"Philistine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and some beautiful pictures hanging there, including the Vandyck, you know, which Charles II. gave to old Sir Peter, your cavalier ancestor. But the gallery is almost a lumber-room, for the floor is too unsafe to walk upon. And down here, as you see, we are terribly Philistine." ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... as a dark cloud. In vain I tried to disperse it. Surely there was some way of combating this gigantic evil. Here indeed was the Philistine Giant of Evil. The people were indifferent. The laws were impotent. There was no public opinion on the subject. True, some of my journeys to different countries had resulted in the homecoming of some who had been falsely beguiled into the way of evil, ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... was only a boy, he said, "You are not able to go against this Philistine. You are only a boy, while he has fought ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... Howard and the man Howard—but both alike; two Samsons—the boy Samson and the man Samson—but both alike. This giant was no doubt the hero of the playground, and nothing could stand before his exhibitions of youthful prowess. At eighteen years of age he was betrothed to the daughter of a Philistine. Going down toward Timnath, a lion came out upon him, and, although this young giant was weaponless, he seized the monster by the long mane and shook him as a hungry hound shakes a March hare, and made his bones crack, and left him by ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... 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 of respect ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... occasionally. And I used to know the Galleries. (Nervously.) You mustn't think me only a Philistine with—a moustache. ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... only because they 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 Samson opened ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... avoid [pi] 3-1/8, and James Smith, Esq., of the Mersey Dock Board: and put hors de combat—which should have been cache[221]—by pebbles from a sling. If Goliath had crept into a snail-shell, David would have cracked the Philistine with his foot. There is something like modesty in the implication that the crack-shell pebble has not yet taken effect; it might have been thought that the slinger would by this time have ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... soberer mood and remembered that Gemma was going to Leghorn and the Padre to Rome. January, February, March—three long months to Easter! And if Gemma should fall under "Protestant" influences at home (in Arthur's vocabulary "Protestant" stood for "Philistine")———No, Gemma would never learn to flirt and simper and captivate tourists and bald-headed shipowners, like the other English girls in Leghorn; she was made of different stuff. But she might be very miserable; she was so young, so ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... 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 ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... know that if any of yours should prove a Goliah-like trouble, yet you may say with David, 'That God, who hath delivered me out of the paws of the lion and bear, will also deliver me out of the hands of this uncircumcised Philistine.'—Lastly, for those afflictions of the soul; consider that God intends that to be as a Sacred Temple for himself to dwell in, and will not allow any room there for such an inmate as grief; or allow that any sadness shall be his competitor. And, above all, ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... doing. While Goliath came again, and challenged them, and reproached them, that they had no man of valor among them that durst come down to fight him; and as David was talking with his brethren about the business for which his father had sent him, he heard the Philistine reproaching and abusing the army, and had indignation at it, and said to his brethren, "I am ready to fight a single combat with this adversary." Whereupon Eliab, his eldest brother, reproved him, and said that he spoke too rashly and improperly for one of his ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... 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, and we may all agree to use the same symbolism, and interpret it as we please. ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... misunderstands. Monsieur Keroulan is the Grand Disdainer. Like his bosom friend, Monsieur Mallarme, he cares little for the Philistine public—" ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the challenge of Goliath, 1 Samuel, ch. 17: "And he stood and cried to the armies of Israel;—Choose you a man for you, and let him come down to me. If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be your servants.—When Saul and all Israel heard the words of the Philistine, they ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Saxham"—this from Surgeon-Major Taggart—"in your place; and maybe I'm putting in six worrds for mysel' as well as half a dozen for the patient. For I have an auld bone to pyke wi' Sir Jedbury Fargoe, aboot a Regimental patient he slew for me, three years back, wi' his jawbone of a Philistine ass." ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Commandments? or to promise that ye'd never lie any more? It's one's duty to maintain one's dignity of character, and, John, I want ye to open yer mouth in defense of the rights of liberty on the occasion; and do yer duty, and bring down the Philistine with a pebble-stun, and 'twill be a glorious ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... great army of industry earn its first experience? Who first employs the untaught hand? Upon Ann 'Lisbeth, untrained in any craft, it was as if the workaday world turned its back, nettled at a philistine. ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... is looking up his patterns and making out his account," thought Abellino to himself; and meanwhile he began looking about him, wondering in which of the rooms this Philistine kept his little sugar-plum, and whether the girl had heard what he had just ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... I 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 ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... servants, as is narrated in chap. xvi., but that being sent by chance to the camp by his father on a message to his brothers, he was for the first time remarked by Saul on the occasion of his victory, over Goliath the Philistine, and was retained at ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... scrounched you, squeal 45 and squall— Cabbalists! Conjurers! great and small, Johva Mitzoveh Evoh[a]en and all! Had I never uttered your jaw-breaking words, I might now have been sloshing down Junket and Curds, Like a Devonshire Christian: 51 But now a Philistine! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... wanted to worship could ever take me seriously. I remember once being introduced to a poet whose stuff I knew by heart, almost every line of it, and when I blurted out some silly enthusiasm—sort of thing a well-meaning Philistine does say, don't you know?—he put the lid down on me with "Now, that's most interesting. I've often wondered if what I write appealed to one of your—er—interests, and ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hours without weariness. Her fellow-musicians declared that she was 'wonderful'; and Harvey, as he listened to this flow of excited talk, asked himself whether he had not, after all, judged Alma amiss. Perhaps he had been the mere dull Philistine, unable to recognise the born artist, and doing his paltry best to obstruct her path. Perhaps so; but he would look for the opinion of serious critics—if any such had ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... not like this view, being conscious that his poetry did not answer its demand. Not only in early but also in later poems, he pictured his critics stating it, and his picture is scornful enough. There is an entertaining sketch of Naddo, the Philistine critic, in the second book of Sordello; and the view I speak of is expressed by him among ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... The Philistine may, of course, object that to be absolutely perfect is impossible. Well, that is so: but then it is only the impossible things ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... next 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 Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... so, doctor!" replied the dying uncircumcised Philistine. But he added at whiles, his breathlessness being grievous, and often broken by a sore hiccup, "I am, however, no saint, as you know, doctor; so I wish you to put in a word for me, doctor; for you know ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... own part I kept with Thomas and "Tige," whose little wagon for racing we had brought down in one of the ox-carts. We avoided the sharpers, for the good reason that we had very little money in our pockets. We were cheated but once, by a youthful Philistine who had "tumblers to break," suspended in ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... turned the limelight full upon him and excited comment and discussion all over the country. But the fuglemen of his caste whose praise had brought him to the front in England were almost unrepresented in the States, and never bold enough to be partisans. Oscar faced the American Philistine public without his accustomed claque, and under these circumstances a half-success was evidence of considerable power. His subjects were "The English Renaissance" and ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... extinguished; most of the Cromwellians had gone over to the enemy, or were hastening to surrender. Blind Milton alone remained, the Samson Agonistes, On him, in the absence of others, the eyes of the Philistine mob, the worshippers of Dagon, had been turned from time to time of late as the Hebrew that could make them most efficient sport; and now it was as if they had all met, by common consent, to be amused by this single Hebrew's ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... 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 ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... another and an Undomestic Daughter, who aspires to be in all things unlike the usual run of common or domestic daughters. From an early age she will have been noted in the family circle for romantic tendencies, which are a mockery to her Philistine brothers, and a reproach to her commonplace sisters. She will have elevated her father to a lofty pinnacle of imaginative and immaculate excellence, from which a tendency to shortness of temper in matters of domestic finance resulting in petty squabbles with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... of the most interesting cities of the world, a place that thousands and thousands of people would travel any distance to investigate, and in forty-eight hours you are tired of it. You have no romance in your nature, no respect for the past; you are a Goth and a Philistine." ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... question of subjects, local colour—that kind of thing. I gravely advise people, if they possibly can, to write of the wealthy middle class; that's the popular subject, you know. Lords and ladies are all very well, but the real thing to take is a story about people who have no titles, but live in good Philistine style. I urge study of horsey matters especially; that's very important. You must be well up, too, in military grades, know about Sandhurst, and so on. Boating is an important topic. You see? Oh, I shall make a great thing of this. I shall teach my wife carefully, and then let her advertise ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... ugly and Philistine. Well, I dont live in it. I find modern houses ugly. I dont live in them: I have a palace on the grand canal. I find modern clothes prosaic. I dont wear them, except, of course, in the street. My ears are offended by the Cockney twang: ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... 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, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... 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 polling-booth ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... from their neighbours the Hebrews we have ample records in the Scriptures, but no illustrations. It is, however, most probable that the dance with them had the traditional character of the nations around them or who had held them captive, and the Philistine dance (fig. 6) may have been of the same kind as that around the golden calf (Apis) of the desert (Exodus ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... that man. The sort of person I've no use for, you know. So horribly on the spot; such sharp, unsoftened manners. All the terrible bright braininess of the Yankee combined with the obstreperous energy of the Philistine Briton. His mother is a young American, about to be married for the third time. The sort of exciting career one would expect from a parent of the delightful Jim. I cannot imagine why Lord Evelyn, who is a person of refinement, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... Raby's words 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 me an ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... seem, Robespierre's credit with this grim assembly was due to his truly Philistine respectability and to his literary faculty. He figured as the