"Filch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no sooner was Swiftnicks out of danger, than he boasted, as well he might, of his splendid courage. Forthwith he appeared a popular hero, obtained a commission in Lord Moncastle's regiment, and married a fortune. And then came Turpin to filch his glory! Nor need Turpin have stooped to a vicarious notoriety, for he possessed a certain rough, half conscious humour, which was not despicable. He purchased a new fustian coat and a pair of pumps, in which to be hanged, and he hired five poor men at ten shillings the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... sleep: Sometimes outstretch'd in very idleness, Nought doing, saying little, thinking less, To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air, Go eddying round; and small birds how they fare, When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn, Filch'd from the careless Amalthea's horn; And how the woods berries and worms provide, Without their pains, when earth hath nought beside To answer their small wants; To view the graceful deer come trooping by, Then pause, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the congregation of negroes assembled for the annual festival called "a picking." They ranged in degrees from Uncle Ish, the oldest representative of his race, to Betsey's five-year-old Jeremiah, who had already been detected in an attempt to filch the nuts from an overturned shock, and was being soundly admonished by his mother's avenging palm. The ground was strewn with baskets and buckets of varying dimensions, into which the nuts were gathered before being consigned to the huge hamper ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... delightful legacy of a spotless reputation: Rich is the inheritance it leaves; pious the example it testifies; pure, precious and imperishable, the hope which it inspires; can there be conceived a more atrocious injury than to filch from its possessor this inestimable benefit to rob society of its charm, and solitude of its solace; not only to out-law life, but attain death, converting the very grave, the refuge of the sufferer, into the gate of ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... haue it not, nor they know it not. Of those things they haue, they would with signes shew vs how to dresse them, and how they grow. They eate nothing that hath any taste of salt. They are very great theeues, for they will filch and steale whatsoeuer they can lay hold of, and all is fish that commeth ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... added, laughing also the while, as he addressed himself to Chia Chen, "that mansion is impoverished. The other day, I heard a consultation held on the sly between aunt Secunda and Yuean Yang. What they wanted was to filch our worthy senior's things and go and pawn them in ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... whirled glittering through the air, and flying from my barbless hook lay floundering on the sands behind me; and though of no great size yet a very good fish I thought him. And indeed I found the fish to bite readily enough and mighty dexterous to filch my bait, and though I lost a-many yet I, becoming more expert, contrived to land five likely fish of different sizes ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... read—you have read," quoted Clorinda. "You are the bookworm, I remember, and filch romances and poems from the shelves. And you have read that it is mostly pain that makes a woman? 'Tis not true. 'Tis a poor lie. I am a woman and I do not suffer—for I will not, that I swear! And when I take an oath I keep it, mark you! It is men women ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and agreeable graces, each of you would take from me a portion of myself, and so would the dancer, and so would the lute-player, if men with distinguished gifts in those arts were present. Each person would filch away a part of me, and instead of being refreshed and restored to health and gladness, as you said, I should be utterly bewildered and distraught, in such wise that for many days to come I should not know in what world I was moving." ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... more now: but if you do not order me a copy of "Bonner's Ghost" incontinently, never dare to look my printing house in the face again. Or come, I'll tell you what; I will forgive all your enormities, if you will let me print your poem. I like to filch a little immortality out of others, and the Strawberry press could never have a better opportunity. I will not haggle for the public will be content with printing only two hundred copies, of which you shall have half, and I half. It shall cost you nothing but a yes, I only propose this, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... I have it not: the first day that I saw you I let you take my heart away from me; Unwilling thief, that without meaning it Did break into my fenced treasury And filch my jewel from it! O strange theft, Which made you richer though you knew it not, And left me poorer, and yet ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... avoid, above all things, the vice of intoxication, which he likened unto the filthy habits of swine, and to those poisonous and baleful drugs which being chewed in the mouth, are said to filch away the memory. At this point of his discourse, the reverend and red-nosed gentleman became singularly incoherent, and staggering to and fro in the excitement of his eloquence, was fain to catch at the back of a chair ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... the