In politics he is a blind partisan, in theology an arrogant dogmatist, in art an ignorant propagandist.

What he accepts, believes, or has, is not only the best of its kind, but nothing better can ever supersede it.
To this spirit the spirit of culture is antipodal; between the two there is inextinguishable antagonism.

They can never compromise or agree upon a truce, any more than day and night can consent to dwell together.

To destroy philistinism root and branch, to eradicate the ignorance which makes it possible for a man to believe that he possesses all things in their final forms, to empty a man of the stupidity and vulgarity of self-satisfaction, and to invigorate the immortal dissatisfaction of the soul with its present attainments, are the ends which culture is always seeking to accomplish.

The keen lance of Matthew Arnold, flashing now in one part of the field and now in another, pierced many of the fallacies of provincialism and philistinism, and mortally wounded more than one Goliath of ignorance and conceit; but the work must be done anew in every generation and in every individual.