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Barbarian   Listen
noun
Barbarian  n.  
1.
A foreigner. (Historical) "Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me."
2.
A man in a rude, savage, or uncivilized state.
3.
A person destitute of culture.
4.
A cruel, savage, brutal man; one destitute of pity or humanity. "Thou fell barbarian."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Barbarian" Quotes from Famous Books



... honor of Rosas, which shows the savagery that lay close under the surface of the Argentine character at that time, and easily found revolting expression in the constant civil strife and in the uncontrolled rule of the dictator. "In the ball-room was a picture which would have disgraced even barbarian society. It was a full-sized figure representing a Federal soldier, with a Unitarian lying on the ground, the Federal pressing his knees between the victim's shoulders, whose head was pulled back with the left hand, ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... of the untraceable past, in the very heart of the most recent portion of the most recent people upon earth. And it was a melancholy reflection for ourselves, that, comparing the majority of the white and red assemblage there, the barbarian should be so infinitely the more civilized and the more interesting of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... seigneur only revisited his lands at the head of his soldiery to extort money by violence. He came down on them as a storm of hail. All hid at his approach. Throughout his lands alarm resounded —it was a sauve-qui-peut. The seigneur is no longer a true seigneur; he is a rude captain, a barbarian, hardly even a Christian. Ecorcheur is the true name for such, ruining what was already ruined, snatching the shirt off the back of him who had one; if he had but his skin, of that he was flayed. It would be a mistake to suppose that it was only the captains ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... Ammalat is not frank or confiding. I cannot blame him. I know how difficult it is to break through habits imbibed with a mother's milk, and with the air of one's native land. The barbarian despotism of Persia, which has so long oppressed Aderbidjan, has instilled the basest principles into the Tartars of the Caucasus, and has polluted their sense of honour by the most despicable subterfuge. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... the Union as a Free State, we will let you in; if not, we will keep you out, and under our arbitrary power of government, until you get rid of your slaves. We don't believe in slavery, and don't mean to have any more barbarian slaveholders in our company. Northern men in Congress, in violation of the spirit and policy of the Constitution, which recognized slavery as a purely local institution, endeavored to compel a full grown sovereign State to abolish slavery. That is the whole point of the case. It is not surprising ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton

... "The birth of Alaric, the glory of his past exploits, and the confidence in his future designs, insensibly united the body of the [Gothic] nation under his victorious standard; and, with the unanimous consent of the barbarian chieftains, the Master-general of Illyricum was elevated, according to the ancient custom, on a shield, and solemnly proclaimed king of the Visigoths. Armed with this double power, situated on the verge of ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... heretics remembered them any more; indeed modern divines affect to believe that marriage rites and family ties were the peculiar concern of the Church from the very first; and few moderns will fail to sympathize with the misgivings of the barbarian chief who, having been converted and being about to receive Christian baptism, paused as he stepped down into the font, and asked the priests if in the heaven to which their rites admitted him he would meet and converse ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... warlike propensities of the native tribes are indeed formidable but not insuperable difficulties in the way of their elevation. The wildest of them may compare not unfavorably with those Northern barbarian hordes that swooped down upon Christian Europe, and who were so soon the docile pupils and proselytes of the peoples they had conquered. The Arapahoes and Camanches of our day are no further removed from the sweetness and light of Christian culture than were the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... passed out of the hands of nobles and knights and into the hands of mob-orators, money-lenders, and atrocity-mongers. To recreate one's self with war in the grand manner, as Prince Eugene, Marlborough and the Old Dessauer knew it, one must now go among barbarian peoples. ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... painting, the arts and industries which aid worship. It also preserved the more valuable industries, which provide man with bread, clothing, and shelter, and especially the greatest of all human acquisitions, and the most opposed to the vagabond humor of the idle and plundering barbarian, the habit and taste for labor. In the districts depopulated through Roman exactions, through the revolt of the Bagaudes, through the invasion of the Germans, and the raids of brigands, the Benedictine monk built his ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the little priest. He interrupted himself by a thousand apostrophes; he lifted hands and eyes to the ceiling repeatedly; he named his poor mistress saint and martyr; he cried out against the barbarian land in which he found himself, and the bloodthirsty tigers with whom, like a second Daniel, he himself had to consort; he expatiated on the horrible risk that he ran in venturing forth from the castle on such an errand, saying ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... of the barbarians was no longer possible. Rome was sacked successively by different nations of Central Europe, and at length the kingdom of the Goths in Italy was established under Theodoric, A.D. 493. [Sidenote: Arianism of barbarian conquerors.] These rude nations, though professing Christianity, had received with it the heretical doctrines of Anus, owing to their teachers having belonged to those eastern portions of Europe, which, from their nearness to Asia, were ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... "Barbarian!" cried Susie angrily, feeling sick already, and certain that she would be quite ill by the end of the drive. "And you laugh at him and encourage him, instead of taking up your position at once and showing him ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... proceeds to puzzle his neighbours, whether they are older or younger, or of his own age—that makes no difference; neither father nor mother does he spare; no human being who has ears is safe from him, hardly even his dog, and a barbarian would have no chance of escaping him, if an interpreter could only ...
— Philebus • Plato