shaping of your own chisel, though not as polished as those you would borrow, will fit more naturally and adorn with greater grace. There are two great risks in reading sermon books—a tendency to imitate the style and a temptation to filch the jewels. The style may be very sublime, but the question is will it suit you. Your neighbour's clothes may fit him admirably, but on ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... up. L10,000, my dear John! God bless my soul! it's a magnificent dowry for a daughter,—an ample provision for a younger son. And she is to be allowed to filch it, as other widows filch china cups, and a silver teaspoon or two! It's quite a common thing, but I never heard of ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... way to have your opinion quoted against yourself, and your own sayings repeated to you as good things. I was once talking to an intelligent man in the pit, and criticising Mr. Knight's performance of Filch. 'Ah!' he said, 'little Simmons was the fellow to play that character.' He added, 'There was a most excellent remark made upon his acting it in the Examiner (I think it was)—That he looked as if he had the gallows in one eye and a pretty girl in ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... that is to say, Buck Fuson ain't got a-plenty. He too lazy and shif'less to make co'n of his own; and he like too well to filch co'n from them he puts his spite on. Buck Fuson he tuck a spite at me, last time the raiders was up atter that Fuson hideout; jes set up an' swore 'at I'd gin the word to 'em. You see, honey, he makes him up a spite that-a-way—jes out o' nothin'—'cause ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... says Barrow, "will disdain to subsist, like a drone, upon others' labours; like a vermin to filch its food out of the public granary; or, like a shark, to prey upon the lesser fry; but it will rather outdo his private obligations to other men's care and toil, by considerable service and beneficence to the public; for there is no calling of any sort, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... concealed hook. The good, [on the contrary,] hate to sin from the love of virtue; you will commit no crime merely for the fear of punishment. Let there be a prospect of escaping, you will confound sacred and profane things together. For, when from a thousand bushels of beans you filch one, the loss in that case to me is less, but not your villainy. The honest man, whom every forum and every court of justice looks upon with reverence, whenever he makes an atonement to the gods ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... man shall be full of maggots; full of silly, foolish, idle inventions, to get up, and to abound with fulness again. It is not a time now, will Satan say, to retain a tender conscience, to regard thy word or promise, to pay for what thou buyest, or to stick at pilfering, and filch from thy neighbour.[32] This Agur was afraid of; therefore he prayed that God would keep him from that which would be to him a temptation to do it. How many in our day have, on these very accounts, brought religion to a very ill savour, and themselves unto the snare of the devil, and all because ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... nurseries; Though hard their fare, at evening, and at morn, (A cruise of water, and an ear of corn,) Yet still they grudged that modicum, and thought A sheaf in every single grain was brought. Fain would they filch that little food away, While unrestrained those happy gluttons prey; And much they grieved to see so nigh their hall, The bird that warned St. Peter of his fall; That he should raise his mitred crest ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... infatuation, they may have expected to force from Ruth the latitude and longitude of Fire Mountain. I would not put a planned kidnaping beyond them. But it doesn't seem probable in the light of our undisturbed efforts to filch the code ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... and I was determined this time that no traitor or ingrate should filch from me the reward of my labours. With the thousand francs which Rochez had given me for my services I had engaged the chaise and horses, paid the coachman lavishly, and secured a cosy little apartment for my future wife in a pleasant hostelry ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... will'd, Stole some from Hebe (Hebe Jove's cup fill'd), And gave it to his simple rustic love: Which being known,—as what is hid from Jove?— He inly storm'd, and wax'd more furious Than for the fire filch'd by Prometheus; And thrusts him down from heaven. He, wandering here, In mournful terms, with sad and heavy cheer, Complain'd to Cupid: Cupid, for his sake, To be reveng'd on Jove did undertake; And those on ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... Gentleman's Magazine' hight 'The Columbian,' (which is to run a brisk competition, as we learn, with the other 'pictorials,' GODEY'S, GRAHAM'S, and SNOWDEN'S,) should have enabled us to speak of it from an examination of our own copy, instead of being obliged to filch an idea of its merits from the counter of those most obliging gentlemen, Messrs. BURGESS AND STRINGER. The work is a gay one externally, and spirited internally; having several good articles from good writers, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... something he's not been able to filch from me, the damned thief!" he exclaimed exultantly as he seated himself again. "I've kept all the talent I ever had in that line, and it has developed and increased wonderfully—I don't mean to ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... "Pardieu! 