"Philistine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have no taste at all; not the slightest. I cannot tell good from bad. There never was such a complete Philistine. But I had the best man in London down, and another fellow from Vienna. They ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... France, too, the final touch of elegance among the romantics was not to have any white linen in evidence; the shirt collar, in particular, being "considered as a mark of the grocer, the bourgeois, the philistine." A certain gilet rouge which Gautier wore when he led the claque at the first performance of "Hernani" has become historic. This flamboyant garment—a defiance and a challenge to the academicians who had come to hiss Hugo's play—was, in fact, a pourpoint or jerkin of cherry-coloured ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... trials, seem to come under the head of sortilege, because something unknown is sought by their means. Yet these practices seem to be lawful, because David is related to have engaged in single combat with the Philistine (1 Kings 17:32, sqq.). Therefore it would seem that divination by lot is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... to be heart-felt and to be heard. It is said of Israel's army on one occasion, 'they cried unto God in the battle, and He was entreated of them.' Do you think that theirs would be very elaborate prayers? Was there any time to make a long petition when the sword of a Philistine was whizzing about the suppliant's ears? It was only a cry, but it was a cry; and so 'He was entreated of them.' If we are 'with Christ' we shall talk to Him; and if we are with Christ He will talk to us. It is for us to keep in the attitude of listening and, so far ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... not help disliking superiority; and as the old Northern sage declared, "the average of men is but moiety." Moiety does not mean necessarily mediocrity, but also that which is below mediocrity. What we call in England to-day, as Matthew Arnold called it, the Philistine element, continues to prove in our own time, to almost every superior man, the danger of being ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... fit him easily. They are worn so often that they hang with the picturesque lines of the best tailor-made garments. That is why well-fed artists of pencil and pen find in the griefs of the common people their most striking models. But when the Philistine would disport himself, the grimness of Melpomene, herself, attends upon his capers. Therefore, Danny set his jaw hard at Easter, and took his ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... and he spoke of books to Mr Hare, whom he considered a gross Philistine, although a worthy man. The shadows of the Virginia creeper fell on the red pavement, and Kitty's light voice was heard on the staircase. Presently she appeared, and lifting the trailing foliage, she spoke ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... touchstone to which everything yields up its latent negation, passing on to its own contradiction—gives truer lights and shades than your pedantic Philistinism. Is Truth really in the cold white light, or in the shimmering interplay of the rainbow tints that fuse in it? Bah! Your Philistine critic will sum me up after I am dead in a phrase; or he will take my character to pieces and show how they contradict each other, and adjudge me, like a schoolmaster, so many good marks for this quality, and so many bad marks for that. Biographers will weigh me grocerwise, as Kant weighed ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the Amorite "z" or "s" seems sometimes to represent the Hebrew "sh," this name might be compared with the Philistine "Achish." ...
— Egyptian Literature
... scripture only as a Philistine god,[1152] which would not prove him to have been acknowledged by the Phoenicians; but as Philo of Byblus admits him among the primary Phoenician deities, making him a son of Uranus, and a brother of Il or Kronis,[1153] ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... 'What a Philistine room it is,' said Gerald, smiling as he looked around him; 'but I must say I like it just as it is. It has never made an ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... would not be admonished; you would go to the Wigwam for your portfolio. "High post," "political canvasser," "manipulation of votes," you will know the exact meaning of these esoteric terms, when, alas, you meet Mr. Hoolihan. For you must know that not every one you meet in Bohemia is not a Philistine. Indeed, many helots are there, who come from Philistia to spy ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... young,' he thought, thrilling. And youth was plastic—he, the sculptor, could surely mould her. Besides, was she not Sir Asher's daughter? She must surely have inherited some of his love for Palestine and his people. It was this Philistine set that had spoiled her. Julius, too, that young Oxford prig—he reflected illogically—had no doubt been a ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... second time—not in the least disconcerted by what I had said to him. His inbred conviction of his own superiority to a young adventurer like me was really something magnificent to witness. He did me justice—the Philistine-Pharisee did me justice! Will you believe it? He made his remarks next on my good points, as if I had been a young bull ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... admitted at all sorts of hours. Reed Opdyke accepted him in mirthful gratitude to the Providence which had arranged so equable a quid pro quo. Prather was manifestly out for copy, despite his constant disavowals of what he termed an envious slander hatched by Philistine minds. Reed Opdyke's sense of humour was still sufficiently acute to assure him that there was every possibility that, at some more or less remote period, he would find a full-length portrait of himself in Prather's ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... led, on the one hand, to an over-estimation of our power, which did not prove favorable to us politically, while, on the other hand, the Americans who frequently indulged in generalizations about Germany were prone to judge us according to the German-American Beer-Philistine, whom they disdainfully called a "Dutchman." The Americans' view of the German people wavered between these two extremes; but every year opinion tended to incline more and more in the direction of the former. The phantom of a German world-empire, extending ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... title, Mester-Pijl-droegster Herdal, would sound a trifle too uncouth to the Philistine ear, and is therefore modified as above, although the term "droegster," strictly speaking, denotes a practitioner who has not received a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 11, 1893 • Various