philosopher and bookman of the party: the most iconoclastic politicians are usually willing to respect the scholar, provided they are sure of his being on their side. Robespierre had from the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... deliberately mystifies them. I cannot imagine what 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, says, ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... a trio of Dutch dolls would have looked more intellectual. They were plainly and comfortably dressed; the drawing-room was plainly and comfortably furnished; and both house and inmates looked thoroughly respectable and eminently dull. What such a hawk as Mrs. Vrain was doing in this Philistine dove-cote, Lucian could not conjecture; but he admired her tact in making friends with a family whose heavy gentility assisted to ballast her somewhat light reputation; while the three of their brains in unison could not comprehend her tricks, ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... it did not do so. This tour of the fronts has made me very sad and weary with a succession of ruins. I can bear no more ruins unless they are the ruins of Dusseldorf, Cologne, Berlin, or suchlike modern German city. Anxious as I am to be a systematic Philistine, to express my preference for Marinetti over the Florentine British and generally to antagonise aesthetic prigs, I rejoiced over that sunlit land as one might rejoice over a child ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... David took Smooth pebbles from the brook: Out between the lines he went To that one-sided tournament, A shepherd boy who stood out fine And young to fight a Philistine Clad all in brazen mail. He swears That he's killed lions, he's killed bears, And those that scorn the God of Zion Shall perish so like bear or lion. But ... the historian of that fight Had not the heart ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... 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
... of rebellion inspired him with an intense interest in German literature and German politics, as representing the ultra-liberal tendencies of the day. Shelley, too, the rejected of Oxford, whose name was scarcely to be mentioned to the British Philistine of the moment, was one of Beddoes' idols, and he joined with two other gentlemen in the expense of printing the first edition of the poet's posthumous works in 1824, afterward withdrawn by Mrs. Shelley. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... representatives of both came together there was inevitably an explosion either on the platform or through the press. It could not have been otherwise. In Palestine two opposing civilizations came into collision,—one the Hebrew and the other the Philistine,—and the Philistine went down. In Holland the Dutchmen, working towards democracy, collided with the Spaniards, working towards autocracy, and the Spaniard went down. In England, Hampden and Pym came into collision with Charles the First and Archbishop Laud. ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... wholly to his musical precocity. It was not such a precocity as that of Mozart, who was playing minuets at the age of four, and writing concertos when he was five; but just on that account it is all the more credible. One's sympathies are with the frank Philistine who pooh-poohs the tales told of baby composers, and hints that they must have been a trial to their friends. Precocious they no doubt were; but precocity often evaporates before it can become genius, leaving a sediment of disappointed hopes and vain ambitions. In literature, as Mr Andrew ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... this brotherly improved way: there surely is one of the most legitimate joys of existence. Friend Ripley took the trouble to send me this Review, in which I detected an Article of his own; there came also some Discourses of his much to be approved of; a Newspaper passage-of-fence with a Philistine of yours; and a set of Essays on Progress-of-the-species and such like by a man whom I grieved to see confusing himself with that. Progress of the species is a thing I can get no good of at all. These Books, which Miss Martineau has borrowed ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... jingle of a few rhymes and a few similes, and a little second-hand supernaturalism, more "accepted" than felt, and that derived from far foreign sources, does not give the white man what the Indian feels. Joe, or Noel, or Sabattis may seem to the American Philistine to be a ragged, miserable, ignorant Indian; but to the scholar he is by far the Philistine's superior in that which life is best worth ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... 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 of whom everyone ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... still shows traces of the image breakers of Zwingli's time, and yet the crumbling north portal remains beautiful, even in decay. As for the interior, it has an exceedingly bare and stript appearance; for, altho' there is good, solid stonework in the walls, the whole has been washed a foolish, Philistine white. The Romanesque of the architectural is said to be of particular interest to connoisseurs, and the queer archaic capitals must certainly attract the notice even of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... three white oaks farther to the west form a clump which casts a grateful shade when the sun begins to decline. The seven acres of forest to the east is left severely alone, save where the carriage drive winds through it, and Polly watches so closely that the foot of the Philistine rarely crushes her wild flowers. Its sacredness recalls the schoolgirl's definition of a virgin forest: "One in which the hand of man has never dared to put his foot into it." Polly wanders in this grove for hours; ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... perhaps lent himself most to Punch's satire. Ruskin had not yet arisen to champion the mighty painter's ill-appreciated art; and Turner's colour-dreams, in which "form" was often to a great extent ignored, were not more tempting to the satirical Philistine than those extraordinary quotations from his formless epic, called "The Fallacies of Hope," extracts from which he loved to append to his pictures' titles. Nothing could be better in the way of satire than the manner in which ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... subjects and most characteristic of the entire activity of Plechanoff on the eve of revolution and during the revolutionary period in Russia. Indeed, in the years 1908 to 1917 Plechanoff showed himself to be half doctrinaire and half philistine, walking, politically, in ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... 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
... Kipling's verse. He loves to take the raw recruit or the boyish, self-conscious, awkward subaltern, and show how he may become an efficient man, happy in the happiness that accompanies success. It is a Philistine goal, but one that has the advantage of being attainable. The reach of this particular poet seldom exceeds his grasp. And although thus far in his career—he is only fifty-two, and we may hope as well as remember—his best poetry belongs to the nineteenth ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... a wedding reception, and among the serious presents some grinning Philistine drew his attention to an uncouth club—"a wife-beater" he called it. The flippancy had jarred upon John terribly: this intrusive reminder of the customs of the slums. It grated like Billingsgate in a boudoir. Now that savage weapon recurred to ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... of the East. Our rugs and carpets of twenty years ago, with their solemn depressing truths, their inane worship of Nature, their sordid reproductions of visible objects, have become, even to the Philistine, a source of laughter. A cultured Mahomedan once remarked to us, "You Christians are so occupied in misinterpreting the fourth commandment that you have never thought of making an artistic application of the second." He was perfectly right, and the whole truth of the matter is this: The ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... enlightenment and education and spirit which make for splendid poetry. The learning of the day was in no wise scientific in the narrower modern sense. It was not of the material and utilitarian, still less of the sordid, kind. The age was the least Philistine of all epochs of English history. We were not yet a nation of shopkeepers. It is inevitable that nowadays an immense proportion of our study and reading should run to social and economic questions, to applied sciences, to the investigation of germs and gases, political ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... himself and he doesn't know what to believe in. When I attempt to tell him (because if I were he I know very well what I should believe in) he calls me a pampered bigot. I believe he seriously thinks me an awful Philistine; he says I don't understand my time. I understand it certainly better than he, who can neither abolish himself as a nuisance nor maintain himself as ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... 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 a stone between ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... 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 to perceive new horizons. ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... the 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 at ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... 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, ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... propose treating of here; my intention rather being to dot down a 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, ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... cried unto the armies of Israel, and said unto them, Why are ye come out to set your battle in array? am not I a Philistine, and ye servants to Saul? choose you a man for you, and let him ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... came, squinted through the fingers, and praised and dispraised, after its wont. The Symbolists sneered and told Peter to his teeth he was a Philistine; they said you can't boot-lick Nature: you've got to bully her, demand her soul, make her give you her Sign! Quieter men came and studied Emma Campbell and her cat, and clapped Peter on the back; the more exuberant Latins kissed him, noisy, hearty, hairy kisses ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... wanted for Aniela's face. Besides, in order to get Lembach we should have to go out of our way, and Angeli is on the way,—a circumstance one is ashamed to confess, not wanting to be regarded as a Philistine. But in this case I wanted to save time. "The dead ride quick," as the poet says; but lovers ride quicker still. Besides I should have chosen Angeli in any case, and finally decided that he should paint Aniela's ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... you were to hear Chopin. I prescribe him for you. He is the Greekiest of the Greeks. THERE was a nation where all the people were artists, where everybody was an intellectual aristocrat, where the Philistine was as unknown, as extinct, as the dodo. Chopin might have written his music ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... understand. Here and there he catches a Jewish word, but most of their talk is entirely unintelligible to him. On inquiring into the reason of this, he is told that these children have Jewish fathers but Philistine mothers, and that they are being brought up to talk the language and learn the religion of their heathen parent. They are making for themselves a strange dialect, a mixture of the two languages they have spoken; it ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... Elzevirs preserve their ancient proportions, only tall Elzevirs are worth collecting. Dr. Lemuel Gulliver remarks that the King of Lilliput was taller than any of his court by almost the breadth of a nail, and that his altitude filled the minds of all with awe. Well, the Philistine may think a few millimetres, more or less, in the height of an Elzevir are of little importance. When he comes to sell, he will discover the difference. An uncut, or almost uncut, copy of a good Elzevir may be worth fifty or sixty pounds or more; an ordinary copy may ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... wrote any tracts," said Augusta, "except to show why we separated from you, but you urged on the Government against us. You likened me to a bastard and to Goliath the Philistine. Your petition read as if it had been ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... "A Philistine is a person who sees everything in its wrong proportions," she answered. "He mistakes the essential for the unessential, and vice versa. He can never recognize the beauty in art or nature, because he can never get any further than the unpleasant details. ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... fair for an excellent father of Philistines?—Victor had a nip of spite at the thought of Dudley's dragging him bodily to be the grandfather. Poor Fredi, too!