'tis a happy return to beat devils and then have all your own little lies come roosting home like imps that filch the victory! They don't trust me because I won by trickery! Egad! is a slaughter better than a game? An a man wins, who a devil gives a rush for the winnings? 'Tis the fight and the game—pah!—not the thing won! Storm and cold, man and beast, powers o' ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... possessions, notably by appropriating some jewels entrusted to his care by a lady. Hence he is said to have got more by Cales (Cadiz) than by Cale (Cabbage); and this is, perhaps, the origin of our term "to cabbage." Among tailors, this phrase "to cabbage" is a cant saying which means to filch the cloth when cutting out for a customer. Arbuthnot writes "Your [77] tailor, instead of shreds, cabbages whole yards of cloth." Perhaps the word comes from the French cabasser, to put into ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... question.... Let her look out or maybe he'd blaze into her teeth: howl menace down her throat until she swooned. Some one should yield to him a visible and tangible agony to balance his. Does law probe no deeper than the pillage of a watch? Can one filch our self-respect and escape free? Shall not our souls also sue for damages against its aggressor? Some person rich enough must pay for his lacerations or there was less justice in heaven than in the Police Courts; and it might be that girl's lot to expiate the sins of Mary. It would be a pleasure, ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... used to declare with affectionate cynicism that the arm had been broken by the cudgel of a Polish peasant while Castro was trying to filch a pig from a stable.... "I cut his throat out, though," Castro would grumble darkly; "so, like that, and it matters very little—it is even an improvement. See, I put on my blade. See, I transfix you that fly there.... See ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... bears, meanwhile, satiated with exercise, air, and light, had begun to grow restive and fretty. Their stomachs cried cupboardwards, and they were disposed to filch each other's toy horses and hoops, and use each other's small persons as targets for balls, thrown as bombs in a fashion far from polite. Anxious maids and nurses hunted them homewards, not without slight asperity on the one part, on the other occasional squealings and free fights. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... we declare simply this, that on the 20th of December, 1851, eighteen days after the 2nd, M. Bonaparte put his hand into every man's conscience, and robbed every man of his vote. Others filch handkerchiefs, he steals an Empire. Every day, for pranks of the same sort, a sergent-de-ville takes a man by the collar and carries him off to ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... night, eternal night, shall settle down upon you; and for those idle orbs no day shall dawn nor starry night appear, nor face of man nor child shall be reflected there. Your sightlessness shall give those who owe you gratitude and love, opportunity to filch your gold; and, lastly, fire shall rob you of your books, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... about fine distinctions," I broke out. "I will tell you broadly what I feel. I am only human. I am covetous. I would have good things for my country. If I am obliged, I would snatch them and filch them. I have anger. I would be angry for my country's sake. If necessary, I would smite and slay to avenge her insults. I have my desire to be fascinated, and fascination must be supplied to me ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... no Goddess to you, Deucalion. That was for the common people; it gives me more power with them; it helps my schemes. All you Seven higher priests know that trick of calling down the fire, and it pleased me to filch it. Can you not be generous, and admit that a woman may be as clever in finding out these natural laws ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... pi-yoroyoro—sounds at intervals over the town from dawn till sundown. Most insolent of all feathered creatures they certainly are—more insolent than even their fellow-robbers, the crows. A kite will drop five miles to filch a tai out of a fish-seller's bucket, or a fried-cake out of a child's hand, and shoot back to the clouds before the victim of the theft has time to stoop for a stone. Hence the saying, 'to look as surprised as if one's aburage [37] had been snatched ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... without tryall or Judgment." Many of the people fled "for reliefe to the Savage Enemy, who being taken againe were putt to sundry deathes as by hanginge, shooting and breaking uppon the wheele and others were forced by famine to filch for their bellies, of whom one for steelinge of 2 or 3 pints of oatmeale had a bodkin thrust through his tounge and was tyed with a chain to a tree untill he starved, if a man through his sicknes ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... impossible it was that Mr. Lincoln's government, on its coming into office, should have given to the South, not what the South had asked, for the South had not asked, but what the South had taken, what the South had tried to filch. Had the South waited for secession till Mr. Lincoln had been in his chair, I could understand that England should sympathize with her. For myself I cannot agree to that scuttling