"Pilfer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... system, right or wrong; but only invented occasionally some miserable tale for the day, in order meanly to sneak out of difficulties into which they had proudly strutted. And they were put to all these shifts and devices, full of meanness and full of mischief, in order to pilfer piecemeal a repeal of an act which they had not the generous courage, when they found and felt their error, honorably and fairly to disclaim. By such management, by the irresistible operation of feeble counsels, so paltry a sum as Threepence in the eyes of a financier, so insignificant an article ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... wish—some other time, however, you must, for my sake, try again; and I shall then be most ready for a rummage of your Irish treasures. Already, indeed, I have been drawing a little upon your 'Researches in the South of Ireland;' and should be very glad to have more books of yours to pilfer. ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... the imperial treasury, the prudent son had to replenish it. True, his method of creating a fund is not the discreetest he could have chosen; for while teaching his people new modes of financiering, he has forgotten that he is also teaching them to pilfer their own gods. What an outcry would be raised in Christendom, if the Jew should plunder his own synagogue. But I tell you, Rachel, that when the lust of riches takes possession of a Christian's heart, it maddens his brain. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the chief blame for this attached to the Greek deputies, Orlando and Luriottis, who had been sent to England to raise the money and to see that it was properly expended, but who, as was well known, had sought only their own advantage and enjoyment, and, pilfering themselves, had allowed others to pilfer without restraint. He urged that the innocent holders of the Greek stock ought not to suffer on this account, and showed also, that, if there had been great abuse of the loan, it had enabled the Greeks to tide ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... constantly words of the same sound, as door, floor. One is pursued by the sheriff, many by the devil. One has invented the perpetual motion and is soon to be rich; others have already acquired vast fortunes: scraps of paper, buttons and chips are to them, large amounts of money. Many pilfer continually and without any apparent motive, while others secrete every thing they can find, their own articles as well as those of others. A majority are disposed to hoard up trifling and useless articles, as scraps of tin, leather, strings, nails, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... here we had none; we were all "men of honour;" and, undoubtedly, if any propensity to mistake the tuum for the meum had been exhibited, there were among us sufficient of the stamp of my old friend "who had served with Rodney," to have flung the culprit where men pilfer no more; whatever ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... there was nothing mean or petty, never having been suspected of corruption, who as Macaulay said of the younger Pitt, "If in an hour of ambition they might have been tempted to ruin their country, never would have stooped to pilfer from her," could not brook the sight of a Legislature made up of ignorant negroes who had been their own slaves, and of venal carpet- baggers. They could not endure that men, some of whom had been bought and sold ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... having needless bother. How miserable! Our slaves are a burden, not worth the trifles they pilfer. I wish they would all run away, then we might ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... had countless rows of narrow cells with iron gratings for doors; and the gimlet gaze of two stalwart young females pierced each newcomer. It was their business to see that Peter Rolls's hands did not pilfer each other's belongings. The gimlet eyes must note the outdoor clothing each girl wore on arrival, in order to be sure that she did not go forth at evening clad in the property of a comrade. Being paid to cultivate ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... him then with more than a hundred rakes; They said: "It here behoves thee to dance covered, That, if thou canst, thou secretly mayest pilfer." ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... his ears. Innocent and guilty alike regarded him with indignant eyes. To the mysterious feminine reasoning it appeared there were different degrees in the crime of theft. To pay a debt by means of a worthless cheque was evidently less reprehensible than to pilfer a brooch from a dressing-table. Guest knew himself condemned before he ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Zagathai we travelled directly north, and our attendants began to pilfer largely from us, because we took too little heed of our property, but experience at length taught us wisdom. At length we reached the bounds of this province, which is fortified by a deep ditch, from sea to sea[1]. Immediately beyond this ditch, we came to the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... been pointed out to us as Wordsworth's residence, we began to peer about at its front and gables, and over the garden-wall on both sides of the road, quickening our enthusiasm as much as we could, and meditating to pilfer some flower or ivy-leaf from the house or its vicinity, to be kept as sacred memorials. At this juncture a man approached, who announced himself as the gardener of the place, and said, too, that this was not Wordsworth's house at all, but the residence of Mr. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... porcelain bath-tubs in its hotels, can testify to this. It is a city that enticed and still entices the mighty of the earth; Roman Emperors in the past came to appease the wrath of its gods, a German Emperor to-day comes to pilfer its temples. For the Acropolis in the poplar grove is a mine of ruins. The porphyry pillars, the statues, the tablets, the exquisite friezes, the palimpsests, the bas-reliefs,—Time and the Turks have spared a few of these. And when the German Emperor came, Abd'ul-Hamid ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... and then added such presents as they considered might be further serviceable to them. Though they appeared anxious to possess whatever the visitors had to give they did not exhibit any disposition to pilfer. And, in some of the bargains, particularly for a sledge and a dog, the articles, though previously paid for, were all ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... partridge comes to the orchard for buds; the rabbit comes to the garden and lawn; the crows and jays come to the ash-heap and corn-crib, the snow-buntings to the stack and to the barn-yard; the sparrows pilfer from the domestic fowls; the pine grosbeak comes down from the north and shears your maples of their buds; the fox prowls about your premises at night, and the red squirrels find your grain in the barn or steal the butternuts from your ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... person shall, within this Commonwealth, or, being a citizen thereof, shall without the same, wilfully destroy,* or run** away with any sea-vessel, or goods laden on board thereof, or plunder or pilfer any wreck, he shall be condemned to hard labor five years in the public works, and shall make good the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... tempting food, and seized - My infant-sufferer found relief; And in the pilfer'd treasure pleased, Smiled on my guilt, and ...
— Miscellaneous Poems • George Crabbe
... town?" repeated Plushkin. "But why? Moreover, how could I leave the house, seeing that every one of my servants is either a thief or a rogue? Day by day they pilfer things, until soon I shall have not a single coat to hang on ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol |
