"Philistine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... amusing combination of 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 the wake ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... Some doubts must darken o'er the world below, Though all the Platos of the nursery trail Their "clouds of glory" at the go-cart's tail? Oh might these couplets their attention claim That gain their author the Philistine's name (A stubborn race, that, spurning foreign law, Was much ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... or rather, what did he stand for, and inflict upon us, to-day? Here there is some confusion. According to one set of critics he is not so much a hater of the arts as indifferent to their charms, not so much a Milton scornful of easy beauty, as a Philistine, deaf and blind to the aesthetic. But these writers have apparently confounded Great-great-grandfather Puritan with Grandpa Victorian, the Victorian that Matthew Arnold scolded and Shaw made fun of. He is a type as different from the real Puritan as the slum dweller from the primitive barbarian. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... 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. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... come out to set your battles in array? Am not I a Philistine and ye servants to Saul? Choose you a man for you and let him come down to me. If he be able to fight with me and kill me, then will we be your servants, but if I prevail against him, then shall ye be our servants and serve us!" And he added in a mighty voice that rang ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... said about the Emperor as man. The Prince's most noteworthy statement was made in the Reichstag in 1903, when, in answer to Leader-of-the-Opposition Bebel, the Prince said, "One thing at least, the Emperor is no Philistine," and proceeded to explain, rather negatively and disappointingly, that the Emperor possesses what the Greeks call megalopsychia—a great soul. One knows but too well the English Philistine, that stolid, solid, self-sufficient bulwark of the British ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... 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 fill, Saw the cedars ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... long-drawn antitheses of which Macaulay was so great a master. How he would himself have revelled in the paradox—"that books which were household words with every cow-boy in Nevada, and every Baboo in Bengal, were condemned by men of culture as the work of a Philistine and a mannerist"; "how ballads which were the delight of every child were ridiculed by critics as rhetorical jingles that would hardly win a prize in a public school"; "how the most famous of all modern reviewers scarcely gave us ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Gosse was chosen to officiate as high pontiff at the Horsham celebration. Mr. Gosse is a young man with a promising past—to borrow a witticism from Heine. In the old Examiner days he hung about the army of revolt. Since then he has become a bit of a Philistine, though he still affects a superior air, and retains a pretty way of turning a sentence. The selection of such a man to pronounce the eulogy on Shelley was in keeping with the whole proceedings at Horsham, where everybody was lauding a "bogus Shelley," as Mr. Shaw remarked at the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... himself called upon to make common cause against the Philistine, put in a tentative word ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... discipline, cleanliness, hard work, and danger is the ever-present moral in Mr. 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 ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... they never 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 that, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... frank, good fellow, and aiming at popularity. He had become one of the club. He played at whist, and only smiled, after his sort, when his partner revoked, and he lost like a gentleman. His talk was brisk, and hard, and caustic—that of a Philistine who had seen the world and knew it. He had the Peerage by rote, and knew something out-of-the-way, amusing or damnable about every person of note you could name; and his shrewd gossip had a bouquet its own, and a fine cynical flavour, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... where the turf fires of many travelers had been. The merchants from the Orient entering Egypt through the great wall of Rameses II, across the eastern isthmus, passed this way going to Memphis. Here Philistine, Damascene, Ninevite and Babylonian had halted; here Egyptian, Bedouin, Arabian and the dweller of the desert had paused. The earth about the well was always damp, and the top-most row of the curb was worn smooth in hollows. This, therefore, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... 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
... procession of undergraduates who possessed in their young present so much that he had left behind or had never had at all, and who were walking, potentially, toward a promising future in which he could take no share. Most of these had been commonplace young fellows enough—noisy, philistine, glaringly cursory and inconsiderate toward their elders; but a few of them—one now and then, at long intervals—he would have enjoyed knowing, and knowing intimately. On these infrequent occasions would come a union of frankness, comeliness and elan, and the rudiments of good manners. ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... is said God never allows man to be tempted beyond his powers of resistance. I dare not question the word of the Most High, but in the hour of temptation I feel like an infant contending with the Philistine giant. But, oh! the joy, the rapture when the paroxysm is past,—when light dawns on the darkness, when warmth comes meltingly over the ice and snow, when reason resumes its sway, and love its ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... once more face 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
... 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 ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... back to their trade; no one ventured to point out that a man might be a good cabinet-maker although he knew the Integral Calculus. If one timidly asked what good purpose was gained by making so many scholars, that man was called Philistine, first; obstructive, next; and other stronger names afterward. And yet no one ventured to point out that all the Professions—and not science only, through the Universities—might ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... cutlery, 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 taken ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... 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 ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... person, this 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 so much ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... reservations, which Amedee reproached himself with, being himself an impure and contemptible Philistine, the poet was delighted with his new friends and the unknown world opening before him. In this Bohemian corner, where one got intoxicated with wild excesses and paradoxes, recklessness and gayety reigned. The sovereign charm ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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 his sword and slew him. Israel thus gained the victory ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... to 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 enjoying ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... worship of vulgar success, their entire preoccupation with the gross materialistic side of life, and their ridiculous estimate of themselves and their importance, the Jews of Jerusalem in Christ's day were the exact counterpart of the British Philistine of our own. Christ mocked at the 'whited sepulchre' of respectability, and fixed that phrase for ever. He treated worldly success as a thing absolutely to be despised. He saw nothing in it at all. ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... that seemed to have been imprisoned in the farther end, and, in its futile efforts to escape, shifted perpetually into strange, fantastic figures. Now, the massive form of the Israelitish giant appeared lying at the feet of the Philistine damsel; anon, the kingly shoulders of the swift-footed Achilles towered helplessly above the heads of the island girls. The noble head of Marcus Antoninus bowed in disgraceful homage before his wife; the gaunt figure of the stern Florentine trembled at the footsteps of the light ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... subsequent publisher, for many years, of the Neue Zeitschrift.] is only known to me by name, as an active and not too moderately Philistine publisher. Personally I have never met him, and therefore I cannot give a decided opinion as to his fitness and suitability for the post of publisher of the Neue Zeitschrift—yet, on the grounds you give me, it seems quite right. Nothing ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... 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 this enlightened him. He felt ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... a member of the "Culture-Seeking Club," but actually and at heart I am a Philistine out and out. This pernicious high-art and culture-seeking fever has never caught my practical soul in its relentless grasp. I love not the ways of the social aesthete. Gleams and shadows do not thrill me; sunflowers and daisies ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... 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 into collision without my being ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... am founding a New Movement! Observe me. . . . I am in Revolt! I revolt! Now persecute me, persecute me, damn you, persecute me, curse you, persecute me! Philistine, Bourgeois, Slave, Serf, Capitalist, Respectabilities that you are, Persecute me! Bah! You ask me, do you, what am I in revolt against? Against you, fool, dolt, idiot, against you, against everything! Against Heavy, Hell and punctuation ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... on the contrary, Truth and Error lie over against each other with a valley between them, and David goes forward in the sight of all men, and from his own camp, to engage with the Philistine. Such is the providential overruling of that principle of toleration, which was conceived in the spirit of unbelief, in order to the destruction of Catholicity. The sway of the Church is contracted; but she gains in intensity what she loses in extent. She has now a direct command and a reliable ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... David's eyes; he was a bright little fellow and he had not studied Hebrew and Jewish history all the long winter with the Rev. Mr. Seixas without learning a few lessons very helpful in time of need. "Didn't David and his sling frighten the whole Philistine army away?" he ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... enveloped me 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 ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... 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
... 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