of the ship by the captain on the day which was ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... I'm doing it with calm deliberation, while, ostensibly, I'm his friend. If I attempt to steal his watch he would be justified in shooting me on the spot—why shouldn't he do the same when I try to filch from ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... the purity of a Christian household, and by a perfidy and adroitness that beat the strategy of hell, flung that girl into the chasm of earthly despair, from which her lost soul goes shrieking to the bottomless pit—nothing! For those who "fleeced" a young man, and induced him to filch from his employers vast sums of money, until, in his agony, he came to an officer of the church, and frantically asked what he ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... in 1874 and re-affirmed at the elections of 1889, means the extinction of the religious sentiment in France. To extinguish the religious sentiment in France would be to empty the history of Reims of all its significance. It would be to filch from the city of St.-Remi and of Clovis, of Urban II. and of Jeanne d'Arc, its great name—a robbery that surely would not enrich the Third Republic, but that would leave Reims ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Unbelief! For if there be now no Hero, and the Histrio himself begin to be seen into, what hope is there for the seed of Adam here below? We are the doomed everlasting prey of the Quack; who, now in this guise, now in that, is to filch us, to pluck and eat us, by such modes as are convenient for him. For the modes and guises I care little. The Quack once inevitable, let him come swiftly, let him pluck and eat me;—swiftly, that ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... to the opposition and actual hostility of the persecuting world, which that handful of frightened men were very soon to face; and our Lord assures them here that, whatsoever the power of the devil working through the world may be able to filch away from them, it cannot filch away the joy that He gives. But we may extend the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... generally poor. They are a mixed people, of Nestorians, Armenians, Jacobites, Georgians, Persians, and Mahometans. These last are perfidious and treacherous people, who think all well got which they can filch or steal from those of other religions; and this wickedness of the Saracens has induced many of the Tartars to join their religion; and if a Saracen be killed by a Christian, even while engaged in the act of robbery, he is esteemed to have died a martyr. It is twelve days journey ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... Law with them more harshly deal That filch a lamb from fold away, Than with the highwaymen who shameless steal Thy purse by force ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... an immeasurable fool she had been, how she had been tricked and fooled all these years by the man who two days ago had put a crown upon his own infamy. He knew where the boys were, he helped to keep them away from their mother, so as to filch from them their present, and above all, future inheritance. How she loathed him now, and loathed herself for having allowed him to drag her down. Aye! of a truth he had wronged her worse even than he had ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... coin, whether gold or silver; but aquafortis he used merely in reducing gold coin, whether guineas, jacobuses, or Portugal pieces, otherwise called moidores, which were at one time as current as guineas. By laying a guinea in aquafortis for twelve hours he could filch from it to the value of ninepence, and by letting it remain there for twenty-four, to the value of eighteenpence, the aquafortis eating the gold away, and leaving it like a sediment in the vessel. He was generally satisfied with taking the value of ninepence from a guinea, of eighteenpence ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the grounding berg and steers the grinding floe, He hears the cry of the little kit-fox and the lemming on the snow. But since our women must walk gay and money buys their gear, The sealing-boats they filch that way at hazard year by year. English they be and Japanee that hang on the Brown Bear's flank, And some be Scot, but the worst, God wot, and ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... twisted a fine lawn handkerchief about the wounded member. Then, with entire good-humor: "I apologize for my incivility and truth; it were a biting rejoinder. Madam, you, too, are welcome to my poor house. With such a dragon in the garden, he will be a brave man indeed who thinks to filch my apples." ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... a mischief meant Fauconbridge To come again so soon? that way he went, And now comes peaking. Upon my life, The buzzard hath me in suspicion, But whatsoever chance, I'll filch ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... curse may blessing haue) Who low and liuing free No princes charge hath prou'de. By stealing sacred fire Prometheus then vnwise, Prouoking Gods to ire, The heape of ills did sturre, And sicknes pale and colde Our ende which onward spurre, To plague our hands too bolde To filch the wealth of Skies. In heauens hate since then Of ill with ill enchain'd We race of mortall men full fraught our breasts haue borne: And thousand thousand woes Our heau'nly soules now thorne, Which free before from those No! earthly passion pain'd. Warre and ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... this