... 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 ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... their bodies with bullets." But they were Indians, and it was pronounnced a pious work. But when the Gauls invaded Italy, and the Roman Senators, in their purple robes and chairs of State, sat unmoved in the presence of barbarian conquerors, disdaining to flee, and equally disdaining to supplicate for mercy, it is applauded as noble, as dying like statesmen and philosophers. But the Indians with far more to lose and infinitely greater provocation, sits upon his mother ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson

... saw the returns from them more quickly and at less risk. The governors have sought this trade very earnestly. Don Alfonso Fajardo sent two ambassadors, namely, Don Juan de Arceo and Don Fernando de Ayala, who were very influential men of Manila; they carried a goodly present with them. But that barbarian refused to admit them, whereupon they returned abashed, without effecting anything. All this rancor has arisen through his expulsion of the orders [from Japan], and his prohibition against preaching any new religion in his country. Although the emperors have done this in their zeal for their ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various

... 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 whole ocean is torn into foam by straining oars and triple-pointed ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... Yeats mention must be made of his black and white work, which at its best has a primitive intensity. The lines have a kind of Gothic quality, reminding one of the rude glooms, the lights and lines of some half-barbarian cathedral. They are very expressive and never undecided. The artist always knows what he is going to do. There is no doubt he has a clear image before him when he takes up pen or brush. A strong will is always directing the strong lines, forcing ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... IDA, once your own, When Probus fill'd your magisterial throne; As ancient Rome fast falling to disgrace, Hail'd a Barbarian in her Caesar's place; So you degenerate share as hard a fate, And seat Pomposus, where your Probus sate. Of narrow brain, but of a narrower soul, Pomposus, holds you in his harsh controul; Pomposus, ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron

... he said. "He's the young man from that far barbarian country called America, who escaped from Germany with me, only he's no barbarian, but a highly civilized being who not only likes France, but who fights for her. John, this is Antoine Picard, who rules and protects ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... command them in war, and govern them in peace. He enlarged Ravenna, restored Rome, and, with the exception of military discipline, conferred upon the Romans every honor. He kept within their proper bounds, wholly by the influence of his character, all the barbarian kings who occupied the empire; he built towns and fortresses between the point of the Adriatic and the Alps, in order, with the greater facility, to impede the passage of any new hordes of barbarians ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... collapse of the Roman empire, a period generally referred to as the Middle Ages, are characterized by a series of barbarian invasions. Angles, Saxons, Goths, Visigoths, Huns, Vandals, Vikings, Slavs, Arabs, and Turks poured over the broken barriers of the empire and threatened to extinguish the last spark of western and Christian civilization. Out of this welter of ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... sing your great chant of love! Heaven and Space and Time, echo back the melody! For Life has called to us the answer of his riddle! Heart to heart we sit, and lips to lips, and we are more wise than Solomon, and richer than barbarian kings, for ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... the villages, and forced the inhabitants to give them a certain quantity of rice and maize; and if the Tagalese refused or were unable to pay these contributions, they cut off a number of heads, which they carried away as trophies for their barbarian festivities. After the conquest of the Philippines by the Spaniards, the latter took upon themselves the defence of the Tagalese, and the Ajetas, terrified by their fire-arms, remained in the forests, and did ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... with this strictness, which in literary art is elementary, how much of the best modern sculpture is abstract, symbolic, purely typical. What insipid fragments most of the really eminent Institute statues would make were their heads knocked off by some band of modern barbarian invaders. In the event of such an irruption, would there be any torsos left from which future Poussins could learn all they should know of the human form? Would there be any disjecta membra from which skilled anatomists could reconstruct the lost ensemble, or at any rate make a shrewd ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... duel, on which depended all that our Europe has since become, had great Russia and gallant Spain and our own glorious island only as subordinates or seconds. That duel, first, last, and for ever, was a duel between the Frenchman and the German; that is, between the citizen and the barbarian. ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... speak; all I could do was to clasp her knees and repeat the man's name, pointing to the post to which he was tied. She understood me, and eager to save the man, or to oblige me, she ran to the large hut, and attempted to intercede with the old barbarian for the man's life; but he was in an agony of rage and passion; he refused her, lifting up his sabre to despatch the man; Whyna was rash enough to seize the king's arm, and prevent the blow, at this his rage redoubled, his eyes glowed like live coals, and turning ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat

... of good eating and drinking in Gryll Grange, the old fine rapture had disappeared in society meanwhile, and Peacock obediently took note of the disappearance. It is considered, I believe, a mark of barbarian tastes to lament the change. But I am not certain that the Age of Apollinaris and lectures has yet produced anything that can vie as literature with the products of the ages of ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... daughters of Isis, with drum and timbrel and wanton mien; devotees of the Persian Mithras; emasculated Asiatics; priests of Cybele, with their wild dances and discordant cries; worshippers of the great goddess Diana; barbarian captives with the rites of Teuton priests; Syrians, Jews, Chaldaean astrologers, and Thessalian sorcerers.... The crowds which flocked to Rome from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean brought with them practices extremely ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... and forethought, and by the blessing of God, we have attained both of these objects. The barbarian nations which we have subjugated know our valour, Africa and other provinces without number being once more, after so long an interval, reduced beneath the sway of Rome by victories granted by Heaven, and themselves bearing witness ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... come from the other part, Barbarian, and steeped in evil art. He's spoken then as fits a good vassal, For all God's gold he would not seem coward. Hastes into view Malprimis of Brigal, Faster than a horse, upon his feet can dart, Before Marsile he cries with all ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous

... shoulders, and in the deep recesses of these mysterious bags they carry moreover sundry articles which constitute the wealth of the Australian savage. These are however worthy of a particular enumeration, as this will make plain the domestic economy of one of these barbarian housewives. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... the Crown, Charles the Fifth had been chiefly engrossed by the politics of Europe, where a theatre was opened more stimulating to his ambition than could be found in a struggle with the barbarian princes of the New World. In this quarter, therefore, an empire almost unheeded, as it were, had been suffered to grow up, until it had expanded into dimensions greater than those of his European dominions and destined soon to become far more opulent. A scheme of government had, it is true, been ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... spirit of his teaching during this earlier portion of his career. In this is contained nearly all that has made Christianity so powerful in the domain of ethics. If all the rest of the gospel were taken away, or destroyed in the night of some future barbarian invasion, we should still here possess the secret of the wonderful impression which Jesus made upon those who heard him speak. Added to the Essenian scorn of Pharisaic formalism, and the spiritualized conception of the Messianic kingdom, which Jesus may probably have ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... says Papa. 'Sir,' I say (for this last question of his outrages me, and I have done being familiar with him—) 'Sir! the immortal fire of genius burns in this Englishman's bosom, and, what is more, his father had it before him!' 'Never mind,' says the golden barbarian of a Papa, 'never mind about his genius, Mr. Pesca. We don't want genius in this country, unless it is accompanied by respectability—and then we are very glad to have it, very glad indeed. Can your friend produce testimonials—letters that speak to his character?' I wave ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... whole school will devote itself to his comfort for days—showing him where to hang his cap, initiating him into games, assisting him with his lessons, and treating his feelings with delicate respect. It has been my own proud satisfaction, as a relic of a former barbarian age, to read the rules, which, I believe, are now printed in black letters with red capitals and hung in the rooms of Muirtown Seminary. My feelings will not allow me to give them all, but the following have moved ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... days the Empire endeavoured to defend its frontiers against the converging barbarians. Not only did the Barbarian Conquests, like all conquests, threaten destruction and ruin, but the way of life the barbarians stood for was the very denial of what Roman civilization had been, though alas, ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... civil to them. If you are not, ugly capacities will flash out fast enough, and too fast. If any one says of the Negro, as of the Russian, 'He is but a savage polished over: you have only to scratch him, and the barbarian shows underneath:' the only answer to be made is—Then do not scratch him. It will be better for ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... equality? Why, Daphnis's flute would not be melodious if it were made of seven equal reeds. You wish to destroy the beautiful harmonies between masters and servants, aristocrats and artisans. Oh, I fear you are a sad barbarian, Monsieur Choulette. You are full of pity for those who are in need, and you have no pity for divine beauty, which you exile from this world. You expel beauty, Monsieur Choulette; you repudiate her, nude and in tears. Be certain of this: she will not remain on earth ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... his head! Where's Dr. Willis?—Or is he joking? What does the rascal mean or hope, 475 No longer imitating Pope, In that barbarian Shakespeare poking?' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... slavery of the many—in Greece 30,000 freemen and 300,000 slaves—and it passed away. True civilization must be measured by the progress, not of a class or nation, but of all men. God admits none to advance alone. Individuals in advance become martyrs—nations in advance the prey of the barbarian. Only as one family of man can we progress. But man must exist as an animal before he can exist as a man: his physical requirements must be satisfied before those of mind; and hitherto it has taken the whole time and energies of the many to provide for their physical wants. Such wants have ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... of good luck bore down upon the moody Pequod, the barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle; and drawing still nearer, a crowd of her men were seen standing round her huge try-pots, which, covered with the parchment-like POKE or stomach skin of the black fish, gave forth a loud roar to every ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... John, Josiah gave no address," said Penhallow,—"a childlike man, intelligent, and with some underlying temper of the old African barbarian." The summer days ran on with plenty of work for John and without incidents of moment, until the rector went away as was his habit the first of August, more moody than usual. If the rectory were finished, he would go there in September, and Mrs. Ann had written to him ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... on[246] of the ancient warrior, Queen Meave of Ireland. She is represented as tall and beautiful, terrible in her battle chariot, when she drove full speed into the press of fighting men. Her virtues were those of a warlike barbarian king, and she claimed the like large liberty in morals. Her husband was Ailill, the Connaught king; their marriage was literally a partnership wherein Meave, making her own terms, demanded from her husband exact equality ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... 'Barbarian, give me the written lie, that I may tear it! I the murderer of Ione's brother: I confess to have injured one hair of the head of him she loved! Let me rather perish ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... strictly true. For in those days I drove with Gilbert and Frances too in a hansom—he and I side by side, she on his knee. We must have given to the populace the impression he says any hansom would give on first view to an ancient Roman or a simple barbarian—that the driver riding on high and flourishing his whip was a conqueror carrying off his ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... sometimes deceived by it, for he thinks that it means that the leaves have not been severed by the paper-knife. I have read with much glee divers indignant letters in the very interesting 'Saturday Review' of one of our best New York journals, in which the barbarian writers have denounced the uncut, and have assailed in vigorous but misguided phrases those who prefer to have their books in that condition. Henry Stevens tells us that even such a famous collector as James Lenox, founder of the splendid library into whose magnificent mysteries ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper

... barbarian, was not deficient in politeness, and declined the compliment; upon which I took off my hat, and bowing, told him it was an advantage Munchausen should never be said to accept from so gallant a warrior: on which Tippoo instantly discharged his carbine, the ball from which, hitting my ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... ceremony had been first observed? Just how were the ability to speak French in the most exclusive circles of Parisian society and a cultivated knowledge of every picture-gallery in the world going to keep me from making a blunder that would put me down in Mrs. Pennie Addcock's mind as a barbarian? ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... with the imitation; and the products of civilised days, 'ballads' by courtesy or convention, are set beside the rugged and hard-featured aborigines of the tribe, just as the delicate bust of Clytie in the British Museum has for next neighbour the rude and bold 'Unknown Barbarian Captive.' To contrast by such enforced juxtaposition a ballad of the golden world with a ballad by Mr. Kipling is unfair to either, each being excellent in its way; and the collocation of Edward or Lord ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick

... in the safeguards of civilisation may be seen in the increased effectiveness of weapons for coastal defence. The hideous nightmare of a barbarian irruption, such as those which almost erased culture and intellect from the face of Europe during the dark ages of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, may occasionally be seen exercising its influence in the pessimistic writings which are from time to time issued from the Press predicting ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... Minota. He knew about the Minota and her Malaita cruises. He knew that she had been captured six months before on the Malaita coast, that her captain had been chopped to pieces with tomahawks, and that, according to the barbarian sense of equity on that sweet isle, she owed two more heads. Also, a labourer on Penduffryn Plantation, a Malaita boy, had just died of dysentery, and Wada knew that Penduffryn had been put in the debt of Malaita by one more head. Furthermore, in stowing our luggage ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... forensic oratory, began his address by contending that duelling was not prohibited by the law of France. In support he quoted Guizot's dictum: "Where the barbarian murders, the Frenchman seeks honourable combat; legislation on the subject is profitless; and this must be the case, since the duel is the complement of ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... Continental diplomat. The contrast between the semi-savage Bhutanese official and his companion, in whom the most modern civilised gentleman's manners were successfully grafted on the old-time courtesy of the Chinese aristocrat, was very striking. The old Envoy was a frank barbarian. He laughed loudly and clapped his hands in glee when Colonel Dermot presented him with a gramophone—which, it appeared, he had longed for ever since seeing one on a previous visit to India—and taught him how to work it. He showed his betel-stained teeth in an ecstatic grin when a record ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... rue it, Edward Benden, you take my word for it! You savage barbarian, to deal thus with a decent woman that never shamed you nor gave you an ill word! Lack-a-day, but I thank all the saints on my bended knees I'm not your ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... that the barbarian queen, Tomyris, enraged that Cyrus had overcome her son by deceit, dipped the slain king's head in a skin-bag of blood, exclaiming, "Drink thy fill of blood, of which thou couldst not have enough ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... and attention his yellow and red ochre on particular parts 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

... has seen servants scrubbing at these polished wooden walls with beeswaxed cloths on a warm May day must allow that they are "intolerable and not to be endured;" and I cannot but secretly applaud the benevolent barbarian who had painted another and larger apartment of Fieldhead—the drawing-room, to wit, formerly also an oak-room—of a delicate pinky white, thereby earning for himself the character of a Hun, but mightily enhancing the cheerfulness of that portion ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... the building of palaces and churches, the execution of vast schemes of conquest. Others, like Galeazzo Visconti, indulged a comparatively innocent taste for magnificence. Some, like Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, combined the vices of a barbarian with the enthusiasm of a scholar. Others again, like Lorenzo de' Medici and Frederick of Urbino, exhibited the model of moderation in statecraft and a noble width of culture. But the tendency to degenerate was fatal in all the despotic houses. The strain of tyranny proved too strong. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... which was at once accurate and complete. For the Cathedrals of that country are monuments not only of architecture and its history, but of the history of peoples, the psychology of the christianising and unifying of the barbarian and the Gallo-Roman, and many things besides, epitomised perhaps in the old words, "the struggle between the world, the flesh, and the devil." In French, works on Cathedrals are numerous and exhaustive; but either so voluminous as to be unpractical ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose

... in squalor, filth, and extreme discomfort, yet daubs himself with grease and paint, and decorates his head with feathers, his neck with bear's claws, and his feat with gaudily-stained porcupine's quills? What of your black barbarian, whose daily life is a succession of unspeakable abominations, and who embellishes it by blackening his teeth, tattooing his skin, and wearing a huge ring in the gristle of his nose? Either of them will give up his daily food, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... before had induced the Sciri and Alani and certain other Gothic nations to form 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 ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius

... had forgotten its curiosity over the foreign-looking men and women who passed the vigilant Cerberus at the stately oaken door. No daring book-agent, no pedlar of indurated cheek, no outside barbarian had ever crossed that guarded portal, for a brass chain of impregnable strength prevented any intrusion, and only a glimpse of the old tesselated marble floor rewarded ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... After the tide of barbarian invasion, Goths and Vandals, Heruli, Burgundians and Franks had swept away the edifice of Roman civilization, had it not been for the regenerating influence of Christianity, another empire as cruel would have risen on the ruins of Rome. No other power would then ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... Laplander.' BOSWELL. 'But what motive could he have to make himself a Laplander?' JOHNSON. 'Why, sir, he must either mean the word Laplander in a very extensive sense, or may mean a voluntary degradation of himself. "For all my being the great man that you see me now, I was originally a barbarian"; as if Burke should say, "I came over a wild Irishman," which he might say in his ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... wearing her lace veil, another had possession of her handkerchief, and a third displayed the rose which had adorned her left ear, things of which the master was obliged to take note with a view of returning them to the prodigal little barbarian at the close of school. Later he was, however, much perplexed by the mysterious passage under the desks of some unknown object which apparently was making the circuit of the school. With the annoyed consciousness that he was perhaps unwittingly participating in some game, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... the task itself was irksome, and his "bearing," as compared with that of the dying statesman, tant son peu bourgeois. "Despite the old faded dressing-gown of the one, and the snuff-colored coat, stiff neckcloth, and polished boots of the other, the veriest barbarian could have told at a glance which was the 'last of the nobles,' and which the 'First Citizen' of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... to a young woman 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 ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... Eugenio, Melancio, Pelagio, Patruno and other names that shone in the past scarcely breaking through the mists of legend. Then came the archbishops of the Gothic era; those kingly prelates who exercised that superiority over the conquering kings by which the spiritual power succeeded in dominating the barbarian conquerors. Miracles accompanied them to confound the Arians, and celestial prodigies were at their orders to terrify and crush those rude men of war. The Archbishop Montano, who lived with his wife, and was indignant at the consequent murmurs, placed red-hot coals in his sacred vestments ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... practical genius of the North created, the remains of that lost civilization—the splendours rescued from the wreck of empires,—the wisdom which had failed so fatally in practice that it must needs cross from a lost world of learning to the barbarian's new one, to find pupils—that it must needs cross the gulf of a thousand years in learning—such work had it made of it—ere it could revive,—the wisdom rescued from the wreck it had piloted to ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... schisms and divisions have arrayed brethren of the same name against each other, and scenes of cruelty and woe have been exhibited within the sanctuary, rivalling in horror the direst cruelties ever inflicted by pagan or barbarian fanaticism. This, however, instead of implying any defect in the gospel system, which breathes peace and love; only pourtrays in darker colours the deep and universal depravity of the human heart. Pure and unsophisticated morality, especially when attempted to be inculcated on mankind, as ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... cliques of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may take themselves, they are not regarded seriously by the rest of the country in any degree comparable to the attitude of the British Philistine towards the British Barbarian. Without the appropriate background of king and nobility, the whole system is ridiculous; it has no national basis. The source of its honour is ineradicably tainted. It is the reductio ad absurdum ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... barbarian, John Gordon," she cried. "He doesn't know a finely turned phrase from a dissecting-knife; does he, Stuart? But really, it sounds far better than I thought it could. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... is very severe. Witchcraft is punished with death; and in this regard stalwart old Massachusetts borrowed from the barbarian. Adultery is punished by slavery or sudden death. Thieves are also sold into slavery. Treason and cowardice and murder are punished by death. The civil code is as complicated as the criminal is severe. Over every village, is a Caboceer, equivalent to our mayor. He can convene ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... to Canada to join those forces of the Dominion Government which will eventually sail for France, and help to free that unhappy country from the heel of the barbarian." ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride: She saw her glories star by star expire, And up the steep, Barbarian monarchs ride, Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide Temple and tower went down, nor left a site:— Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void, O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light, And say, "Here was, or is," ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... in the galleries of the Louvre. His mind, almost orbicular in its various capacity, took in the scene at a glance. There were pictures from almost every country, statues from almost every age, representations of the finest imaginations of the mind and of the noblest labors of history. He was not a barbarian with respect to the Louvre, but understood all about it, and knew its excellence and value; yet he mingled his sentiment and common-sense well together, and took a rapid walk from chamber to chamber. He probably entertained large views of Art during his impetuous progress through the ages, from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... liturgies— I dare not yet believe! My ears are shut! I will not hear the thin satiric praise And muffled laughter of our enemies, Bidding us never sheathe our valiant sword Till we have changed our birthright for a gourd Of wild pulse stolen from a barbarian's hut; Showing how wise it is to cast away The symbols of our spiritual sway, That so our hands with better ease May wield the driver's whip and ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... both enjoin the brotherhood of men, but what are the meanings which they give to this term? What are their aims, respectively? One is endeavoring to enforce the rigid and insurmountable barriers of caste; the other commends a mission of love which shall regard neither Jew nor Greek, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free. It will become apparent, I think, that there may be parallels or similarities which relate to mere phrases while their ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... the whole acceptable, and a credit to our culture and civilization.—The reporter goes on to state that there will be no lecture next week, on account of the expected combat between the bear and the barbarian. Betting (sponsio) two to one (duo ad unum) ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... instruction; and of consequence his proficiency, even in the arts of writing and reading, was extremely slender. From his birth he was muscular and sturdy; and, confined to the ruelle of his mother, he made much such a figure as the whelp-lion that a barbarian might have given for a ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... of all the things of this world became possible. The subjective side at the same time asserted itself with corresponding emphasis; man became a spiritual individual, recognized himself as such. In the same way the Greek had once distinguished himself from the barbarian, and the Arab had felt himself an individual at a time when other Asiatics knew themselves only as members of a race. It will not be difficult to show that this result was due above all to ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... noisy, croaking frogs into their entrails. They refused to let the Israelites go, and He brought lice against them, which pierced their flesh like darts. They refused to let the Israelites go, and He sent barbarian legions against them, mixed hordes of wild beasts. They refused to let the Israelites go, and He brought slaughter upon them, a very grievous pestilence. They refused to let the Israelites go, and He poured out naphtha over them, burning blains. They refused to let the Israelites go, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... 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 to set Mind above Strength. In Athens the orator ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... points of attack. Cimber, to judge from Cicero's invective, was suspected of having risen from servile parentage, and of trying, as freedmen then frequently did, to pass as a descendant of some unfortunate barbarian prince. Since his brogue was Celtic (tau Gallicum) he could readily make a plausible story of being British. Vergil seems to imply that the brogue as well as the name Cimber had been assumed to hide his Asiatic parentage. The second point seems to be that Cimber, ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... became contemptible in the eyes of Rome, who has no respect for a nation, save so far as it can minister to her cruelty or avarice. The Spaniard was still willing to pay, as far as his means would allow, but he was soon given to understand that he was a degraded being,— a barbarian; nay, a beggar. Now, you may draw the last cuarto from a Spaniard, provided you will concede to him the title of cavalier, and rich man, for the old leaven still works as powerfully as in the time of the first Philip; but you must never hint that he is poor, or ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... present, and among them, the colonel, his niece, and my new friend. I must be prepared for the occasion; so, friend Bannech, send for the best tailor in the place forthwith; for it will never do to appear in this barbarian costume." ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... mask, the verses of Euripides and Menander. Now they no longer recite dramas, they act in dumb show; and of the divine spectacles with which Bacchus was honoured in Athens, we have kept nothing but what a barbarian—a Scythian even—could understand—attitude and gesture. The tragic mask, the mouth of which was provided with metal tongues that increased the sound of the voice; the cothurnus, which raised the actors to the height of gods; the tragic majesty and the splendid verses that used ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... there is no respect of persons with Him. 'In Christ Jesus,' says St. Paul, 'there is neither male nor female, slave nor freeman, Jew who fancies that God's promises belong to him alone, or Gentile who knows nothing about them, clever learned Greek, or stupid ignorant Barbarian.' ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley

... the price of Indian and Mississippi stock, the more billets de banque were issued to keep pace with it. The edifice thus reared might not unaptly be compared to the gorgeous palace erected by Potemkin, that princely barbarian of Russia, to surprise and please his imperial mistress: huge blocks of ice were piled one upon another; ionic pillars, of chastest workmanship, in ice, formed a noble portico; and a dome, of the same material, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... you nearly well enough, Miss Mannering," he said, smiling, "to tell you what I really think. But I can assure you that you don't seem a barbarian ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... lisped a young debauchee from Athens, who stood with one hand upon the shoulder of an Asiatic boy, 'neither Plangon, nor Archianassa, nor Thais can be compared with this marvellous barbarian; yet I can scarce believe that she equals Theano of Colophon, from whom I once bought a single night at the price of as much gold as she could bear away, after having plunged both her white arms up to the shoulder in my ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier

... half-ashamed; "we all of us have some little remnant of superstition in some dark corner of our minds. And after all, it is very odd that ever since our return she is continually turning up the knave of hearts." And as Wilhelm was obviously still unenlightened, she explained, "Barbarian, don't you know that ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... the opulent treasures of the Arabians, and are preparing vigorous for a war against the kings of Saba, hitherto unconquered, and are forming chains for the formidable Mede. What barbarian virgin shall be your slave, after you have killed her betrothed husband? What boy from the court shall be made your cup-bearer, with his perfumed locks, skilled to direct the Seric arrows with his father's bow? Who will now deny that it is probable for precipitate rivers to flow ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... genius soared aloft into regions whither the imagination of none of our earlier poets had preceded them. On the other hand, the days have passed for attention to be spared for the treatment experienced by Chaucer in the Augustan Age, to which he was a barbarian only to be tolerated if put into the court-dress of the final period of civilisation. Still, even thus, he was not left altogether unread; nor was he in all cases adapted without a certain measure of success. The irrepressible vigour, and the frequent ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... not, he would have ceased to be the valuable example and lesson that he is to us. So we have here a disciple quite sincere, who believes himself to have already obeyed in spirit and only to be hindered from obeying in outward act by an imperative duty that even a barbarian would know ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... cold-blooded barbarian it is! Don't hit a woman when she's down. Can't we do anything? She was simply dropping with starvation. She almost fell into my arms, and when she got to the food she ate like a wild beast. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... upon a stool where, in the white combing-cloth, with his curly hair, he resembled an angel done by an Italian Primitive. For an instant the father thought himself a barbarian, and the barber hesitated, scissors in air, as before a crime. They exchanged glances; then the father stiffened and gave the order. ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... gravel saws down; the wind, armed with fine sand, rounds off and hollows out; and thus the sculpturing goes on. But after you have reasoned out all these things, you still marvel at the symmetry and the structural beauty of the forms. They look like the handiwork of barbarian gods. They are the handiwork of physical forces which we can see and measure and in a degree control. But what a gulf separates them from the handiwork ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... British bards ([Greek: bardoi]), whose fame was known to, and mentioned by, the ancients. In Ireland, however, Celtic literature had a longer period of development. The country was not affected by the Roman Conquest; the barbarian invasions did not bring about the total ruin they caused in England and on the Continent. The clerks of Ireland in the seventh and eighth centuries committed to writing the ancient epic tales of their land. Notwithstanding the advent of Christianity, the pagan origins constantly ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... large deliberate smoke-heads renewing themselves along that yellowed beach. "That is the frontier of civilization. They have all civilization against them —those brutes yonder. It's not the local victories of the old wars that we're after. It's the barbarian—all the barbarian. Now, you've seen the whole thing in little. Come and look ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling

... as the Emperor was becoming. Charles had his revenge. A German army of "Lutheran heretics" marched into Italy swearing to hang the Pope to the dome of St. Peter's. They stormed Rome, sacked it with such cruelty as rivalled the barbarian plunderings of over a thousand years before; and if they did not hang Clement, it was only because his castle of St. Angelo proved too strong for their assaults. The marvellous art treasures which had been slowly garnered ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... rude nobility, like that of a barbarian king, in this unshaken confidence in himself and indifference to the wants, thoughts, or sufferings of others. In his whole works I find no trace of pity. This was partly the result of theory, for he held the world too mysterious to be criticised, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... make use of its strong teeth to attack its slayer. Feeling the pain of the sharp stake the crocodile becomes so docile that it neither resists nor attacks, nor dares move, for the slightest movement causes it pain. Thereupon the barbarian, pulling strongly on the stake, wounds the beast repeatedly with a dagger (carried in the right hand) in the throat, until it bleeds to death. Then it is drawn ashore with lines and ropes, with the aid of other Indians who unite to drag it in; and many are needed, because of the huge bodies of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... gods of the Romans, Greeks, Christians, Jews, and barbarian nations, you are a noble-hearted woman," he said, "and that kiss is my tribute to you. Little wonder that puppy, Marcus, is called The Fortunate, since, even when he deserved to die who suffered himself to be taken alive, you appeared to save him—to save him, by Venus, at the cost ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... 'Insolent young barbarian!' he cried. 'Do you call the ships of Tyre LITTLE? None greater sail the seas. That ship has been on a three years' voyage. She is known in all the great trading ports from here to the Tin Islands. She comes back rich and glorious. Her very ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit

... grinned sheepishly. The cookies resting joyfully in their barbarian young stomachs could not very ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... all the easier, as I could not suspect what was the subject of this flow of barbarian words; all I understood was that, when the ladies spoke to me, they addressed me as "Istok,"[7] a jest which I found quite out of place, not knowing that it was the German for "Why don't you eat?" For you must know ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... popular with "the general." The powerful and the learned quailed beneath the lash with an affected contempt which scarcely veiled their tremor. In the meantime, as in the latter days of the Empire, the barbarian ravaged the country, while the pale-faced patricians were inactive within the walls. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... changing circumstances, and to make use of the abilities of all the members of the community, to give them a voice in the local assembly, and a right to hold public office. Such progressive communities were the city states of Greece, the republic of Rome, and the rural communities of the barbarian Germans before they settled in the Roman Empire. When the Greek communities became decadent they fell under foreign dominion; Rome imperialized the republic, but never forgot how to rule well in her municipalities; the Germans passed on their democratic ways to the ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... made the youth ponder. It was revealed to him that he had been a barbarian, a beast. He had fought like a pagan who defends his religion. Regarding it, he saw that it was fine, wild, and, in some ways, easy. He had been a tremendous figure, no doubt. By this struggle he had overcome obstacles which he had admitted to be mountains. They had fallen like paper peaks, and he ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane



Words linked to "Barbarian" :   primitive, uncivilized, churl, barbaric, peasant, boor, uncivilised, tike, head-shrinker, headhunter, Odovakar, Goth, primitive person, disagreeable person, man-eater, wild, Odovacar, hunter-gatherer, vandal



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