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Philistine   Listen
adjective
Philistine  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to the Philistines.
2.
Uncultured; commonplace.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Philistine" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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

... 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with two other gentlemen in the expense of printing the first edition of the poet's posthumous works in 1824, afterward withdrawn by Mrs.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. Byron was the popular poet then, and universal Young ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... 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

... 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 ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... an icy stalactite that hung from her classic nose. One of the passengers remarked that Bartholdi ought to have supplied her with a handkerchief, but this suggestion was considered flippant by his Philistine audience, and it ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... laughter may even now be heard re-echoing through the pages of his book on 'The Philistine' (1811). His dramatic power is evinced in the broadly conceived play 'Die Gruendung Prags' (The Founding of Prague: 1815); but it is upon two stories, told in the simple style of the folk-tale, that his widest popularity ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... in—bring him in, Philistine! I always call my man Philistine, because he has Sampson in his hands. Set him down there," pointing to an easy chair, as the group now ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... 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 ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... everything in the world. He's the victim of a critical age; he has ceased to believe in 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 ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... Israelites to let one of their men fight him hand to hand, the result of this contest to decide the victory or defeat of either army. A youth named David, inspired and urged by the spirit of God, went forth with a few smooth stones and a sling to meet this Philistine, and as Goliath rushed toward him David cast the stones with the sling and struck the Philistine in the forehead, and he fell upon his face to the earth. David then ran and stood over the Philistine and took his sword and slew ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings

... me money is not such a reality. And if it were, what is it between you and me? If the position were reversed, Morgan—it may be a shocking admission to make—I should not hesitate to take money from you, you conventional Philistine. I thought you were above such petty considerations—to ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... imported. But of this more fully 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 as a crime to Vedder that he had ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... himself this upper crust of the "Society of December 10" by considering that Veron Crevel [13 Crevel is a character of Balzac, drawn after Dr. Veron, the proprietor of the "Constitutional" newspaper, as a type of the dissolute Parisian Philistine.] is their preacher of morality, and Granier de Cassagnac their thinker. When Guizot, at the time he was Minister, employed this Granier on an obscure sheet against the dynastic opposition, he used to praise him with the term: ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... Instead of being able to see only that one type of beauty which first appealed to us, our eyes have become so instructed that we now see the beauty of all the other types as well; and we no longer scorn as Philistine the taste of the man in the street for the beauty that is robustly vital and flamboyantly contoured. Once we called it obvious. Now we say it is "barbaric," and call attention to its ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... 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

... 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, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... spared to us both. But that was not to be!" It is with dutiful respect but with no touch of filial affection that Goethe has drawn his father's portrait in Dichtung und Wahrheit. As the father is there depicted, he is the embodiment of Goethe's own definition of a Philistine—one naturally incapable of entering into the views of other people.[5] Yet Goethe might have had a worse parent; for, according to his lights, the father spared no pains to make his son an ornament of his generation. Strictly conscientious, methodical, ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... southern scenery, people, and art, everything seemed ugly, homely, and vulgar in his 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

... vastly greater than the world will 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 ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... already 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' to be ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger

... I, too, have tried to reason with myself in this manner! I have tried passionately, earnestly, feverishly. I have failed! I cannot! No one can! I know that to you I seem to be writing like a Philistine, like a man of a generation gone by! You have filled your little world with new ideals, you have lit it with the lamp of love, and it all seems very real and beautiful to you! But some day, though the lamp may burn still as brightly as ever, a great white ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Castiglione, and Lyly are the most famous instances. The ambition of those who frequent Courts has always been to appear distinguished—distinguished that is from the vulgar and the ordinary, or, as we should now say, from the Philistine. In the Courts of the Renaissance period, where learning was considered so admirable, this necessary distinction would naturally take the form of a cultured, if not pedantic, diction; and for this it was natural that men should go to the classics, and more especially to classical orators, ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... of Philistine conquest at last forced the Israelites with a common voice to "demand a king." Reinforced by bodies of their kinsfolk from Krete and the islands of the Greek seas, the Philistines poured over the frontier of Judah, ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... things are connected with each other. That he was called to verify the truth of the promise given to Judah, "Thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies," was first seen in his victory over Goliath the Philistine, fore-champion of the world's power. After David's word had been fulfilled, "The Lord who 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 ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... Mr. Ogle, I beseech you. That way fierce controversy and, it may be, disaster lies. Do not stir the Philistine within us. The British nation is still savage under the skin. It has no real love for books, libraries, or librarians. In its hidden heart it deems them all superfluous. Anger it, and it may in a fit of temper sweep you all away. The loss of our free librarians would indeed be grievous. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... 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, my Narcissus ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard

... of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit of a Philistine. Since I have known you, ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... Somerset; "to stake one's life for others? to deracinate occult and powerful evil? I appeal to Mr. Godall. He, at least, as a philosophic looker-on at life, will spit upon such philistine opinions. He knows that the policeman, as he is called upon continually to face greater odds, and that both worse equipped and for a better cause, is in form and essence a more noble hero than the soldier. Do you, by any chance, deceive yourself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Hampstead had never talked to anyone but his fellow-clerks. One evening Watson asked him to dinner at a restaurant and they went to a music-hall together; but he felt shy and uncomfortable. Watson talked all the time of things he did not care about, and while he looked upon Watson as a Philistine he could not help admiring him. He was angry because Watson obviously set no store on his culture, and with his way of taking himself at the estimate at which he saw others held him he began to despise the acquirements which till then had ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... he spoke of books to Mr Hare, whom he considered a gross Philistine, although a worthy man. The shadows of the Virginia creeper fell on the red pavement, and Kitty's light voice was heard on the staircase. Presently she appeared, and lifting the trailing foliage, she spoke to him. She took him away, and the parson watched the white lines being marked on ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... round him in 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. ...
— David the Shepherd Boy • Amy Steedman

... to affect your 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 ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... the generosity of his hospitality but to the keen interest he takes, amongst other things, in the renascence of Indian art in which Bengal has taken the lead. There is amongst Europeans in India a good deal of Philistine contempt for all Indian forms of culture, and Indians are surprised and grateful when Governors like Lord Ronaldshay, and his predecessor, Lord Carmichael, frankly acknowledge that whilst Indian painting and Indian music are ruled by other canons than those of the West, they pursue none the ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... 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

... he attended 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 so ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth

... in the Chouteau cafe, Griswold had ample time to overtake himself in the race reconstructive, and for the moment the point of view became frankly Philistine. The luxurious hotel, with its air of invincible respectability; the snowy napery, the cut glass, the shaded lights, the deferential service; all these appealed irresistibly to the epicurean in him. It was as if he had come ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... there is no possibility of moderation, and if he is to be saved he must become a total abstainer. He must sign the pledge, and the pledge must be made of a solemn character with witnesses, say his poor afflicted wife and some intelligent self-made Philistine. Perhaps it might run like this: "I, A. B., do hereby promise that I will never buy a classical book in any tongue, or any book in a rare edition; that I will never spend money on books in tree-calf or tooled morocco; that I shall never enter a real old bookshop, but should ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren

... Though it may not demonstrably be a means to other useful things, it is itself a worthy end. It helps to enrich the community with the immaterial goods of the spirit, and it yields the psychic income of dignity and joy in the individual and national life. And as a final appeal to any doubting Philistine it may be said that just as the cult of pure science is necessary to the continual and most effective progress in the practical arts, so the study of economics on the philosophical plane surely is necessary to the highest and most lasting results in the application of economics ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... 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

... Margaret laughed at Isabelle's philistine horror of the Goring household, and amused herself with suggesting more of the philosophy of the Intellectuals, the creed of Woman's Independence. She pointed out that Aline did not interfere with Goring's pursuit of his profession though ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... 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 ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... 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 ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... 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 ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson

... and published to the world by many, that the professed church had been walking in open violation of the fourth commandment since the days of the Apostles.—Every one that has read the history of this TESTIMONY of God in the ark, must see the mighty power that accompanied it through Israel and Philistine, one of the greatest wonders that ever existed [iv]in this world, a pattern only of what was seen in the opening of the Temple in heaven. In the xiv: 12, John sees them obeying its dictates. In the xv ch. he ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates

... 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 from me, did not arrive till three weeks ago or less. ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... without removing 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 as ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... to the chorus of women that "came out of all the cities of Israel" to meet the army, when David had conquered the Philistine in single-handed fight. ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner

... grasp. It 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 empire,—oh! my beloved! it is life renewed—it is a resurrection from the ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... order to increase the comical effect, this method is often employed in conjunction with that of exaggeration. The Athenian democracy was probably not quite so stupid as Aristophanes represents it; the average Britisher is not so philistine as Shaw paints him. Yet the measure of exaggeration may be small and we readily discount it. And finally, whereas in simple representation there is a revelation of the object only, in comical representation there is a two-fold revelation,—of the ideal and of the incongruous reality. ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... describes the plight of one engaged in a hopeless struggle against an uncompromising, Philistine world too ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... show that we are older than the fifteen hundreds. Still, ancient though we are, we have always been a ville of humble folk,—hardy sailors, brave fishers, and thrifty bourgeois,—and to-day, as always, our highest families buy and sell and build their philistine homes back toward the cote, while our humble ones picturesquely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... conscientious efforts to the contrary, I was predestined to become what I am, a member of the romantic school, protesting against romanticism, a Utopian inculcating the doctrine of half-measures, an idealist unsuccessfully attempting to pass muster for a Philistine, a tissue of contradictions, resembling the double-natured hircocerf of scholasticism. One of my two halves must have been busy demolishing the other half, like the fabled beast of Ctesias which unwittingly devoured its own paws. As was well said by that keen observer, Challemel-Lacour: ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... 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

... it is a good one," said I, laughing. "And, now I think of it, I'll change my plan too. I don't think much of a club, so I'll make me a sling out of this piece of cloth. I used to be very fond of slinging, ever since I read of David slaying Goliath the Philistine, and I was once thought to be ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... "Wherefore did I come?" Deluded infants! will they ever know 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 belabored ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... 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 the modern Berliner eats without ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... 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 ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Balliol was jolly— "Your epithet," sighed he, "means noise. Vile noise! At his age it were folly To revel with Philistine boys." Competition, the century's vulture, Devoured academical fools; For himself, utter pilgrim of Culture, He countenanced none ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various

... on one occasion, 'they cried unto God in the battle, and He was entreated of them.' Do you think that theirs would be very elaborate prayers? Was there any time to make a long petition when the sword of a Philistine was whizzing about the suppliant's ears? It was only a cry, but it was a cry; and so 'He was entreated of them.' If we are 'with Christ' we shall talk to Him; and if we are with Christ He will talk to us. It is for us to keep in the attitude of listening ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... the people said? I dare fight well with this giant; and declined from his brother to other of the people. And all this was showed to Saul, and David was brought to him, and said to Saul: I, thy servant, shall fight against this giant if thou wilt. And Saul said to him: Thou mayst not withstand this Philistine nor fight against him, for thou art but a child; this giant hath been a fighter from his childhood. David said to Saul: I thy servant kept my father's sheep, and there came a lion and a bear and took away a wether from the middle of my flock, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... the 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

... 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 thou or ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... was only a boy, he said, "You are not able to go against this Philistine. You are only a boy, while he ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett

... fictitious names upon either his Saints or his Sinners. I have selected "corners" which have not been published between boards. It is, perhaps, needless to say that I am always made to figure as a Philistine in these gatherings, as a penalty for my lack of sympathy with the whole theory of valuing books by their dates, editions, and bindings ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... gossamer of recreative conversation, to upraise a few monumental, I may say memorable, judgments on the subject of lithography. Now, there are many red rags in the various arts with which to encompass the discomfiture of the Philistine's bull, and the raven will always appropriate the feathers of the peacock and look ridiculous in them; but the rapier enwreathed in the red rag of painting is more readily rushed upon, and plumes of appreciation more wantonly borrowed and ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett

... were not to be bluffed, and so promptly accepted the challenge. Back they came to camp with their "bluff," to look up a man to meet this professional. So far as our men were concerned, it was another case of the Philistine defying the armies of Israel. Where was our David? All hands entered into the fun, from the colonel down. The race was to be a one-hundred-yard dash from a standing mark. We found our man in Corporal ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... question now is, Will the promise and the vision ever be realized, or will they fade out and disappear and leave him a Philistine? And lucky if he is not a brute, for the only brute in this world, my friends, is a degenerate man. When you hear a man say that he has cut his eye-teeth, and he has got rid of his dreams and his visions, then may the Lord have mercy on the soul of that man, because he is dead. The all-important ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... this underground life, revealed moral relationships which no one had suspected. A sudden intimacy showed itself between Clerambault and a brother of his wife whom he had looked upon until now, and with good reason, as the type of a perfect Philistine. ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... Philistine in those days—still am, as a matter of fact—and I could not appreciate the statue. A strenuous life with my Regiment had stifled what little appreciation for such things a more leisured existence might have fostered. I could not appreciate nor understand the things that ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... 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 ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... with all his heart, as she knew. But why change a relation in which both had been so comfortable for a generation. It was a delightful emotion to know that, while outwardly free, they were secretly united by warm friendship. This bond would not oppress. The fetters of a regular Philistine marriage would probably burden them, and, after all, it would not be morally so beautiful and so strong as a daily desired and renewed companionship. He, for his part, at any rate, would desire nothing better than the endless continuance of their ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... Diary, or, Manners and Customs of ye Englyshe in 1849,' characteristically illustrated by RICHARD DOYLE at his graphic best. The same year was remarkable for the appearance of LEECH's most delightful character, the simple-minded, sport-loving, philistine paterfamilias, Mr. BRIGGS, first met with in connection with 'The Pleasures of Housekeeping,' though subsequently associated especially ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various

... and mothers. The whole matter looked at from Lady Scroope's point of view was no doubt very injurious to the priest's character. He regarded a stranger among them, such as was Fred Neville, as fair spoil, as a Philistine to seize whom and capture him for life on behalf of any Irish girl would be a great triumph;—a spoiling of the Egyptian to the accomplishment of which he would not hesitate to lend his priestly assistance, the end to be accomplished, of course, ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... plucked but the smallest hair, Ev'ry crop would be smoothed ere the sun went down, Though at morn 'twere as bushy as Absalom's crown. Now, Joshua, methinks, was a soldier as well— By the arm of King David the Philistine fell; But where do we find it written, I pray, That they ever blasphemed in this villanous way? One would think ye need stretch your jaws no more, To cry, "God help us!" than "Zounds!" to roar. But, by ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... last, they have the right to speak plainly on this matter. The feminine influence upon art has been bad. Let us admit that it has been the result of a bad masculine influence upon women, that it has been supreme because men have become philistine; but the fact remains that it has been bad. Art must be taken seriously if it is to be worth anything. It must be the expression of what is serious and real in the human mind. But all this feminine art has expressed, and has tried to glorify, something false and worthless. Therefore ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock

... of sympathy; but Job's servants will not obey him, and little children make sport of him, and his wife turns away from him, and will not hear his sobbing words, nor hear him as he calls the names of their children whom he loved. Tragic Job! Not Samson, blind and jeered at by the Philistine populace in Dagon's temple, is sadder to look upon than Job, Prince of Uz, in the solitude of his bereavement. This old dramatist, as I take it, had himself known some unutterable grief, and out of the wealth of his melancholy recollections has poured tears like rain. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... the 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

... impossible to convince the narrator of this incident that the demeanour of her servant, instead of being heartless, might have been heroic, and capable of a very touching interpretation. Even one not a Philistine might be deceived in such a case by appearances. But quite a number of the foreign residents of the open ports are pure Philistines, and never try to look below the surface of the life around them, except as hostile ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... 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 process of some unhurried and mighty ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... exception among the young writers: Reginald Wright Kauffman, whose work, THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE, is the first earnest attempt to treat the social evil, not from a sentimental Philistine viewpoint. A journalist of wide experience, Mr. Kauffman proves that our industrial system leaves most women no alternative except prostitution. The women portrayed in THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE belong to the working class. Had the ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... 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, not unhappy in their way, whereby the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... industry, it was 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 a way of mitigating order and disorder ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... force of Philistine fatuity can no further go than it has gone in the 'laicization' of the home of Jeanne d'Arc, I ought to say that the actual keeper of the place seemed to me to be a decent sort of fellow, not wholly destitute 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

... to Timnah and saw there a Philistine woman. When he came back he said to his father and mother, "I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah. Get her as a wife for me." But his father and mother said to him, "Is there no woman in your own ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman

... been asked, "Why does He pass by the older pastors, and call 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 all because they seem to hinder our glory! Does not every man owe ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar

... time, an' he 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 ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... they come all graciously with no scorn nor 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, we sight ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... graced, fell to the ownership of a man who, erecting a house under its beneficent protection, soon complained of its shade. Then came a lumber prospector, who saw only furniture in the still flourishing old black walnut. His offer of forty dollars for the tree was eagerly accepted by the Philistine who had the title to the land, and although there were not wanting such remonstrances as almost came to a breaking of the peace, the grand walnut ended its hundreds of years of life to become mere lumber for its destroyers! The real estate man who sold the land greatly ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... illustrated examples, but no record, whereas 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

... clause put into the bill to gull ignorant folk who had not eyes enough to recognise the fact that it was faineant; a make-believe clause,—so said Mr. Turnbull,—to be detested on that account by every true reformer worse than the old Philistine bonds and Tory figments of representation, as to which there was at least no hypocritical pretence of popular fitness. Mr. Turnbull had been very loud and very angry,—had talked much of demonstrations among ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... are a miserable philistine, a typical representative of your base species and you are denied a voice ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... 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 of youth was ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... 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

... is not general yet, but it grows more general every year and the conviction of sin spreads. No doubt, like all conviction of sin, it often produces unpleasant results. The consciously artistic person often has a more irritating house than his innocently philistine grandfather had. So, no doubt, many simple pagan people were much nicer than those early Christians who were out for their own salvation. But there was progress in Christianity and there was ...
— Progress and History • Various

... 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 ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... 'What a Philistine room it is,' said Gerald, smiling as he looked around him; 'but I must say I like it just as it is. It has never made ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... this way it has some grandeur, something colossal in the odious and the absurd. This figure in whose power it is to suppress an intellectual conception—to kill thought (a dream for a mad brain, my masters!)—seems designed in a spirit of bitter comedy to bring out the greatness of a Philistine's ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... have intimated, a fast-growing esoteric literature of exposition and comment,— part of it simply the expression of the disciple's loyal homage, part of it designed to win and educate the reluctant Philistine intellect to the comforts of a true faith. In the latter class we reckon the excellent work of Professor Corson, of Cornell University. More than half of it is, as it should be, made up of a selection from the shorter poems, giving each complete; while these include what is perhaps the most ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... 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 ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... feudal ties that bound man to his "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, ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

... 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 poetry belongs to the nineteenth century ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... other responsibility is 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 of genius.' ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... back to the audience when she is speaking and acting, and everybody else on the stage is still but herself," petulantly insisted the Western Philistine, showing no signs ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley

... should it come from? Only a grand idea can inspire art. Art is in our ideal synonymous with creation, it must look ahead; but save a few rare, very rare exceptions, the professional artist remains too philistine ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... of its success there and in other German towns, did not find its way on to a Parisian stage until 1890. The libretto follows the Biblical narrative with tolerable fidelity. In the first act, Samson rouses the Israelites to arms, kills the Philistine leader and disperses their army. In the second he visits Dalila in the Vale of Sorek, tells her the secret of his strength, and is betrayed into the hands of the Philistines. The third act shows Samson, blind and in chains, grinding at a mill. The scene ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... Spencer, whose Unknowable is not merely the unfathomable but the absolute-irrational, on which, if consistently represented in thought, it is of course impossible to count, performs the same function of rebuking a certain stagnancy and smugness in the manner in which the ordinary philistine feels his security. But considered as anything else than as reactions against an opposite excess, these philosophies of uncertainty cannot be acceptable; the general mind will fail to {82} come to rest in their presence, and will seek for solutions ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... did, but he 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, ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... I go Home occasionally. And I used to know the Galleries. (Nervously.) You mustn't think me only a Philistine with—a moustache. ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... the human figures on your stage (I leave out fairies and superhumans for the moment) are bound to challenge reality by the fact that they are alive. If Mr. BARKER wants to be consistent (and he would probably repudiate so Philistine a suggestion) his figures should be marionettes worked by strings; and for words—if you must have words—he might himself read the text from a corner of the top landing of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various

... but the maintenance of Fabian friendly relations with them was left mostly to me and Stewart Headlam. The rest kept aloof and consoled themselves with the reflection—if they thought about it at all—that the Utilitarians, though even more Philistine than the Fabians, were ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... 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 ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... Philistines. When a Samson does now and then pull a temple down about their ears, is he not sure to be engulfed in the ruin with them? There is no horse-leech that sticks so fast as your latter-day Philistine. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... passed with a mere glance. One observation may, however, be allowed. After the victory, Saul is represented as not knowing who David was, and as sending Abner to find out where he comes from. Abner, too, professes entire ignorance; and when David appears before the king, "with the head of the Philistine in his hand," he is asked, "Whose son art thou, young man?" It has been thought that here we have an irreconcilable contradiction with previous narratives, according to which there was close intimacy between him and the king, who "loved him greatly," and ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... Behold, I 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! ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis

... virgin soil, unexplored ground; dark ages. [Imperfect knowledge] smattering, sciolism[obs3], glimmering, dilettantism; bewilderment &c. (uncertainty) 475; incapacity. [Affectation of knowledge] pedantry; charlatanry, charlatism[obs3]; Philister[obs3], Philistine. V. be ignorant &c. adj.; not know &c. 490; know not, know not what, know nothing of; have no idea, have no notion, have no conception; not have the remotest idea; not know chalk from cheese. ignore, be blind to; keep in ignorance &c. (conceal) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... contemplative virtues we reckon the love of books. Now this virtue, like courage or liberality, has its mean, its excess, and its defect. The defect is indifference, and the man who is defective as to the love of books has no name in common parlance. Therefore, we may call him the Robustious Philistine. This man will cut the leaves of his own or his friend's volumes with the butter- knife at breakfast. Also he is just the person wilfully to mistake the double sense of the term 'fly-leaves,' and to stick the 'fly- leaves' of his volumes ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... permitted to hold his royal levees. Thither all that was best and truest in the socially rebellions classes domiciled in London used to make its way; and there men calmly talked over the ultimate chances of social revolutions which would have made the hair of respectable Philistine Marylebone stand stiffly on end, had it only known the rank political heresies that were quietly hatching ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... 29, 1855, under Costa's own direction, with Mesdames Viardot and Novello and Messrs. Sims Reeves and Carl Formes in the principal parts. The characters are Eli, Elkanah, Hannah, Samuel, the Man of God, Saph the Philistine warrior, Hophni and Phinehas the sons of Eli, and the Priests and Philistines as chorus. The story is not very consistent in its outlines, and is fragmentary withal, the narrative of the child Samuel being the central theme, around which are grouped the tribulations of Elkanah and Hannah, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... heart trusted in the Lord, we shall understand why he could do such heroic deeds. David said: "The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine." Again: "Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee." ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... 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 written his music ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... right Hegelian touchstone to which everything yields up its latent negation, passing on to its own contradiction—gives truer lights and shades than your pedantic Philistinism. Is Truth really in the cold white light, or in the shimmering interplay of the rainbow tints that fuse in it? Bah! Your Philistine critic will sum me up after I am dead in a phrase; or he will take my character to pieces and show how they contradict each other, and adjudge me, like a schoolmaster, so many good marks for this quality, and so many bad marks for that. Biographers will ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... southern domination was to Wallace. Religion gave her sanction to that intense and unquenchable animosity. Hundreds of Calvinistic preachers proclaimed that the same power which had set apart Samson from the womb to be the scourge of the Philistine, and which had called Gideon from the threshing floor to smite the Midianite, had raised up William of Orange to be the champion of all free nations and of all pure Churches; nor was this notion without ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Monica, imperiously, terrified to death as she conjures up before her Aunt Priscilla's face as it will surely be if this Philistine dares to address her: "I tell you my aunts would never forgive me if they knew I had interchanged even one syllable with you. From this moment you must forget me. There will really be no difficulty about it, as our acquaintance is but of an hour's growth. You ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... 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 and Solomon did, in fact, eclipse for ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... him, and he caught it and rent it in two, as if it had been a kid. When he passed the same way afterward he saw that the bees had built a nest in the body of the lion, and it was full of honey. At his marriage feast—for he married a Philistine woman—he made a riddle for ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury

... 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

... temperament form such utterly dissimilar views of the same object. Thus, as Mr. Spencer has shown,[144] in looking at things national there may be not only a powerful patriotic bias at work in the case of the vulgar Philistine, but also a distinctly anti-patriotic bias in the case of the over-fastidious seeker after culture. And I need hardly add that the different estimates of mankind held with equal assurance by the cynic, the misanthropist, and the philanthropic ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... 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 is to be expected from Bussenius until he has made a firm ...
— 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

... Keroulan is the Grand Disdainer. Like his bosom friend, Monsieur Mallarme, he cares little for the Philistine public—" ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... in 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?" ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger

... joyously. "Well, you wouldn't understand what a triumph it was if I told you. I suppose, papa, you've no idea how Philistine you are. ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... Rebekah's mother and brother.[109] Laban says to Jacob, "These daughters are my daughters, and these children are my children;"[110] the obligation to blood-vengeance rests apparently on the maternal kindred;[111] Samson's Philistine wife remained among her people;[112] and the injunction in Gen. 2:24, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife," refers to the primitive Hebraic form of marriage.[113] Where the matriarchate prevails we naturally find no prejudice against ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... of our power, which did not prove favorable to us politically, while, on the other hand, the Americans who frequently indulged in generalizations about Germany were prone to judge us according to the German-American Beer-Philistine, whom they disdainfully called a "Dutchman." The Americans' view of the German people wavered between these two extremes; but every year opinion tended to incline more and more in the direction of the former. The phantom of a German ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... 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

... the conjecture that the murderers of Belgium had never entertained too fastidious a respect for womanhood; and after the destruction of Louvain and Ypres it is mere bathos to insist that the perpetrators of these outrages against art had previously cherished a Philistine affection for antimacassars and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various

... 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 precincts, he was often there, hunting up books, reading newspapers, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Bohemian 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

... 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.

... 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 ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves

... 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 a touch of queerness ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... Robinson to say? Of course he forgave him. It was in his nature to forgive; and he would even have forgiven Maryanne at that moment, had she come to him and asked him. But she was asleep in her bed, dreaming, perchance, of that big Philistine whom she had chosen as her future lord. A young David, however, might even yet arise, who should smite that huge giant with ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope

... whose movements were polar, and carried from day to day those of the world along with them. The Samson Agonistes,—were his life passed like that of Samuel Johnson in dirty garrets, and the produce of it only some bits of written paper,—the Agonistes, and how he will comport himself in the Philistine mill; this is always a spectacle of truly epic and tragic nature. The rather, if your Samson, royal or other, is not yet blinded or subdued to the wheel; much more if he vanquish his enemies, not by suicidal methods, but march out at last flourishing his miraculous fighting implement, and leaving ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle

... the Amorite "z" or "s" seems sometimes to represent the Hebrew "sh," this name might be compared with the Philistine "Achish." ...
— Egyptian Literature

... 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 that are ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... 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

... 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 ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... report from Washington last night, one comprising all she had learned from Mr. Sands. What would Hitt do with that? She must get in touch with him at once. So she set out to find a telegraph office, that she might check the impulsive publisher who was openly hurling his challenge at the giant Philistine. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... distant yet so distinctly. And when 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; for it is notorious that he has his wild student ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... indescribable piquancy about his epigrams and sallies of thought. He is eloquent, he knows how to love, but the uncertainty that appears in his execution is a part of the very nature of the man. The brotherhood loved him for the very qualities which the philistine ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... perhaps thousands, of pairs of tired eyes would have been freshened and gladdened by the sight of their rare gem-like beauty only made him prouder of his achievement. This young man was a cockney of the small shop-keeping class—a Philistine of the Philistines—hence there was no call to feel surprise at his self-glorification over such a matter. But what shall we say of that writer whose masterly works on English rural life are familiar to everyone, who is regarded as first among "lovers of nature," when he relates that ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... In seeking just occasion to provoke The Philistine, thy Countries Enemy, Thou never wast remiss, I hear thee witness: Yet Israel still serves with all his ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... Schloss Johannisberg, the Steinberg Abbey above Hattenheim, are of course household words, and the man who said that travelling along the Rhine was like reading a restaurant wine-list had some justification for his Philistine speech. One does not expect to discover the real Steinberg Cabinet in a village inn, and the Johannisberg generally found in every hotel in Rhineland is a very inferior wine to that of the Schloss, and is ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard

... and widest of romancers we neglect for some hothouse hybrid of psychological analysis, for the wretched imitators of Balzac and the jackanapes phrasemongering of some Osric of the day, who assures us that Scott is an absolute Philistine. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... agent a venal scoundrel who has just tried to murder him, is, to say the least, a little improbable. Here Schiller was evidently trying to Shaksperize again; trying, that is, to assert the poet's sovereign lordship over the petty bonds of Philistine logic. The Moor's frank exposition of the professional ethics of rascality, the dash with which he does his work, his ubiquitous serviceableness, and his rogue's humor make him a picturesque character and account for his having become on the stage the most popular figure in the piece; ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... things over. What special value would there be in owning a slave where everyone owns slaves. What I want is to have a slave, I alone, here in our civilized sober, Philistine world, and a slave who submits helplessly to my power solely on account of my beauty and personality, not because of law, of property rights, or compulsions. This attracts me. But at any rate we will go to a ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

... newly-arrived visitor. Mr. Cleveland looked terrifically courteous and amiably arrogant. He greeted the Marquess with a smile at once gracious and grim, and looked something like Goliath, as you see the Philistine depicted in some old German painting, looking down upon the pigmy ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... Philistine believes that life is something infinite and unconditioned, and tries to look upon it and live it as though it left nothing to be desired. By method and principle the learned Philistine does the same: he believes that his methods ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer

... system of superstition and ignorance, which two feeble missionaries armed like David when he met the Philistine with "trust in the Lord his God," ventured to attack, and ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart



Words linked to "Philistine" :   habitant, lowbrow, pleb, nonintellectual, dweller, indweller, inhabitant, plebeian, denizen, Philistia, anti-intellectual



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