end the prelatic order should be revived, and the Bishops chosen as the Church's representatives. The jurisdiction of the prelates within the Church was to be left over for future consideration, in accordance with James's policy, which was not to filch so much of the Church's liberty at any one time as might frustrate his hope of taking it all away in the end. The petition of the Commissioners was granted by ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... man than Mr. Fenwick, having been for thirty years in the ministry, and he had always previously enjoyed the privilege of being on bad terms with the clergyman of the Establishment. It had been his glory to be a poacher on another man's manor, to filch souls, as it were, out of the keeping of a pastor of a higher grade than himself, to say severe things of the short comings of an endowed clergyman, and to obtain recognition of his position by the activity of his operations in the guise of a blister. Our Vicar, understanding something ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... tasted, and still taste. Nor do we intend that those who come after us shall be denied the same high fruition. Our honor as well as our happiness is concerned. We cannot, we dare not, we will not, betray our sacred trust. We will not filch from posterity the treasure placed in our hands to be transmitted to other generations. The bow that gilds the clouds in the heavens, the pillars that uphold the firmament, may disappear and fall away ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... that made all the stars you daily read, And from them filch a knowledge how to feed, Hath hid this from you. Your conjectures all Are drunken things, not how, but when they fall: Man is his own star, and the soul that can Render an honest, and a perfect man, Commands all light, all influence, all fate; Nothing to him falls early, ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... oppress, because to us unknown. Then, howsoever by our needs impelled, Let us resolve to move in gentleness; Judge mildly when we doubt; and pause awhile Before injustice palpably proclaimed Ere we let fall the judgment stroke: against Their ignominious craft, who ever wait To filch another's right, we will maintain Majestic peace in silence; knowing well Their craft takes something richer from themselves. It is but seemly to respect the great; But never let us fail toward lowly ones; Respecting more, in that they lack the ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... fundamentally in agreement, I point to them and say—these were men! They knew how to love their people, they knew how to suffer for them, they knew how to sacrifice everything for them, yet they knew how to differ from them when they ought, and did not filch certain ideas from them. Could Byelinsky have sought salvation in Lenten oil, or peas with radish!..." But at this point ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the other feller never got him again! Why they'd 'a' had to bring the whole standin' army to filch that dog away from Bill after the big doin's. Out here in Wyoming it's a test of class—owners of one of Cupid's pups are first-class, others ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... "Shall this man filch our wits from us With his furor poeticus? Nay!" cried Sir Stodge. "You must agree, If you will hark a while to me And at the Glugs' collective head He ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... former days Could shape our talents to exhibit plays? Your patience, sirs: some observations made, You'll grant us equal to the scenic trade. He who to midnight ladders is no stranger You'll own will make an admirable Ranger, And sure in Filch I shall be quite at home: Some true-bred Falstaff we may hope to start. The scene to vary, we shall try in time To treat you with a little pantomime. Here light and easy Columbines are found, And well-tried Harlequins with us abound. From ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... aquafortis he used merely in reducing gold coin, whether guineas, jacobuses, or Portugal pieces, otherwise called moidores, which were at one time as current as guineas. By laying a guinea in aquafortis for twelve hours, he could filch from it to the value of ninepence, and by letting it remain there for twenty-four to the value of eighteenpence, the aquafortis eating the gold away, and leaving it like a sediment in the vessel. He was generally satisfied with taking the value of ninepence from a guinea, of eighteenpence ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... "Who does not know that the gods say such words as their thievish priests filch from them. Mark now this fellow that comes from the captain-general. Do you not see how the fingers of his left hand clutch and unclutch? Were Hannibal to crucify him and a few like, his gods might utter more favouring responses. Meanwhile, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... they dart across our turbid sky Like a quick flash after a heated day. A moment, where the sombrous shadows lay We see a glory. Though it passed us by No earthly power can filch that dazzling glow From memory's eye, that instant's shine ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... when it is tyme to sleepe, May poure his limbs forth on your pleasant playne; The whiles an hundred little winged loves, Like divers-fethered doves, Shall fly and flutter round about your bed, And in the secret darke, that none reproves, Their prety stealthes shal worke, and snares shal spread To filch away sweet snatches of delight, Conceald through covert night. Ye sonnes of Venus, play your sports at will! For greedy pleasure, carelesse of your toyes, Thinks more upon her paradise of joyes, Then what ye do, albe it good or ill. All night therefore attend your merry play, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... sea-ward, where with the less difficulty we got on board the ship, because we were no strangers to Lycas's servants then in wait upon her: They still honouring us with their company, it was not a time to filch any thing; but, leaving Gito with them, I took an opportunity of getting into the stern, where the image of Isis stood, and strip'd her of a rich mantle, and silver taber, lifting other good booty out of the master's cabin, I stole down by a rope, unseen by any but Gito; ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... thy ambidextrous part, Nor always filch. It was but yesterday, Blundering, they nearly caught thee in the fact; None of thy balls had livers, and the guests, In horror, pierced their airy emptiness. Not even the brains were there, thou brainless hound! ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... he only asked me five francs. I gave him ten, for I pitied his poor old patched boots, and there was a meekness about him that touched me. "And now, Socrates," said I at parting, "we go on our several ways, you to steal tomatoes, I to filch ideas from other people; for the rest—which of these two roads will be the better going, our father which is in heaven ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... because of love without causing us to tremble and grow pale. If any one oppose me in this, I can at once refute his argument; for whoever does not grow pale and tremble, whoever does not lose his senses and memory, is trying to filch and get by stealth what does not by right belong to him. The servant who does not fear his master ought not to remain in his employ nor do his service. He who does not esteem his lord does not fear him, and whoever does not esteem him does not hold him dear, but rather tries ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... What rendered his lordship's passion for amusements of this nature very singular, was his being totally blind. In this place he is beset by seven steady friends, five of whom at the same instant offer to bet with him on the event of the battle. One of them, a lineal descendant of Filch, taking advantage of his blindness and negligence, endeavours to convey a bank note, deposited in our dignified gambler's hat, to his own pocket. Of this ungentlemanlike attempt his lordship is apprised by a ragged post-boy, and an honest butcher: but he is so much ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... else Imogen's piquant's face? Portia's gravity and womanly sweetness? Rosalind's true heart and silvery laughter? Cordelia's beauty of holiness? These would form the centre of the court, but the purlieus, how many-coloured! Malvolio would walk mincingly in the sunshine there; Autolycus would filch purses. Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Sir Toby Belch would be eternal boon companions. And as Falstaff sets out homeward from the tavern, the portly knight leading the revellers like a three-decker a line of frigates, they are encountered ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... world a little more advanced in its fashionable ways, she might readily make a small fortune in teaching young ladies "How to Marry Well." No man could resist her pupils, once properly finished by her and turned out to prey upon the stronger sex. "The Complete Angler" would be a title they might filch with perfect honor and call ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... perhaps. This world is not a very fine place for a good many of the people in it. But I've made up my mind it shan't be the worse for me, if I can help it. They may tell me I can't alter the world—that there must be a certain number of sneaks and robbers in it, And if I don't lie and filch, somebody else will. Well, then, somebody else shall, for I won't. That's the upshot of my conversion. Mr. Lyon, if you ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... FILCH, or FILEL. A beggar's staff, with an iron hook at the end, to pluck clothes from an hedge, or any thing out of a casement. Filcher; the same as angler. Filching cove; a man thief. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... best in the stories of Mr. W. W. JACOBS, apart from their mere hilarity, is their triumphant vindication of the right to jest. They spread themselves before me like a pageant representing the graceful submission of the easy dupe. They tempt me to filch away chairs from beneath stout and elderly gentlemen who are about to sit down. Take the case of Sergeant-Major Farrer in Night Watches (HODDER AND STOUGHTON). He was afraid of nothing on earth, or off it, but ghosts, and he despised the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... proportionable quantity of gold and silver, and thereby render him almost incapable of taking flight to foreign countries; nay, at last perhaps utterly so, when under pretence of their not being completed, he should filch in more of his metal, and filch away more ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... wave. Wherefore if thou desire we rend thee not, Take heed thou mount not o'er the pitch." This said, They grappled him with more than hundred hooks, And shouted: "Cover'd thou must sport thee here; So, if thou canst, in secret mayst thou filch." ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... word but of kindness, and there you'd up and say, 'Be off, go along, get away with you!' Oh yes, you're a shrewd one at politics, I dare say! You don't need to be taught how to swindle the master, and to filch fur coats!" ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... of our Lord eighteen hundred and three: All I mean to say is, that the Muse is now free From the self-imposed trammels put on by her betters, And no longer like Filch, midst the felons and debtors, At Drury Lane, dances her hornpipe in fetters. Resuming her track, At once she goes back To our hero, the Bagman—Alas! and Alack! Poor Anthony Blogg Is as sick as a dog, Spite of sundry ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... permit the keeper to remove a single shaving from the cage if a fresh supply was not in sight. He would gather all the bedding in a pile, lie upon it and guard every shred jealously, striking and smashing any implement of wood or iron thrust into the cage to filch his treasure. But when a sackful of fresh shavings was placed where he could see it, Monarch voluntarily left his bed, went to another part of the cage and watched the removal of the ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... superintendent, used to say that she had made prey of as many of these articles as there were days in the year. Animals in menageries are sometimes great enemies to the milliner's art; giraffes have been known to filch the flowers adorning a bonnet, and we once saw a lady miserably oppressed by monkeys. She was very decidedly of "a certain age," but dressed in the extreme of juvenility, with flowers and ribbons of all the colors of the rainbow. Her complexion ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... foreign original, and frequently appended a quotation. {103a} Drayton in 1594, in the dedicatory sonnet of his collection of sonnets entitled 'Idea,' declared that it was 'a fault too common in this latter time' 'to filch from Desportes or from Petrarch's pen.' {103b} Lodge did not acknowledge his borrowings more specifically than his colleagues, but he made a plain profession of indebtedness to Desportes when he wrote: 'Few men are able to second ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... to-day. Confucius, it is plain, was no mere pedant; for we have seen how, in the year 500, when he first enjoyed high political power, he displayed conspicuously great strategical and diplomatic ability in defeating the treacherous schemes of the ruler of Ts'i, who had been endeavouring to filch Lu territory, and who was dreadfully afraid lest Lu should, through Wu's favour, acquire the hegemony or protectorship. He could even be humorous, for when the barbarian King of Wu put in a demand for a ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... must give to the severe whims of such husbands as hers: from that very Monday morning she began to grow a little careless about her expenditure—which she had never been before. By degrees bill after bill was allowed to filch from the provision of the following week, and when that was devoured, then from that of the week after. It was not that she was in the least more expensive upon herself, or that she consciously wasted anything; but, altogether averse to housekeeping, she ceased to exercise the ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... in skeletons, avaunt! Ye are but dust; belike the dust of beggars; for on this bed, paupers may lie down with kings, and filch their skulls. This, great Marjora's arm? No, some old paralytic's. Ye, kings? ye, men? Where are your vouchers? I do reject your brother-hood, ye libelous remains. But no, no; despise them not, oh Babbalanja! Thy own skeleton, thou thyself dost carry ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... people of Louisiana into our Union? Our children are settling that country." Sir, it is no concern of mine what he does. Because his children have run wild and uncovered into the woods, is that a reason for him to break into my house, or the houses of my friends, to filch our children's clothes, in order to cover his children's nakedness. This Constitution never was, and never can be, strained to lap over all the wilderness of the West, without essentially affecting both the rights and ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... A people, careless and ignorant of their own interests, so far give away the rights in their streets, that a few men get them into their possession. With the grip once fast upon this power, it becomes not a machinery primarily to serve the people: primarily it becomes an enginery to filch vast unearned increments from the public. It becomes a device for gambling, with the dice so heavily loaded in your favor that you cannot lose. You change power from one kind to another; you merge one line with another or with the ...
— The Conflict between Private Monopoly and Good Citizenship • John Graham Brooks
... as Great Britain claimed Normandy, because her conquerors came from that region; and now that two of her neighbours have exhausted themselves in fighting for it, she will take good care that neither of them shall filch the jewel ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... eat that which their own hands have harvested, and need not to spend of their substance in buying of others. Truly, it is well for honest men, but not so well for forestallers and regraters;[2] but who heeds what befalls such foul swine, who filch the money from people's purses, and do not one hair's turn of work ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris |
