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Barbarity   /bɑrbˈærəti/  /bɑrbˈɛrəti/   Listen
Barbarity

noun
(pl. barbarities)
1.
The quality of being shockingly cruel and inhumane.  Synonyms: atrociousness, atrocity, barbarousness, heinousness.
2.
A brutal barbarous savage act.  Synonyms: barbarism, brutality, savagery.






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"Barbarity" Quotes from Famous Books



... frantic outbursts of barbarity against the Christian inhabitants of his country, of which the Turk has frequently been guilty, yet never has he been so oppressive as the Greek patriarch. Given power over the Slav population, the patriarch used it to its limit. Not only did he tax them oppressively ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... papacy, and, in a later day, of the Scottish Covenanters. They saw their friends and ministers tortured and murdered—the pain of the boots must have been inconceivable—the bones of their legs were crushed between pieces of iron, and, even when death had released the victim, savage barbarity was practised upon his mutilated remains; the head and hands were cut off and exhibited upon a pike, the hands fixed as in the attitude of prayer, to mock the holiest duty. Can we wonder that lambs became lions, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... that the attack had been made here. I then searched all along at the back of the beach, to see if the cutter was there. We found no boat, but instead of her, such a shocking scene of carnage and barbarity as can never be mentioned or thought of but with horror; for the heads, hearts, and lungs of several of our people were seen lying on the beach, and, at a little distance, the dogs ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... forlorn suggestion that they were amalgamated among their savage neighbors, but sober thought will rather fear that they perished under the mingled weight of famine, of disappointed hope, and of Indian barbarity. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... engagement took place, when the Boers and Swazies attacked Johannes' stronghold. The place was taken with circumstances of great barbarity by the Swazies, for when the signal was given to advance the Boers did not move. Nearly all the women were killed, and the brains of the children were dashed out against the stones; in one instance, before the captive ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... and rakish-looking topsail schooner, with a black ball in her foretopsail, and had, apparently, a full crew. We now became alarmed, for we could hardly imagine it possible that she did not observe us, and were apprehensive that she meant to leave us to perish as we were—an act of fiendish barbarity, which, however incredible it may appear, has been repeatedly perpetuated at sea, under circumstances very nearly similar, and by beings who were regarded as belonging to the human species. {*2} In this instance, however, by the mercy of God, we were destined to be most ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the distracted officer, left with his bleeding fellow, and springing up the steps after Johnny. But he found a door already bolted in his face; and cursing Johnny for a treacherous and murderous scoundrel, he began vainly denouncing his barbarity in leaving his comrade thus to perish, and kicked and thundered ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... us mortals below, Shows the soul from barbarity clear, Compassion will melt, Where this virtue is felt, And its dew is ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron

... as could possibly be done; for as it generally proves in other Places as well as in the Moon, that Mischief unjustly contriv'd falls upon the Head of the Authors, and redounds to their treble Dishonour, so it was here; the barbarity and inhumane Treatment of this Man, made the sober and honest Part even of the Solanarians themselves blush for their Brethren, and own that the Punishment awarded ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe

... which has ever since been his portion, and which his pale, sickly countenance, and his sunk and exhausted frame so strongly attest. As his enthusiasm was such as to require no artificial stimulus, this severe system could only have been a piece of cool and wanton barbarity. He already began to show much promise of excellence, when a circumstance occurred which not only served to confirm these early prognostications, but to rouse him to exert all his energies. This was no other than a dream of his mother, Theresa. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various

... and found. There was an elderly man in the yard of it, placidly plucking a live fowl, a barbarity with which our traveller had ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett

... the inseperable Union of two Souls. With mutual Ardour, they repeated the Demonstration; till at last the Demonstrator quite spent, sunk under the Fatigue of the Arguments. In this Manner Zeokinizul and Lenertoula amused themselves, when he was informed of the Barbarity with which his Enemies carried on the War in his Country, at which he was deeply affected. The Impossibility of quickly meeting them, made him very impatient; the Account of their Forces added to this Uneasiness; in fine, Joy, Grief, Hope and Fear, distracted his Heart, and the Shock ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon

... such measures, which created for their profit a class of female pariahs; and this was frankly and openly admitted. Nowadays, the equal rights of women which are officially recognized in civilized countries no longer allow it, and hygienic arguments only can give such modern barbarity the hypocritical appearance of justification. Lunatics and criminals are only locked up as a measure of safety, and to attempt to improve them; but their bodies are not allowed to become an object of commerce for the pleasure of ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... of frontier life in, see vol. i.; democracy in; vagrants in; violence and barbarity of; manners and customs; grows in civilization; economic conditions of; frontier law and politics; popular eloquence in; its ignorance ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... Borneo I heard the following story of Dayak barbarity, which is a good example of the way the women incite their men to go on these head-hunting expeditions. In a certain district where some missionaries were doing good work among the Dayaks, a Dayak young man named Hathnaveng had been persuaded by the missionaries ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker

... melancholy fact that life and beauty can not be preserved in them without water. On grand, temporary occasions it may answer for the artist to disregard this natural law, but it would be an excess of barbarity to do thus often. There ought to be no more martyrs for the sake of effect than can ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... patiently; but when his wife appealed to the blood on her face, as an evidence of his barbarity, he could not help laying claim to his own blood, for so it really was; as he thought it very unnatural, that this should rise up (as we are taught that of a murdered person often doth) in ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... was acquainted with Erasmus, who afterwards gave him a public testimony of his esteem, by inscribing to him a catalogue of his works. The stile of Boethius, though, perhaps, not always rigorously pure, is formed with great diligence upon ancient models, and wholly uninfected with monastic barbarity. His history is written with elegance and vigour, but his fabulousness and credulity are justly blamed. His fabulousness, if he was the author of the fictions, is a fault for which no apology can be made; but his credulity may be excused in an age, when ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots. Whatever your opinion may be of the follies of the Roman Catholic religion, remember they are the follies of four millions of human beings, increasing rapidly in numbers, wealth and intelligence, who, if firmly united with this country, would set at defiance ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... fortress the Sultan, according to Ibn Batuta, pursued Baha-ud-din southwards and arrived near the city of the prince with whom he had taken refuge. The chief abandoned his guest to the tender mercies of the tyrant, by whom he was condemned to a death of fiendish barbarity. ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... pursuant to the dictates of his wisdom, dispenses both light and darkness, and knows how to check the impetuous torrent of human passions, would not permit mankind, though abandoned to the utmost corruptions, to degenerate into absolute barbarity, and brutalize themselves, in a manner, by the extinction of the first principles of the law of nature, as is seen in several savage nations. Such an obstacle would have too much retarded the rapid progress, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... ascertained—of this unprovoked attack on the boat's crew, was the old story. A party of godless white men had previously visited that part of the coast and treated the poor natives with great barbarity, thus stirring up feelings of hatred and revenge against all white men—at least for the time being. In this way the innocent are too often made ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... said to be only following Ascham. Ascham was not the first in his own time to preach such doctrine. Forty years before the publication of The Schoolmaster, Sir Thomas Elyot, in his book called The Governour, raised his voice against the barbarity of teachers 'by whom the wits of children be dulled,'—almost the ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... surpassed all the former horrors. Those who had hitherto escaped, or who were forced by the flames from their hiding-places, experienced a more dreadful fate. Numbers were driven into the Elbe, others massacred with every species of savage barbarity—the wombs of pregnant women ripped up, and infants thrown into the fire or impaled on pikes and suspended over the flames. History has no terms, poetry no language, painting no colors to depict all the horrors of the scene. In less than ten hours ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... had been amiss in him, he was miserable enough in consequence: miserable about Hetty; miserable about this letter that he had promised to write, and that seemed at one moment to be a gross barbarity, at another perhaps the greatest kindness he could do to her. And across all this reflection would dart every now and then a sudden impulse of passionate defiance towards all consequences. He would carry Hetty away, and all ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... barbarity of the Mexican sacrifices, the numbers of the victims, and the refinements of torture to which they were subjected. Prisoners, who had often been fattened for months previously, perished by thousands on the altars. The palpitating flesh was distributed amongst the assistants, ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... died in the preceding January, but Hertford (now Protector Somerset) continued the Scottish policy of the preceding reign. In the summer of 1547 he made his third invasion of Scotland, marked by the usual barbarity. In the course of it, on 10th September, was fought the last battle between Scots and English. Somerset met the Scots, under Arran, at Pinkiecleuch, near Edinburgh, and by the combined effect of artillery and a cavalry charge, ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait

... concerning the English nation, speaking of British poets, thus mentions Waller. 'Our author was much talked of in France. He had much the same reputation in London that Voiture had in Paris; and in my opinion deserved it better. Voiture was born in an age that was just emerging from barbarity; an age that was still rude and ignorant; the people of which aimed at wit, tho' they had not the least pretensions to it, and sought for points and conceits instead of sentiments. Bristol stones are more easily found than ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... woman who has been married eleven years, and yet has never been allowed to sleep out of her mistress's chamber.—This is a great hardship to slaves. When we consider that house slaves are rarely allowed social intercourse during the day, as their work generally separates them; the barbarity of such an arrangement is obvious. It is peculiarly a hardship in the above case, as the husband of the woman does not "belong" to her "owner;" and because he is subject to dreadful attacks of illness, and can have but little attention from his wife in the day. And yet her mistress, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... to me from people of great fashion, I assure you I know not where to be certain of getting a shilling." Wild greatly felicitated him on the lucky accident of preserving his note, and then proceeded, with much acrimony, to inveigh against the barbarity of people of fashion, who kept ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity-seeking. If they want peace, they and their ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... of the claims and grievances of the oppressed classes; they grasped their weapons by virtue of the Divine law. Hence the peculiar ardour and energy that marked the insurrection, although the enthusiasm, thus kindled, was united with the utmost barbarity and licentiousness. Never has Germany been threatened with a revolution so vast and violent, or so immeasurable in its possible results. On no single man's word did so much depend as on that of Luther, the genuine man ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... third in rank and size in England, with its magnificent church, its cloisters, and its halls, covering thirty acres of buildings,—and such buildings! within the outer courts;—to say nothing of that most reckless barbarity just at our door—we in our little village of Aberleigh lie between Basting-House to the south, whose desperately defended walls offer little more now than a mere site,—and Donnington to the west, where the ruined Gatehouse upon the hill alone remains of that strong ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... while on the way wandered about like undisciplined bands of robbers, plundering cities, committing the most abominable enormities, and spreading misery and desolation where-ever they passed. There was no kind of insolence, injustice and barbarity of which they were not guilty. The seven successive crusades drained the wealth of the fairest provinces and caused the loss of ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... years ago the wile of Muchtar Pacha complained to his father of his son's supposed infidelity: he asked with whom, and she had the barbarity to give in a list of the twelve handsomest women in Yanina. They were seized, fastened up in sacks, and drowned in the lake the same night. One of the guards who was present informed me, that not one of the victims uttered a cry, or showed a symptom of terror at so sudden a "wrench ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... expostulated against the barbarity and injustice of the exclusion laws and finally, finding expostulations of no avail, the scholars and merchants of China organized in 1905 a boycott against American trade. This quickly brought public feeling ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... cant about the inalienable rights of man. I would not for my right hand stand up before a European assembly, and exult that I am an American citizen, and denounce the usurpations of a kingly government as wicked and unjust; or, should I make the attempt, the recollection of my country's barbarity and despotism would blister my lips, and cover my cheeks with burning ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... it." Honestly he did not. Although he had no cause to love the Oriental race he was loth to believe even an uncivilized foe capable of such barbarity. ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... of two months before a magistrate for inspection. The strong and promising were preserved and the weak destroyed. The founders of the Roman Empire followed a similar usage. With great indignation Seneca, Ovid, and Juvenal reproved this barbarity of the Romans. With the domination of Christianity this custom gradually diminished, and Constantine stopped it altogether, ordering succor to the people too poor to rear their own children. The old Celts were so jealous of their vigor ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... in the broad light of day on the heights near Middletown. Testimony and affidavits to the fact, which was never questioned, were duly gathered and laid before Washington. The deed was one of wanton barbarity, for which it would be difficult to find a parallel in the annals of modern warfare. The authors of this brutal murder, to our shame be it said, were of American birth, but they were fighting for the crown and wore the British ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... barbarity, greediness, ill-will, malignity, self-seeking, brutality, harshness, inhumanity, niggardliness, stinginess, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... to wantonly torture or maim an enemy, whoever or whatever he may be, however great his crime. Not even the express command of a superior officer can justify such doings, because it is barbarity, pure and unmitigated. In war these things are morally just what they would be if they were perpetrated in the heart of peace and civilization by a gang of thugs. These are abominations that, not only disgrace the flag under which they are committed, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... its original sternness, we could have thought of letting loose upon you, our late beloved brethren, these fierce tribes of savages and cannibals, in whom the traces of human nature are effaced by ignorance and barbarity. We rather wished to have joined with you in bringing gradually that unhappy part of mankind into civility, order, piety, and virtuous discipline, than to have confirmed their evil habits and increased their ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley

... whole set of connected institutions. Readers of Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough are now in possession of facts which it would take a very long time to explain. They see that side by side with agricultural economics is agricultural religion, of great rudeness and barbarity, of considerable complexity, and bearing the stamp of immense antiquity. The same villagers who were the observers of those rules of economics which are thought to be due to Roman origin were also observers of ritual and usages which ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... to us mortals below, Shows the soul from barbarity clear; Compassion will melt where this virtue is felt, And its dew ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... the life of the inhabitants of the frontier was one of constant peril and alarm. Many a scene of dismal barbarity was enacted, as the history of the times testifies, and even those who felt themselves in some measure protected by their immediate neighbors, the Delawares, never lost sight of the caution required ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... classes; and policy, philanthropy, and Christianity alike demand that the nomadic waifs should be encircled by the arms of an ameliorating law which will give them a chance of escaping from the life of semi-barbarity to which untoward circumstances have consigned them, and to place them in a position to make something better of the life that now is, and to secure some fitting preparation for the life that is to come. It is evidently high ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... security to the slave system, caps the climax of national barbarity, and stains with human blood the garments of all the people. In consequence of it, that system has multiplied its victims from five hundred thousand to nearly three millions—a vast amount of territory has been purchased, in order to give it extension and perpetuity—several new slave ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... Chuechli-Steuerli, Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumandsuspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocent -generalhistoryspecialprofessordoctor Kriegfried Ueberallgemein. All the delegates without exception expressed themselves in the strongest possible heterogeneous terms concerning the nameless barbarity which they had been called upon to witness. An animated altercation (in which all took part) ensued among the F. O. T. E. I. as to whether the eighth or the ninth of March was the correct date of the birth of Ireland's patron ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... France, Picardy and Artois, were always exposed to attack from pirates by sea, Northmen and Saxon, and from invaders over the border. But none of these can have exceeded in barbarity that of 1635 to 1641, when Spanish armies—the first under John de Werth and Piccolomini, 40,000 in number, and made up of Germans, Hungarians, Croats as well as Spaniards—poured over the provinces committing the most frightful atrocities. And precisely to this ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... Stoney, a bankrupt lieutenant on half pay, who had fought a duel on her behalf, induced her to marry him, and subsequently hyphenated her name with his own. He became member of Parliament, and ran such extravagant courses as does Barry Lyndon, treated his wife with similar barbarity, abducted her when she had escaped from him, and then, after being divorced, found his way to a debtors' prison. There are similarities here which no seeker after originals can overlook. Mrs Ritchie ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... within two days of Goombia, had no apprehensions from the Moors, accepted the invitation, and spent the forenoon very pleasantly with these poor negroes. Their company was the more acceptable as the gentleness of their manners presented a striking contrast to the rudeness and barbarity of the Moors. They enlivened their conversation by drinking a fermented liquor made from corn. Better beer I never tasted ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... the boy Victor—poor little defeated Victor!—had appeared in the street fleeing from his home, four miles away, crying that his father was going to kill him. The child's ear had been frightfully bruised and swollen, and there were unmistakable marks of ill usage upon him. The man Rumpety's barbarity was notorious on all the countryside, and this was the third successive year he had been up before the court. It had never been possible to secure a conviction, owing to the dogged persistence of his victims in perjuring ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... governments for the protection of their own citizens. Or it might have restored them to Spain. Besides the desertion of natives whose aid against Manila had been encouraged, that would have been to say that while the United States went to war because the injustice and barbarity of Spanish rule in the West Indies were such that they could no longer be tolerated, it was now so eager to quit and get peace that it was willing to reestablish that same ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid

... habits, and the precise language of our progenitors, the Goths and Vandals. Were all the advocates for the introduction of such philosophical grammars into common schools, at once to enter on their pilgrimage, and recede into the native obscurity and barbarity of the ancient Britons, Picts, and Vandals, it is believed, that the cause of learning and refinement would not suffer greatly by their loss, and that the good sense of the present age, would not allow many of our best teachers to be of ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... not intend to encroach so much on your attention, but I cannot repress my indignation—I feel myself impelled to speak. My Lords, we are called upon as members of this House, as men, as Christians, to protest against such horrible barbarity!—"That God and nature have put into our hands"! What ideas of God and nature that noble lord may entertain, I know not; but I know, that such detestable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... same type. Alexander Severus organized all the industrial colleges and assigned them defensores. In the colleges all were equal, so that they were educational in effect. "But these instances cannot make us forget the cruel contempt and barbarity of which the slave was still the victim, and which was to be his lot for many generations yet to run. Therefore the improvement in the condition of the slave, or of his poor plebeian brother, by the theoretical ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... not a little excuse for the exasperation of the whites. Fiends incarnate could not have invented more terrible tortures than they often inflicted upon their captives. We have no heart to describe these scenes. They are too awful to be contemplated. In view of the horrid barbarity thus practised, it is not strange that the English should have wished to shoot down the whole race, men, women, and children, as they would exterminate ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... justified the destruction of an innocent people, that the invasion of Belgium was necessary as a measure of "self-defence," Americans consider as striking proof of the essential barbarity of the German Government. A man who would shoot down an innocent girl in order to get at another man would be condemned as the worst kind of a brute. A Government which slaughters an innocent and peaceful people in order to get at an enemy Government is universally regarded by Americans ...
— Plain Words From America • Douglas W. Johnson

... to say to you!" exclaimed the Marquis. "For why, monsieur? If I venture to express my astonishment and indignation at the way I am treated, you subject me to a barbarity that could be matched no where else in the civilized world than in this extraordinary country. My life is menaced with firearms. My protests are sneered at. I have left but one inference—you ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... reopen negotiations with Trajan, but on his refusal to receive the emissaries of the emperor, who declined to meet him in person, hostilities were renewed, and the war was prosecuted by the Dacians with great fierceness and barbarity. The discipline and warlike resources of Rome, however, maintained the ascendency for her arms. Decebalus was pressed from stronghold to stronghold, and defeated in one encounter after another, until at length ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... happily so ordered, that several of the early seizures and surrenders under this law were conducted with such marked barbarity, such cruel indecent haste, such wanton disregard of justice and of humanity, as to shock the moral sense of the community, and to render ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... when we had opportunities of being better informed; and, that, if the minds of people had not been open to conviction, the Christian religion could not have been propagated in the world, and we should now be in a state of Pagan darkness and barbarity: he endeavoured to prove, by some texts of Scripture and many quotations from the Fathers, that the Pope was the successor of St. Peter, and vicar of Jesus Christ; that the church of Rome was the true, holy, catholic church; and that the Protestant faith was an impious heresy and damnable schism, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... him of his true parents. Instead of defending his tender years, she took delight to see him struggling with misery, and continued her persecution, from the first hour of his life to the last, with an implacable and restless cruelty. His mother, indeed, could not affect others with the same barbarity, and though she, whose tender sollicitudes should have supported him, had launched him into the ocean of life, yet was he not wholly abandoned. The lady Mason, mother to the countess, undertook to transact with the nurse, and superintend ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... nothing in it but a few necessary articles of linen—no dresses, no ornaments, not so much as the fragment of a letter which might help in discovering her friends. Between the risk of keeping her under these circumstances, and the barbarity of turning a sick woman into the street, the landlady herself had not hesitated. She would willingly have kept her tenant, on the chance of the lady's recovery, and on the chance of her friends turning up. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... room exhibits a rich collection of curiosities from the South Pacific Ocean, brought by Capt. Cook. In the left corner is the mourning dress of an Otaheitean lady, in which taste and barbarity are curiously blended. Opposite are the rich cloaks and helmets of feathers from the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... not sustained by any evidence which would secure conviction in a court of justice. It is quite contrary to the well-established humanity of De Soto. There can be no possible excuse for such an act of barbarity on the part of any civilized man. If De Soto were guilty of the atrocity, it would, indeed, indicate that his reason was ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... cause their captive to be regarded as a menace to human safety, and to be forgotten altogether; but how futile to attempt such a task while the world of civilisation is swayed by human instinct and not by barbarity! ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... by the bed and caressed her darling. To the three doctors she told every detail she had obtained from Pierrette as to her life in the Rogron house. Horace Bianchon expressed his indignation in vehement language. Shocked at such barbarity he insisted on all the physicians in the town being called in to see the case; the consequence was that Dr. Neraud, the friend of the Rogrons, was present. The report was unanimously signed. It is useless to give a text of it here. If Moliere's medical terms ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... left because my employer had the scandalous barbarity to make me pound drugs, which tired ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... annihilation of Belgium, of its right to live its own life, its right even to preserve those monuments of its noble and beautiful history which had become treasured heirlooms of the whole world, has been carried out with a ruthless barbarity to the people, and especially the non-combatants, for which it is hard to find a parallel in the worst incidents of the Thirty Years' War or of the devastation of the Palatinate. To bring the actual guilt home to those who actually did or ordered these deeds to be done in ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... hear many of our readers crying out against the barbarity of confining the free denizens of the air in wire or wicker Cages. Gentle readers, do, we pray, keep your compassion for other objects. Or, if you are disposed to be argumentative with us, let us just walk down stairs to the larder, and tell the public truly what we there behold—three ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... more detestable than fraud, one feels greater disgust at the sight of captive monarchs without hands and arms, than even these idolatrous brutalities inspire; and no greater proof can be obtained of Roman barbarity, than the statues one is shewn here of kings and generals over whom they triumphed; being made on purpose for them without hands and arms, of which they were deprived immediately on ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... his work ought to be built, will not render it perfect by following the advice of his friends. Though Messrs. Wilkes and Churchill dragged his heroine to the altar of politics, and mangled her with a barbarity that can hardly be paralleled, except in the history of her husband,—the artist retained his partiality; which seems to have increased in exact proportion to their abuse. The picture being thus contemplated through the ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... that you should have now no other prospect of immortality than that which is common to Cicero and to Bacon; such as never can be interrupted while there exists the beauty of order, or the love of virtue, and can fear no death except what barbarity may impose on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... to such brutal and debasing exhibitions, to feel any thing but savage delight in the spectacle of a fellow-creature so scandalously treated and tormented, and the only excuse to be offered for their barbarity, is the firm belief they entertained that they were dealing with a witch. And when even in our own day so many revolting scenes are enacted to gratify the brutal passions of the mob, while prize-fights are tolerated, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... ill breeding; ill manners, bad manners, ungainly manners; insuavity^; uncourteousness^, &c adj.; rusticity, inurbanity^; illiberality, incivility displacency^. disrespect &c 929; procacity^, impudence: barbarism, barbarity; misbehavior, brutality, blackguardism^, conduct unbecoming a gentleman, grossierete, brusquerie^; vulgarity, &c 851. churlishness &c adj.; spinosity^, perversity; moroseness &c (sullenness) 901.1. sternness ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... easy-going system of getting off with a fine is at an end, and murder is punished with the utmost sternness. In such a state as Dahomey, in the old days of independence, there may have been a good deal of barbarity displayed in the administration of justice, but at any rate human life was no less effectively protected by the law than it was, say, ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... sheep and the cows, and little children cheering the train, everything sparkling in the hot sunshine; such is France—and such was the Kent I left behind me—at present. As one looks upon the peaceful country-side in France to-day one can scarcely realize that war is raging in all its ferocity and barbarity so near. It seems an anomaly. The weather is more suggestive of cricket than ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd

... higher class of schools and colleges, which prepare boys for examinations and academic distinctions of various kinds, than to the elementary schools to which the children of the poor are commandeered. In the latter establishments a special barbarity takes place which has been so widely discussed in Parliament and in the newspapers that I will do no more here than allude ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... Epping Forest, supporting herself by the produce of her wheel and the cultivation of her flower-garden." He beguiles his time, while twisting the hemp, by spinning a tedious yarn about this well-to-do spinster; from which we infer Barbara's barbarity, and that he is crossed in love. The soliloquy is interrupted by an elderly man, who enters to remark that he has come out for a little relaxation after a hard morning's work: no wonder, for we soon learn that he is the Jack Ketch of his day, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various

... month, a most horrid murder was committed upon Mr. Samuel Clode, one of the missionaries, who had flown for refuge from the savages of Otaheite to this government. This act of more than savage barbarity was committed at the brickfields, in the house of one Jones, a soldier. His brains were beaten out at the back of his head, with an axe, and his throat so cut as nearly to sever the head from the body, which was then dragged to a sawpit, at that time ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... moment have I cursed the fatal union imposed upon me by an inexorable family, whom my tears could not move. I cannot help hating this woman, who, in spite of me bears my name, innocent victim though she is of the barbarity of our parents. And, to complete my misery, she too will soon render me a father. Who can describe my sorrow when I compare the ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... of parliament, being convicted of forgery, was first expelled the House, and then sentenced to the pillory on the 17th of February 1727. Mr Curll (having likewise stood there) looks upon the mention of such a gentleman in a satire as a great act of barbarity. Key to the Dunc., 3d edit. p. 16. And another author reasons thus upon it: Durgen., 8vo, pp. 11, 12, 'How unworthy is it of Christian charity to animate the rabble to abuse a worthy man in such a situation? What could move the poet thus ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... was at the pains to search for, and which, now that I have found it, I think proper to lay before him,—is so much more fully express'd in the deed itself, than ever I can pretend to do it, that it would be barbarity to take it out of the lawyer's hand:—It is ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... ache now?" Stern hastily interrupted, in a rather weak yet brisk voice, which he was trying hard to render matter-of-fact. "Of course the lack of water, except that half-pint or so, to bathe your bruise with, is a rank barbarity. But if we haven't got any, we haven't—that's all. All—till we have another ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... some particulars his private character was still more exceptionable, and stained with the vices as well as virtues of the savage character. Though not habitually cruel, he was stern, vindictive, and implacable; and his government has been stained by some acts of atrocious barbarity at which humanity shudders, and which must ever leave an indelible stain on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... of us, treated with unexampled barbarity those unfortunate beings, whom they were able to overtake. Except a few steady old soldiers, most of the rest had thrown away their arms, and were without defence; but they were not the less massacred without pity. Four Prussians killed General ...... in cold blood, after having ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... attention to the fact that peonage, a crime under the Federal statutes, was being flagrantly practised in the State. This allegation was supported by a voluminous brief, giving names and dates and particular instances of barbarity. The colonel was not without some quiet support in this movement; there were several public-spirited men in the county, including his able lieutenant Caxton, Dr. Price and old General Thornton, none of whom were under any obligation to Fetters, and who all acknowledged ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... and after I had sat half an hour meditating how to behave before such profound casuists, I rose up and took my leave. Chance has since that time thrown me very often in her way, and she as often has directed a discourse to me which I do not understand. This barbarity has kept me ever at a distance from the most beautiful object my eyes ever beheld. It is thus also she deals with all mankind, and you must make love to her, as you would conquer the sphinx, by posing her. But were she like other women, and that there were any talking to ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... found the most experienced leaders of the age at the head of armies that had just fanaticism enough to be ferocious, but not enough to render them ungovernable. In these engagements, many hundreds fell on both sides; and on both sides the most revolting barbarity was practised: the Crusaders cut off the heads of the fallen Mussulmans, and sent them in panniers to Constantinople, as trophies of their victory. After the temporary defeat of Kilij Aslaun, the siege of Nice was carried on with ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... the details of his nefarious trade, amid cheers and bravos. The party are in ecstasies, evincing a singular merriment at the issue. There is nothing like liberty—liberty to do what you please, to turn freedom into barbarity! They gloat over the privileges of a free country; and, as Romescos recounts each proceeding,—tracing it into the lowest depths of human villainy, they sing songs to right, justice, freedom-they praise the bounties of a great country. How different is the picture below! Beneath this ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... it, and that the inherent cruelty of his nature was gratified in causing obstinate Covenanters, who had not taken the oath, to be shot on the spot, and haling others to prison, where they were treated with extreme barbarity. Others believed that being a man of broad mind and chivalrous temper, he absolutely disapproved of the government policy and loathed the butcher work to which he and his troopers ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... want to express to you my appreciation of the high character of citizenship displayed by the people of Centralia in their agonizing calamity. We are all shocked by the manifestation of barbarity on the part of the outlaws, and are depressed by the loss of lives of brave men, but at the same time are proud of the calm control and loyalty to American ideals demonstrated by the returned soldiers and citizens. I am proud ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin

... that their dead passed into a future life, and from the time of the early Scythians it had been the custom to strangle a male and a female servant of the deceased to accompany him on his journey to the other land. The barbarity of their religious rites varied with the different tribes, but the general characteristics were the same, and the people everywhere were profoundly attached to their pagan ceremonies and under the dominion of an ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... you ogre? Publishers, you know, Miss Melville, are noted for living upon the bones of unfortunate authors, and never saying grace either before or after the meal. This Goth, this Vandal, this Jacob Tonson, has had the barbarity to find fault with the last thing ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... and in about twenty minutes the musketry from the shore was silenced. At day-break they made farther reprisals, and in order to terrify the natives, landed and set fire to the village—an act of barbarity which appears to have been entirely gratuitous and uncalled for. After they had passed the scene of this unfortunate rencontre, the river increased in breadth to one thousand yards; the banks were higher, and the woods were ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... type which prevailed in the forest and over the grass-lands, but rather inclined towards a Semitic type. Thick lips were the exception, not the rule, and a broad flat nose was also a rarity. The only sign of barbarity was in the hair which, when the head was not clean shaven, was allowed to grow straight out in every direction, giving a very wild appearance to its owner. The hair of some, however, seemed to be softer, for it hung down to the nape ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... mortally wounded, and likewise lived but a few hours. The quarrel was one of professional, as Burr's of political, jealousy. But as the only conceivable advantage of the Hamilton duel lay in its arousing the public mind to the barbarity of duelling, the only gain from the Decatur duel was that it confirmed this conviction. In both instances there was an unspeakable shock to the country and infinite domestic anguish. Nothing else was achieved. Neither general manners nor morals were improved, nor was the ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis

... the summer from 50 to 180. The streets were encumbered with unburied corpses, the houses infested by robbers and marauders. Some incidents reported of this plague are ghastly in their horror. The infected were treated with inhuman barbarity, and retorted with savage fury, battering their assailants with the pestiferous ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... prisoner, that he "had issued proclamations and approved of practices, which were marked with cruelty towards the people that fell into his hands, such as inciting the Indians to bring in scalps, putting prisoners in irons, and giving men up to be the victims of savage barbarity." ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... guilty of his crime. Suppose he had taken my life, as he was near doing, how, pray, would you have made restitution? Bring me to life again, I suppose, by a miracle. Away, sir, with this cant, which is only fit for the barbarity of the dark ages, when your church was a mass of crime, cruelty, and ignorance; and when a cunning and rapacious priesthood usurped an authority over both soul and body, ay, and property too, that oppressed ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... combatants alike are paying to American opinion. It happened to the writer recently to meet a considerable number of Belgian refugees from Brussels, all of them full of stories (which I must admit were second or third or three-hundredth hand) of German barbarity and ferocity. Yet all were obliged to admit that German behavior in Brussels had on the whole been very good. But that, they explained, was "merely because the American Consul put his foot down." Yet one is not aware that President Wilson had authorized the American Consul so much as to ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... over the capital of Tibet had been at last torn aside, and the naked city had been revealed in all its "weird barbarity." Plans of the "scattered and ill-regulated" city are now familiar, the Potala has been photographed, the Grand Lama has been drawn, and if, with the departure of Younghusband, the gates of Lhasa were once more closed, voices from beyond the snowy Himalayas ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... not intend myself; I was speaking of an old Sosie, who was formerly a relative of mine, and whom, with the utmost barbarity, they drove out of the ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere

... them. There are at present three strong commandos of burghers fighting upon the British side, commanded by three Boer Generals—Marais, Celliers, and the younger Cronje, all of whom had made their names in fighting against us. This fact alone goes far to dispel those stories of British barbarity with which I shall presently deal. They are believed in by political fanatics in England and by dupes abroad, but the answer which many of the Boers upon the spot make to them is to enlist and fight under the British flag. They are in the best position ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... victors having followed the vanquished into the water, were continually dragging out and murdering those, whom by reason of their wounds they easily overtook. The very children, whom they took in great numbers, did not escape the massacre. Enraged at their barbarity, we fired our guns loaden with grape shot, and a volley of small arms among them, which effectually checked their ardour, and obliged them to retire to a distance from the shore; from whence a few round cannon shot soon removed them into the woods. The whole river was black over with the heads of ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson

... standard. When they were not resisted, they usually contented themselves with plunder, but the slightest opposition provoked them to acts of violence and murder; and some Catholic priests, who had imprudently signalized their zeal, were tortured by the fanatics with the most refined and wanton barbarity. The spirit of the Circumcellions was not always exerted against their defenceless enemies; they engaged, and sometimes defeated, the troops of the province; and in the bloody action of Bagai, they attacked in the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... differing from them; for the colour of the stile is wholly different from that of the other plays, and there is an attempt at regular versification, and artificial closes, not always inelegant, yet seldom pleasing. The barbarity of the spectacles, and the general massacre, which are here exhibited, can scarcely be conceived tolerable to any audience; yet we are told by Jonson, that they were not only borne, but praised. That Shakespeare wrote any part, though Theobald declares it incontestible, I ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... good Discipline, which he took care to make his Troops observe, did not give us their customary boorish Reception. And yet as secure as we might think our selves, I met with a little Passage that confirm'd in me the Notions, which the generality as well as I, had imbib'd of the private Barbarity of those People, whenever an Opportunity falls in their Way. I was stroling at a Distance from my Quarters, all alone, when I found my self near one of their Houses; into which, the Doors being open, ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe

... led away by one or many corrupted and misled by these other of these temptations, and several temptations, and (19) indeed some needed no other others (40 a) who needed no temptation than their innate other temptations than from the fierceness and barbarity and the fierceness and barbarity of malice they had contracted against their (47 a) own natures, and the Church and the court. But the the malice they had contracted leaders of the conspiracy were not against the Church and against the many. The ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott

... and you know of the disasters overwhelming us. You know all the hideousness and barbarity of what is being done. Your father's son must ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... invitation, Berry returned to his roll and, after eyeing it with disgust which the bread in no way deserved, proceeded to disrupt and eviscerate it with every circumstance of barbarity. Covertly, Jonah ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... the way for all others—like those early branches that one sees in spring, which shoot first from the stem, and sometimes die before the summer. It nursed that people, whose least vestiges we discover to-day with surprise and wonder; a people who, in the very dawn, in the midst of the original barbarity, conceived magnificently the infinite and the divine; who placed with such certainty and grandeur the first architectural lines, from which afterwards our architecture was to be derived; who laid the bases of art, of science, and of ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... that he had indeed promised him his life, but not freedom from punishment, ordered his hands to be cut off, and his tongue to be bored, "to prevent him from being so witty for the future." This act, says Leti, "filled every one with terror and amazement." And well might such a piece of Oriental barbarity excite the horror of the Romans.[11] Pasquin, however, was not alarmed, and a few days afterward he appeared holding a wet shirt to dry in the sun. It was a Sunday morning, and Marforio, naturally surprised at such a violation of the day, asked him why he could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... violence of their dispositions, and inculcated into their breasts some principles of humanity. By observing the conduct of the new settlers, the savages have learned to imitate their actions, and to discard a portion of that barbarity of manners, which allied ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann

... the Romans the title of Augustus, and General of the East; he revenged the fate of Valerian, who had been taken captive and put to death by Shah Poor: the eastern king, with a luxurious barbarity truly oriental, is said to have used the unfortunate emperor as his footstool to mount his horse. But in the midst of his victories and conquests Odenathus became the victim of a domestic conspiracy, at ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... the knowledge of the authorities that such meetings were being held, large bodies of troops were sent into the southern provinces, with orders to disperse them and apprehend the ringleaders. These orders were carried out with much barbarity. Amongst various assemblies which were discovered and attacked in the Cevennes, were those of Auduze and Vigan, where the soldiers fell upon the defenceless people, put the greater number to the sword, and hanged upon the nearest trees those who did ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... honourable injuries and in the savour of fame Gilbert Elliott of the Cauldstaneslap; but his sons had scarce less glory out of the business. Their savage haste, the skill with which Dand had found and followed the trail, the barbarity to the wounded Dickieson (which was like an open secret in the county), and the doom which it was currently supposed they had intended for the others, struck and stirred popular imagination. Some century earlier the last of the minstrels might have fashioned ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... do what you can for them; they are so brave and so kind! They can hardly live on the thousand crowns he gets as deputy-head of the office, for they have got into debt since Marshal Montcornet's death. It is barbarity on the part of the Government to suppose that a clerk with a wife and family can live in Paris on two thousand ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... uprisings; that the French Communists were but rough imitators of our Chinese Taipings; that we had had in 1230 a siege at Nankin which had lasted seven years, etc. In short, these Europeans are only beginning again our history with less grandeur and more barbarity. ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy

... converted into a hospital for their relief, with such accommodations as could be afforded. Pesquiera was well aware of the adage that "dead men tell no tales." Crabb was beheaded, and his head carried in triumph to Pesquiera, preserved in a keg of Mescal, with the savage barbarity of the days of Herod. The contracts which would have compromised Pesquiera with the Mexican government were destroyed by fire. So ended the Crabb Expedition, one of the most ill-fated and melancholy of any in the bloody ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston

... little steel thumbscrew which gave such exquisite torment that it had wrung confessions even out of men on whom His Majesty's favourite boot had been tried in vain. [124] But it was well known that even barbarity was not so sure a way to the heart of James as apostasy. To apostasy, therefore, Perth and Melfort resorted with a certain audacious baseness which no English statesman could hope to emulate. They declared that the papers found in the strong ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to lose!" cried Mr. Effingham, on whose bosom Eve lay, nearly incapable of motion. "The food and water are in the boat, and in the name of a merciful God, let us escape from this scene of frightful barbarity?" ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... evidently far above the position of life which is usually that of those who occupy the dreadful post of executioner, came to accept of it."—"The real reason, sir. I considered, too, that in holding such a humiliating situation that I was justly served for the barbarity of which I had been guilty; for what can be a greater act of cruelty than to squander, as I did, in the pursuit of mad excitement, those means which should have rendered my home happy, and conduced to the welfare of those who ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... withdrew, and in about one Hour brought in their Verdict, GUILTY. Mrs. Hollowell's Testimony against the Prisoner was fully corroborated by the Physician who attended her, and by the People who were in the House, at and after the Perpetration of the Crime; by which the Guilt and Barbarity of the Prisoner was so fully demonstrated, that the Verdict of the Jury has ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks

... Macedonia. By way of recompense, Philip helped him to subdue the Greek mercantile cities in his territory. Chalcedon submitted. Cius, which resisted, was taken by storm and levelled with the ground, and its inhabitants were reduced to slavery—a meaningless barbarity, which annoyed Prusias himself who wished to get possession of the town uninjured, and which excited profound indignation throughout the Hellenic world. The Aetolians, whose -strategus- had commanded in Cius, and the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... one of the loveliest stories I had ever heard; there is no hardness comparable to that of the sportsman, yet here was one, a very monarch among them, who turned sick at his own barbarity ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... labour'd much, he judges well not to expect the Encomiums of the Publick: for these are not his due. Yet for fear his drudgery shou'd have no recompense, God (of his goodness) has given him a personal Satisfaction. To envy him in this wou'd be injustice beyond barbarity itself: Thus the same Deity (who is equally just in all points) has given Frogs the comfort of ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte

... founding of one colony is, I fear, the history of most, if not all—commencing in doing all that is possible to obtain the goodwill of the people until a firm footing has been obtained in the land, and then treating them with barbarity and injustice. ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... description from Statius, which was hardly the way to get the true local colour. Windsor Forest, however, like Cooper's Hill, speedily diverges into historical and political reflections. The barbarity of the old forest laws, the poets Denham and Cowley and Surrey, who had sung on the banks of the Thames, and the heroes who made Windsor illustrious, suggest obvious thoughts, put into verses often brilliant, though sometimes affected, varied by a compliment to Trumbull and an excessive eulogy ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... continued Dan, regardless of this despairing remark, "that a good while ago the Nor'-westers took him prisoner, when he was wounded after a skirmish with them, and carried him to Canada—treating him with great barbarity on the way. There he was put in jail, but, as nothing could be proved against him, he was liberated, and then tried to return to his family in Red River, but the Nor'-westers caught him again, imprisoned him, sent him a second time to Canada, and had him tried at the Court of the King's Bench, ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... existed. She did not, as the cynical matrons had prophesied, "give up worrying about the world and other folks' babies soon as she got one of her own to fight for." The barbarity of that willingness to sacrifice other children so that one child might have too much was impossible to her. But she would sacrifice herself. She understood consecration—she who answered Kennicott's hints about having Hugh ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... certain feebleness of exertion takes place, and it is more difficult to recover them from this dying languor to their proper strength, than it was to polish them from their former rudeness; for it is a less formidable undertaking to refine barbarity, than to stop decay: the first may be laboured into elegance, but the latter will ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More

... for reticence, such proof of friendliness made me yearn to possess the deserted little beast. But its legs were very thin, its hoofs exceedingly small, and the thought of loading so frail a structure with the great packs that held my camping kit seemed a barbarity. Meanwhile Gotteland, who knows something of everything, had carefully examined the tiny animal, and just as I was growing sentimental over its perfections, he broke the charm by pronouncing it to be incredibly old, and unfit for work. He also drew my attention ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... all strangers on a proper application were admitted to a sight of it. But when Sir Hough Clopton was succeeded by the Reverend Francis Gastrell, that gentleman, to save himself the trouble of showing the tree to visitors, had "the gothic barbarity" to cut down and root up that interesting—indeed sacred memorial—of the Pride of the British Isles. The people of Stratford were so enraged at this sacrilege that they broke Mr. Gastrell's windows. That prosaic ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... the screams of outraged innocence, the groan of tortured flesh, and has reddened beneath the heel of Tyranny; this same sun has seen the smoke and ravishment of cities and been darkened by the hateful mists of war—but never such a war as this of cultured barbarity with all its new devilishness. Shell-shock and insanity, poison gas and slow strangulation, liquid fire and poison shells. Rape, Murder, Robbery, Piracy, Slavery—each and every crime is here—never has humanity endured all ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol

... their intimates, have introduced into their general conversation, and would have it pass for innocent freedom or humor; which is a dangerous experiment in our northern climate, where all the little decorum and politeness we have are purely forced by art, and are so ready to lapse into barbarity. This, among the Romans, was the raillery of slaves, of which we have many instances in Plautus. It seems to have been introduced among us by Cromwell, who, by preferring the scum of the people, made it a court entertainment, of which I have heard ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser

... necessities of war could excuse. Torrents of ink were spilt to prove that at the end of the nineteenth century measures and methods worthy of the Inquisition were resorted to by British Government officials, who—so the ready writers and ready-tongued averred—with a barbarity such as the Middle Ages had not witnessed, wanted to be revenged on innocent women and children for the resistance their husbands and fathers were making against an aggression which in itself ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill

... vengeance, which have brought you into the Roman camp, are the thoughts of a haughty soul, roused by injustice and barbarity. The mutilation which you have suffered seemed above all to prove the truth of your words," resumed the interpreter. "But fugitives always arouse a secret suspicion. The wife often is a test of the husband. Yours is a valiant wife. To inspire such fidelity, you must be a man of ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue

... time Jason grew tired of his wife, and fell in love with Glauce, daughter of the king of Corinth. Medea was greatly exasperated with his infidelity, and, among other enormities, slew with her own hand the two children she had borne him before his face, Jason hastened to punish her barbarity; but Medea mounted a chariot drawn by fiery dragons, fled through the air to Athens, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... breeding; ill manners, bad manners, ungainly manners; insuavity[obs3]; uncourteousness &c.adj[obs3].; rusticity, inurbanity[obs3]; illiberality, incivility displacency[obs3]. disrespect &c. 929; procacity[obs3], impudence; barbarism, barbarity; misbehavior, brutality, blackguardism[obs3], conduct unbecoming a gentleman, grossieret, brusquerie[obs3]; vulgarity, &c. 851. churlishness &c. adj.; spinosity[obs3], perversity; moroseness &c. (sullenness) 901a. sternness &c. adj.; austerity; moodishness[obs3], captiousness &c. 901; cynicism; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... credited, more preternatural appearances and predictions announced this event, than its importance deserved.[30] The truth seems to be, that a belief in omens and prodigies was again become prevalent, as the people were evidently relapsing into pristine barbarity, ignorance being ever the proper soil ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... whom he had slain, Frankton carried Llywelyn's head to Edward at Rhuddlan, who, with a barbarity unworthy of himself, set it over the Tower of London, wreathed in mockery of a prediction (ascribed to Merlin) upon the coronation of a ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... choleric, revengeful, and fickle, easily incensed against us, even by our involuntary thoughts, or our most innocent words and actions; such a man naturally conducts himself with contempt and pride, with harshness and barbarity towards all others whom he may deem obnoxious to the resentment of his Heavenly King. Those men, whose folly leads them to view the Deity in the light of a capricious, irritable, and unappeasable despot, can be nothing but gloomy and trembling slaves, ever eager to anticipate the vengeance ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... Diceto makes this barbarity a part of the sentence passed on the Germans. Newbury mentions it only ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... their burning houses, were slain by the fire of the cannon and small arms; that those who endeavoured to save their persons and effects were pushed down and destroyed by the bayonets of the Prussian soldiers posted in the streets for that purpose: he enumerated particular instances of inhuman barbarity, and declared that a great number of people perished, either amidst the flames, or under the ruins of the houses. The destruction of two hundred and fifty elegant houses, and the total ruin of the inhabitants, were circumstances in themselves so deplorable, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... communication, and locked his daughter into a tenement room; the adjoining apartment (with only a thin partition wall between) being occupied by a neighbor, who overheard the angry altercation that ensued. He recognized the voices of father and daughter, and the words 'barbarity,' 'cruelty, 'death,' were repeatedly heard. The father at last left the room, locking his child in as a prisoner. After a time, strange noises were heard by the tenant of the adjoining chamber; suspicion was aroused, a bailiff was summoned, the door forced open, and there lay the dying girl weltering ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... was remarkable, and partook of the barbarity which characterized most of their customs. They worshipped the Sun and Moon, Fire, Air, Earth, Water, and a god whom Herodotus calls Hercules. But their principal religious observance was the worship of the naked sword. The country was parcelled ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... loved his next brother Antigonus and treated him as an equal, but the others he kept in bonds. He also cast his mother into prison because she disputed the government with him, for Hyrcanus had left her in control of everything. He also proceeded to that degree of barbarity that he killed her in prison with hunger. Moreover he was estranged from his brother Antigonus by false charges and also slew him, although he seemed to have a great affection for him and had shared the kingdom with ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... entered the German lines, imploring to be shot for pity's sake. But it was too late; all the rifles were in use in the firing-line. It was not till he heard this that Bertram Borstal, racked with indigestion, realised the atrocious barbarity of his reprieve. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various

... was conscious of struggling to rise above indifference. I reproached myself for lack of patriotism. I had read the morning's Dispatch and had been shocked at the relation of some harrowing details of pillage and barbarity on the part of the Yankees; yet I felt nothing of individual anger against the wretches when I condemned such conduct, and my judgment told me that my passionless indignation ought to be hot. But this peculiarity seemed so unimportant ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... as slaves, which occasioned Hill, in the account he gives of his second voyage, to use these remarkable words:—"Here began the horrid practice of forcing the Africans into slavery, an injustice and barbarity which, so sure as there is vengeance in heaven for the worst of crimes, will some time be the destruction of all who allow or encourage it." That the trade should have been suffered to continue under such a princess, and after such solemn expressions ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... provost-marshal warned him of the futility of these plans, but he had persisted in them. He had later been shocked, however, by news that the best of his colonels had been ambushed and killed, and that others had been made prisoners and treated with barbarity. From everywhere, except one, had come either news of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... and most iustly, holden in great and reuerent estimation and account, by all wise, vertuous, and temperate spirits: So should it by the contrary, iustly bring a great disgrace into that sort of customes, which hauing their originall from base corruption and barbarity, doe in like sort, make their first entry into a Countrey, by an inconsiderate and childish affectation of Noueltie, as is the true case of the first inuention of Tobacco taking, and of the first entry thereof among vs. For Tobacco being a common herbe, which (though vnder ...
— A Counter-Blaste to Tobacco • King James I.

... thousand instances of official barbarity was perpetrated at our expense while Sanchez de Toca was Alcalde. This gentleman is a Siamese twin of Maura's when it comes to garrulousness and muddy thinking, and he had resolved to do away with the distribution of bread by public delivery, and to license only deliveries ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... had been aflame with tender thoughts of Naomi's trials, with hatred of Ben Aboo's tyrannies, and pity of Israel's miseries. But at first his humanity had withheld him from sympathy with Ali's dark purpose, so full, as it seemed, of barbarity and treachery. ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... them was that of branding on the forehead, their garments being cut down to the girdle, and being turned into the open fields. Proclamation was made that none should presume to receive them under his roof, nor "to administer consolation." The sentence was carried out with even more barbarity than it was issued, for Gerhardt was twice branded, on forehead and chin, all were scourged, and were then beaten with rods out of the city. No compassion was shown even to the women. Not a creature dared to open his door to the "heretics." ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... the mild, reverence-commanding appearance of the pope. He was a man of forty, with a wild, glowing-red face, whose eyes flashed with malice and rage, whose mouth gave evidence of sensuality and barbarity, and whose form was more appropriate for a Vulcan than a prince of the Church. And yet he was such, as was manifested by his dress, by the great cardinal's hat over his shoulder, and by the flashing cross ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach



Words linked to "Barbarity" :   inhumanity, inhumaneness, barbaric



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