... and what 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; ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... no fault of his. Along with the torment of doubts that assailed him, thanks to that infernal notebook, the studio kept catapulting itself into a jungle of nerve-racking disorder in which it was impossible to work. And when Mrs. Haggerty fell upon it with the horrible energy of the Philistine and found places for everything, the studio became a place in which no self-respecting painter could be expected to keep his inspiration or his temper. Here again, Kenny felt aggrievedly, was a condition which Brian's presence could have altered. The lad had ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... commissioned spirit announced to her the conception of a son; and giving her at the same time some directions respecting her own mode of living, and the devotement of the future Samson as a Nazarite from the womb, assured her that be should become the deliverer of Israel from Philistine subjection. It does not seem as if she were commanded to tell her husband; nevertheless, she immediately hastens to disclose to him every circumstance that had transpired. To whom could she so properly confide ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... for 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 a ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... he answered, carelessly. "I haven't been listening to you at all. I've been thinking of something else. Life's too short to pay any attention to your big Philistine jaw." ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... great-grandson, David, a worthy man likewise, but of a very different life, marked out by God from his youth for strange and desperate deeds; killing, as a mere boy, a lion and a bear, overthrowing the Philistine giant with a sling and a stone, captain of a band of outlaws in the wilderness, fighting battles upon battles; and at last a king, storming the mountain fortress of Jerusalem, and setting up upon Mount Zion, which shall never be removed, the Throne of David. A strange man, ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... Look 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 abuse ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... chauffeur, that philistine, who opened the hood and gingerly felt of the heated engine. And the voice of the wind, wandering through the forest, came to them. David heard a long wondering sigh ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... book of philology." Anthony Wood, hitting on a notion which has often been borrowed since, held that it is a convenient commonplace book of classical quotations, which, with all respect to Anthony's memory (whom I am more especially bound to honour as a Merton man), is a gross and Philistine error. Johnson, as was to be expected, appreciated it thoroughly. Ferriar in his Illustrations of Sterne pointed out the enormous indebtedness of Tristram Shandy to Democritus Junior. Charles Lamb, eloquently praising the "fantastic ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... too vague in thought, too crude in practice, and the enthusiast of hygiene or education or temperance may have much to answer for. But so, also, has he who stands outside of the actual civic field, whether as philistine or aesthete, utopist or cynic, party politician or "mug-wump." Between all these extremes it is for the united forces of civic survey and civic service to find the middle course. [Page: 114] We ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... you 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 now?" Again they ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... through, and stood on my ward; and only just in time I was, what's more; there's two arrows in the house wall, and two or three more in my buckler, which I caught up as I went out, for I had hung it close by the door, you see, sir, to be all ready in case," said the cunning old Philistine-slayer, as they went ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... 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; but then she knows where and how things grow, and her footsteps ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... bar your path. Winnington is a good fellow, but a thickheaded Philistine all the same. You spoke to me about him with compunction. Have no compunctions. Go straight forward. Women have got to shew themselves ruthless, and hard, and cunning, like men—if ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... inquired, with a 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 courts of the ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... 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 from me, did not arrive till three weeks ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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: I keep out of hearing ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... I am a Philistine, it is true, a barbarian caring little for the refinements of cookery. I am not thinking of the epicure, but of the frugal man, the husbandman especially. I should consider myself amply repaid for my persistent observations ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... effort, and could have played for 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
... deserves to be encouraged anywhere, it is surely in England,—not, as has been suggested, in order to keep English literature from falling into the abyss of German platitudes, nor to put Aneurin and Taliesin in the place of Shakespeare and Burns, and to counteract by their "suavity and brilliancy" the Philistine tendencies of the Saxon and the Northman, but in order to supply sound materials and guiding principles to the critical student of the ancient history and the ancient language of Britain, to excite an interest in what still remains ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... news?" she asked dancing ecstatically to and fro; as if she were a Delilah, leading the Philistine maidens in the "Spring Song," and he were another Samson. "I'm expecting to ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... 