—necessarily the mother: condemned by her hard fate to feel proud of Philistine babies! Though women soon get reconciled to it! Or do they? They did once. What if his Fredi turned out one of the modern young women, who have drunk of ideas? He caught himself speculating on that, as on a danger. The alliance with Dudley really ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a Philistine spick and span, He was a bold Bohemian. She had the mode, and the last at that; He had a cape and a brigand hat. She was so riant and chic and trim; He was so shaggy, unkempt and grim. On the rue de la Paix she was wont to shine; The rue de la Gaite was more his line. She doted ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... conditions which it needs a fine eye to distinguish from those of easy-going bourgeois mediocrity. Their large and catholic humanity exempted them from much that makes for bold and sensational outline in the story of a career. Their poetic home was built upon all the philistine virtues. Mrs Jameson laughed at their "miraculous prudence and economy"; and Mrs Browning herself laughed, a little, at her husband's punctilious rigour in paying his debts,—his "horror of owing five shillings for five days"; Browning, a born virtuoso in whatever he undertook, abhorring a neglected ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... 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 ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... subject upon which she is evidently in entire and lamentable ignorance, and to protest against her aspersions upon the artistic studies of this and kindred societies. He begs to state that true aesthetes are not eccentric (they leave that to lady professors and her Philistine followers); that to dress becomingly is one of the principal objects of life, and that true greatness is achieved as much by the study of the art of dress as by any other noble pursuit or graceful accomplishment. Are not Horatio Postlethwaite, Leonara Saffronia Gillan, Vandyke Smithson ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... 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 ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... the very word sounded appallingly commonplace. How could anyone of his complex temperament endure the idea of a philistine menage? It was impossible. "And yet I love her," he thought. "Why should I put her from me, and go? Why should I destroy my own happiness? It's ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... define exactly what a Roman means by the word "serious." In some measure it is the opposite of gay, and especially of what is young and unsettled. The German use of the word Philistine expresses it very nearly. A certain sober, straitlaced way of looking at life, which was considered to represent morality in Rome fifty years ago; a kind of melancholy superiority over all sorts of amusements, joined with a considerable asceticism and the most rigid economy in the household—that ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... 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 be ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... of Bohemians in his gaudy dressing-gown and velvet smoking-cap. His hair is longer than ever, and he has become aesthetic in his tastes. There was broken china enough to stock a small shop. I am afraid I am rather too much a Philistine for their notions. I got some good downright stares and shrugs over my tough John ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 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 ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... be traced back a thousand years before Christ: the idea is neither Christian, Jewish, Philistine nor Buddhist. Every people of which we know have had their hermits ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... word "Philistine" is borrowed from the vernacular of student-life, and, in its widest and most popular sense, it signifies the reverse of a son of the Muses, of an artist, and of the genuine man of culture. The Philistine ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... such a mountain opens his giant eyes, it may be that he sees somewhat more than we dwarfs, who with our weak eyes climb over him. Many indeed assert that the Blocksberg is very Philistian, and Claudius once sang "The Blocksberg is the lengthy Sir Philistine;" but that was an error. On account of his bald head, which he occasionally covers with a cloud-cap, the Blocksberg has indeed a somewhat Philistian aspect, but this with him, as with many other great Germans, is the result of pure irony; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... lives as the Petit Trianon. The programme must be classic enough to satisfy the critic; yet tuneful enough not to bore the amateur, and accordingly it roamed from Brahms to Molloy, and included that first Slavonic Dance of Dvorak which sets the pulses of Pagan and Philistine alike to tingling with a barbarous joy in the mere consciousness of living. Thayer alone had refused to accept dictation at the hands ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... fell sharply and Markham and the Countess turned toward the Philistine who stood with her head cocked on one side, her arms a-kimbo. Markham's eyes peered forward somberly for a moment and he spoke ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest, peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... 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 ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... painted window panes. If one looks from the square into the church, Dusk and dimness are his gains— Sir Philistine is left in the lurch! The sight, so seen, may well enrage him, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... impudent and half flinching, he held forward his left hand 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 ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... all that band of protesting spirits who had been so well known in artistic Boston as the Pagans, married Edith Caldwell, there had been in his mind a purpose, secret but well defined, to turn to his own account his wife's connection with the Philistine art patrons of the town. Miss Caldwell was a niece of Peter Calvin, a wealthy and well-meaning man against whom but two grave charges could be made,—that he supposed the growth of art in this country to depend largely upon his patronage, and that he could never be persuaded not to take ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... made it worse was the thought that for the least thing, by a mere hair's breadth, he might have taken this affair sentimentally. But clearly Anthony was no diplomatist. His brother-in- law must have appeared to him, to use the language of shore people, a perfect philistine with a heart like a flint. What Fyne precisely meant by "wrangling" I don't know, but I had no doubt that these two had "wrangled" to a profoundly disturbing extent. How much the other was affected I could not even imagine; but the man before ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... her poems with serious thoughts of publication, but with strictest secrecy. No one but