... are an incorrigible Philistine," said her father, "and I yield. Tom's father is a broker, and Tom is by way of being a broker too, though I doubt if he is broking very much. May I dismiss Tom for a few minutes ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... "And so the Philistine leader pounced upon me herself," she was saying. "You know the 'Ark,' Phil? Well, they were all in the Ark,—the Rev. Bilberry in front, and the boys and girls filling up the corners; so you may imagine the effect produced ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... cultivate the habit, which I think many Christian people do not cultivate, of little short swallow-flights of prayer in the midst of our daily work. 'They cried unto God in the battle, and He was entreated of them.' If a Philistine sword was hanging over the man's head, do you think he would have much time to drop down upon his knees, to make a petition, divided into all the parts which divines tell us go to make up the complete idea of prayer? I should think not; but he could say, 'Save me, O Lord!' 'They cried ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... time devoted to it, the money which it absorbed, were incredible. It was all one that impostor after impostor was exposed; it was all one that the clubs, the circles, the societies were proved beyond doubt to have been swindled. The more the Philistine press of the city railed and guyed, the more the women rallied to the defence of their protege of the hour. That their favourite was persecuted, was to them a veritable rapture. Promptly they invested the apostle of culture with the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... name with that of Dagontacala of Ascalon, it appears that this writer was probably a Philistine. ...
— Egyptian Literature
... head was unbowed. She sullied her hands but not her conscience. A dirty act she could not perform. Aristocrat and anarchist, she was also an artist. With simple things and simple people, she was simple as you please. Stupidity and pretentiousness enraged her. The philistine and the ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... same the Philistine was an anachronism, a survival from an older world. The day of the Minoan, like that of his early friend the Egyptian, had passed away. The stars of new races were rising above the horizon, and new claimants were dividing the heritage of the ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... a distinctly philistine virtue. Love is sought by those who do not venture out into the world, who fear a comparison with others, who haven't the courage to face a fair trial of strength. Love is sought by every miserable rhymester who cannot live without being idolized by some one. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... person must have been very eminent and distinguished—a shepherd-king, not a mere shepherd. Rawlinson, in a note on this portion of the narrative of Herodotus, suggests that Philitis was probably a shepherd-prince from Palestine, perhaps of Philistine descent, 'but so powerful and domineering, that it may be traditions of his oppressions in that earlier age which, mixed up afterwards in the minds of later Egyptians with the evils inflicted on their country by the subsequent shepherds of better known dynasties, lent ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Schloss Johannisberg, the Steinberg Abbey above Hattenheim, are of course household words, and the man who said that travelling along the Rhine was like reading a restaurant wine-list had some justification for his Philistine speech. One does not expect to discover the real Steinberg Cabinet in a village inn, and the Johannisberg generally found in every hotel in Rhineland is a very inferior wine to that of the Schloss, and is grown in the vineyards round Dorf Johannisberg. I have ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... confidential agent a venal scoundrel who has just tried to murder him, is, to say the least, a little improbable. Here Schiller was evidently trying to Shaksperize again; trying, that is, to assert the poet's sovereign lordship over the petty bonds of Philistine logic. The Moor's frank exposition of the professional ethics of rascality, the dash with which he does his work, his ubiquitous serviceableness, and his rogue's humor make him a picturesque character and account for his having become on the stage ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... satisfy the not exacting conditions of a nonconformist or Anglican place of worship? You are not surprised to learn that Keble College mistook the 'Light of the World' for a patent fuel, or that the background of the 'Innocents' was painted in 'the Philistine plain.' Who could live even in cold weather with the 'Miracle of the Sacred Fire?' Give me rather the 'Derby Day' of Mr. Frith—admirable and underrated master. What are they if we cannot place them in the category of pictures? They are pietistic ejaculations—tickled-up ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... full of kindly scorn when I announced that I was going to Canada. 'A country without a soul!' they cried, and pressed books upon me, to befriend me through that Philistine bleakness. Their commiseration unnerved me, but I was heartened by a feeling that I was, in a sense, going home, and by the romance of journeying. There was romance in the long grim American train, in the great lake we passed in the blackest ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... fight him hand to hand, the result of this contest to decide the victory or defeat of either army. A youth named David, inspired and urged by the spirit of God, went forth with a few smooth stones and a sling to meet this Philistine, and as Goliath rushed toward him David cast the stones with the sling and struck the Philistine in the forehead, and he fell upon his face to the earth. David then ran and stood over the Philistine and took ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... latter-day Philistines. When a Samson does now and then pull a temple down about their ears, is he not sure to be engulfed in the ruin with them? There is no horse-leech that sticks so fast as your latter-day Philistine. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... table in the Chouteau cafe, Griswold had ample time to overtake himself in the race reconstructive, and for the moment the point of view became frankly Philistine. The luxurious hotel, with its air of invincible respectability; the snowy napery, the cut glass, the shaded lights, the deferential service; all these appealed irresistibly to the epicurean in him. It was ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... attack. Their swords are streaming with blood, and their horses' hoofs squash out our poor fellow's bowels as they lie. A ball has sunk in Sir Thomas Picton's forehead and killed him like Goliath the Philistine. I don't see what's to stop the French. Well, it's the Lord's doing and marvellous in our eyes. Hullo, who's he? [They look towards the road.] A fine hale old gentleman, isn't he? What business has a man of ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the Philistine you are not, Phil," said Kirkwood. "What you were trying to whistle is the 'Lucia Sextette' upside down. Rose, let's have the 'Mozart Minuet' we used to play. We haven't had it ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... a curious ghostly fragrance, as of Alfred Noyes's lecture, last week, or of "the New Republic" or the "Literary Digest." The most "liberal" of them may even take "The Masses," precisely as people rather like them used to take "The Philistine," a generation or two ago. Among the members of this group are the women who work violently for suffrage—something in which I personally believe, but which, merely because I believe in it, I do not necessarily like ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... they mean; it seems to me that he deliberately insults them. His language, especially on moral questions, is generally as straight and solid as that of a bargee and far less ornate and symbolic than that of a hansom-cabman. The prosperous English Philistine complains that Mr. Shaw is making a fool of him. Whereas Mr. Shaw is not in the least making a fool of him; Mr. Shaw is, with laborious lucidity, calling him a fool. G.B.S. calls a landlord a thief; and the landlord, instead of denying or resenting it, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Of course he forgave him. It was in his nature to forgive; and he would even have forgiven Maryanne at that moment, had she come to him and asked him. But she was asleep in her bed, dreaming, perchance, of that big Philistine whom she had chosen as her future lord. A young David, however, might even yet arise, who should smite that huge giant with ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... Baal-berit[1129] has been interpreted as meaning "lord of a covenant"—that is, a deity presiding over treaties; but the expression is not clear. Baalzebub is in the Old Testament the god of the Philistine city Ekron, where he had a famous oracle;[1130] it is highly improbable that the name means "lord of flies" (which would rather be Baal-zebubim), but the sense is obscure. The New Testament Baal [Beel]-zebul[1131] (the only correct form) has been variously explained. The ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... a means to other useful things, it is itself a worthy end. It helps to enrich the community with the immaterial goods of the spirit, and it yields the psychic income of dignity and joy in the individual and national life. And as a final appeal to any doubting Philistine it may be said that just as the cult of pure science is necessary to the continual and most effective progress in the practical arts, so the study of economics on the philosophical plane surely is necessary to the highest and most lasting results in ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... centuries earlier to one who may almost be called his countryman, he would have been astonished to recognize in the humble kingdom just lifting its head in the far West, and struggling to hold its own against Philistine cruelty and oppression, a power which in little more than fifty years would stand forth before the world as the equal, if not the superior, of his own state. The imperial splendor of the kingdom of David and Solomon ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... says Monica, imperiously, terrified to death as she conjures up before her Aunt Priscilla's face as it will surely be if this Philistine dares to address her: "I tell you my aunts would never forgive me if they knew I had interchanged even one syllable with you. From this moment you must forget me. There will really be no difficulty about it, ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... great help, for they were popular and had a nodding acquaintance with most of the inhabitants. They regarded me as a meritorious aspirant towards a higher life, and I was paraded before their friends with the suggestion of a vivid, if Philistine, past. If I had any gift for writing, I would make a book about the inhabitants of Biggleswick. About half were respectable citizens who came there for country air and low rates, but even these had a touch of queerness and had picked up the jargon ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... trusted in the Lord, we shall understand why he could do such heroic deeds. David said: "The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine." Again: "Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee." (I ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... the old Philistine, laughing. "That sounds like you Greeks. Ah! sir, in our rocks here we have few enough Muses, but those who carry these lances, or teach us how to trade with the islands ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... reverent spirit, seeing around me the tombs of great and famous men, the mighty and wise of their day, what department it was of the Abbey—"It's the eighteenpence department," said an uncircumcised Philistine, with as little respect as if we had been treading the ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... shall bear The palace with us? Its old walls, ten times As old as I am, and I'm very old, Have served you, so have I, and I and they Could tell a tale; but I invoke them not To fall upon you! else they would, as erst The pillars of stone Dagon's temple on The Israelite and his Philistine foes. 220 Such power I do believe there might exist In such a curse as mine, provoked by such As you; but I curse not. Adieu, good Signers! May the next Duke be better than ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... making it is a good one," said I, laughing. "And, now I think of it, I'll change my plan, too. I don't think much of a club, so I'll make me a sling out of this piece of cloth. I used to be very fond of slinging, ever since I read of David slaying Goliath the Philistine, and I was once thought to ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... most individual trait in his writings sprang from his scorn of mere word-mongering divorced from actual life. "A man ought to have the right of being a Philistine if he chooses," he tells us: "there is a sickly incompleteness in men too fine for the world and too nice to work their way through it." A great man of letters, no one has ever mocked his craft so persistently. A great thinker, he never tired of humorously magnifying ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... himself, that makes a figure of him, and gives him his unique place in the sterile literature of the republic's second century. He stands for a Weltanschauung that is not only un-national, but anti-national; he is the chief of all the curbers and correctors of the American Philistine; in praising the arts he has also criticized a civilization. In the large sense, of course, he has had but small influence. After twenty years of earnest labour, he finds himself almost as alone as a Methodist in Bavaria. ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... presents which he carried went to Rebekah's mother and brother.[109] Laban says to Jacob, "These daughters are my daughters, and these children are my children;"[110] the obligation to blood-vengeance rests apparently on the maternal kindred;[111] Samson's Philistine wife remained among her people;[112] and the injunction in Gen. 2:24, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife," refers to the primitive Hebraic form of marriage.[113] Where the matriarchate prevails ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... of Naddo occurs in this book, and will often reappear in the course of the story. This personage is the typical Philistine—the Italian Brown, Jones, or Robinson—and will represent genuine common-sense, or mere popular judgment, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... under its beneficent protection, soon complained of its shade. Then came a lumber prospector, who saw only furniture in the still flourishing old black walnut. His offer of forty dollars for the tree was eagerly accepted by the Philistine who had the title to the land, and although there were not wanting such remonstrances as almost came to a breaking of the peace, the grand walnut ended its hundreds of years of life to become mere lumber for its destroyers! The real estate man who ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... the last MAGAZINE OF ART, with pictures by a young lady; rather pretty, I think. If we find a market for PHASELLULUS LOQUITUR, we can try another. I hope it isn't necessary to put the verse into that rustic printing. I am Philistine enough to prefer clean printer's type; indeed, I can form no idea of the verses thus transcribed by the incult and tottering hand of the draughtsman, nor gather any impression beyond one of weariness to the eyes. Yet the other day, in the CENTURY, I saw it imputed as ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... creature out of the very mouth of the lion—and how he said to King Saul, "The Lord hath delivered me out of the paw of the lion" [that strong paw which can knock a man down], "and out of the paw of the bear, He will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine;" and, strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, he went to meet the boastful giant ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... Mr. Chumbleton if there were any signs of Cardinal College being affected by the new Moral Uplift, but he seemed unable to fathom the meaning of my query. His standpoint was clearly philistine and, I regret to say, distinctly pagan. He had never heard of the Land Campaign, or of Mr. HEMMERDE, Baron DE FOREST or even Mr. HAROLD BEGBIE. His attitude towards Mr. LLOYD GEORGE was unsympathetic. He deplored the popularity of motor-bicycles, but, with a strange ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... mind feels nothing of it; but the war, by waking up this underground life, revealed moral relationships which no one had suspected. A sudden intimacy showed itself between Clerambault and a brother of his wife whom he had looked upon until now, and with good reason, as the type of a perfect Philistine. ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... touched too sensitive a chord, and after a vain attempt to control myself, I suddenly burst into hysterical tears, and left the room. They thought it was my strange temper, but I was only miserable that the enemy—my Philistine—was upon me, when he was only lurking in ambush for the time when my weakness would render ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... expected another attack, would have done the like. But these measures of course incensed the Uitlanders, who saw that another insurrection would have less chance of success than the last, and resented the inferiority implied in disarmament, as Israel resented the similar policy pursued by the Philistine princes. The capitalists also, an important factor by their wealth and by their power of influencing opinion in Europe, were angry and restless, because the prospect of securing reforms which would reduce the cost of working the gold reefs became ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... is without salt or flavour of any sort. An anonymous writer in "Current Literature" for July, 1907, asks plaintively why this author has been permitted to remain in obscurity and quotes from some of the reviews. In "The Philistine" for October, 1907, Elbert Hubbard takes a hand in the game. He says, "Edgar Saltus is the best writer in America—with a few insignificant exceptions," but he deplores the fact that Saltus knows nothing about the cows and chickens; only cities and gods seem to interest ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... its persecution the censor figures. His Philistine pen passed ruthlessly over everything that seemed to hint at criticism of the Church; but not content with expunging the heretical and the inferentially heretical, the censor at times went even so far as to erase sentiments particularly lofty, in order that the Talmud should not have the credit of ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... played according to latter-day rules. If it had been a regular knock-out fight, like the contests in the old days of the ring when it was in its prime, Goliath could have managed him with one hand; but the Samson backers played a sharp game on the Philistine by having the most recently amended Queensbury rules adopted, and Goliath wasn't in it five minutes after ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... his fellow-creatures. It was possible that the barbarian suspected as much, that by some slow process of rumination he had arrived at his fixed and inveterate impression, by no means a clear reasoned conviction; the average Philistine, if pressed for the reasons of his dislike, would either become inarticulate, ejaculating "faugh" and "pah" like an old-fashioned Scots Magazine, or else he would give some imaginary and absurd reason, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... is possible for any one to say, "You are a Philistine and a Vulgarian. You wish to regard life through a horse-collar," etc., etc. But these reproaches would leave my withers quite ungalled. I think Ecclesiastes one of the very greatest books in the world's literature, and Hamlet the greatest play, with the possible exception of the Agamemnon. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... I go Home occasionally. And I used to know the Galleries. (Nervously.) You mustn't think me only a Philistine with—a moustache. ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... who maintained just now (and who does not feel a hard-hearted Philistine for gainsaying them?) that we have no right to ostracise, still less to stone, unwholesome kinds of art, make much of the fact that, as we are told in church, "We have no health in us." But it is the recognition of this lack of health which ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... said that Micky felt a natural enmity towards those in his own condition in life who wore better clothes than himself. For the last nine months, Dick's neat appearance had excited the ire of the young Philistine. To appear in neat attire and with a clean face Micky felt was a piece of presumption, and an assumption of superiority on the part of our hero, and he termed it "tryin' to be ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... conqueror of Corinth. It points back to the good old days of Roman contempt for Greek art, and ignorance of it, for Mummius, in his stupid indifference to the beautiful monuments of Corinth, made himself the typical Philistine for all time. It points forward to the new Greco-Roman civilization of Italy, because the works of art which Mummius is said to have brought back with him, and the Greeks who probably followed in his train, augmented that stream of Greek influence which in the next ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... the business of his country at the expense of his own, but much that he attempted succeeded and enough still remains to enable us to realize that by his efforts he made his estate attractive. He was no Barbarian or Philistine. He had a sense of beauty and it is only in recent years that his countrymen, absorbed in material undertakings, have begun to appreciate the things that he was ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... against him. But the old-fashioned leaders of the Jewish faith, according to Joseph, were much upset. They greatly disliked his popularity with the masses of the poorer Hebrews. The "Nazarene" (so they told Pilatus) had publicly claimed that a Greek or a Roman or even a Philistine, who tried to live a decent and honourable life, was quite as good as a Jew who spent his days studying the ancient laws of Moses. Pilatus does not seem to have been impressed by this argument, but when ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... the whole commonalty, which, at present, stands helpless through sheer democracy. For only in the hands of a political people does democracy mean the rule of the people; in those of an untrained and unpolitical people it becomes merely an affair of debating societies and philistine chatter at the inn ordinary. The symbol of German bourgeois democracy is the tavern; thence enlightenment is spread and there judgments are formed; it is the meeting place of political associations, the forum of their orators, ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... is the Grand Disdainer. Like his bosom friend, Monsieur Mallarme, he cares little for the Philistine public—" ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... reveal the doings, and openly denounce the schemes of the party of her paramour, was a sacrifice that a woman of her character was not generally ready to make—in fact, such thoughts did not find lodgment in her brain. In the flattering embrace of the Philistine all noble aspirations ordinarily become extinct. Mr. Wingate's interrogation was followed by a brief pause, which caused Molly to move uneasily in her chair. "I see, Silas Wingate, that you question my sincerity," she said, slowly. "I can't blame you, though. ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... did provoke, To make them subject to Philistine yoke For forty years: in Zorah dwelt a man, His name Manoah, of the tribe of Dan; His wife was barren, unto whom appeared The angel of the Lord, and thus declared: Though thou, said he, art barren, time shall come Thou shalt enjoy the blessing of thy womb; Now therefore ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... this virtue, like courage or liberality, has its mean, its excess, and its defect. The defect is indifference, and the man who is defective as to the love of books has no name in common parlance. Therefore, we may call him the Robustious Philistine. This man will cut the leaves of his own or his friend's volumes with the butter- knife at breakfast. Also he is just the person wilfully to mistake the double sense of the term 'fly-leaves,' and ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... poet, you have a singular grip on the world. To me money is not such a reality. And if it were, what is it between you and me? If the position were reversed, Morgan—it may be a shocking admission to make—I should not hesitate to take money from you, you conventional Philistine. I thought you were above such petty considerations—to ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... observe that for Lucian 'we' is on occasion the Romans; 'we' is also everywhere the Greeks; while at the same time 'I' is a barbarian and a Syrian. Roughly speaking, the Roman element stands for energy, material progress, authority, and the Greek for thought; the Roman is the British Philistine, the Greek the man of culture. Lucian is conscious enough of the distinction, and there is no doubt where his own preference lies. He may be a materialist, so far as he is anything, in philosophy; but in practice ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... should it come from? Only a grand idea can inspire art. Art is in our ideal synonymous with creation, it must look ahead; but save a few rare, very rare exceptions, the professional artist remains too philistine ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... William Bartholomew, was first performed at the Birmingham Festival, Aug. 29, 1855, under Costa's own direction, with Mesdames Viardot and Novello and Messrs. Sims Reeves and Carl Formes in the principal parts. The characters are Eli, Elkanah, Hannah, Samuel, the Man of God, Saph the Philistine warrior, Hophni and Phinehas the sons of Eli, and the Priests and Philistines as chorus. The story is not very consistent in its outlines, and is fragmentary withal, the narrative of the child Samuel being the central ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... moderate drinker, for there is no possibility of moderation, and if he is to be saved he must become a total abstainer. He must sign the pledge, and the pledge must be made of a solemn character with witnesses, say his poor afflicted wife and some intelligent self-made Philistine. Perhaps it might run like this: "I, A. B., do hereby promise that I will never buy a classical book in any tongue, or any book in a rare edition; that I will never spend money on books in tree-calf or tooled morocco; that I shall never enter a real old bookshop, but should it be necessary ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... with the colorless life of the philistine borough into which Weimar more and more degenerated after Goethe's death may be read between the lines of this apostrophe. Repelled by the gloomy humdrum and filled with dreams of past greatness as well as with longing for a ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... scene the Israelites return victorious and are greeted with triumphant songs and offerings of flowers. Even the Philistine Delila, the rose of Sharon receives them with her maidens, and pays homage to the ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... atmosphere of his study so as to give an impression of amiable indolence, Reggie Forsyth lit a cigarette and strolled out into the garden, amused at his own impatience. In London he would never have bestirred himself for old Geoffrey Barrington, who was only a Philistine, after all, with no sense of the inwardness ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... devoted to such a passion is a stumbling-block to the practical man, and to the Philistine foolishness. Yet you may hear men praised because up to the day of death they were diligent in business,—business which added to life nothing more significant than that useful thing called money. Thoreau used to say that if a man spent half his time ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... strange mission and she murmured, "How noble," I became a very Samson of strength, ready to vanquish an army of Philistine admirers with the jawbone of my inflated self-confidence—provided, always, one queen of the combat were ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... life the aspiration to have and do and be the best. Yet who is there does not know the paralyzing chill that the sneer of the philistine or even the memory of our own many failures can give when great possibilities offer themselves to us? How easily enter in the cold considerations that deaden our aspirations; how subtle the temptation to be content with the condition that involves neither ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... between King Saul and the Philistine tribes, who lived near the seacoast, never ceased; for the Philistines had made up their minds to make the men of Israel their servants, and King Saul was determined that ...
— Children of the Old Testament • Anonymous
... been spared to us both. But that was not to be!" It is with dutiful respect but with no touch of filial affection that Goethe has drawn his father's portrait in Dichtung und Wahrheit. As the father is there depicted, he is the embodiment of Goethe's own definition of a Philistine—one naturally incapable of entering into the views of other people.[5] Yet Goethe might have had a worse parent; for, according to his lights, the father spared no pains to make his son an ornament of his generation. Strictly conscientious, methodical, with a genuine love of art and ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... means, not that certain events actually happened, or that the poetical "machinery" is to be taken as an existing fact; but that the poem is, so to speak, the projection of truths upon the cloudland of imagination. It reflects and gives sensuous images of truth; but it is only the Philistine or the blockhead who can seriously ask, is it true? Some such position seems to be really conceivable as an ultimate compromise. Put aside the prosaic insistence upon literal matter-of-fact truth, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... she had learned from Mr. Sands. What would Hitt do with that? She must get in touch with him at once. So she set out to find a telegraph office, that she might check the impulsive publisher who was openly hurling his challenge at the giant Philistine. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... those I have gained. Yes, brainless! There, in music, we beat them, as politically France beats us. No life without brain! The brainless in Art and in Statecraft are nothing but a little more obstructive than the dead. It is less easy to cut a way through them. But it must be done, or the Philistine will be as the locust in his increase, and devour the green blades of the earth. You have been trained to shudder ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish. This is commonly understood in the case of books or set orations; even in making your will, or writing an explicit letter, some difficulty is admitted by the world. But one thing you can never make Philistine natures understand; one thing, which yet lies on the surface, remains as unseizable to their wits as a high flight of metaphysics—namely, that the business of life is mainly carried on by means of this difficult art of literature, and according to a man's proficiency in that art ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... order to make them