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, ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... entered the room. "My word!" he continued, allowing his gaze to rove over the lad's stalwart frame, "but you'm growed into a reg'lar strapper, and no mistake; a reg'lar young Goliath of Gath a be, no less. And you've been a slayin' of a Philistine or two, here and there, so I do hear" (Mr Radlett was a little mixed in the matter of his Bible imagery, you will perceive, but he meant well). "Ay, ay; I've been havin' a crack wi' old Cap'n Burroughs, since mun comed ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... flower cut and dried—an unpleasant specimen, and by no means valuable from its scarcity. Self-sufficient, assured, with scarce shyness enough for modesty, handsome and hard, she was essentially a self-glorious Philistine; nor would she be anything better till something was sent to humble her, though what spiritual engine might be equal to the task was not for man to imagine. She was clever, but her cleverness made nobody happier; she had great confidence, but her ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... or founder of a religion, his sexual doctrine is nothing but a barren special pleading for pleasure, excitement, and knowledge when he is young, and for contemplative tranquillity when he is old and satiated. Romance and Asceticism, Amorism and Puritanism are equally unreal in the great Philistine world. The world shown us in books, whether the books be confessed epics or professed gospels, or in codes, or in political orations, or in philosophic systems, is not the main world at all: it is only the self-consciousness of certain abnormal people who have the specific artistic ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... from the Rectory, was visible through a gap in the trees where a short cut, known as the "church path" wound its way through the copse that hedged the garden. It was an ancient little church, boasting a very beautiful thirteenth century window, which, in a Philistine past, had been built up and rough-cast outside, and had only been discovered in the course of some repairs that were being made to one of the walls. The inhabitants of Crailing were very proud of that thirteenth century window when it was disinterred; they had a proprietary ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... Painted by the English School. Must be welcome to our British Taste, which is not grim or skittish; Rather Philistine, it may be. Sweet on cornfields and the Baby; Yet of ROMNEY'S grace no spurner, Or the golden dreams of TURNER. Moral? Will a moral, bless us! Comes like that old shirt of NESSUS. Still, here goes! An Art-official Should be genial, but judicial. When ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... husband has genius—that is beyond question—but he is unknown here as yet. Would it not be a pity for him to be introduced to the American public through these rather sinister drawings? We are not fond of the too frank critic here, you know," he smiled, whimsically. "You may think me a Philistine, Mr. Byrd," he continued, "but I have your welfare in mind. Win your public first with smiles, and later they may perhaps accept chastisement from you. If you have any drawings in a different vein I shall feel honored in publishing them"—his tone was courteous—"if ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... her own. Virtue rewards the saint, art the artist; but men are rewarded for attention to morality by some measure of joy in virtue, for attention to beauty by some measure of joy in works of art. Between the artist and the Philistine is no great gulf fixed, in the sense that the witty "master of the butterfly" pretends to assume, but an infinite and gentle decline of persons representing every possible blend of the virtues and faults of these two types. Again, an artist is miscalled "master ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... 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
... bayonets. It is natural, according to the Jingo, for a man to kill other people with gunpowder and himself with gin. It is natural, according to the humanitarian revolutionist, to kill other people with dynamite and himself with vegetarianism. It would be too obviously Philistine a sentiment, perhaps, to suggest that the claim of either of these persons to be obeying the voice of nature is interesting when we consider that they require huge volumes of paradoxical argument to persuade ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... been wholly sane. Sanity is difficult to define, except negatively; but, even though we may be convinced of the truths of the mystic, that nothing is what it seems to be, the above-mentioned conduct suggests temporary insanity. It is sufficient to conclude, as any Philistine would, that whoever has to shake a gate-post to convince himself that it is not a vision is dangerously near madness. Mad people do such things; those who carry on the work of the world as useful and law-abiding citizens do not. I may add that I myself had ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... 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 ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... long, low-roofed room in which Elfrida Bell meditated, biting the end of her pen, upon the difference it made when a fellow-being was not a Philistine; and it was not in the least like any other apartment Mrs. Jordan had to let. It was the atelier of the Rue Porte Royale transported. Elfrida had brought all her possessions with her, and took a nameless comfort ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... always conceited, just as the true Philistine is always fond of going to the Royal Academy. I have brought the art of preposterous conversation to the pitch of perfection; but I have been greatly handicapped in my efforts by the egregious wisdom ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... morning the 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 back ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... eyes. Gorgeous Cathedrals with their High Masses and sweet Benedictions, their bannered processions and kneeling peasantry, rose in his memory as he beheld the half restored Church, the stiff, open seats, and the Philistine precision of the St. Cradocke's Old Church congregation; and Anglicanism shared his distaste, in spite of the fascinations ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... I who design all dreams can never consent to that, and no Philistine must ever enter Poictesme. Why did you not come to me for help at the beginning, instead of wasting time upon kings and queens?" demands the magician, fretfully. "And are you not ashamed to be making any alliance with Philistia, remembering how you ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... dissevered the enthusiast from 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, alleging that all "littery men" were ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... ideas into a conception where it may not have originally existed. If the God is 'the savage himself raised to the n^th power' so much the less of a spirit is he. Mr. Matthew Arnold might as well have said: 'The British Philistine has no knowledge of God. He believes that the Creator is a magnified non-natural man, living in the sky.' The Gippsland or Fuegian or Blackfoot Supreme Being is just a Being, anthropomorphic, not a mrart, or 'spirit.' The Supreme Being is a wesen, Being, Vui; we have hardly a term for ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... with a merry nod of the head. "But now I'll play. I told you 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 ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... but it was Rose who understood the situation best and Charles who understood it least. His feelings were torturing but simple. He wanted Henrietta and he could not get her: he did not please her, and that Sales, that Philistine, that handsome, well-made, sulky-looking beggar knew how to ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... 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 ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... 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 a touch of queerness and had picked ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... force of Egypt seems to 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
... the 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 Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... 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 ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... stood and 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... he was in constant though not direct communication. He studied them—their nature and their functions. But this tall, stately man, in his abominable garment which reached barely to his knees, with the white, effeminate forehead and unintelligible language, who was he? Was he a Philistine? a cruel Roman, or perhaps a Spaniard—one of those that murdered the famous Abrabanel family, and drove his ancestor Todros ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... time to see the simple and central fact about anything. All sorts of things have been said about the modern Press, especially the Yellow Press; that it is Jingo or Philistine or sensational or wrongly inquisitive or vulgar or indecent or trivial; but none of these have anything really to do with ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... china would convict you of tastelessness merely; were you a blind woman, of nothing but an odious parsimony. As you have normal eyesight and more than normal wealth, your gift to me proclaims you at once a Philistine and a miser (or rather did so proclaim you until, less than ten seconds after I had unpacked it from its wrappings of tissue paper, I took it to the open window and had the satisfaction of seeing it shattered to atoms on the pavement). But stay! I perceive a possible flaw in my argument. Perhaps ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... unsuccessful painter. Unlike Reginald Sellers, who had a studio in the same building, and sometimes dropped in to drink her coffee and pour out his troubles, he did not attribute his non-success to any malice or stupidity on the part of the public. She was so used to hearing Sellers lash the Philistine and hold forth on unappreciated merit that she could hardly believe the miracle when, in answer to a sympathetic bromide on the popular lack of taste in Art, Beverley replied that, as far as he was concerned, the public showed strong good ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... "knows as well what this act of his means in the South,—in the unwritten law of our land—as I do. He has taken his chance of life or death. I'll see that it is death. This is the last of me and my house. But in the fall I'll see that this Philistine of Philistines dies ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... 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
... seeking just occasion to provoke The Philistine, thy Countries Enemy, Thou never wast remiss, I hear thee witness: Yet Israel still serves with ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... excommunicate and deliver him over to Satan," said the monk, unable to wait the phlegmatic and lingering answer of the Fleming, "if he give horn, hoof, or hair of them, to such an uncircumcised Philistine as ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... be, I think that the above passage will show that M. Zola was already possessed of a large amount of his acknowledged realistic power at the early date I have mentioned. I should also have liked to quote a rather amusing story of a priggish Philistine who ate violets with oil and vinegar, strongly peppered, but considerations of space forbid; so I will pass to another passage, which is of more interest and importance. Both French and English critics have often contended that although M. Zola is a married man, he knows very ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... Lincoln is immeasurably more creative in form and substance than his fanciful Potato Face. Intense exercise of his creative power sets, in a way, the writer apart from the life he is trying to sublimate. Becoming a Philistine will not enable a man to interpret Philistinism, though Philistines who own big presses think so. Sinclair Lewis knew Babbitt as Babbitt could never know ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... 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 ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... 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
... ere long. You will see some verses of mine in 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 ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... penetrated the Judean hills. Having appealed to the patriotic memories and the religious zeal of his followers, Judas led them in a sudden early morning attack against the Syrians encamped near Emmaus. Soon the Syrians were in wild flight across the plain to the Philistine cities, and Judas and his followers were left in possession of the camp and its rich spoil. Panic also seized his pursuers when they saw their camp in possession of the enemy, and Judas was left for the moment undisputed master of the land of his fathers. This victory in the year ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... it is difficult for any one with a love of letters to speak in few or measured words. He may have been a Philistine, as Mr. Symonds calls him, but he was surely a Philistine of genius. He has the supreme virtue of style. In fact, it may be roughly said that in Europe for nearly two centuries there is no such ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... sculptor. At first he had taken a condescending interest in the fact of his friend's receiving an order, and had admonished him not to lose the chance of "showing up" his sitter and her environment. It was a splendid opportunity for a fellow with a "message" to be introduced into the tents of the Philistine, and Stanwell was charged to drive a long sharp nail into the enemy's skull. But presently Arran began to suspect that the portrait was not as comminatory as he could have wished. Mungold, the most kindly of rivals, let drop a word of injudicious praise: the picture, he said, ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Cromwell, Mr. Arnold expressly bestows the name of "Philistine," and if he bestows it on these he can hardly abstain from bestowing it on the rest of those we have named. Milton, at all events, has identified himself with Cromwell as thoroughly as one man ever identified himself with ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Could he, however, have possessed for a few moments the prophetic foresight vouchsafed some 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 ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... 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
... his eyes from the fire. He was a somewhat solemn young fellow, and carried the hook and leather gloves of a furze-cutter, his legs, by reason of that occupation, being sheathed in bulging leggings as stiff as the Philistine's greaves of brass. "That's why they went away to be married, I count. You see, after kicking up such a nunny-watch and forbidding the banns 'twould have made Mis'ess Yeobright seem foolish-like to have a banging wedding in the same parish all ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... lighted Philip's face not unmingled with the satisfaction of a shrewd Jew who has pleased himself at business. One hundred talents, then, for the best establishment in five cities, in all the Philistine country. But why? Costobarus supplied the answer ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... somehow "subtly" feel it, why am I now so convinced that I must have had familiarly before me a masterpiece of the great Daumier, say, or Henri Monnier, or any other then contemporary projector of Monsieur Prudhomme, the timorous Philistine in a world of dangers, with whom I was later on to make acquaintance? I put myself the question, of scant importance though it may seem; but there is a reflection perhaps more timely than any answer to it. I catch myself in the act of seeing poor anonymous "Dear," as cousin Helen ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... 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, my ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... 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 ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... a good long look at Queequeg. How long hath he been a member? he then said, turning to me; not very long, I rather guess, young man. No, said Peleg, and he hasn't been baptized right either, or it would have washed some of that devil's blue off his face. Do tell, now, cried Bildad, is this Philistine a regular member of Deacon Deuteronomy's meeting? I never saw him going there, and I pass it every Lord's day. .. I don't know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeeting, said I, all I know is, that Queequeg here is a born member of the First Congregational Church. He is a deacon ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... and Goliath were encamped in the valley of Elah, an opportunity was given to every soldier in Israel to meet the Philistine giant, but the youthful shepherd, David, alone accepted it, and his name has been ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... or painted in colours with pictures representing his deeds. There he was shewn fighting the bear, there taking the lamb from the lion's mouth, and smiting him. There he was pictured with his sling going against the giant Goliath. There he was represented standing over the fallen Philistine and hewing off his head. Look! another picture! his marriage with Michal, the daughter of King Saul. "Whose is this image?" It is that of the conqueror over Amalek. "Whose is this image?" It is David crowned king of Judah in Hebron. And here ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... Alda back on Monday, but promised to come home for Christmas, and kept his word. Perhaps the Renville wirthschaft afforded less contrast with home than did the Underwood menage; and, in spite of the Philistine furniture, the rooms in the High Street agreed better with his tastes than the old house in St. Oswald's Buildings. He was above objecting to the shop; and whereas Clement carefully avoided the public ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... money which Delilah received from the Philistine lords as the price of Samson's secret, she gave to her son Micah, and he used it to make an idol for himself. (125) This sin was the more unpardonable as Micah owed his life to a miracle performed by Moses. ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... "Orchids" were as tough a crowd As Boston anywhere allowed; It was a club of wicked men— The oldest, twelve, the youngest, ten; They drank their soda colored green, They talked of "Art," and "Philistine," They wore buff "wescoats," and their hair It used to make the waiters stare! They were so shockingly behaved And Boston thought them so depraved, Policemen, stationed at the door, Would raid them every hour or more! They used to smoke (!) and laugh out loud (!) They were a very devilish ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... the city when you wanted flowers and fruit. In Berlin there are twelve covered markets besides the open ones, and they are all as admirably clean, tidy, and unpoetical as everything else is in that spick and span, swept and garnished Philistine city. The green gooseberries there are marked "unripe fruit" by order of the police, so that no one should think they were ripe and eat them uncooked; and you can buy rhubarb nowadays, a vegetable ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... I think 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 that in these times, doctor, it ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... has a mistress to her eyebrow write a sonnet, Let the lover of a lily pen a languid ode upon it; In such sentimental subjects I'm a Philistine and cynic, And prefer the inspiration ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... 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 be ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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
... and luxury, to come out and 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 ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... that parch'd them there. Then David, king of Israel, Straight bethought him of a well, Which stood beside the city gate, At Bethlem; where, before his state Of kingly dignity, he had Oft drunk his fill, a shepherd lad; But now his fierce Philistine foe Encamp'd before it he does know. Yet ne'er the less, with heat opprest, Those three bold captains he addrest; And wish'd that one to him would bring Some water from his native spring. His valiant captains instantly To execute his will did fly. The mighty Three the ranks broke ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... men fearful, arrives at Tarsus, which he takes. The siege of Tyre comes next, and holds a large place; but a very much larger is occupied by the Fuerres de Gadres ("Foray of Gaza"), where the story of the obstinate resistance of the Philistine city is expanded into a kind of separate chanson de geste, occupying 120 pages and some ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... title 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 ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... subject if one sees anything of him at all that I believe he'd draw speculation out of any one. There was old Maradick talking about him the other night—fascinated by him and understanding him most amazingly well—another instance of your Philistine and ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... helpless little 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 of whom everyone ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... 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 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 ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... the flood which was to deliver her out of the hands of the Philistine. How far away the other bank of the newborn stream might be, she could only guess from the vague rush in her ears. The arroyo's water slipped ceaselessly, objectlessly away from beneath her strained vision, smooth, suave, even, effortless, like the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... HENRIETTE. Philistine! You'll never be an artist. But I am an artist, and I'll make a bust of you with a shopkeeper's cap instead of the laurel ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... turning himself into a snail to 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 ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... such a place as this. But though art can never mean much to me now, your case is different, and I am thankful to know that these things will be a great addition and interest to your future life. I'm a Philistine, and shall always so remain, but I'm a repentant one. I see my ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... 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
... something worse than to be a Doctrinaire who pursues an ideal without regard to practical consideration; it is worse to be a Philistine so immersed in practical considerations that he doesn't know an ideal when he sees it. If the choice were between these two I should say, "Keep on being a Doctrinaire. You have chosen the better part." But fortunately there is a still more excellent way. It is possible to be a practical ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... "z" or "s" seems sometimes to represent the Hebrew "sh," this name might be compared with the Philistine "Achish." ...
— Egyptian Literature
... 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 me, O Lord!' 'They cried to God in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in families 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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... priggishness and his twopenny-tract morality, and the modern school of French novelists, who are certainly not prigs, and whose morality is by no means that of tracts? We might have expected a priori that they would have summarily put him down, as a hopeless Philistine. Yet Richardson was idolised by some of their best writers; Balzac, for example, and George Sand, speak of him with reverence; and a writer who is, perhaps, as odd a contrast to Richardson as could well be imagined—Alfred de Musset—calls 'Clarissa' le premier roman du monde. ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... 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 his people should ...
— Children of the Old Testament • Anonymous
... appeared. It seemed as though it were taken for granted that she herself had not enough intelligence to discover wit in others, and needed to be told of it with great circumstance in order to be upon her good behavior. Consequently Josephine began by disliking John. She thought he was a Philistine; his hair was too straight, and besides, it was red; he shaved all his face, whereas the men she liked always had beards; she liked men with black eyes, or blue— John's were gray and hard; he spoke quietly, without expression, and she liked men who were enthusiastic. After ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... which you may detect 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 to take in my coffee as a substitute for ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... 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 ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... conventional aspect, and do not for your life say anything about the stage or the latter-day hard luck you have had, or anything else which will not commend itself to a popular sense which, although artistic on one side is implacably Philistine on the other. They have a tremendous regard for Reade. Carry yourself as if you were the undoubted inheritor of the Reade traditions. Think how Reade himself would have borne himself—then strike out from it all the bumptious and aggressive ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... not a fiction but a truth; and, so long as this conviction lasts, the 'Pilgrim's Progress' will still be dear to all men of all creeds who share in it, even though it pleases the 'elect' modern philosophers to describe its author as a 'Philistine ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... middle-class households of fifty years ago have largely disappeared, and in their place have sprung up, at any rate in the larger towns, the very same commercial and parasitical classes, with their Philistine luxury and fatuous ideals, which have been so depressing and distressing a feature of our social life during the same period. Naturally, the desire of these classes has been for the glorification ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... 20th October, 1842 I had resolved not to disturb any of my singers by a visit, yet I happened to come across one of them, a stiff Philistine called Risse, who was playing a minor bass part in a dull but respectable way. The day was rather cool, but wonderfully bright and sunshiny, after the gloomy weather we had just been having. Without a word this curious creature saluted me and then remained standing, as though bewitched. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... 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, ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... her mother say, a few minutes later, "either some son of a Philistine has told that child something, or ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... generosity at its true value, she was glad her father had received even a small part of what was his just due, and although she knew the restoration had been made to please, and, if possible, to win her, she was glad to have spoiled the royal Philistine, and despised him more than ever before, if that ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... never wrote another play; he did not care if they returned to him battered and dog's-eared after months of delay and desultory travel—as in the old days. Manders might cut the thing about to the top of his vulgar Philistine bent. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... told how, in "L'Africaine," at the Opera, in Paris, the entire superstructure of the stage—wings, drops, and backs—turned when Vasco da Gama put the ship about. Jadwin having criticised the effect because none of the actors turned with it, was voted a Philistine by Mrs. Cressler and Corthell. But as he was about to answer, Mrs. Cressler turned to the artist, passing him her opera glasses, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... 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. ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald |
