“Now what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.”

—  Constantine P. Cavafy , Waiting for the Barbarians

Source: Waiting for the Barbarians (1904), l. 26
Context: Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people's faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.
And some of our men who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.Now what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Now what's going to happen to us without barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution." by Constantine P. Cavafy?
Constantine P. Cavafy photo
Constantine P. Cavafy 62
Greek poet 1863–1933

Related quotes

Paul Blobel photo

“I would not say that they were happy. They knew what was going to happen to them. Of course, they were told what was going to happen to them, and they were resigned to their fate, and that is the strange thing about these people in the East.”

Paul Blobel (1894–1951) German SS officer and Holocaust perpetrator

Source: Quoted in "The Eichmann Kommandos" - Page 162 - by Michael Angelo Musmanno - 1961.

Tzvetan Todorov photo

“The fear of barbarians is what risks making us barbarians.”

Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017) Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist
Orson Welles photo

“What's happening now is what happened before, and often what's going to happen again sometime or other”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Source: Mr. Arkadin

Stephanie Powell Watts photo

“Humor is absolutely necessary to keep going…So many of the people in my family and my community were wonderful storytellers. They would tell stories about just awful things that happened to them. But their humor made what happened into their own kind of triumph.”

Stephanie Powell Watts

On the importance of humor in “INTERVIEWS: Stephanie Powell Watts” https://bookpage.com/interviews/21148-stephanie-powell-watts-fiction#.Xe_qN_lKjcs in BookPage (April 2017)

Will Rogers photo

“Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what's going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

As quoted in Dreams Come Due : Government and Economics as If Freedom Mattered (1986) by John Galt, p. 235
As quoted in ...

Paul of Tarsus photo

“There are, for example, so many kinds of tongues in this world; and none is without voice. If then I know not the power of the voice, I shall be to him to whom I speak a barbarian; and he that speaketh, a barbarian to me.”

Paul of Tarsus book First Epistle to the Corinthians

1 Corinthians 14:10-11 (as quoted in Catholic Bible Douay-Rehims http://www.biblebible.com/text-bible/Catholic-Bible/1_corinthians_14.asp)
First Epistle to the Corinthians

Cassandra Clare photo

“What happened to you?”
Jace looked affronted. “What happened to me?”
Alec shook him, not lightly. “You said you were going for a walk! What kind of walk takes six hours?”
“A long one?” Jace suggested.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“The question was what's happening to the individual in America? Is the individual going the way of the environment, being destroyed? In other words, were we becoming the creatures of the machine?
That was the way people thought in the '60s. Now maybe that's passé today but that's the kind of thing people thought about. Are we turning into machines? They wanted to rebel against that.
Their rebellion cannot be called a success by any means, far from it. Those of us who tried are very grateful that we tried to the degree we did. Anybody who achieved any success against the machine feels good about it.”

Charles A. Reich (1928–2019) American lawyer

The Greening of America turns 40 (2010)

Jonathan Ive photo

“Paying attention to what’s happened historically actually helps give you some faith that you are going to find a solution. Faith isn’t a surrogate for engineering competence, but it can certainly help fuel the belief that you’re going to find a solution. And that’s important.”

Jonathan Ive (1967) English designer and VP of Design at Apple

Time: "Apple Design Chief Jonathan Ive on the iPhone X: We Had to Solve ‘Extraordinarily Complex Problems’" http://time.com/5025887/apple-jony-ive-iphone-x/ (16 November 2017)

“The British Parliament is now in the hands of the worst kind of terror-appeasing moonbats… We’re about to witness what happens when a country is governed by the “progressive” Kos mentality. And it’s going to be ugly.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

August 13, 2007 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26637&only

Related topics