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Barbarism   Listen
noun
Barbarism  n.  
1.
An uncivilized state or condition; rudeness of manners; ignorance of arts, learning, and literature; barbarousness.
2.
A barbarous, cruel, or brutal action; an outrage. "A heinous barbarism... against the honor of marriage."
3.
An offense against purity of style or language; any form of speech contrary to the pure idioms of a particular language. See Solecism. "The Greeks were the first that branded a foreign term in any of their writers with the odious name of barbarism."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Barbarism" Quotes from Famous Books



... with his mysterious bag, making incantations, he saw the tepee of the chief, with its barbarous pennant above; he saw the idle, naked children tearing at the entrails of a calf; and he realized that this was a deadly tournament between civilization and barbarism. ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... sight of what is actually going on amongst comparatively civilized people in our own day enables us to understand better what must have been the state of things when the whole world was in a state of barbarism. ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... splendor of its empire. I am filled with alarms for the event of the irruptions daily making on us, by the Goths, the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Vandals, lest they should re-conquer us to our original barbarism. If I am sometimes induced to look forward to the eighteenth century, it is only when recalled to it by the recollection of your goodness and friendship, and by those sentiments of sincere esteem and respect ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... discoveries being stopped by the Senate of Carthage, those who happened to be in the newly discovered countries, cut off from all communication with their countrymen, and being destitute of many of the necessaries of life, easily fell into a state of barbarism. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... that war had its amenities and refinements and that in the nineteenth century it was simply barbarism to ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger

... this sanctuary, with a life almost terrestrial, though immaterial, has just been plunged suddenly into the abyss of things that are ended, whose very memory will soon perish. The Great Barbarity has passed by, the modern barbarism from beyond the Rhine, a thousand times worse than the ancient, because it is stupidly and outrageously self-satisfied, and, in consequence, fundamental, incurable, final—destined, if it be not crushed, to throw a sinister night ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... however, there never can be. No record seems to be kept, except in the unfaithful memories of the natives; and even if the contrary were the case, posterity would willingly consign to oblivion all but the salient points of this period of barbarism ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... maintained that, as the development not only of the race but of the individual depended on the treatment of the female by the male, the capture of these independent beings at this stage of civilization would be a return to barbarism. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... observes, precisely coincides with the Greek K, while a C may be either K or S. He writes Perikles, Alkibiades. To this approximation of the English pronunciation to the Greek we can see nothing to object. A reader of Greek finds it a mere annoyance, and sort of barbarism, to be obliged to pronounce the same name one way while reading Greek, and another when speaking or reading English; and to the English reader it must be immaterial which pronunciation he finally adopts. Meanwhile, it must be allowed that the first changing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... he must be prepared to see the whole frame of civilization in the colonies destroyed, and a state of things brought about which, however they might in time settle down into some improvement, must at least begin in barbarism. On a division, Mr. Buxton's amendment was lost by a majority of only seven, one hundred and fifty-one having voted for it, and one hundred and fifty-eight against it. The result of this division convinced government that they ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... subordinates, like mystic automatons, nodding and smoking by the doorway. Beyond them, across a darker square like a cavern-mouth, flitted the living phantoms of the street. It seemed a fit setting for his fears. "I am lost," he thought; lost among goblins, marooned in the age of barbarism, shut in a labyrinth with a Black Death at once actual and mediaeval: he dared not think of Home, but flung his arms on the littered ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... but over the destruction of life and property which the victory entails, I cannot understand. We have reached a time when civilized man no longer thinks he must right his wrong with his fists or a club or a knife or a pistol. On the part of individuals we call this a reversion to barbarism. The time will come, and we are advancing towards it, when it will be considered just as much a reversion to barbarism on the part of families, states, nations, and when we shall substitute hearts and brains for bruises and bullets in ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... the fried ham and eggs. Look where you would beside, and you saw ruffled chintzes and little fly-away breakfast-caps, and fingers with jewels on them. Miss Euphemia had her tresses of long hair unbound and unbraided, hanging down her back in a style that to her grandfather savoured of barbarism; he could not be made to understand that it was a token of the highest elegance. For these ladies there was some attempt at elaborate and dainty cookery, signified by sweetbreads and a puffed omelette; and Mrs. Reverdy presided over a coffee-pot that was the wonder of the Elmfield household, ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... heart, while he opened his mouth, as of old he opened that of the unwise animal ridden by cursing Balaam. Then spake Mr. "Vice-President" Stephens those memorable words which fixed forever the theory of the new social order. He first lifted a degraded barbarism to the dignity of a philosophic system. He first proclaimed the gospel of eternal tyranny as the new revelation which Providence had reserved for the western Palestine. Hear, O heavens! and give ear, O earth! The corner-stone of the new-born dispensation ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... accepted their sway, the Christian Church was their greatest support. In East as well as West, the bishops, saints, and missionaries were the true leaders of the nations into the unity of the Empire as well as the unity of the Church. [Sidenote: The Church's conquest of barbarism.] The idea of Christian unity saved the Empire and taught the nations. The idea of Christian unity was the force which conquered barbarism and made the barbarians children of the Catholic Church and fellow-citizens with the ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton

... of obtaining the opinion of the hearers concerning them, and for which purpose Augustus had built the Temple of Apollo, was well calculated for the improvement of taste and judgment, as well as the excitement of emulation; but, conducted as it now was, it led to a general degradation of poetry. Barbarism in (396) language, and a corruption of taste, were the natural consequences of this practice, while the judgment of the multitude was either blind or venal, and while public approbation sanctioned the crudities of hasty composition. There arose, however, in this period, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... ballot unasked, unsought, already laid at their feet—think you the daughters of Adams, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry, in whose veins flows the blood of two Revolutions, will forever linger round the campfires of an old barbarism, with no longings to join this grand army of freedom in its onward march to roll back the golden gates of a higher and better civilization? Of all kinds of aristocracy, that of sex is the most odious and unnatural; invading, as it does, our homes, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... and a miracle of words in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, after the long slumber of language in barbarism, which gave an almost romantic character, a virtuous quality and power, to what was read in a book, independently of the thoughts or images contained in it. This feeling is ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... I'm glad he didn't shoot you. Where would I have been?" Well, it does seem like rather a shady transaction for me to have been mixed up in. The side of it that impresses me, however, is the lapse of time as measured in conditions and institutions. That was barbarism; and it was Iowa! And it was in my lifetime. It was in a region now as completely developed as England, and it goes back to things as raw and primitive as King Arthur's time. I wonder if his knights were not in the main, pretty shabby rascals, as bad as Dick ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... have been revered without being known; for sciences, which have been confided to proud and mysterious inscriptions; for wise and earliest monuments of the arts, which time has respected;—this sanctuary, abandoned, isolated through barbarism, and surrendered to the desert from which it was won; this city, shrouded in the veil of mystery by which even colossi are magnified; this remote city, which imagination has only caught a glimpse of through the darkness of ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... seven years old I used to think that the chief modern danger was a danger of over-civilisation. I am inclined to think now that the chief modern danger is that of a slow return towards barbarism, just such a return towards barbarism as is indicated in the suggestions of barbaric retaliation of which I have just spoken. Civilisation in the best sense merely means the full authority of the human spirit over all externals. Barbarism ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... laws, nevertheless, and the other discriminating laws passed against the Loyalists provided the excuse for a great deal of barbarism and ruthlessness. In Pennsylvania bills of attainder were passed against no fewer than four hundred and ninety persons. The property of nearly all these persons was confiscated, and several of them were put to death. A detailed account has come down to us of the hanging of two Loyalists ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... clamour of drums in the principal street, which happened to be our own. There might have been fifty, unaccompanied by any wind instrument. The French do not use the fife, and when one is treated to the drum, it is generally in large potions, and nothing but drum. This is a relic of barbarism, and is quite unworthy of a musical age. There is more or less of it in all the garrisoned towns of Europe. You may imagine the satisfaction with which one listens to a hundred or two of these plaintive instruments, beat between houses ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the medieval traditions still lived on in subtly conventionalized forms. The "chivalrous" attitude towards women was, as the word itself suggests, a medieval survival. It belonged to a period of barbarism when brutal force ruled and when the man who magnanimously placed his force at the disposition of a woman was really doing her a service and granting her a privilege. But civilization means the building up of an orderly society in which individual rights are respected, and ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... smoking their pipes, or reading their filthy papers. There was a contrast between Christian congregations and infidel meetings. One had the appearance of purity and elevation; while the other had the stamp of pollution and degradation. Irreligion seemed the nurse of coarseness and barbarism. Some of the secularists actually argued against civilization, as Rousseau had done before them. One of them reprinted Burke's ironical work in favor of the savage state, and sent it to me for review, and was greatly offended because I refused to recommend it as a sober, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... startling candour, and drawing its inspiration always from the sickening bases of life. Darius had remembered with ease the vocabulary to which he was hourly accustomed when he began life as a man of seven. For more than fifty years he had carried within himself these vestiges of a barbarism which his children had never even conceived, and now he threw them out in all their crudity at his daughter. And when she did not blench, he began to accuse her as men were used to accuse their daughters in the bright days of the Sailor King. He invented enormities which she had ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... only because Vail had been gazing upon death in every phase, every degree—on brutal destruction wholesale and in detail; but also he had been standing on the outer escarpment of Civilization and had watched the mounting sea of barbarism battering, thundering, undermining, gradually engulfing the world itself and ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... there's something to be said for him. It's a natural revolt against domestic bondage. Of course, as things are, someone else has to bear the bother and expense; but that's only our state of barbarism. A widower with two young children and no income—imagine the position. Of course, he ought to be able to get rid of them in some legitimate way—state institution—anything you like that ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... desert. They work the same miracles, see the same visions, and live in the same intimacy with the wild animals, as the hermits of Egypt, or of Roman Gaul: but their history, owing to the wild imagination and (as the legends themselves prove) the gross barbarism of the tribes among whom they dwell, are so involved in fable and legend, that it is all but impossible to separate fact from fiction; all but impossible, often, to fix the ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... has betrayed that peculiar mark of barbarism consisting in using the intellectual weapons of a superior, but not knowing how to use them. It is still a matter of mystery to the directing Prussian mind why the sinking of the Lusitania should have shocked the world. A submarine cannot take a prize into port. The ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... or vanity, Europe was eager in contributing to civilize these men of the north, of whom Peter had already made formidable warriors. She acted wisely, in so far as she diminished for herself the danger of falling back into fresh barbarism; if we allow that a second relapse into the darkness of the middle ages is possible, war having become so scientific, that mind predominates in it, so that to succeed in it, a degree of instruction is required, which nations that still ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... look out for new acquisitions. Ireland was in that age a country little known in the world. The legates sent sometimes thither from the Court of Rome, for urging the payment of annats, or directing other Church affairs, represented the inhabitants as a savage people, overrun with barbarism and superstition: for indeed no nation of Europe, where the Christian religion received so early and universal admittance, was ever so late or slow in feeling its effects upon their manners and civility.[48] Instead of refining their manners ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... view, the Chaldee shepherd[3] gazed In his mid watch observant, and disposed The twinkling hosts as fancy gave them shape. Yet in the interim what mighty shocks Have buffeted mankind—whole nations razed— Cities made desolate—the polish'd sunk To barbarism, and once barbaric states Swaying the wand of science and of arts; Illustrious deeds and memorable names Blotted from record, and upon the tongue Of gray Tradition, voluble ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... horrible practice of burying alive all sick persons, while the custom of the executioner accompanying the reigning monarch everywhere, ready to obey the royal command, was distinctly a relic of savage barbarism. ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... improve, to soften the mind by human love and sympathy, or to excite it to a just and hopeful indignation, for therein is a source of pleasure? The rule of tragedy should be applicable here. Undoubtedly, we receive pleasure from tragic representations. Isolated, barbarism, cruelty would be intolerably disgusting. But in every good tragedy, there are always good and lovely characters with whom we can sympathise. We are bettered by thus uniting ourselves with what is lovely; and are content to take at second-hand, and thus feel only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... the Union to find peace and safety. Whatever may be the sins of Slavery in the South they are as nothing when compared to the degradation of your life which must follow their violent emancipation. The Southern white man is slowly lifting the African out of barbarism into the light of Christian civilization. In our own good time we will emancipate him and start him on a new life beyond the boundaries of our Republic. Whatever may be the differences of opinion in the South on the institution ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... more exuberantly than ever. There was no speck on his horizon; no fly in his pot of ointment. It was he who urged that the child should be christened promptly, though Dr. Glynn was not disposed to dwell on the clerical barbarism as to the destiny of unbaptized infants. Babcock was cultivating a conservative method: He realized that there was no object in taking chances. Illogical as was the theory that a healthy dog which had bitten him should be killed at ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... extravagantly absurd that it is possible to imagine. Many of them descend to mere childishness; and it is difficult to conceive how any people, so far advanced in civilization as to be able to write, could display such evidences of barbarism. A specimen of a warrant of recent date, addressed to Tuanku Sungei-Pagu, a high-priest residing near Bencoolen, is ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... home and lives a respectable life ever after on this side the water; that Russia's ill-treatment of the serf and general barbaric conditions are to be overlooked on account of the friendliness she displayed toward us in our hour of need, barbarism being on the whole a less crucial blemish than the above-mentioned peculiarities of our other ally; and that everyone should hitch ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... study to find out; whereas the possible faults in bread, which are not less in number, require no study at all for the defection; they publish themselves through all varieties of misery. But the perfection of barbarism, as regards our island cookery, is reserved for animal food; and the two poles of Oromasdes and Ahrimanes are nowhere so conspicuously exhibited. Our insular sheep, for instance, are so far superior to any which the continent produces, that the present Prussian minister at our court is in ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... capitalist "public sentiment". So the hopes of the people went down in blood and reaction sat enthroned. The nations, ridden by despotisms, and whirled into senseless wars, ran the old course of militarism, imperialism, barbarism; and so civilization slid back ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... agreement. They did have something to offer, and surely it would be recognized—even if the Naturalists had won, even if the entire country had sunk into semi-barbarism. No use anticipating such problems now. Wait until fall came; then they'd reconnoitre and find ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch

... were the usual varieties entering into the composition of all communities, it is wholly inadmissible to suppose that the witchcraft delusion took place there because it was the scene of greater ignorance or stupidity or barbarism than prevailed elsewhere. This will be made more apparent still by some general views of the state of society and manners. The people of a remote age are in general only regarded as they are seen through prominent ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... days' sitting and study, still very far from coming to a decision, Madame called in the aid of the Grand Duke, who proposed "something national." The proposition was plausible; but, according to Madame Carolina, Germany, until her own time, had been only a land of barbarism and barbarians; and therefore in such a country, in a national point of view, what could there be interesting? The middle ages, as they are usually styled, in spite of the Emperor Charlemagne, "that oasis in the desert of barbarism," to use ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... silken awnings from the cares of life, have nothing to do but to write books upon tables of cedar, and fish for perch from a gilded galley. And that 's what will come to pass when the ages lose their barbarism and know their benefactors. Meanwhile, sir, I invite you to my rooms, and will regale you upon brandy-and-water as long as I can pay for it; and when I cannot—you ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... ever-increasing yet degenerating people leaving the city ruins, which they could not rebuild—taking to the fields, the forests, the mountains—going down, down, back toward the primeval state, down through barbarism, through savagery, to—what?" ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... religion and a most notorious corruption of manners in the English colonies settled on the continent of America, and the islands," and that "the Gospel hath hitherto made but very inconsiderable progress among the neighboring Americans, who still continue in much the same ignorance and barbarism in which we found them above a hundred years ago." After stating what he believes to be the causes of this state of things, he propounds his plan of training young natives, as missionaries to their countrymen, and educating "the youth of our English plantations," ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... careful not to interfere with any of the king's acts of arbitrary cruelty, knowing that such interference, at an early stage, would produce more harm than good. This last act of barbarism, however, was too much for my English blood to stand; and as I heard my name, Mzungu, imploringly pronounced, I rushed at the king, and, staying his uplifted arm, demanded from him the woman's life. Of course I ran imminent risk of losing my ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... age of the young English officers, and their coming was to him delightful. For his father was wise enough to foresee the course of events—how the old barbarism of the Malay was dying out, to give place to the busy civilisation taught by the white men from the west; and he felt sure that the most civilised and advanced of the young chieftains would occupy the best positions in the ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... in the west, the whole of this magnificent country is in a state of barbarism. The few Malay settlements along the coast are but very slightly removed from the same condition. It is said that the chief delight of the Dyak tribes, who inhabit the interior as well as the larger part of the coast and the banks ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston

... a surprising quality of ruthlessness mingled with softer traits. Have you not noticed it? The past is absolutely intractable. One can't do anything with it. And an exaggerated attention to it is like an exaggerated attention to sepulchres—a sign of barbarism. Moreover, the past is usually the enemy of cheerfulness, and cheerfulness is a ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett

... and the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Not merely the abodes of the ancient civilised nations, but even the capitals which were the medium of communication between East and West, have fallen into barbarism; even the great metropolis, from which first political, and then spiritual, dominion extended itself in both directions over widespread territories, has not maintained its rank. It was due to this tendency of things, combined with a certain geographical cause, that neither could the medieval ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... Doctor June, "will you forgive me for saying that it is fairly amazing to me how the church of God continues to use the terms of barbarism? We talk of the peace that passeth understanding, and yet we keep on employing metaphors of blood-red war. What does the modern church want of a helmet and a sword, if I may ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale

... was sufficient. Invariably it was found, on those planets where human life survived at all, man slipped back during his first two or three centuries into a state of barbarism. Then slowly began to inch forward again. There were exceptions and the progress on one planet never exactly duplicated that on another, however the average was surprisingly close to both nadir and zenith, in terms ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... Christians, and not only did they preserve their faith in exile, but they were the happy means of drawing to it many of their new allies. Several years after, missioners were amazed and charmed at finding a little band of fervent Christians in the very centre of heathen vice and barbarism. The exiled Hurons who sought an asylum in Quebec were located in the Isle of Orleans, to which they gave the name of St. Mary's, in memory of their old and still dearly-cherished home. Our limits do not permit us to dwell on the heroism of the missioners ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... of substances of intrinsic value as the materials of a currency, is a barbarism;—a remnant of the conditions of barter, which alone render commerce possible among savage nations. It is, however, still necessary, partly as a mechanical check on arbitrary issues; partly as a means of exchanges with foreign nations. In proportion to the extension of civilization, and increase ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... origin of reflection is not to be found in what may be called the mythical creation of nature, which is the necessary result of the spontaneity of the intelligence, both in man and animals; it is developed after long duration of barbarism and ignorance. M'Lennan and others have shown how the era of reflection and hypothesis begins in the evolution of human intelligence. Sekesa, an intelligent Kaffir, said to Arbrousset,[13] "For twelve years I have shepherded my flock. It was dark, and I sat down upon a rock ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... thus. And for those other faults of barbarism, [104]Doric dialect, extemporanean style, tautologies, apish imitation, a rhapsody of rags gathered together from several dunghills, excrements of authors, toys and fopperies confusedly tumbled out, without art, invention, judgment, wit, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... saw, and cut off the upper limbs. He came back with an axe, and chopped away vigorously; but as one limb after another fell, and I said, 'I need more, cut away,' he said, 'I think I must cut down the whole tree.' I said, 'Cut it down.' I felt the barbarism of it, but I felt more that a bird might have a ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... employed in factories at all. The bill was not, of course, carried, but it raises a most interesting sociological question. Ruskin probably would have been in favor of it. He described as the very last act of modern barbarism for the woman to be made "to shriek for a hold of the mattock herself." It was argued in Connecticut that the employment of married women injured the health of the children, which is perfectly true. Indeed, the death-rate in England is very largely determined by the fact ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... not only most interesting to trace the transformation throughout its whole extent, but the story will also afford an instructive example of the mode in which the law has grown, without a break, from barbarism to civilization. Furthermore, it will throw much light upon some important and peculiar doctrines which ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... slow-hatching lunatic or a good subject for a hypnotist. I knew Jack would need me in New York to steer him right until all that Indian mysticism gets out of his system, and that is the reason I left the delights of the wilds for the barbarism of the city. Well, I excused myself and hurried out to take possession of Jack, but when I got close to him and was just about to slap him on the shoulder, I followed his eyes—and for the life of me, I ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... of these subjugated creatures increases. Our American aborigines in their primitive state commanded only the dog and three or four plants, yet with this scant help they had already won beyond the lowest savagery and were at the threshold of barbarism. In our more civilized societies of to-day we find the products of near a hundred animals and about a thousand plants as elements of commerce, and each year sees some gain in the number of creatures which we make tributary to ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... those with most sense of international obligations and with keenest and most generous appreciation of the difference between right and wrong, to disarm. If the great civilized nations of the present day should completely disarm, the result would mean an immediate recrudescence of barbarism in one form or another. Under any circumstances a sufficient armament would have to be kept up to serve the purposes of international police; and until international cohesion and the sense of international duties and rights are far more advanced than at present, a nation desirous both ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... orphans, nay, the very angels in heaven, if they are permitted to look down upon us from their bright abodes in bliss, must mourn over the sad result of man's semi-barbarism, and his worship of the world's materialism. Long ere this mind should have been the controlling force in all nations claiming to be civilized. Pure intellect and its struggles, its aspirations for light and truth, ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... days of Catharine's youth, and society at the Court of St. Petersburg seems to have been distinguished from that in the other circles of the empire only by an addition of the vices of civilization to those of barbarism. The women blended the manners and tastes of Indian squaws and French marquises of the period; the men modelled themselves on Peter the Great, and succeeded in imitating him in everything except his wisdom and patriotism. The business of life was, first, to avoid being sent to Siberia ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... conquered, as a principal element amongst the fruits of conquest. 'Doubtless,' says his present biographer, 'to defend his own infringed territory, and to punish the aggressors, formed a part of his design; but, beyond that, he aimed at civilizing a people whose barbarism had been for centuries the curse of the neighboring countries, and at the same time communicating to the cruel savages, who shed the blood of their enemies less in the battle than in the sacrifice, the bland and mitigating spirit ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... have hardly their parallel in the annals of war. In the course of time, however, the Christians could not avoid feeling some respect for the courage, and admiration for the polished manners and advanced civilisation of the Saracens, so much superior to the rudeness and semi-barbarism of Europe at that day. Difference of faith did not prevent them from forming alliances with the dark-eyed maidens of the East. One of the first to set the example of taking a Paynim spouse was King Baldwin himself, and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... the imperial dynasty that is owing all the vast progress which, in a century and a half, has rescued that empire from barbarism. The imperial power must contend against all the ancient prejudices of our old Europe: it must centralize, as far as possible, all the powers of the state in the hands of one person, in order to destroy the abuses which the feudal and communal franchises have ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... which lost their force three hundred years ago, unless connected with artistic music? It is music which vitalizes ritualistic worship in our times, as it did in the times of David and Solomon. The vitality of the Jewish ritual, when the nation had emerged from barbarism, was in its connections with a magnificent psalmody. The Psalms of David appeal to the heart and not to the senses. The ritualism of the wilderness appealed to the senses and not to the heart; and this was necessary when the people had scarcely emerged from ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... present,—amid clamors of secession and of coercion,—angry threats and angrier replies,—wars and rumors of wars,—what is more common than to hear sensible men—men whom the people look to as leaders—picturing forth a dire relapse into barbarism and anarchy as the necessary consequence of the threatened convulsions? They forget, if they ever realized, that the people made this government, and not the government the people. Destroy the intelligence of the people, and the government could not exist ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... huddled together on the top were those of slaves or prisoners of war, sacrificed beside the dead chieftain's tomb, and eaten with the other products of the chase by his surviving tribesmen. In an inner chamber behind the chieftain's own hut we came upon yet a stranger relic of primitive barbarism. Two complete human skeletons squatted there in the same curious attitude as their lord's, as if in attendance upon him in a neighbouring ante-chamber. They were the skeletons of women—so our professional bone-scanner immediately told ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... civilizations over the barbarism of Northern Europe shows that Assyria[555] as well as Egypt was a highly organized empire, and the Mediterranean peoples far advanced in the arts of life, while the Neolithic man survived and lingered in Britain, France, and Scandinavia. Yet, even ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... hastiness and the sudden outburst of friendliness which had followed it. He wanted to apologise to Laevsky in a joking tone, to give him a good talking to, to soothe him and to tell him that the duel was a survival of mediaeval barbarism, but that Providence itself had brought them to the duel as a means of reconciliation; that the next day, both being splendid and highly intelligent people, they would, after exchanging shots, appreciate each other's noble qualities and would become friends. ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... previous century it is, for a little while, almost a relief to come on an author who is frankly without style, and says what he has to say straightforwardly. But it is only the absorbing interest of the matter which makes this kind of writing long endurable. It is, in truth, the beginning of barbarism; and Suetonius measures more than half the distance from the fine familiar prose of the Golden Age to the base jargon of the authors of the Augustan History a century and a ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... buried rubbish as it is now possible to unearth can we rebuild in imagination so much of the rough and crumbling walls that fell before the trumpet-blast of Tamburlaine as may give us some conception of the rabble dynasty of rhymers whom he overthrew—of the citadel of dramatic barbarism which was stormed and sacked at the first charge of the young conqueror who came to lead English audiences and to deliver ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... of the ancient world; not merely on that benighted part of it where all lay buried in brutish ignorance and barbarism, but on the seats of civilized and polished nations, on the empire of taste, and learning, and philosophy: yet in these chosen regions, with whatever lustre the sun of science poured forth its rays, the moral darkness was so thick "that it might be felt." Behold ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... earliest reply which chivalry makes to our forbearance. Talk to me no more of the same race, of the same blood. He is no brother of mine and of no race of mine who crowns the barbarism of treason with the murder of an unarmed husband in the sight of his wife. On the villains who led this rebellion let justice fall swift and relentless. Death to every traitor of the South! Pursue them one by one! Let every door be closed ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... morally than it appeared to be physically. No virgin, surely, could keep a holy awe about her while stowed higgledy-piggledy with coarse-natured rustics into this narrowness and filth. Such a habitation is calculated to make beasts of men and women; and it indicates a degree of barbarism which I did not imagine to exist in Scotland, that a tiller of broad fields, like the farmer of Mauchline, should have his abode in a pigsty. It is sad to think of anybody—not to say a poet, but any human being—sleeping, eating, thinking, praying, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... their success in destroying the Union, it would enable them to carry out their cherished schemes of empire, as an independent power. But, what was, perhaps, more important, it would tend to prolong, if not to perpetuate slavery, by infusing new supplies of barbarism among the African race, lowering their present grade of civilization, retarding their improvement on the whole, and thus postponing the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... you speak out of the remains of the old tyrannical barbarism, when the daughters were nothing ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge

... least suspect it), by those who lived or live in ruder conditions than our own. David has perhaps taught us more than we could have taught him; and there are other vices than those proper to semi-barbarism. It is not by reference to date or country, or grade of material progress, that we assess the value of moral judgments, but by that subjective standard with which our own moral attainments supply us in regard to all that is equal or less, similar or dissimilar. To deny this discernment is ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... it had reduced Gweedore, or "Tullaghobegly," fifty years ago to barbarism. Nearly nine thousand people then dwelt here with never a landlord among them. There was no "Coercion" in Gweedore, neither was there a coach nor a car to be found in the whole district. The nominal owners of ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... who wished to raise himself and his country from barbarism, and extend his power by conquests and treaties, had felt the necessity of marriages, in order to ally himself with the chief potentates of Europe. But to form such marriages he must be of the Catholic religion, from which the Greeks were separated by such a little distance, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the hopes of civilization are like to-day: for indeed I purpose speaking of our own times chiefly, and will leave for the present all mention of that older civilization which was destroyed by the healthy barbarism out of which our present ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... dream, Mr. Gear, but truth and soberness," said I. "A dream does not last through eighteen centuries, and raise half a world from barbarism to civilization. A dream does not carry mothers through such sorrows as this with outlooking anticipations so clear as those which give Mrs. Gear her radiant hope. No! Mr. Gear. It is you who have been dreaming, and life's ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott

... temporary splendor, was the residence of the king, who exercised a legal authority over an obedient people. Their luxury was maintained by the labor of the Sogdians; and the only vestige of their ancient barbarism, was the custom which obliged all the companions, perhaps to the number of twenty, who had shared the liberality of a wealthy lord, to be buried alive in the same grave. The vicinity of the Huns to the provinces ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... era; and the preserved bodies of men and women who trod the streets of Thebes and Memphis, partakers of an advanced civilisation, when the inhabitants of Europe were roaming about uncultivated wastes, in a state of barbarism. Here are graceful household vessels, compared with the art of which the willow pattern of the nineteenth century is a barbarism, and fabrics of which modern Manchester would not be ashamed. Into this room a vast collection of Egyptian ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... of Canadian justice which sentimentalists deplore. It is that the lash is still used for crimes of violence against the person and for bestiality. This is not a relic of barbarism. It is the result of careful thought on the part of the Department of Justice—the thought being that it is useless to speak to a man capable of bestiality in terms not articulate to his nature; and the fact remains that criminals ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... man had been a kind master to his slaves. Conscious cruelty was the exception. The real evils of the system were those which arose from its un-conscious barbarism—the natural and inevitable results of holding human beings as chattels, without right, the power of self-defence or protestation—dumb driven brutes, deprived of all volition or hope, subservient to another's ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... the use of unfamiliar terms, i.e. strange words, metaphors, lengthened forms, and everything that deviates from the ordinary modes of speech.—But a whole statement in such terms will be either a riddle or a barbarism, a riddle, if made up of metaphors, a barbarism, if made up of strange words. The very nature indeed of a riddle is this, to describe a fact in an impossible combination of words (which cannot be done with the ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle

... order, on duty at every street corner, alert to check every outbreak of individuality. Do ladies aspire to ride bicycles? Or wear bloomers? There is the small boy to face. It is a question for him. Conciliate him, and you may laugh at the pragmatic. His, too, is a healthy barbarism, beneficent in its action, that thinks scorn of eyeglasses and spectacles, and leads him to denounce quadruple vision, as, indeed, all departure from the simplicities of physical perfection. A human scarecrow he abhors, and will follow such an one through ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... Italy, who was pleased to receive the same very graciously. From Turin we went to Milan, where we lapsed into the regular routine of Italian society, so remarkable for the exquisite amenity of its old civilization (as far as manners are concerned), and for the stiffness and mediaeval semi-barbarism of its surroundings. As an instance of this we had occasion to call on a personage to whom we had letters of introduction. We sent in our letters with a visiting- card by the porter, asking when we should call. The ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... were the only ones who refused to join the westward stampede plunging the world daily deeper into barbarism. We in England had cause to congratulate ourselves on our unique position. The Channel might have been a thousand miles wide instead of twenty. The turmoil of the Continent and of Africa was but dimly reflected. There ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... system had inherited his penetrating mind, his observing glance, and his depth, the art of healing would have approached the limit of perfection before all the other sciences; but it was written in the book of destiny that mind and reason were to bend under the yoke of superstition and barbarism, and were only to emerge after ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae

... circumstances of contumely and outrage, growing out of deep inexorable malice, which cannot be redressed, as things now are, without an appeal to the voye de fait. 'But this is so barbarous an expedient in days of high civilisation.' Why, yes, it labours with the semi-barbarism of chivalry: yet, on the other hand, this mention of chivalry reminds me to say, that if this practice of duelling share the blame of chivalry, one memorable praise there is, which also it may claim as common to them both. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... impregnated the whole social atmosphere. There had been Socialists before, but none like Gustave Herve in his old age—at least no one of the same power. He, perhaps you have read, taught absolute Materialism and Socialism developed to their logical issues. Patriotism, he said, was a relic of barbarism; and sensual enjoyment was the only certain good. Of course, every one laughed at him. It was said that without religion there could be no adequate motive among the masses for even the simplest social order. But he was right, ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... filled by good intentions nor even by the cardinal virtues. The function of the older societies is to hand on the best things the world has won, so that those who come after, instead of having to go back to barbarism, may start from where the best of their day left off. We do for manners and the arts in general what the Moors did for learning when the wild hordes came down. There were capital chaps among the barbarians,' he smiled, 'I haven't a doubt! But it was the ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... type, with frontispiece, perhaps, by Albert Duerer—Ars Versificandi: The Art of Versification: by Conrad Celtes. Crowned poet of the Emperor Frederick the Third, he had the right to speak on that subject; for while he vindicated as best he might old German literature against the charge of barbarism, he did also a man's part towards reviving in the Fatherland the knowledge of the poetry of Greece and Rome; and for Carl, the pearl, the golden nugget, of the volume was the Sapphic ode with which it closed—To Apollo, praying ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... million years in which man, or what we term man, has presumably lived on this particular planet, nothing so far has been discovered, I believe, which tells of such abominations as are taking place to-day. It's an interesting epoch from the standpoint of man's advance in scientific barbarism." ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... known as Indus-Ganges-Irriwady Basic Sector-Grouping—probability of civilization having developed late on the Indian subcontinent, with the rest of the world, including Europe, in Stone Age savagery or early Bronze Age barbarism. The Kharandas, the people among whom she had once done field-research work, had developed a pre-mechanical, animal-power, handcraft, edge-weapon culture. She could imagine the roads jammed with fugitives from the barbarian ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper

... revolution in business motives, it should do so. That is genuinely constructive work, and will do more to a humane solution of the class struggle than all the jails and state constabularies that ever betrayed the barbarism of the Twentieth Century. It is no wonder that business is such a sordid affair. We have done our best to exclude from it every passionate interest that is capable of lighting up activity with eagerness and joy. "Unbusinesslike" we have called the devotion of craftsmen and scientists. We ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... craftsmen who had the inheritance of not only generations, but ages of training. Such a combination of complete mastery in composition, perfect control of definite and fixed forms, and hand technique, can grow up from barbarism in no few hundred years. I would hesitate to think it could even come in a few thousands, unless they were years of greater settledness and peaceful civilization than our two thousand years of disturbed and warring European Christendom have yet had an example of to show us. It is easy enough ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates

... deal socially with the Indians, so that the slender settlement along the coast had arrayed against it this vast line of northern and western forts, and the Indians, who were mostly friendly with the French, united with them in several instances and showed them some new styles of barbarism which up to that time they ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... was thrown upon his sacred head, Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off, His face still combating with tears and smiles, (The badges of his grief and patience) That had not God (for some strong purpose) steel'd The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted, And barbarism itself have ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... they marched and countermarched, threatening to charge down its face. Most of them were naked, and as their persons were painted in gaudy colors and decorated with strips of red flannel, red blankets and gay war-bonnets, their appearance presented a scene of picturesque barbarism, fascinating but repulsive. As they numbered about six hundred, the chances of whipping them did not seem overwhelmingly in our favor, yet Nesmith and I concluded we would give them a little fight, provided we could engage them without going beyond the ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan

... lecture-platform, in the fields of literature and science, in the councils of rulers, on the exchange, in the legislature—everywhere. When Greece and Rome were in their infancy, this extraordinary people was in middle age; and when our Saxon forefathers were in the lowest stage of barbarism, they were in a state of high civilization; and to-day, although scattered, they show a compact front, firmly knit in the bonds of brotherly love, a model for Christians. The great reform movement now agitating Judaism, as well as every other species of political ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... fruits. In Italy, at Rome, and on the Papal chair these despotic pretensions were then asserted without shame or reserve. In Germany, on the other hand, the leading champions of the new learning, even when in open arms against the barbarism of the monks and clergy, sought, for themselves and their disciples, to remain faithful on the ground of their Mother Church. At Erfurt, in particular, the relations between them and the representatives of Scholasticism were peaceful, unconstrained, and friendly. ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... our heroes and sages and poets sleep. It would as ill become you to cultivate narrow national memories in regard to the past as it would to cultivate narrow national prejudices at present. You have come out, as from other relics of barbarism which still oppress Europe, so from the barbarism of jealous nationality. You are heirs to all the wealth of the Old World, and must owe gratitude for a part of your heritage to Germany, France, and Spain, as well as to England. Still, it is from England ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... who devote themselves to athletic pursuits. There is my defense. In stating my case, I have spoken out of my own sincere respect for the interests of virtue and of learning; out of my own sincere admiration for those young men among us who are resisting the contagion of barbarism about them. In their future is the future hope of ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... the middle ages, the papacy was nothing, in fact, but a confederation of the learned men in the west of Europe against the barbarism and ignorance of the times. The Pope was chief of this confederacy; and so long as he retained that character exclusively, his power was just and irresistible. It was the principal mean of preserving for us and for our posterity all that we now ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... subway, and emerging in the West Side, you realise that the slums of Chicago, if not quite so tightly packed as those of New York or London, are no whit behind them in the other essentials of civilised barbarism. Chicago, more than any other city of my acquaintance, suggests that antique conception of the underworld which placed Elysium and Tartarus not only on the same plane, but, so to speak, round ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... moving on towards the gates of the Baptistery, "I daresay you might get a confession of the true faith from me. But with my throat free from peril, I venture to tell you that your buildings smack too much of Christian barbarism for my taste. I have a shuddering sense of what there is inside—hideous smoked Madonnas; fleshless saints in mosaic, staring down idiotic astonishment and rebuke from the apse; skin-clad skeletons hanging ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... is rapidly superseding the sword. Arbitration is banishing war. More than five hundred international disputes have already been peacefully settled. Civilization, not barbarism, is the mother of true heroism. Our lately departed poet and disciple of peace, Richard Watson Gilder, has left us the answer to the false idea that brute force employed against our fellows ranks with heroic moral courage exerted to save or ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... for bread while other women spend the sustenance of thousands upon jewels for pet dogs. No. It was no such fiendish ingenuity which devised the capitalistic system and imposed it upon mankind. It has grown up through the ages, Jonathan, and is still growing. We have grown from savagery and barbarism through various stages to our present commercial system, and the process of growth is still going on. I believe we ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo

... races of people who inhabit them, the defiles of the Caucasus, the mountains of Hindookho, at the northern extremity of Asia, beyond the Tungouses, and the Tartare settled at the mouth of the Lena. The barbarism which prevails throughout these different regions is perhaps less owing to a primitive absence of all kind of civilization, than to the effects of long degradation; for most of the hordes which we designate under the name of savages, are probably the descendants of nations highly advanced ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... war really and artistically. His campaigns do not try the reader's constitution, his battles are not bores. His soldiers are the soldiers we actually know,—the green wood of the volunteers, the warped stuff of men torn from civilization and cast suddenly into the barbarism of camps, the hard, dry, tough, true fibre of the veterans that came out of the struggle. There could hardly be a better type of the conscientious and patriotic soldier than Captain Colburne; and if Colonel Carter must not stand as type of the officers of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... history of the world, there are certain points of time which are rendered memorable by important events. By referring to a chronological table, the young reader will see the great events which have marked the progress of civilized nations from the lowest depths of barbarism up to their present enlightened state. Every individual, if he had the requisite wisdom, could make up a list of epochs in his own experience. Perhaps he would attach too little importance to some things, too much to others; for we cannot always clearly perceive the influences which ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic

... Bible, especially the Old Testament, the same as I do most other ancient books, in which there is some truth, a great deal of error, considerable barbarism and a most ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... the King of the Wood at Nemi, the Sacrificial King at Rome, and the magistrate called the King at Athens, occurs frequently outside the limits of classical antiquity and is a common feature of societies at all stages from barbarism to civilisation. Further, it appears that the royal priest is often a king, not only in name but in fact, swaying the sceptre as well as the crosier. All this confirms the traditional view of the origin of the titular and priestly kings in the republics of ancient Greece and Italy. At least by ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... possessed. This inertia has been conquered at various times in the course of recorded history,—in Egypt and China and India, in Chaldea and Assyria, in Greece and Rome,—conquered only again to reassert itself and drive man back into barbarism. Now we of the Western world have conquered it, let us hope, for all time; for we of the Western world have discovered an effective method of holding it in abeyance, and this method is ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... Anarchy, 1873" (the Russian place of publication is not given), pp. 223-224 (Russian). We know the word "Statism" is a barbarism, but Bakounine uses it, and the flexibility of the Russian language lends ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... results were neglected. As a scheme of life under established institutions, it was a remarkable display of the condition of mankind in two well marked ethnical periods, namely, the Older Period and the Middle Period of barbarism, the first being represented by the Iroquois and the second by the Aztecs, or ancient Mexicans. In no part of the earth were these two conditions of human progress so well represented as by the American Indian tribes. A knowledge of the culture and of the state of the arts ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... because they would not be at home. The Roman principle of making war support war would be easily applied to the rich tracts of central India, which an Affghan leader would endeavour to make the theatre of his aggression. They could move faster than we could. Semi-barbarism furnishes strength in that respect; and it would be vain to think of acting politically upon Affghanistan, when all her martial children were in the act of projecting themselves upon stages of action which would soon furnish their own recompense to strength of character and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... be so always. We believed we had discovered a method of settling all the world's difficulties without blows. The peace people had their jubilee. They talked about the advance of intelligence, and the softening power of civilization. They placed war among the forgotten horrors of a dead barbarism. They proved that commerce had rendered war impossible, because it had made it against self-interest. They talked about reason and persuasion, and moral influences. They asked, 'Why not settle all troubles in a grand world's congress, some huge palaver and paradise ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... flung back into chaos. The Roman Republic had conquered the civilized world; it had thrown down kings; it had destroyed the political existence of nations. What but feebleness, corruption, decay, anarchy, disintegration, disruption, recurring barbarism, had the oligarchs, for whom Pompeius was fighting his battle, to put in the place of what the Republic had destroyed? Could a Senate where almost every man had his price, where almost every member looked on the provinces as a mere feeding ground ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... the Africans. We did them harm enough formerly when we were engaged in the slave trade, although I for one didn't see it at the time, and was entirely ignorant of the horrors it inflicted on the unfortunate natives. If I thought at all, I thought they exchanged barbarism for civilisation; and what are called the horrors of the middle passage were not so great in those days as they are now, when the traffic has become unlawful. We had roomy vessels, the slaves were well-fed and looked after; and the master had no fear ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... in front of the stage, and from the ceiling dangled a "barrel hoop," pierced by half a dozen nails on which were spiked as many candles. It is not necessary to take the descriptions of these early playhouses as baldly literal, nor as indicative of something like barbarism. The "barrel hoop" chandelier of the old theater in Nassau street was doubtless only a primitive form of the chandeliers which kept their vogue for nearly a century after the first comedians sang and acted at the Nassau ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... called 'barbarians' the Germans who opened the grave. The world to-day also smells death and will surely call us barbarians. . . . So be it! When Tangiers and Toulouse, Amberes and Calais have become submissive to German barbarism . . . then we will speak further of this matter. We have the power, and who has that needs neither to hesitate nor to argue. . . . Power! . . . That is the beautiful word—the only word that rings true and clear. . . . Power! One sure stab and all ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... a pawn on that tiny chessboard where the game was being played between Civilization and Barbarism. The fight must go on to the bitter end: he must either vanquish or be vanquished. There were other threads being woven into the garment of his life at that moment, but he knew not of them. Sufficient for ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... mystic being, half man, half fish, who spent his nights in the waters of the gulf, but who would come out of the waters during the day to give instruction to the people, until that time steeped in ignorance and barbarism. This 'Oannes,' as Berosus is said[140] to have called him, was none other than Ea. As the great benefactor of mankind, it is natural that Ea should have come to be viewed as the god whose special function it is to protect the human race, to advance it in all its good undertakings, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... her Pyrenean valleys at least)—there flourishes a vast burgeoning of cheese, infinite in variety, one in goodness. But as Europe fades away under the African wound which Spain suffered or the Eastern barbarism of the Elbe, what happens to cheese? It becomes very flat and similar. You can quote six cheeses perhaps which the public power of Christendom has founded outside the limits of its ancient Empire—but not more than six. I will quote you 253 between the Ebro and the Grampians, between ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... skin deep, and so is barbarism. Had your country never broken its word and been as just as it is powerful, your red men would have been to-day where ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... queerly ancient, barbaric—reminding me of the flat, motionless pictures of Earth's early history. Yet it was a symbol here on Venus, not of barbarism, ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... and Gentlemen of the Continental Congress:—I am opposed to war first, last, and all the time. It is a relic of barbarism. I believe in the gospel of peace on earth, good will toward men. It would be better to settle our differences with England even by flipping a coin than by fighting and killing one another. Let us hearken unto the voice of God as it comes ringing down the centuries ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... daily expanding, and as commerce kept ahead of all other interests, it became simply impossible, by any dexterity of evasions and compromises, to make a dead language do the offices of negotiation without barbarism and reciprocal misunderstanding. Now was commencing the era of congresses. The Westphalian congress, in 1648, had put up with Latin; for the interests which it settled, and the boundaries which it counterbalanced, were political and general. The details of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... however they have attained them, we have only to reflect on the civilization introduced by the Saxons into England—on the actual state of the ancient Britons at present inhabiting Wales and the Highlands—and on the terrible disorder and barbarism that reigns in Ireland—to be thankful that the pure Celtic blood has not been allowed to remain ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various

... less injurious than have been those of the negroes of Jamaica, the demand for whose labour must diminish with every step in the progress of the abandonment of land and the destruction of machinery. Under such circumstances we can feel little surprise at learning that every thing tends towards barbarism; nor is it extraordinary that a writer already quoted, and who is not to be suspected of any pro-slavery tendencies, puts the question, "Is it enough that they [the Americans] simply loose their chain and turn them adrift ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... returned to his home—which by contrast must seem squalid indeed—to the parents whom his education must make it difficult to honor, and left to make his way against the ignorance and bigotry of his tribe. Is it any wonder he fails? Is it surprising if he lapses into barbarism? Not having earned his education, it is not appreciated; having made no sacrifice to obtain it, it is not valued. It is looked upon as a right and not as a privilege; It is accepted as a favor to the government and not to the recipient, ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... in this house, it marks a retrocession toward barbarism for Little Rivers which I refuse to contemplate. Take your shower, Sir Chaps, and"—a smile went weaving over the hills and valleys of Jasper Ewold's face—"and, mind, you take off those grand boots or they will get full of water! You will find me in the library when you ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... and made as if he would pass on. Now, nothing annoys an angry savage or an uneducated person so much as the perfect coolness of a civilised and cultivated man when he himself is boiling with indignation. He feels its superiority an affront on his barbarism. So, with a vulgar oath, Sir Lionel flung himself point-blank in the way. "Damn it all, no you won't, sir!" he cried. "I'll soon put a stop to all that, I can tell you. You shan't go on one step without committing an assault upon me." And he drew himself ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... listen attentively to instruction conveyed to them in their own tongue. It is, however, difficult to give an idea to an Englishman of the little effect produced by our teaching, because no one can realise the degradation to which their minds have sunk by centuries of barbarism and hard struggling for the necessaries of life. Like most other savages, they listen with respect and attention to our talk; but when we kneel down and address an unseen Being, the position and the act often appear to them so ridiculous, ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne

... the all but inevitable result of endeavouring to express them. Not to speak of mere vulgarity such as Jessie Cartwright exhibited, Emily's instinct shrank from things which usage has, for most people, made matters of course; the public ceremony of marriage, for instance, she deemed a barbarism. As a sacrament, the holiest of all, its celebration should, she felt, be in the strictest privacy; as for its aspect as a legal contract, let that concession to human misery be made with the smallest, not the greatest, violation of religious ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... their statements fully confirm all that I have heard from the lips of slaves. If you read Southern Laws, you will need very small knowledge of human nature to be convinced that the practical results must inevitably be utter barbarism. In view of those laws, I have always wondered how sensible people could be so slow in believing the actual state of ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child

... think we are wasting our energies. We will leave California several beautiful monuments for posterity to wonder at, but as for the Indians we will end where we began. They are always escaping and running back to the mountains. Their every instinct is for barbarism; they have not one for civilization, nor can any be planted whose roots will not trail over the surface. The good Lord intended them to be savages, nothing more; and it is mistaken sentimentalism—However, it is not for me to ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton



Words linked to "Barbarism" :   savagery, barbarity, brutality



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