her parents and Roderick Vawdrey had been told of these poetic flights. The book would be given to the world under a nom de plume. Lady Mabel was not so much a Philistine as to suppose that writing good poetry could be a disgrace to a duke's daughter; but she felt that the house of Ashbourne would be seriously compromised were the critics to find her guilty of writing doggerel; and critics are apt to deal harshly with the titled ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... been 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' ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... the grievances of his life was the necessity under which he found himself of protecting his treasure from the Philistine abuse and contempt of his wife. When they moved into the flat, Mrs. Worthington, during her husband's absence, had ranged them all, systematically enough, on the top shelf of the kitchen closet to "get them out of the way." But at this ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... irreconcilable, and with perfect frankness they have shown their contempt for each other. About the kindest criticism that the socialist makes of the anarchist is that he is a child, while the anarchist is convinced that the socialist is a Philistine and an inbred conservative who, should he ever get power, would immediately hang the anarchists.[J] They are traditional enemies, who seem utterly incapable of understanding each other. Intellectually, they fail to grasp the meaning of each other's philosophy. It is but rare that a socialist, no ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... "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 out ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... reconnaissance of our lines. It was a beautiful thing, white and birdlike. But as its occupants were probably taking photographs of our most secret fastnesses, artistic appreciation was dimmed by righteous wrath—wrath which turned to profound gratification when a philistine British plane appeared in the blue and engaged the glittering stranger in battle. There was some very pretty aerial manoeuvring, right over our heads, as the combatants swooped and circled for position. We could hear their machine-guns pattering away; and the volume of sound was increased ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... Mr. Fennell, mistaking his aversion for things not in keeping with his artistic ideals, came to the conclusion that he was only on a voyage of destruction when he merely was proving how little of the philistine there was in his nature by removing from his home such articles as did not harmonize with his conception of the beautiful. The fact that the whole affair happened so hastily only goes to prove that Mr. Fennell has ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... moreover, he was "not careful" to incur a charge of indifference to the fine arts in general. Among the "crowd" which found their place in his complex personality, there was "the barbarian," and there was "the philistine," and there was, too, the humourist who took a subtle pleasure in proclaiming himself "a plain man," puzzled by subtleties, and unable to catch the drift of spirits ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... prop and ornament of Coney, that isle of the blest, whose sands he models into gracious forms and noble sentiments, in anticipation of the casual dime or the munificent quarter, wherewith, if you have low, Philistine tastes or a kind heart, you have perhaps aforetime rewarded him. In the off-season the thwarted passion of color possesses him; and upon the flagstones before Thornsen's Elite Restaurant, which constitutes his canvas, he will limn you a full-rigged ship in ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... accomplishment of the ancients had not gone from us and that the moderns might write as the ancients by merely looking at the clouds and the sea. Dr. Moehrlein was an upholder of the kommers. But his wife, though German-born, behaved like a very Philistine and objected to his constant and unwavering attendance upon these occasions of intellectual uplift. For as the doctor added to the knowledge of the world, he added to his weight. He had identified Brahma with ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... conjuring up some vague representation of the scenes that were once enacted in these places; the more imaginative feel the very air vibrating with the unseen spirits of men and women famous in the world's history. He must be indeed a Philistine or a dullard who cannot contrive to arouse a passing exaltation at the thought of treading in the footsteps of Cicero and the Caesars in Rome, of Pericles and Socrates in Athens, for the very soil ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine—an expression at first peculiar to the German language, a kind of slang term at the Universities, afterwards used, by analogy, in a higher sense, though still in its original meaning, as denoting one who is not a Son of the Muses. A philistine is and remains [Greek: amousos anaer]. I should prefer to take a higher point of view, and apply the term philistine to people who are always seriously occupied with realities which are no realities; but as such a definition would be a transcendental ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... "natural superiors," and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless and indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... to face, like David and the Philistine. Look at us as long as you may; for this is all you shall see of the combat. According to my thinking, the hospital teaches a better lesson than the battle-field. I will tell you about my black eye, and my swollen lip, if you will; but not a word ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... up to Him are likely 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... mountain, and it may be a question whether his religion be the cause or the effect of a certain spirit, vivid and yet strangely negative, which dwells in such deserts. Walking among the olives of Gaza or looking on the Philistine plain, such travellers may well feel that they are treading on cold volcanoes, as empty as the mountains of the moon. But the mountain of Mahomet is not yet an ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... next evening saw us in the eminently Philistine suburban street where was the little house of conventional exterior that sheltered the high dreams of "the Irish Emerson." Once entered, his embodied visions attract you from all four walls of the study. Piles of them in corners make you wonder ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... was young David mocked the Philistine. It was young David laughed beside the river. There came his mother—his and yours and mine— With five smooth stones, and dropped them ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... was "Paradise Lost" to the lewd revellers who would have profaned his aristocratic isolation with howlings and brutalities and philistine uproar! Milton despised "priests and kings" from the heights of a pride loftier than their own—and he did not love the vulgar mob much better. In Paradise Lost he can "feel himself" into the sublime tyranny of God, as well as into the ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... in 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] it is perhaps ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... this dance among the acres of cooked food. Whatever they leaped over, whatever they called for, became theirs. To see mediaeval Dante thus demean himself struck a kind of a chill of incongruity into our Philistine souls; but even in a great part of the Samoan concourse, these antique and (I understand) quite local manners awoke laughter. One of my biscuit tins and a live calf were among the spoils he claimed, but the large majority of the cooked food (having ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 more abundant life in the future, the young writer felt the close confinement ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... with objective fidelity to nature; and the teacher that represses or criticizes this first point of genius, or who can not pardon the grave faults of technique inevitable at this age when ambition ought to be too great for power, is not an educator but a repressor, a pedagogic Philistine committing, like so many of his calling in other fields, the unpardonable sin against budding promise, always at this age so easily blighted. Just as the child of six or seven should be encouraged in his strong instinct to draw the most ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Island was boisterous. He loved to read that play as well as to see it performed. The glimpses of Ireland and the portraits of Irish character enchanted him. Broadbent—typifying the self-complacency of the well-meaning but Philistine Victorian who had solved to his own satisfaction all mysteries in earth and heaven—he regarded as a masterpiece of creative art. For Kipling his admiration was qualified; but he loved "M'Andrews' ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... 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
... 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 at ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... would not have done so if he had remained as quiet as the other Israelites. David was one of those who could not be easy so long as the enemies of his country were in the ascendant. To see a Philistine strutting about, defying the armies of the living God, was more than he could bear. Is not this the spirit which should animate Christians to-day? It is not one GOLIATH merely, there are many. DRUNKENNESS, PROFANITY, SUPERSTITION, INFIDELITY, and a host of others ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... will say that is most mean and trivial stuff, the vulgar English nature in full force; just such food as the Philistine would naturally provide for his young. He will say he can see the boy fed upon it growing up to be like his father, to be all for business, to despise culture, to go through his dull days, and to die without having ever lived. That may be so; but now take the ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... to obtain an interpreter. His mission was a failure and Venice, who in the person of her doge did her best to show either her ignorance of the great poet who did her the honour of crossing her Piazza or of her philistine contempt of him, lives in the Divine Comedy only as ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... mother say, a few minutes later, "either some son of a Philistine has told that child something, or she ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... my way into local society. The Jimsons were a 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 ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... 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 say ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... deserve our admiration, as much as did the courage of King Albert and his nation in opposing the faithless invasion of Belgium by the Germans aiming at France. There was, however, a difference. Necoh was not invading Judah, but crossing Philistine territory and a Galilee which had long ceased to be Israel's. Some suppose that since the Assyrian hold upon Palestine relaxed, Josiah had gradually occupied all Samaria. If this be so, was he now stirred by a gallant sense of duty to assert Israel's ancient claim to Galilee as well? We ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... streets of Hastings town— Slowly thread them—when behold, French canary-merchant old 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 ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... ever know. It belongs not to the material plane of existence but to the plane of eternal reality. This larger self is in all probability a perfect and eternal spiritual being integral to the being of God. His surface self, his Philistine self, is the incarnation of some portion of that true eternal self which is one with God. The dividing line between the surface self and the other self is not the definite demarcation it appears to be. To the higher self it does not exist. To us it must seem that to all intents and purposes the ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... Longshaw under safe-conduct, and that there it was told him by one of the loose-tongued and grudging kind, as I deem, that Sir Godrick of Longshaw had gotten to him these latter days a new captain, a man very young, and as it were a David to look on in the days before he slew the Philistine. Furthermore, said this grudger, that though the said youth was a tall lad of his inches, and strong and well-knit, he was all untried, and yet was he shoving aside older and well-proven men in ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... 