasses; they wore ready-made ties; they said: "Do you wish that I should do it?" Their grandfathers had been butchers and pedlars and ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... Villages. Indian Hospitality. Barbarian Splendor. Attractive Scenery. The Alarm. Its Joyful Issue. Genial Character of La Salle. Erecting the Cross. Pleasant Visit to the Koroas. The Two Channels. Perilous Attack. Humanity of La Salle. The Sea Reached. Ceremonies of ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... which imposed themselves on Latin Europe under the Caesars[8] were developed there, and it is there we must look for the key to enigmas still unsolved. It is true that at present nothing is more obscure than the history of the religions that arose in Asia when Greek culture came in contact with barbarian theology. It is rarely possible to formulate satisfactory conclusions with any degree of certainty, and before further discoveries are made we shall frequently be compelled to weigh contrasting probabilities. We must frequently throw out the sounding line into the shifting ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... of all their astronomical or astrological science, is quite sufficient to settle that point. Those who are acquainted with the Chinese character will not readily admit that their long established superstitions should be found incorporated on an instrument of barbarian invention. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... Europe to-day seething with socialism and anarchy, its huge standing armies scarcely able to hold these worse than barbarian hordes in check. Out of what dark womb have these monsters crept? A corrupt Press. The devil found men whose lives were filled with pain and want; he came breathing through the Press telling them to distrust God, and to make war upon society. ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... an alliance with them; and from that time on it was their fortune to suffer at the hand of Alaric and Attila those things which have been told in the previous narrative.[1] And in proportion as the barbarian element among them became strong, just so did the prestige of the Roman soldiers forthwith decline, and under the fair name of alliance they were more and more tyrannized over by the intruders and oppressed by them; so that the barbarians ruthlessly forced many other measures ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius

... discovered the perfidy of the African magician, she could not help shewing, by marks of the greatest indignation, how much she detested him; and when her son had finished his story, she broke out into a thousand reproaches against that vile impostor. She called him perfidious traitor, barbarian, assassin, deceiver, magician, and an enemy and destroyer of mankind. "Without doubt, child," added she, "he is a magician, and they are plagues to the world, and by their enchantments and sorceries have commerce with the devil. Bless God for preserving you from his wicked designs; for your death ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... other. "The boy and girl are so civilized, and their uncle is so rudimentary. I'm afraid they are spoiling him just as the missionaries spoil the noble savage. They ought to go away and leave him alone. As a barbarian he was rather effective—but they will whitewash him and gild him and make a tame monstrosity of him. But I suppose it's inevitable. Having made his fortune, it is the rule that he must set up as a gentleman. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... in the old Latin race, it went back in every domain of learning to the rich subsoil which still underlay the ruin and the alien structures left by the long barbaric dominion, for the Italian in his darkest hour had never been a barbarian; and as the mind was once more roused to conscious life, Florence entered readily upon that great intellectual movement which she was destined to lead. Her cast of thought was, from the first, realistic and scientific. Its whole endeavour was to know the truth, to weigh evidences, ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... mission to the world, that Hellenism stood for the higher life of man as against barbarism, for Aretê, or Excellence, as against the mere effortless average. First came the crude patriotism which regarded every Greek as superior to every barbarian; then came reflection, showing that not all Greeks were true bearers of the light, nor all barbarians its enemies; that Hellenism was a thing of the spirit and not dependent on the race to which a man belonged or the place where he was born: then came the new word and conception ανθρωποτης {anthrôpotês}, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... of his forehead or cheeks, as he judges most becoming; whoever despises the other for this attention to the fashion of his country, whichever of these two first feels himself provoked to laugh, is the barbarian. ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... are further considerations which it were well you should lay to heart. If danger were ever again to visit Hellas from the barbarian world outside, in whom would you place your confidence if not in the Lacedaemonians? Whom would you choose to stand at your right hand in battle if not these, whose soldiers at Thermopylae to a man preferred to fall at their posts rather than save their ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon

... superstitions became the very wonder and asylum of all people,—the wonder by reason of its knowledge, sacred and profane, and the asylum of religion, literature and science, when chased away from the continent by the barbarian invaders. I recollect its hospitality, freely accorded to the pilgrim; its volumes munificently presented to the foreign student; and the prayers, the blessings, the holy rites, the solemn chants, which sanctified the while both ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... and then innocently remarked, "Why, this must be like one of the palaces of our ancient kings!" Here was precisely the popular Irish idea. Her "ancient king"—who actually lived in the wattled walls of Tara, enjoying barbarian feasts of beer and hecatombs of lean kine and sheep—is supposed to have been a refined and splendid prince, dwelling in ideal "halls," (doubtless compounded out of the Dublin Bank and Rotunda,) and enjoying the finest music on a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... like the human countenance, which conceals by its smiles and godlike expression the furnace that so often glows within the heart, and the volcano that consumes our happiness. For centuries, the Turk and the Moor rendered it unsafe for the European to navigate these smiling coasts; and when the barbarian's power temporarily ceased, it was merely to give place to the struggles of those who drove ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Poor C., barbarian that he was, and utterly unaware of the priceless gentility of the thing, said to me, sotto voce, "How can men wear such dirty stuff? Why don't they wash it?" I expounded to him what an ignorant sinner he was, and that the dirt of ages was one of the surest indications ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... put all the intensity of which he was capable into his attention. His knowledge of music was not extensive, but on the other hand it was enough to enable him to analyze this jazz. Neither music nor ragtime, it seemed utterly barbarian in character. It appealed only to primitive, physical, sensual instincts. It could not be danced to sanely and gracefully. When he opened his eyes again, to see once more the disorder of dancers in spirit and action, he seemed to ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... thou? in what arrogance Darest thou thus insult Pelasgia's realm? Deemest thou this a woman-hearted town? Thou art too full of thy barbarian scorn For us of Grecian blood, and, erring thus, Thou dost bewray ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... were marked by surprising activity in thought and progress. In three far-separated regions - China, India, and Babylonia - and in a fourth on the borders of Asia - Egypt - civilization rose and flourished for ages, while the savage and the barbarian roamed over all other regions of the earth. A still more extraordinary fact is, that during the more recent era, that of European civilization, Asia rested in the most sluggish conservatism, sleeping while Europe and America were actively moving, ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... was at a loss. They made out a crescent on the flag, and this caused even the old man a moment's astonishment. But he declared then, for her information, shortly and decisively, that it was a "barbarian." ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... minister, the philosopher Kuan-tzi. Other states attained leadership by success in warfare. Among these leaders we see duke Mu of T'sin (659 B.C.), a state on the western boundary which was so much influenced by amalgamation with its Hunnic neighbours that the purely Chinese states regarded it as a barbarian country. The emperor was in those days a mere shadow; several of his vassals had grown strong enough to claim and be granted the title "king," and they all tried to annihilate their neighbours by ruse in diplomacy and by force of arms, without referring to their common ruler ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... most popular hero of Japanese history, and the special favourite of boys. He was the brother of Yoritomo, who was appointed by the Mikado in 1192 Sei-i Tai Shogun (barbarian- subjugating great general) for his victories, and was the first of that series of great Shoguns whom our European notions distorted into "Temporal Emperors" of Japan. Yoshitsune, to whom the real honour of these victories belonged, became the object ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... nothing to that which now arose. Kustir-Aga and the Odalisques of the Harem prostrated themselves at the feet of Soliman the Magnificent, and with streaming eyes, dishevelled hair, and frantic gestures, demanded the instant despatch of an expedition to utterly exterminate these barbarian corsairs, the Knights of Malta, who had thus injured them and lacerated their tenderest susceptibilities. The Grand Turk, autocrat as he was, had no peace day or night; he was surrounded by wailing women and sullen officials, all of whom had lost ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... death of Ruth's mother, Aunt Emma had taken it as one of her duties, along with symphony concerts and committees, to rear Ruth properly. She had been neglecting this duty so far as to permit the invasion of a barbarian named Ericson only because she had been in California with her young son, Arthur. Just now, while her house was being opened, she was staying at the Winslows', with Arthur and a peculiarly beastly Japanese spaniel ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... Concubines! Virgins! Beyond counting. Didst thou think in thy Hebrew pride, that the Prince was a savage and a barbarian?... Down, damsel! Here is Bagoas. Embrace the earth for ...
— Judith • Arnold Bennett

... masterpiece in question had escaped my research, but pleaded in extenuation that I came from England, where the rudiments of polite larnin' and the iliments of Oirish litherature have not yet permeated the barbarian population. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... reader, is it not possible that even in these different days you and I might have been cruel when our hour came? God knows alone, and God be thanked that so far as we can foresee, except under the pressure, perhaps, of invasion by semi-barbarian hordes, or of dreadful and sudden social revolutions, civilized human nature will never be put to ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... to us) looking on. Here are the venerable walls and streets of Liegnitz; and the Castle which defied Baty Khan and his Tartars, five hundred years ago. [1241, the Invasion, and Battle here, of this unexpected Barbarian.]—Oh, your Majesty, this Liegnitz, with its princely Castle, and wide rich Territory, the bulk of the Silesian Lowland, whose is it if right were done? Hm, his Majesty knows full well; in Seckendorf's presence, and going ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Europe has produced. Far otherwise: his career is not so interesting to us as that of Hildebrand, or Elizabeth, or Cromwell, or Richelieu, or Gustavus Adolphus, or William III., or Louis XIV., or Frederic II., or others I might mention. I have simply to show an enlightened barbarian toiling for civilization, a sort of Hercules cleansing Augean stables and killing Nemean lions; a man whose labors were prodigious; a very extraordinary man, stained by crimes and cruelties, yet laboring, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... wider and more remarkable innovations. This was the time, at home, of the second Parliamentary Reform, which did at least as much to infringe the authority of his enemy the Philistine, as the first had done to break the power of the half-dreaded, half-courted Barbarian. This was the time when, abroad, the long-disguised and disorganised power of Germany was to rearrange the map of Europe, and to bring about a considerable rearrangement of Mr Arnold's own ideas ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... containing as many sticks as there were days intervening before the deadly assault should begin. One stick was to be drawn from the bundle every day until but one remained, which was to signal the outbreak for that day. This was the best calendar the barbarian mind could devise. At Pittsburgh, a Delaware squaw who was friendly to the whites had stealthily taken out three of the sticks, thus precipitating the attack on Fort Pitt three days in ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church

... the Greek character; and closely connected with this faculty was a strong propensity to flippancy and impertinence. When Posthumius placed an accent wrong, his hearers burst into a laugh. When he remonstrated, they hooted him, and called him barbarian; and at length hissed him off the stage as if he had been a bad actor. As the grave Roman retired, a buffoon, who, from his constant drunkenness, was nicknamed the Pint-pot, came up with gestures of the grossest indecency, and bespattered the senatorial gown with filth. ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the religious genius strikes his roots through it, and insists upon a present revelation, we are apt to cry "heretic;" when the poet strikes his roots through it, as Whitman did, and insists upon giving us reality,—giving us himself before custom or law,—we cry "barbarian," or "art-heretic," or ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... young fellow deserved some reward, so she began talking to him in such a matter-of-course way that before he was aware he was responding with a freedom that surprised all the family, and none more than himself. Mildred was compelled to admit that the "young barbarian," as she had characterized him in her thoughts, possessed, in the item of intelligence, much good raw material. He not only had ideas, but also the power of expressing them, with freshness and vivacity. She did not give herself sufficient ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... excepting man, sleeps with the mouth open or breathes through the mouth, and in fact it is believed that it is only civilized man who so perverts nature's functions, as the savage and barbarian races almost invariably breathe correctly. It is probable that this unnatural habit among civilized men has been acquired through unnatural methods of living, enervating ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka

... Not a sparrow falls to the ground but some of the remote conditions of his fall are to be found in the milky way, in our federal constitution, or in the early history of Europe. That is to say, alter the milky way, alter the federal constitution, alter the facts of our barbarian ancestry, and the universe would so far be a different universe from what it now is. One fact involved in the difference might be that the particular little street-boy who threw the stone which brought ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... Maine comes to the same conclusion, and deplores the fact of the loss of liberty for women, adding: "The prevalent state of religious sentiment may explain why it is that modern jurisprudence, forged in the furnace of barbarian conquest, and formed by the fusion of Roman jurisprudence with patriarchal usage, has absorbed among its rudiments much more than usual of those rules concerning the position of women which belong peculiarly to an imperfect civilization." And he adds words which come from a man who is a good Christian ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell

... brow, and his [682-715]ancestral star dawns overhead. Elsewhere Agrippa, with favouring winds and gods, proudly leads on his column; on his brows glitters the prow-girt naval crown, the haughty emblazonment of the war. Here Antonius with barbarian aid and motley arms, from the conquered nations of the Dawn and the shore of the southern sea, carries with him Egypt and the Eastern forces of utmost Bactra, and the shameful Egyptian woman goes as his consort. All at once rush on, and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... dual nature of the solution and its relative importance to both races is clearly indicated by Voltaire, the great French savant: "It is more meritorious and more difficult to wean men from their prejudices than to civilize the barbarian." ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... even receded; for though Miss Austin was suffered to learn Greek, the accomplishment was kept secret like a piece of guilt. But whether this stealth was caused by a backward movement in public thought since the time of Edward Barron, or by the change from enlightened Norwich to barbarian London, I have no ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... female relatives for sorcery, as they did in this neighborhood a little while ago, or burns my instructor for not believing as he does, I care no more for his religious edicts than I should for those of any other barbarian. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... The little kingdom of the Hebrews, hardy and warlike under Saul and David, luxurious and effeminate under Solomon, lasted but little more than a hundred years. Persia, rising rapidly by military means from the barbarian state, lived a brilliant life of conquest, cultivated but little those arts of peace that hold in check the passions of a successful military nation, yielded rapidly to the seductions of luxury, and fell abruptly before the Macedonian Alexander, lasting less than two hundred and fifty years. Macedonia, ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... New York, at a recent meeting, passed unanimously a set of resolutions, in one of which they spoke of King WILLIAM of Prussia as the modern ATTILA. As an admirer of that fine old barbarian, Mr. PUNCHINELLO protests against such a slanderous attack upon his historic reputation. ATTILA and the hordes he led were honest thieves, who made no hypocritical pretences to virtue in order to hide their real motives. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various

... had located as a savage and a barbarian living under the primitive conditions of several thousand years before. But which self was he, and which was the other, he could never tell. For he was both selves, and both selves all the time. Very rarely indeed did it happen that one self did not know what the other was doing. ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London

... without a shudder, to set up my everlasting rest, to lay my weary bones in the earth, and to mingle my clay with that whereout it was moulded. No fear of being houcked here, Thomas, and preserved in a glass case, like a stuffed woodcock, in Surgeons Hall. I am a barbarian, Tom, in these respects—I am a barbarian, and nothing of a philosopher. Quiero Paz is to be my epitaph. Quiero Paz—'Cursed be he who stirs these bones.' Did not even Shakspeare write it? What poetry in ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... forgotten that, apart from the chance of obtaining concessions for the building of railways, for the establishment of banks, for the leasing of mines and working of cotton plantations, there is a large German export of beads, cloth, and, in short, of hundreds of articles which appeal to barbarian or only ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... his speech, the General struck him on the head with his heavy ivory staff, and the Barbarian fell. The Gauls howled, and their frenzy, which was spreading to the others, would soon have swept away the legionaries. Gisco shrugged his shoulders as he saw them growing pale. He thought that his ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... river, together with the frequent roarings and bellowings of whole cargoes of wild beasts from the deserts of Asia and Africa destined to the amphitheatre, intermingled with the jargon of an hundred different barbarian languages from the thousands who thronged the decks of this fleet of all nations,—these sights and sounds at first wholly absorbed me, and for a moment shut all the world besides—even you—out of my mind. It was a strange yet inspiring scene, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... tongue and take up your drawing-board?" cried Mr. Blyth. "You young barbarian, you deserve to be expelled my academy for talking in that way of the Dying Gladiator. Now then; where's Madonna? No! stop where you are, Zack. I'll show her her place, and give her the drawing-board. Wait a minute, Lavvie! Let me prop ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... rare thing for rivals to play together. A single good actor, among a dozen bad, is deemed sufficient. Are we then to wonder that the regular drama does not pay?' . . . OUR readers will remember the order given by the Chinese Emperor to a corps of Mandarins, who were to exterminate the 'barbarian Englishers' in the harbor of Canton, by going down to the bank of the river in the night, and then and there 'dive straight on board those foreign ships, and put every soul of them to death!' Subsequently however the red-bristling foreigners managed to land, when, as it since turns ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... emperor, however, ruled so badly that Alaric thought it best to restore Honorius. Then Honorius, when just about to be treated so honorably, allowed a barbarian chief who was an ally of his to make an attack upon Alaric. The attack was unsuccessful, and Alaric immediately laid siege to Rome for the third time. The city was taken, and Alaric's dream came true. In a grand procession ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren

... formed a stock sufficient for the merchant to recommence trade with advantage. The Agarwalas trace their descent from a Raja Agar Sen, whose seventeen sons married the seventeen daughters of Basuki, the king of the Nagas or snakes. Elliot considers that the snakes were really the Scythian or barbarian immigrants, the Yueh-chi or Kushans, from whom several of the Rajpat clans as the Tak, Haihayas and others, who also have the legend of snake ancestry, were probably derived. Elliot also remarks that Raja Agar ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... what object all this wealth and power? What memory shall I leave? What family shall I found? Not a relative in the world, except a solitary barbarian, from whom when, years ago I visited him as a stranger I ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... '"Alas! my poor barbarian," said Pertinax, still laughing. "Well, you have sold us too many good ponies to be thrown back to your friends. We will make you a prisoner, ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... Silenus and Faunus and a Bacchant band Round me. Wild my wine-stained hand O'er tumultuous hair is lifted; While the flushed and Phallic orgies Whirl around me; and the marges Of the wood are torn and rifted With lascivious laugh and shout. And barbarian there again,— Shameless with the shameless rout, Bacchus lusting in each vein,— With her pagan lips on mine, Like a god made drunk with wine, On I reel; and, in the revels, Her loose hair, the dance dishevels, Blows, and 'thwart my vision swims All ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... Time was flying. Virginia's errand of mercy was not yet accomplished, and Aunt Martha in her character of anxious chaperon was not to be forgotten. Also, Miss Carteret had a feeling that under his well-bred exterior Mr. Morton P. Adams was chafing like any barbarian industry captain at ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde

... Oklahoma! Land, O, land of the Fair God, Land where ancient, savage races Through barbarian ages trod! Through thy story fancy traces Facts above what fictions say, Where the world with haste advances,— Born are nations in a day! Where the wigwam stood so lonely, Lordly cities rise in might; Where spread desert wildness only, Fertile farms and homes delight. Thou hast summoned to thy ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller

... some five miles away from Venice, in the northern lagoon. The city was founded far back in the troubled morning of Christian civilization, by refugees from barbarian invasion, and built with stones quarried from the ruins of old Altinum, over which Attila had passed desolating. During the first ages of its existence Torcello enjoyed the doubtful advantage of protection from the Greek emperors, but fell afterward ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... And the prodigious feasts, the music of the long harps, the blares of the brazen trumpets; the slaughters and battles when Thebes was the great and unique capital of the world, an object of fear and envy to the kings of the barbarian peoples who commenced to awake in neighbouring lands; the symphonies of siege and pillage, in days when men bellowed with the throats of beasts. To think of all this, here on this ground, on a night so calm and blue! And these same walls of granite ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... occupation of men, and that the most exalted greatness is the growth of battle-fields. Because the world has adopted the idea, be not you deceived. That we must worship something is a law which will continue as long as there is anything we cannot understand. The prayer of the barbarian is a wail of fear addressed to Strength, the only divine quality he can clearly conceive; hence his faith in heroes. What is Jove but a Roman hero? The Greeks have their great glory because they were the first ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... than that corruptions should gradually and stealthily have mingled themselves with the simplicity of Gospel worship. That tendency is plainly evinced by the history of every nation under heaven: Greek and Barbarian, Egyptian and Scythian, would have their gods many, and their lords many. From one they would look for one good; on another they would depend for a different benefit, in mind, body, and estate. Some were of the highest grade, and to be worshipped ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... sides in the quarrel; those who delayed doing so at once having it in contemplation. Indeed this was the greatest movement yet known in history, not only of the Hellenes, but of a large part of the barbarian world—I had almost said of mankind. For though the events of remote antiquity, and even those that more immediately preceded the war, could not from lapse of time be clearly ascertained, yet the evidences which an inquiry carried as far back as was practicable ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... have prejudices, superstitions, tyrannies, fanaticisms, blind laws lending assistance to ignorant customs. You taste nothing of the present nor of the future without a flavor of the past being mingled with it. You have a barbarian, the monk, and a savage, the lazzarone. The social question is the same for you as for us. There are a few less deaths from hunger with you, and a few more from fever; your social hygiene is not much better than ours; shadows, which are Protestant in England, are Catholic in Italy; but, under different ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... until this his languid creeds had held that no wise man feels strongly, and that to glide through life untroubled and unmoved is as possible as it is politic. Now he suffered, he suffered dumbly as a dog, passionately as a barbarian; now he was met by that which, in the moment of its dealing, pierced his panoplies of indifference, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... part being noble and sympathetic, while Sir Henry Irving had the ungrateful part of the villain. To be sure, he was a villain of much complexity; and Tennyson thought that his subtle blend of Roman refinement and intellectuality, and barbarian, self-satisfied sensuality, was not "hit off." Synorix is, in fact, half-Greek, half-Celt, with a Roman education, and the "blend" is rather too remote for successful representation. The traditional villain, from Iago downwards, is not apt to utter such poetry ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... ill of him. As I have often been told, I am myself more than half a barbarian when correct manners are concerned. But if I ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... the adventurous Phoenician traders who, in the sixth century B.C., voyaged to the Scilly Islands and Cornwall to barter their own commodities in exchange for the useful metals. Knowing the requirements of their barbarian customers, these early merchants from Tyre and Sidon are believed to have brought some of the larger pugnaces, which would be readily accepted by the Britons to supplant, or improve, their courageous ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... retribution. The tyrant element in man is found in this Satanic form of his individuality. His will, self-released from restraint, preys upon and crushes other wills. He asserts himself by enslaving others, and mimics Divinity on the stilts of diabolism. Like the barbarian who thought himself enriched by the powers and gifts of the enemy he slew, he aggrandizes his own personality, and heightens his own sense of freedom, through the subjection of feebler natures. Ruthless, rapacious, greedy of power, greedy of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... suddenly awakened public recognition of the shocking conditions surrounding pregnancy, maternity, and infant welfare prevailing at the very heart of our boasted civilization. So terrible, so unbelievable, are these conditions of child-bearing, degraded far below the level of primitive and barbarian tribes, nay, even below the plane of brutes, that many high-minded people, confronted with such revolting and disgraceful facts, lost that calmness of vision and impartiality of judgment so necessary in any serious consideration of this vital problem. Their "hearts" are touched; they become ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... ill-fated Boys ever created Young Jack was the wretchedest lad: An emphatic, erratic, Dogmatic fanatic Was foisted upon him as dad! From the time he could walk, And before he could talk, His wearisome training began, On a highly barbarian, Disciplinarian, ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... deities whom their fancies had created—deities even more hateful and cruel, perhaps, than the worst of your own Christian Calvinistic fancies. I can't see, myself, that civilised people are one whit the better in all these respects than the uncivilised barbarian. They pull together better, that's all; but war, bloodshed, superstition, fetich-worship, religious rites, castes, class distinctions, sex taboos, restrictions on freedom of thought, on freedom of action, on freedom of speech, on freedom of knowledge, are just as common in their midst ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... miracles of patient art. The grandeur of the stately place was marred, however, by signs of revel and rough usage. The Persian monarch, spared by his Grecian conqueror, had been deprived, by some more modern barbarian, of his eyes; while the face of his royal consort had been cut out of the threaded picture, to judge by the ragged end of the canvas, by a penknife. The very pillars were notched in places, as though some mad revelers ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... and I between us soon laughed him out of these innocent little literary vagaries, and he remained content with the homely words he had inherited from his barbarian ancestors in England (they speak good English, our barbarians), and the simple phrasing he had learnt from M. Durosier's classe de litterature at the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... heart of the metropolis of modern civilization was secretly trod by this jaunty barbarian in broadcloth; a sort of prophetical ghost, glimmering in anticipation upon the advent of those tragic scenes of the French Revolution which levelled the exquisite refinement of Paris with the bloodthirsty ferocity of Borneo; ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... Eastern and Western divisions at Skodra, or Scutari, as the Europeans call it. Under the early empire, the land was perpetually changing from East to West, but when the Western division fell under the weight of barbarian invasions Uin 476 A.D., it was finally incorporated in the East. This was a momentous decision, for the manners and habits of the people still remain tinged with Eastern life, and in the ninth century it secured their adhesion to the Eastern Church, which influences their policy to the present time. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... Throne. Behold, I, Menkau-ra, the Osirian, having in the days of my life been warned of a dream that a time will come when Khem shall fear to fall into the hands of strangers, and her monarch shall have great need of treasure wherewith to furnish armies to drive the barbarian back, have out of my wisdom done this thing. For it having pleased the protecting Gods to give me wealth beyond any Pharaoh who has been since the days of Horus—thousands of cattle and geese, thousands of calves and asses, thousands of measures of corn, and hundreds of measures of gold ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... of coldly, clerkly aspect intrenched behind gold-rimmed spectacles, I made inquiries concerning the pleasures of this independence. They liked it—indeed they did. 'Twas the natural fate of almost all girls—the recognized custom in America—and I was a barbarian not to see it in ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... cried she, bursting into tears, "thus to echo the words of the barbarian Kirkpatrick; thus to condemn us to die! You will see another tragedy: your own wife and child seized by the returning Southrons, and laid bleeding ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... and continued: "Although they deserve death, still, I am not a barbarian, and shall give them a chance for their lives," and, saying this, he moved through the door, and, sighting a large steamer, gave a signal. Once, twice, three times he moved the flag from right to left. Almost immediately there was a response and ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward

... father, and tried to gain influence over him, and frankly suggested the measures to be adopted, and Dionysius listened at first to his wise counsels. Dion wished to make Syracuse a free city, with good laws, to expel the Carthaginians from Sicily, and replant the semi-barbarian Hellenic cities. He also endeavored to reform the life of Dionysius as well as Syracuse, and actually wrought a signal change in his royal pupil, so that he desired to see and converse with the great sage who had so completely changed ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... to Rome, and his brother executed, both falsely charged with conspiracy. Such were the triumphs adjudged to Batavian auxiliaries. He escaped with life, and was disposed to consecrate what remained of it to a nobler cause. Civilis was no barbarian. Like the German hero Arminius, he had received a Roman education, and had learned the degraded condition of Rome. He knew the infamous vices of her rulers; he retained an unconquerable love for liberty and for his own race. Desire to avenge his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... barbarian was not insensible to literary merit. Usher, notwithstanding his being a bishop, received a pension from him. Marvel and Milton were in his service. Waller, who was his relation, was caressed by him. That poet always said, that the protector himself was not so wholly illiterate as was commonly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... with it! They don't know how to do anything else! Anybody, even the most abject fool or criminal, is capable of manual labour; such labour is the distinguishing mark of the slave and the barbarian, while the holy fire is vouchsafed only to ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... whole earth. The message of his history, composed with scrupulous care, and a critical method rare in that age, is that the very stars in their courses fight for Rome, whether she wages war against Greek or against Barbarian, that hers is the domination of the earth, the empire of the world, and it is to the eternal honour of Greece that it accepted this message. The Romano-Hellenic empire is born. Other men arise both to the east and to the west of the Adriatic, in whom the Greek and Roman genius are fused, who ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... Gurdi. And I would eat before I make talk with you. I have not done any wrong that you should treat me as a barbarian who has stolen salt from the ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton

... against the heel of the bowsprit, and he held a book at arm's length before his big, sunburnt face. With his spectacles and a venerable white beard, he resembled a learned and savage patriarch, the incarnation of barbarian wisdom serene in the blasphemous turmoil of the world. He was intensely absorbed, and as he turned the pages an expression of grave surprise would pass over his rugged features. He was reading "Pelham." The popularity ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... ecclesiastical culture, which hitherto had been synonymous with civilisation, a very long way behind. "Mezura," "masze" (the [Greek: mphstoes] of the Platonic Greeks) was the new criterion, as compared with the barbarian's want of restraint. ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... with conquest, appeared with his barbarian horde before the gates of Rome in 452, Pope Leo alone of all the people dared go forth and try to turn his wrath aside. A single magistrate followed him. The Huns were awed by the fearless majesty of the unarmed ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... the foot of the hills, into a boundless plain, where he might be surrounded by the enemy; for nothing was further from the intentions of the Parthians than to attack the Romans right in front. Accordingly, the barbarian coming to Crassus (and he was a plausible talker), spake in high terms of Pompeius as his benefactor, and praised the force of Crassus; but he blamed him for his tardiness, inasmuch as he was delaying and making preparation, as if he would have occasion to employ arms instead of hands ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... glorious panorama! and not less rich in associations than in its natural beauty. Below me had moved the barbarian hordes of old, the triumphant followers of Arminius and the cohorts of Rome, and later full many a warlike host bearing the banners of the red cross to the Holy Land, many a knight returning with his vassals from the field to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various

... would make no jot of difference if he knew. He had a thing to do, and he was purposed to do it strenuously, inflexibly. Yet in the inmost chamber of his heart, where the barbarian ego stands unabashed and isolate and recklessly contemptuous of the moralities minor and major, he saw the birth of an influence which inevitably must henceforth be ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde



Words linked to "Barbarian" :   cannibal, unpleasant person, Odoacer, Odovakar, vandal, noncivilized, anthropophagus, noncivilised, disagreeable person, anthropophagite, primitive person, man-eater, primitive, hunter-gatherer, Odovacar, head-shrinker, headhunter



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