talk before company. I cannot be tempted to "come aloft" for these marks of distinction, and, like imprisoned Samson, I would rather remain—if such must be the alternative—all my life in the mill-house, grinding for my very bread, than be brought forth to make sport for the Philistine lords and ladies. This proceeds from no dislike, real or affected, to the aristocracy of these realms. But they have their place, and I have mine; and, like the iron and earthen vessels in the old fable, we can scarce come ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... rapidly and widely. For as the essence of provincialism is the substitution of a part for the whole, so the essence of philistinism is the conviction that what one possesses is the best of its kind, that the kind is the highest, and that one has all he needs of it. A true philistine is not only convinced that he holds the only true and consistent position, but he is also entirely satisfied with himself. He is infallible and he is sufficient unto himself. In politics he is a blind partisan, in theology an arrogant dogmatist, in art an ignorant propagandist. What he accepts, ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... charming creature you ever saw, but it had been far better to call him something else. Both he and Verrocchio's David, also upstairs, are young tournament nobles rather than shepherd lads who have slung a stone at a Philistine bully. I see them both—but particularly perhaps Verrocchio's—in the intervals of strife most acceptably holding up a lady's train, or lying at her feet reading one of Boccaccio's stories; neither could ever have watched a flock. Donatello's second ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... irrespective of its co-operation, create a sociable foundation from which it can on its part practise oppression. Even the moral self-esteem of the German middle class is only based on the consciousness of being the general representative of the philistine mediocrity ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... population; it does not really count. However seriously the little cliques of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may take themselves, they are not regarded seriously by the rest of the country in any degree comparable to the attitude of the British Philistine towards the British Barbarian. Without the appropriate background of king and nobility, the whole system is ridiculous; it has no national basis. The source of its honour is ineradicably tainted. It is the reductio ad absurdum of the idea of aristocratic ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... all, let it be remembered that the average Briton of to-day is not the average Briton of yesterday. Three years ago he was a prosperous, comfortable, thoroughly insular Philistine. He took a proprietary interest in the British Empire, and paid a munificent salary to the Army and Navy for looking after it. There his Imperial responsibilities ceased. As for other nations, he recognized their existence; but that was all. In their daily life, or national ideals, ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... youthfulness, the Phaedo with its discussion of immortality, the Metaphysics of Aristotle with their still subtler and more abstruse speculations, source of so much of our Christian doctrine and apologetic—all these require little defence against the Philistine of to-day, if only he can be induced to gaze at his intended victim before he delivers his blow. But Thucydides with his long and detailed account of an inter-tribal or inter-municipal war, decked out with sham speeches which were never delivered: Plato with his imaginary Utopia, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Shepherding his flock of gold In a low dim-lighted pen Scann'd of tramps and fishermen! There a bird, high-coloured, fat, Proud of port, though something squat— Pursy, play'd-out Philistine— Dazzled Nelly's youthful eyne. But, far in, obscure, there stirr'd On his perch a sprightlier bird, Courteous-eyed, erect and slim; And I whisper'd: 'Fix on him!' Home we brought him, young and fair, Songs to trill in Surrey air. Here Matthias sang his fill, Saw the cedars of Pain's ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... in it, and many tender, succulent strips of red pepper. They had a salad made out of a little of everything that grows green, with the true Spanish oil, which has a tang and a bouquet unappreciated by the Philistine; and then they had a strange pastry and some cheese and green almonds. And to make then glad, they drank a bottle of old red Valdepenas, and afterward a glass each of a special Manzanilla, upon which the restaurant very justly ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... from the square into the church— Gloom and dusk are all your gains! Sir Philistine is left in the lurch: Outside he stands—spies nothing or use of it, And nought is left him save the ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... thing you see in looking at this picture down at the Bank Exchange? Is it the gleaming eye and fine face of Samson? or the muscular Philistine gazing furtively at the lovely Delilah? or is it the rich drapery? or is it the truth to nature in that pretty foot? No, sir. The first thing that catches the eye is the scissors at her feet. Them scissors is too modern; thar warn't no scissors like them in them days—by ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... London press overflowed. Every prominent paper gave a leader in the editorial column, and when the weeklies and monthlies came out they followed suit. These editorials make now to us who were on the inside amusing reading. They were full of Philistine talk and amazement, and generally conceded that Noyes was an innocent dupe, and all more or less doubted if his principal, the mysterious Mr. F. A. Warren, would ever come ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... their Bible over again, and make all manner of great discoveries there. All these discoveries are favourable to liberty, and in this way is satisfied that double craving so characteristic of the Philistine, and so eminently exemplified in that crowned Philistine, Henry the Eighth,—the craving for forbidden fruit and the craving for legality. Mr. Hepworth Dixon's eloquent writings give currency, over here, to these important discoveries; so ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... and Philistine, greeting. In your heart is the lust of Mammon, in your mind cunning devils, in your tent this woman whom you live with in adultery; yet of these divers sins, even here in the wilderness, I, Sturges Owen, apostle to the Lord, bid you to repent and ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... to his newly-arrived visitor. Mr. Cleveland looked terrifically courteous and amiably arrogant. He greeted the Marquess with a smile at once gracious and grim, and looked something like Goliath, as you see the Philistine depicted in some old German painting, looking down upon the pigmy fighting ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... significance that this great library still lies open to the public as a part and a notable part of the palace of the chief prelate of the English Church. Even if Philistines abound in it the spirit and drift of the English Church have never been wholly Philistine. It has managed somehow to reflect and represent the varying phases of English life and English thought; it has developed more and more a certain original largeness and good-tempered breadth of view; amidst the hundred jarring ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... force of Philistine fatuity can no further go than it has gone in the 'laicization' of the home of Jeanne d'Arc, I ought to say that the actual keeper of the place seemed to me to be a decent sort of fellow, not wholly destitute ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... 'Comment,' that compendium of pedantic rules of conduct for the preservation of a defiant and exclusive esprit de corps, as opposed to the bourgeois classes, had its fantastic side, just as the most philistine peculiarities of the Germans have, if you probe them deeply enough. To me it represented the idea of emancipation from the yoke of school and family. The longing to become a student coincided unfortunately ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... for his own enjoyment of vice. This consideration especially applies to professional politicians. A Member of Parliament, who must cultivate an immaculately pure reputation, feels that he is also bound to record by his vote how anxious he is to suppress other people's immorality. Thus the philistine and the hypocrite join hands with the simple-minded idealist. Very few are left to point out that, however desirable it is to prevent immorality, that end can never be attained ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... heard her mother say, a few minutes later, "either some son of a Philistine has told that child something, or she has overheard ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... such a mother, Dolores' ideas—nay, worse her ideals—were essentially commonplace. Not that she had much opportunity of imbibing commonplace opinions from any outside source; she redeveloped them from within by a pure effort of atavism. She had reverted to lower types. She had thrown back to the Philistine. ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... few personal characteristics—not so much his 'works' as his 'ways.' I write as they come into my head; and to any Reader about to cry out against digression, let me add: I write thinking of Narcissus; for know all men, friend or Philistine, if you have yet to learn it, my Narcissus ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... Sharon Whipple, the Philistine, never quite knew whether pragmatism was approved or condemned by Schilsky, and once he asked the dark-faced young man what it meant. He was told that pragmatism was a method, and felt obliged to pretend that ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... for example, and to good reading aloud, and intelligible writing. His own education had been very limited; he knew no modern language but his own, and I believe he knew no Greek whatever, and only just enough Latin for a solicitor, which in those days was not very much; but if he was a Philistine in neglecting his own culture, he had not the real Philistine's contempt for culture in others and desired to have me well taught; yet there was nobody near at hand to continue my higher education properly, and I was likely, had we lived long together at Shaw, to become like the regular middle-class ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Joe." Moreover I have felt that all that you write serves to bring our people closer together. I know, of course, the ordinary talk is that an artist should be judged purely by his art; but I am rather a Philistine and like to feel that the art serves a good purpose. Your art is not only an art addition to our sum of national achievement, but it has also always been an addition to the forces that tell for decency, and above all for the ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... that David was only a boy, he said, "You are not able to go against this Philistine. You are only a boy, while he has ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... permitted to hold his royal levees. Thither all that was best and truest in the socially rebellions classes domiciled in London used to make its way; and there men calmly talked over the ultimate chances of social revolutions which would have made the hair of respectable Philistine Marylebone stand stiffly on end, had it only known the rank political heresies that were quietly hatching ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... believe each of our mothers' pantries contributed. Then a stock of grub was confiscated. The storeroom in the Phalansterie furnished Heinz beans, chutney, and a few others of the fifty-seven. John had run an ad in "The Philistine" for Heinz and taken good ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... see it, and shall be very sorrowful." Alexander took this brave Philistine city after a siege of two months, and behaved more cruelly there than was his wont. It was the turn of Jerusalem next; but the Lord had promised to "encamp about His House, because of him that passeth by;" and in answer to the prayers and sacrifices ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... weapons of Saul are the Philistine's prey! Who shall stand when the heart of the champion fails him; Who strive when the mighty his shield casts away, And yields up his post when a woman assails him? Alone and despairing thy brother remains At ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... the sun anew. He left the gates in the grass and dew. He went to a county-seat a-nigh. Found a harlot proud and high: Philistine that no man could tame— Delilah was her lady-name. Oh sorrow, Sorrow, She was too wise. She cut off his hair, She put ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay |