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 ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... is not easy to define exactly what is meant in Italian by a "serious" man. The word does not exactly translate the French equivalent, still less the English one. It means something in the nature of a Philistine with a little admixture of Ciceronism—pass the word—and a dash of Cato Censor to sour the whole—a delight to school-masterly spirits, a terror to lively damsels, the laughing-stock of the worldly wise and only ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... itself was rather more interesting that year than had been the entirely Philistine Princeton of two years before. Things had livened surprisingly, though at the sacrifice of much of the spontaneous charm of freshman year. In the old Princeton they would never have discovered Tanaduke Wylie. Tanaduke was a sophomore, with tremendous ears and a way of saying, "The ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... ideal can be attained, and that is to 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... "Canterbury Tales" in his best days. Troubled times we know to have been in store for him. The reverse in his fortunes may perhaps fail to call forth in us the sympathy which we feel for Milton in his old age doing battle against a Philistine reaction, or for Spenser overwhelmed with calamities at the end of a life full of bitter disappointment. But at least we may look upon it with the respectful pity which we entertain for Ben Jonson groaning in the midst of his ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... David's pebble it may do its work; but in a fencing match David might have found it harder to maintain his ground. And his overthrow would not have touched the truth of his cause, nor perhaps his own faith—yet the Philistine would have triumphed." ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... body. In the mythology, no god falls in love with Minerva. A mannish woman only attracts a feminine man. A woman's power lies in her petticoats, as Samson's strength lay in his hair. Cut them off, and you leave her at the mercy of every brutal Philistine, who now dares not be rude to her because she is sacred. Do you not see that, instead of gaining something, you will lose all?—sink into fifth-rate mannikins, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... into wild disorder, as he would never have done had not all his childish remembrances of them been embittered by the association of restraint and privation. He actually seemed to hate any appearance of luxury or taste or order,—he was a perfect Philistine. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... cover the rooms with carpets?" exclaimed Antonia. "I never heard of anything so Philistine. Oak parquetry, with rugs that slip about, is the only thing admissible. Better bare boards ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... ask me to join in those things," she said, pleasantly enough. "The sacred fire has not descended on me. They say that I regard their performances as mere childish amusement; but I don't really; it isn't for a Philistine like myself to express disdain about anything. But then, you see, if I were to try to join in with my clever sisters, and perhaps when they were most in earnest, I might laugh; and enthusiasts couldn't be expected to like ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... not only his success in life, but his physical prowess. By God's help he slays the lion and the bear. By God's help he has nerve to kill the Philistine giant. By God's help he is so strong that his arms can break even a bow of steel. It is God who makes his feet like hart's feet, and enables him to leap over the walls of the ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... said it was the best readin' the' was, an' I said it was too dry. He read me about a feller in it named Samson, who was full o' jokes an' the strongest man ever was, I reckon, before he let that Philistine woman loco him, an' he read about another feller, just a mite of a boy, who killed a giant with a slingshot in front of an army which had made fun of him an' was all ready to give in to the giant, an' he read me some poems about mountains; an' I had to give in that the Bible was ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... 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] ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... Amorite "z" or "s" seems sometimes to represent the Hebrew "sh," this name might be compared with the Philistine "Achish." ...
— Egyptian Literature
... the letters.—Daughter, do you hear? Entertain Lodowick, the governor's son, With all the courtesy you can afford, Provided that you keep your maidenhead: Use him as if he were a Philistine; Dissemble, swear, protest, vow love to him: [83] He is not of the seed of Abraham.— [Aside to her.] I am a little busy, sir; pray, pardon me.— Abigail, bid him welcome for ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... for the inexperienced youth?" But when sovereign grace was coming to bless a region in the way that would redound most to the glory of the Lord, can we conceive a wiser plan than to use the sling of David in bringing down the Philistine? If, however, there be some whose prejudice is from the root of envy, let such hear the remonstrance of Richard Baxter to the jealous ministers of his day. "What! malign Christ in gifts for which He should have the glory, and ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... Balliol library; chrome-lithographic reproductions of Saints and Madonnas by Old Masters hung above. The Philistine School of Art was represented by a Zoological hearthrug; three Windsor chairs offered accommodation to the visitor; a table of the kitchen pattern was covered by a square of green baize; and a slippery hair-cloth ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... amazement, and his cheeks burned with shame. What were the people doing to allow this boasting heathen Philistine to defy the armies of the living God? Eagerly he turned to the men around him and began to ask them what it meant. The soldiers answered him shortly. No, there was no one who dared to go forth and fight Goliath. The king had promised great rewards ...
— David the Shepherd Boy • Amy Steedman
... was interesting and exciting. We dealt in millions as if they were checkers. These practical men have a better grip on life than the cynics and dreamers like you. You call them plebeian and bourgeois and Philistine and limited—all the bad names in your select vocabulary. But they know how to feel in the good, old, common-sense way. You've lost that. I like plebeian earnestness and push. I like success at something, ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... otherwise so happy meeting, there talked one 'Philistine'; who even now, to the general weariness, was dominantly pouring-forth Philistinism (Philistriositaeten); little witting what hero was here entering to demolish him! We omit the series of Socratic, or rather Diogenic utterances, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Ruskin has done in a prosaic, commercial, and Philistine age, in teaching the world to love and study the Beautiful, in opening to it the hidden mysteries and delights of art, and in inciting the passion for taking pleasure in and even possessing embodiments of it, that age owes to the great prose-poet and enthusiastic author of "Modern Painters." ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord |
