"Thievish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... under another name, she engaged a woman to accompany her as a servant; and this woman one day having committed some fault, was beaten by her master, who scolded her and told her she was lazy, thievish, and impudent. Smarting under the punishment, she determined to be revenged, and going to the magistrate told him: 'This man, who seems to you so respectable, is a wicked wretch who has abandoned his own wife, and run away in the night with the daughter of one ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... merchandise, dry goods and groceries, and hardware—anything the purchaser might desire from ham and bacon and tinned goods to shirts and overalls, spurs and guns. Behind it stood the proprietor, a slant-eyed, thievish-looking Mexican, while behind him were his untidy shelves—a further jumble of commodities. He looked his approval at the girl, his professional interest ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... a shrewd question. You know I have a theory that a man is known by his dog. This beast seems to have changed character when he changed masters. When Enciso had him he was little more than a puppy, and then he was thievish and cowardly. Now he will attack an Indian as savagely as Leoncico himself. Pizarro must have ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... perhaps somewhat too unqualified reprobation. For there are tinkers and tinkers. Some of them, indeed, are stout and sturdy thieves,—veritable birds of prey,—whose rapacity is continually questing for plunder. But some of them have merely the magpies' and jackdaws' thievish propensity for picking up what lies temptingly in their way. And some few are so honest that they pass by as harmlessly as a wedge of high-flying wild duck. And I have heard it said that to places ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the women, and in that of Antonio when he made his appearance at night. In these tertulias the grandmother was the principal spokeswoman, and astonished my ears with wonderful tales of the Land of the Moors, prison escapes, thievish feats, and one or two poisoning adventures, in which she had been engaged, as she informed me, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... tarnished, greasy, rascallion-like, the costly bauble! Filled with what motley, unlovable contents: stale pawn-tickets of foreign monts de piete, pledges never henceforth to be redeemed; scrawls by villanous hands in thievish hierolgyphics; ugly implements replacing the malachite penknife, the golden toothpick, the jewelled pencil-case, once so neatly set within their satin lappets. Ugly implements, indeed,—a file, a gimlet, loaded dice. Pell-mell, with such ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dice, nor chess, nor others like these. But they play with the ball, with the sack, with the hoop, with wrestling, with hurling at the stake. They say, moreover, that grinding poverty renders men worthless, cunning, sulky, thievish, insidious, vagabonds, liars, false witnesses, &c.; and that wealth makes them insolent, proud, ignorant, traitors, assumers of what they know not, deceivers, boasters, wanting in affection, slanderers, &c. But with them all the rich and poor together make up the community. They are rich because ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Russorum inimica, qui capti se invicem interficiunt. In 1777 GEORGIUS says in his Beschreibung aller Nationen des Russischen Reichs (part ii., p. 350) of the Chukches "They are more savage, coarse, proud, refractory, thievish, false, and revengeful, than the neighbouring nomads the Koryaeks. They are as bad and dangerous as the Tunguses are friendly. Twenty Chukches will beat fifty Koryaeks. The Ostrogs (fortified places) lying in the neighbourhood of their country are even in continual fear of them, and cost so much ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... fountain of national and domestic antagonisms. Every ignoring of inherent rights, every transfer of inherent interest, from the first organization of communities, has been the license of power to robbery and murder, itself the embodiment of a thievish and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... a long time with his face down upon the books, when he suddenly started and listened. He heard the sound of an opening door, but not of the door in ordinary use. Thinking it proceeded from some thievish intent, he kept still. There was another door, in a corner, covered with books, but it was never opened at all. It communicated with a part of the buildings of the quadrangle which had been used for the abode of the students under a former economy. It had ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... which Evan had proposed. The woman said: "A lawyer will do this"; the man said: "Splendid is the bargain and costly and thievish are ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... to a small table and sat down to a plentiful meal of such things as formed the dainties of persons of their rank of life. Upon the table stood the dish of sweetmeats which the thievish maidservant had brought to Mere Malheur with the groom's story of the conversation between Bigot and Varin, a story which, could Angelique have got hold of it, would have stopped at once her frightful plot ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... of boxes and a variety of furniture, smelt of tobacco, sour cabbage, and olive oil. Petunikoff looked around him and made a face. Vaviloff looked at the icon, and then they looked simultaneously at one another, and both seemed to be favorably impressed. Petunikoff liked Vaviloff's frankly thievish eyes, and Vaviloff was pleased with the open cold, determined face of Petunikoff, with its ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... others brought against him. Reynard, still undismayed, demanded with well-feigned indignation whether he was to be held responsible for the sins of those messengers whose misfortunes were attributable to their gluttonous and thievish propensities only. ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... Hudson Bay and York Factory. From Le Grand Diable's former association with the North-West Company it was probable he would be in Robertson's brigade. Among the voyageurs of both companies there was not a more expert canoeman than this treacherous, thievish Iroquois. As steersman, he could take a crew safely through knife-edge rocks with the swift certainty of arrow flight. In spite of a reputation for embodying the vices of white man and red—which gave him his ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Italian cabbies and porters fill me with terror for the time when I may have to fall alive and unassisted into their hands: they have neither conscience nor gratitude, and regard thievish demands when satisfied merely as stepping-stones ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... gives a pitiful account of these: "I came this journey with a determination to observe very carefully all your hints as to occupations and observations, east and west, north and south, but I have been so worried by lazy, deceitful Sepoys, and thievish Johanna men, and indifferent instruments, that I fear the results are very poor." He goes on to say that some of his instruments were defective, and others went out of order, and that his time-taker, one of his people, had no conscience, and could not be trusted. The ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... lessons the percentage of persons driven by destitution into the ranks of crime. Add to these the great bulk of juvenile offenders convicted of theft, and that peculiar class of people who steal, not because they are in distress, but merely from a thievish disposition, and it will he manifest that half the cases of theft in England and Wales are not due to ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... young girls," he said, "and far more tractable; thievish, of course, and untruthful—but so are all children! They attach themselves to me in a pathetic, dog-like fashion, without hope of preferment or any ulterior object.... Yes, they have established themselves in my heart, somehow or other; perhaps because I am an orphan ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... 's just put through some particularly thievish deal and wants to ease his conscience. Have you the paper? Perhaps the ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... gambling attractions of the fur trade, to the bad governmental system, and to the frequent interruptions of the corvee, a kind of forced labour which was meant to serve the public interest, but which Bigot and other thievish officials always turned to their own private advantage. On the whole, the reports were most encouraging in the prospects they held out to honest labour, ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... Danish Mission Intelligence:—Nobody can deny that the Pariers are the dregs and refuse of all the Indians; they are thievish, and have wicked ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... moving, they might be deer, or they might be wolves, but from the way they progressed I had little doubt they were men. They came from a quarter I did not like, inhabited by Dacotahs and Pawnees—treacherous, thievish rascals, who will take the scalp of an old woman if they can catch her asleep, and make as much boast of it as if they had killed a warrior in open fight. Still it was necessary to be on my guard against them. I waited till I ascertained without doubt that they were human ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... for the weather may then be better, and I shall not have upset the milk, and these generals will not be looking at me so fiercely." In fact, I had actually begun to move towards the door when Monsieur Markov entered—a grey-headed man with thievish eyes, and clad in a dirty dressing-gown fastened with a belt. Greetings over, I stumbled out something about Emelia Ivanovitch and forty roubles, and then came to a dead halt, for his eyes told me that my ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... knight,' he said, 'for there be six knaves who have taken my lord and bound him, and now they will surely take you and your lady unless you go back. I barely escaped with my life, and hid when I heard you, thinking you were of their thievish company.' ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... in all other, chuckled, at safe distance, that if Olopana's suspicions were correct, the boy should have somewhat of his—er—uncle's good looks and pleasant manner, whereas he was hairy, ill-favored, and, as his nature disclosed itself with increasing years, violent, thievish, treacherous; in short, he was Olopana at his worst. Every day added to the bad feeling between the boy and his father, for when he had grown old enough to appreciate the position to which he had been born, the youngster repaid the hate of his parent, and strove to deserve it. Vain the attempt ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... flight of crows which passed overhead, cawing, and flying so low that the children could see every feather in their bodies, which shone in the sun like burnished green-black jet, and the glancing of their thievish eyes. ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... speaking, and, not least, at their names; but, until the present day, I had been unacquainted with the most extraordinary point connected with them. How came they possessed of this extraordinary virtue? was it because they were thievish? I remembered that an ancient thief-taker, who had retired from his useful calling, and who frequently visited the office of my master at law, the respectable S—-, who had the management of his property—I remembered to have heard this worthy, with whom I occasionally held discourse, philosophic ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... called Science as against psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and literary men, whom he regards as wild, foolish, immoral scoundrels in this relation; but he has a strong feeling for all educated men as against the working man, whom he regards as a cheating, lying, loafing, drunken, thievish, dirty scoundrel in this relation; but so soon as the working man is comprehended together with those others, as Englishmen—which includes, in this case, I may remark, the Scottish and Welsh—he holds them superior to all other sorts of ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... obliged to one of two distasteful and perilous alternatives; either to shut the door altogether and set his portmanteau out upon the wayside, a wonder to all beholders; or to leave the door ajar, so that any thievish tramp or holiday schoolboy might stray in and stumble on the grisly secret. To the last, as the least desperate, his mind inclined; but he must first insure himself that he was unobserved. He peered out, and down the long road; it lay dead empty. He went to the corner of the by-road ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... three weeks (which time it took for the hampered and filibustered bill to come up for its passage or defeat), is known to those who have tried to do it. The railroads were outraged and incensed by the measure; they sincerely believed it to be monstrous and thievish. "Let the legislature try to confiscate two-fifths of the lawyers', or the bakers', or the ironmoulders', just earnings," said they, "and ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... it—and the picture had disappeared. She laughed at her own folly, yet she was glad Stanley had given her this chance to make up a silly day-dream. She waited until he had exhausted himself on the subject of valets, their drunkenness, their thievish habits, ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... he embarked on board the barque Clymene, which was bound for Payta, in Peru, and was landed on Picton Island; but before the vessel had departed the Fuegians had beset the little party, and shown themselves so obstinately and mischievously thievish, that it was plainly impossible for so small a party to hold their ground among them. Before there could be a possibility of convincing them of even the temporal benefit of the white man's residence among them, they would have stripped and carried off everything from persons ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... we here? see, see, the giant Cacus Draws an ox backward to his thievish den. Hath this device so long deluded me? Monster of men, Cacus, restore my cattle, Or instantly I'll crush thy idle coxcomb, And dash thy doltish brains ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... had a wholesome horror, and merry was the prank which he played upon the extortionate money-lender of Warwick. Riding on an easy rein through the town, Hind heard a tumult at a street corner, and inquiring the cause, was told that an innkeeper was arrested by a thievish usurer for a paltry twenty pounds. Dismounting, this providence in jack-boots discharged the debt, cancelled the bond, and took the innkeeper's goods for his own security. And thereupon overtaking the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... parting of her hair. The couple are fed with rice and pulses one after the other out of the same leaf-plates, and the parties have a feast. Next morning, before their departure, the father of the bride asks the bridegroom to do his best to put up with his daughter, who is thievish, gluttonous and so slovenly that she lets her food drop on to the floor; but if he finds he cannot endure her, to send her home. In the same manner the father of the boy apologises for his son, saying that he ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... we found it necessary to be equally well prepared; and whenever we seated ourselves at a table, we never failed to display the butts of our pistols, which kept them in decent order, for they are as cowardly as they are thievish. Our seamen, not being so cautious or so well provided with arms, were frequently robbed ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... for a moment doubt the faith of Wingfold; but a man must have some respect for appearances: appearances were facts as well as realities were facts. An honest man must not keep company with a thief, if he would escape the judgment of being of thievish kind. Something must be done; probably something said would be enough, and the rector was now on his way ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... to reflect, that a thievish orator at one of our Agricultural Fairs might appropriate page after page out of the "Gentleman Farmer" of Lord Kames, written in the middle of the last century, and the county-paper, and the aged directors, in clean shirt-collars ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... these creatures, though they live in the open air, have their ideas of fireside comforts. There were two or three children sleeping on the straw with which the tents were littered; a couple of donkeys were grazing in the lane, and a thievish-looking dog was lying before the fire. Some of the younger gipsies were dancing to the music of a fiddle, played by a tall, slender stripling, in an old frock-coat, with a peacock's feather ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... deadly foe of rats and mice, Was making ready in a trice To eat the stranger as a mouse. "What! do you dare," she said, "to creep in The very bed I sometimes sleep in, Now, after all the provocation I've suffered from your thievish nation? Are you not really a mouse, That gnawing pest of every house, Your special aim to do the cheese ill? Ay, that you are, or I'm no weasel." "I beg your pardon," said the bat; "My kind is very far from that. What! I a mouse! Who told you such a lie? Why, ma'am, I ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... Australis), or the wood-hen, belonging to the class of rails, which have already become quite scarce upon North Island. In the grassy plains and forests of the Southern Alps, however, they are still found in considerable numbers. It is a thievish bird, greedy after everything that glistens; it frequently carries off spoons, forks, and the like, but it also breaks into hen-coops, and picks ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the clear, and sparkling air, Fleet the pointed darts of frost, The filmy nets, now here, now there, For thievish birds, are lightly toss'd; Or, plac'd with silent heed, the wily snares, To lure the stranger-cranes, and timid hares. Rich viands they, whose pleasing flavor Crown his board, reward his labor. In those convivial hours the Heart forgets ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... intolerable, as much so as the suspense of ignorance. He could not, would not, believe her capable of ingratitude so rank; and fought fiercely, unreasoningly, against the conviction that she would have followed her thievish instincts and made off with the booty.... A judgment meet and right ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... O thievish Night, Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end, In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars Which Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps With everlasting oil to give due light To the misled and ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... sponge loaf. Nothing much worse than had already happened could befall him, and after brief temptation he kicked off his unlaced hobnails and stole downstairs. With some such vague idea of disguising crime as a thievish monkey might have had, he packed up a pair of neatly folded towels in the paper which had once held the loaf, and so retreated to his prison. All day long the familiar noises of the house, exaggerated into importance by his own loneliness, went on. Feet travelled here and there, voices ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... for amber or iron no Druid has recorded. How he slew the foraging Belgae, or was slain by them and dispossessed, no bard has sung. Whether he was generous and heroic as the New Zealander, or apelike and thievish as the Bushman, no ethnologist has yet proved. The very ashes of the founder of London have long since turned to ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... race or class of people in America, for whom we scarcely seem to have a parallel in England. Of pure white blood, they are unknown or unrecognizable in towns; inhabit the fringe of settlements and the deep, quiet places of the country; rebellious to all labour, and pettily thievish, like the English gipsies; rustically ignorant, but with a touch of wood-lore and the dexterity of the savage. Whence they came is a moot point. At the time of the war, they poured north in crowds to escape the conscription; lived during summer on fruits, wild animals, and petty ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... adding ish to them; which termination when added to adjectives, imports diminution, or lessening the quality; as, "White, whitish;" i.e. somewhat white. When added to nouns, it signifies similitude or tendency to a character; as, "Child, childish; thief, thievish." ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... which seemed to have recruited at all points of the compass, possessed a crew composed of every variety of thievish knaves; each country ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... People, after a stay of just three Months, the most part of which time we have been upon good terms with them. Some few differences have now and then hapned owing partly to the want of rightly understanding each other, and partly to their natural thievish disposition, which we could not at all times bear with or guard against; but these have been attended with no ill consequence to either side except the first, in which one of them was kill'd, and this I was very sorry for, because from what had hapned to them by the ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... neither capable nor willing; and if, indeed, there chances to be one willing to erect some worthy building, he often takes no manner of care to seek out an architect of real merit or of any loftiness of spirit. Nay, he puts his honour and glory into the keeping of certain thievish creatures, who generally disgrace the name and fame of such memorials; and in order to thrust forward into greatness those who depend entirely upon him (so great is the power of ambition), he often rejects the good designs that are ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... persons, rich and poor, young and old, men and women, to come and see me. At the same time I make a distinction between those who are likely to be useful to me and mere idle intruders. All the Arab soldiers come, and, in general, though poor and thievish, they have less of prejudices, and like the English better than the Ghadamsee people. This city has not yet felt the benefit of English influence, and interference in Tripoli, and therefore the merchants have not the same reasons ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... appeared as an orator he pleased his hearers. This turned his head, and a spendthrift's blood runs in his veins. To bring his fair young bride to a stately mansion, he undertook the bad cause of the thievish ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... where the grass was best, and the knots he tied were the knots his dad would have tied in his place. He unrolled his blanket and carried it to the sheltered little nook under the ledge, and dragged the bag of doughnuts and the jelly and honey and bread after it. He had heard about thievish animals that will carry off bacon and flour and such. He knew that he ought to hang his grub in a tree, but he could not reach up as far as the fox who might try to help himself, so that was ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... in one instant that it must be some money he had taken for the flowers, and had kept back from her. "You wicked, thievish boy!" she shrieked. "I'll teach you to thieve, and then pry about arter people be a-bed; so good as I've been to ye, too. Ye jest leave my ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... temper of the house-holder, whether she would take that apparition quietly, deceived by Lanyard's mumming into believing she had only a poor thievish fool to deal with, or with a storm of bourgeois hysteria. In the latter event, Lanyard's hand was ready planted, palm down, on the top of the desk: should the woman attempt to give the alarm, a single bound would carry the adventurer across it in ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... lace. I knew very well that no lady of elegance could occupy such apartment, or, indeed, was to be found (I mean no disrespect to the abbe) in that quarter of Paris. The window plainly belonged to some thievish den, and the lace formed a portion of the spoils. I began to be distrustful of late visits to the abbe's quarters, and full of the notion of thievish eyes looking out from the strange window—I used half to tremble as ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... rated his own writings much above their value, and who was inclined to see all Voltaire's actions in the worst light, was enraged to think that his favourite compositions were in the hands of an enemy, as thievish as a daw and as mischievous as a monkey. In the anger excited by this thought, he lost sight of reason and decency, and determined on committing an outrage ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have been taught to think that they are the finest of the wheat, and that their enemy is the stranger, above all—the Jew. For a long time these people were being persuaded that all the Jews are restless people, strikers and rioters. They were next informed that the Jews like to drink the blood of thievish boys. In our days they are being taught that the Polish Jews ...
— The Shield • Various
... to Europe. The produce of their labours being also less valuable, their tasks are not so rigorously exacted, and in justice to both, it must be allowed that the Negroes themselves are less treacherous and thievish, than they are in the Islands: for the propagation of the black species being very considerable here, most of them are born in the country, and it is remarked that these are in general less depraved than those imported from Africa. Besides, we must do ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... twelve when he reached home. Now, once more, would begin the gruesome process of deception—flinching of soul, and brazening of visage. It would be better when the whole thievish business was irretrievably begun and ordered ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... driven from her course in a voyage to Hammerfest, and wrecked on a desolate shore. The survivors experience the miseries of a long sojourn in the Arctic circle, with inadequate means of supporting life, but ultimately, with the aid of some friendly but thievish Lapps, they succeed in making their way to a reindeer station and so southward to Tornea and home again. The story throughout is singularly vivid and truthful in its details, the individual characters are fresh and well marked, and a pleasant ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... skill, thine arrow's sharp head dip In yonder thievish Frenchman's guilty blood, I promise thee thy sovereign shall not slip To give thee large rewards for such a good;" Thus said the spirit; the man did laugh and skip For hope of future gain, nor longer stood, But from his ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower, Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk Where serpents are—chain me with roaring bears, Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house O'ercovered quite with dead men's rattling bones; Or bid me go into a new made grave; Or hide me with ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... thought me damned too unutterably to have one thought left that savoured of redemption—who was to be my captain, but the knave that you saw me cudgel at the ordinary when you waited on Lord Glenvarloch, a cowardly, sharking, thievish bully about town ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... stature, well proportioned in body, {29} with broad faces and small eyes, wide mouths, for the most part unbearded, and with great lips. They were, so Davis said, 'very simple in their conversation, but marvellous thievish.' They made off with a boat that lay astern of the Moonshine, cut off pieces from clothes that were spread out to dry, and stole oars, spears, swords, and indeed anything within their reach. Articles made of iron seemed to offer an irresistible temptation: in spite of all pledges of ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... too many Indian servants about them to keep tidy; seven or eight is the average number for a family. These are married, and occupy the ground floor, which swarms with nude children. They are cheap, thievish, lazy, and filthy. No class, pure-blood or half-breed, is given to ablution, though there are two public baths in the city. Washerwomen repair to the Machangara, where they beat the dirty linen of Quito over the smooth rocks. We remember but two or three table-cloths ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... feel quite like, That o'er the fire ladders crawls Then softly creeps, ground the walls. My aim's quite virtuous ne'ertheless, A bit of thievish lust, a bit of wantonness. I feel it all my members haunting— The glorious Walpurgis night. One day—then comes the feast enchanting That shall all ...
— Faust • Goethe
... the last remaining building they had left besides the negro quarter. That was too much; all my pride, and the resolutions that I had made (and until now kept up) to treat them with cool contempt, and never, let the worst come, humble myself to the thievish cutthroats, forsook me at the awful thought of my home in ruins; I must do something, and that quickly;—hardened, thieving villains, as I knew them to be, I would make one effort for the sake of my home. I looked over the crowd, as they ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... population of Rio Medio, leading a cloistered existence in the ruins of old splendour, used to call that thievish rabble Lugarenos—villagers. They were sea-thieves, but they were dangerous. At night, from these clusters of hovels surrounded by the banana plantations, there issued a villainous noise, the humming of hived scoundrels. Lights twinkled. One could hear the thin twanging of guitars, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... better fishing. Robert Coppin, their pilot, likewise informed them of "a great and navigable river and good harbour in the other headland of the bay, almost right over against Cape Cod," which he had formerly visited, and which was called "Thievish Harbor." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... horses of the Sun shall bring Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring; Ere twice in murk and occidental damp Moist Hesperus hath quench'd his sleepy lamp; Or four-and-twenty times the pilot's glass Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass; What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly, Health shall live free, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Earth People. They said that they had been made from red clay. Their totem was a fox; and the French of the Great Lakes had dubbed them Foxes—had asserted that, like the fox, they were quarrelsome, tricky and thievish. As warriors they were much feared. They had ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... peaceful garden of Linden House held her imagination. She recalled each syllable of it, and there throbbed in her brain the hitherto undreamed of possibility that Coke had brought the Andromeda to Fernando Noronha in pursuance of his thievish project. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... several days' negotiation, procured the requisite number of canoes, Mr. Hunt would gladly have left this thievish neighborhood, but was detained until the 5th of February by violent head winds, accompanied by snow and rain. Even after he was enabled to get under way, he had still to struggle against contrary winds and tempestuous weather. The ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... one tosses in the fire; Alone, a somewhat thievish slave neglecting one; Alone, a vague disgust of all beneath ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... "dregs" on purpose, as of course peoples in a collective sense cannot be held responsible for the bad-doings of a small number of their countrymen, and I wish it here to be distinctly understood that when I speak of the villainous acts and thievish propensities of these latter (who being too well-known and despised in their own place, to be able to succeed in their base tricks go elsewhere in search of victims) I do not mean to offend, or cast a slight upon Malays, Chinese, ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... a certainty!" I said to myself. The thought at once drove away all ideas of sleep; and I placed myself in an attitude to listen, and, if possible, lay my hands on the thievish intruder; for I now felt certain that, crab or no crab, whatever creature was making the scratching noise was the same ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... I did not want to re-enter the service of his Majesty. Incensed by these presumptuous words, which were none of my saying, the King exclaimed: "Since he left us without any cause, I shall not recall him; let him e'en stay where he is." Thus the thievish brigands brought matters exactly to the pass they desired; for if I had returned to France, they would have become mere workmen under me once more, whereas, while I remained away, they were their own masters and in my place; consequently, they did everything in their ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... after the abdication at Fontainebleau: "I always desired the return of that excellent Prince, Louis XVIII., and his august family." But these things are mere shadows of the incomparable villainy of this thievish human jackdaw. ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... with an innocent taste for green peas a thievish method of acquiring their usual savory accompaniment, is reported to have been addressed by an English judge in the following felicitous terms:—"Prisoner at the bar, Providence has endowed you with health and strength, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in the draft-riots! By this unholy combination a pledge to reduce the tariff was carried out by a bill which greatly increased its burdens; by this combination the public lands and resources of the country were fed to a gang of vultures by a thievish Secretary of the Interior. And of course under such an administration the cause of "Religion" made tremendous strides. Catholic officials were appointed to public office, Catholic ecclesiastics were accorded public honors, and Catholic favor became a means to political advancement. You might ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... trestles and boards. She was as red in the face as Birkenbog himself, for a cur with a kettle tied to its tail had taken refuge under her stall, and she had been serving a writ of ejectment with the same old umbrella with which she whacked thievish boys and sheltered her goods on ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... night, a negro whom we had suspected of thievish propensities, presented eight full-day tickets as the representative of ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... had gone, and with it the gold which it contained and Clotilde's precious ring. In dismay Aurelian hurried to the city, reached his home, and sent his servants in all directions in search of the thievish mendicant, whom he felt sure had sought some ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... decidedly a thievish place. The shops are all shut at dark, after the Oracion, for fear of thieves. Ladies used to wear immense tortoise-shell combs at the back of their heads, where the mantilla is fastened on; but, when it became a regular trade for thieves to ride on horseback through ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... The thread itself, as it her hand did hit, But smote it full, and quite did sunder it. The more kind Neptune rag'd, the more he raz'd His love's life fort, and kill'd as he embrac'd: Anger doth still his own mishap increase; If any comfort live, it is in peace. O thievish Fates, to let blood, flesh, and sense, Build two fair temples for their excellence, To rob it with a poison'd influence! Though souls' gifts starve, the bodies are held dear In ugliest things; sense-sport preserves ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... homeopathic education. Allopathy has produced the poisonous illusion that it enlightens instead of darkening. The suggestion may, however, explain why, whilst most people's minds succumb to inculcation and environment, a few react vigorously: honest and decent people coming from thievish slums, and sceptics ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... way down stream a thievish Indian, who had come out in a canoe, managed to steal something from the ship. One of the crew chanced to see the Indian as he was slyly slipping off, and picking up a gun he fired and killed him. After that Hudson's men had several ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... his place along the woodside. To my terror, he was gone. Forgetful of my weakness, I passed rapidly, hither and thither, inquiring of cavalry-men, and entertaining suspicions of every person in the vicinity. Finally, I espied him in charge of a rough, thievish sabreman, who affected not to see me. I went up to the animal, and pulled the reins from his shoulder, to discover the brand mark,—"U. S." As I surmised, he had not been branded, and I turned indignantly ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... our encampment (at Jenin in Palestine) our dragoman told us that the people of the village were so quarrelsome and thievish that it was never safe to stop a night there without an extra guard, and he had engaged the brother of the sheik of the village to occupy this responsible post. This man was a great, tall, athletic-looking fellow, but a deaf mute. While we were taking our dinner he came into our tent, ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... wrinkles which thy glass will truly show Of mouthed graves will give thee memory; Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know Time's thievish progress ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... the thievish corners of the streets: and privily in his lurking dens doth he murder the innocent; his eyes are set against ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... sobriquet of Jack Dawkins, an artful thievish young scamp, in the boy crew of Fagin the Jew villain.—C. Dickens, Oliver ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Cogia walking along the plain met a heifer, and forthwith laying thievish hands upon it, led it straight to his house, where he slaughtered it and stripped off the skin. The proprietor soon appeared before the Cogia's house, making a loud cry and lamentation. 'Who would have thought,' said the Cogia to his people and his ...
— The Turkish Jester - or, The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi • Nasreddin Hoca
... of September the Indians became very troublesome on the line of the stage along the Sweetwater, between Split Rock and Three Crossings. A stage had been robbed and two passengers killed outright. Lem Flowers, the driver, was badly wounded. The thievish redskins also drove stock repeatedly from the stations. They were continually lying in wait for passing stages and Pony Express riders. It was useless to keep the Express going until these depredations could ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... Bohemia—an error over which Ben Jonson and many later critics have made merry. {251b} A few lines were obviously drawn from that story of Boccaccio with which Shakespeare had dealt just before in 'Cymbeline.' {251c} But Shakespeare created the high-spirited Paulina and the thievish pedlar Autolycus, whose seductive roguery has become proverbial, and he invented the reconciliation of Leontes, the irrationally jealous husband, with Hermione, his wife, whose dignified resignation and forbearance lend the story its intense pathos. In the boy Mamilius, the poet depicted ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... on the West Coast, not South of the Pappar River. These are the orang-laut (men of the sea) or sea-gipsies of the old writers, and are the worst class that we have to deal with, being of a treacherous and thievish disposition, and confirmed ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... miles off. The country fertile and delightful, abounding with game. The ocean suddenly appears. Rough weather and its effects. Friendly Indians bring food. Rain ruins merchandise, clothing and food. Thievish Indians are withstood. The journey comes successfully ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... was tempted by the glittering thing; he loves glitter, and he snatched it up and flew right back home with it. He hid it somewhere; that's his thievish nature, and when I came in here he was walking up and down the floor as innocent appearin' as a lamb! Oh, you ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... houses—some of which had been given to the flames. Under the hoofs of these horses, as they dashed recklessly to and fro, were crushed rich treasures that had been sacked from the deserted dwellings, and now lay scattered upon the ground, tempting only the hand of the thievish camp-follower. The soil, defiled in every way, presented only a scanty growth of bruised herbage, upon which the horseman ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... for lost, when I felt the ice tremble on which I stood, and heard men running at a little distance. 'Fire your guns!' I cried out, as loud as I could. My order was obeyed, and such a yelling and howling immediately filled the whole forest as would have chilled your very heart. The thievish varmints instantly ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... with a few sketches out of the north-west voyages. Here is one, for instance, which shows how an Englishman could deal with the Indians. Davis had landed at Gilbert's Sound, and gone up the country exploring. On his return he found his crew loud in complaints of the thievish propensities of the natives, and urgent to have an example made of some of them. On the next occasion he fired a gun at them with blank cartridge; but their nature was ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... known tradition, or probability, that "Coppin's harbor . . . afterward proved to be Cut River and the site of Marshfield," but in another place she contradicts this by stating that it was "Jones River, Duxbury." As Coppin described his putative harbor, called "Thievish Harbor," a "great navigable river and good harbor" were in close relation, which was never true of either the Jones River or "Cut River" localities, while any one familiar with the region knows that what Mrs. Austin knew as "Cut River" had no existence ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... congested districts, each winter suffer unto death for want of fuel; and here is this wealth of forest debris, the useless plaything of the river. But not only wreckage of this character is borne upon the flood. The thievish river has picked up valuable saw-logs that have run astray, lumber of many sorts, boxes, barrels—and now and then the body of a cow or horse that has tumbled to its death from some treacherous clay-cliff or rocky terrace. The beaches have ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... bloom. Therefore from such danger lock Every one of his loved flock; And let your dogs lie loose without, Lest the wolf come, as a scout From the mountain, and ere day Bear a kid or lamb away; Or the crafty, thievish fox Break upon your simple flocks. To secure yourselves from these, Be not too secure in ease. So shall you good shepherds prove, And deserve your master's love. Now, good night! may sweetest slumbers And soft silence fall in numbers On ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... the rounds of the tents outside, and he was marvelling. There were men who had fought bravely, who had stood wounds and the surgeon's knife without a murmur; who, weakened and demoralized by fever now, were weak and puling of spirit, and sly and thievish; who would steal the food of the very comrades for whom a little while before they had risked their lives—men who in a fortnight had fallen from a high plane of life to the pitiful level of brutes. Only here and there was an exception. This ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... on the path, but some would find its resting-place there. It would lie bare on the surface of the hard ground, and would not be there long enough to have a chance of germinating, but as soon as the sower's back was turned to go up the next furrow, down would come the flock of thievish birds that fluttered behind him, and bear away the grains. The soil might be good enough, but it was so hard that the seed did not get in, but only lay on it. The path was of the same soil as the rest of the field, only it had ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that the favourable accounts often given of their prudent regulations for the administration of their domestic affairs, are sufficiently confuted by their transactions with Mr Anson: For we have seen that their magistrates are corrupt, their people thievish, and their tribunals crafty and venal. Nor is the constitution of the empire, or the general orders of the state, less liable to exception: Since that form of government, which does not in the first ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... music, for they are active and lively, although they are of thicker build than the Germans. They cut their hair close on the forehead, letting it hang down on either side. They are good sailors, and better pirates, cunning, treacherous, thievish. Three hundred and upwards are hanged annually in London. Hawking is the favourite sport of the nobility. The English are more polite in eating than the French, devouring less bread, but more meat, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "of fruits abundance, but of wits a famine." Cf. Plat. "Rep." 546 A. His prayer resembles that of the thievish trader in Ovid, "Fast." v. 675 foll., "Grant me to-day my daily... fraud!" but in spite of himself (like Dogberry), he seems to pray to the gods to ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... his dark lantern upon a table, he draws forth his picklock and chisels, and commences breaking open the bureau. Right—this thievish instinct has not deceived him, he has found all, all. Here is the little box of sparkling diamonds, and here the full purses ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... Spain ever caused so great and so general a sensation, not so much amongst the Gypsies, that peculiar people, for whom it was intended, as amongst the Spaniards themselves, who, though they look upon the Roma with some degree of contempt as a low and thievish race of outcasts, nevertheless take a strange interest in all that concerns them, it having been from time immemorial their practice, more especially of the dissolute young nobility, to cultivate the acquaintance of the Gitanos as they are popularly called, ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... by jury was not quick or sure enough for Berkeley; he condemned them by court-martial and the noose was round their necks at once. Their families were stripped of their property and sent adrift to subsist on charity. In his bloodthirstiness, he never forgot his pecuniary advantage, and his thievish fingers grasped all the valuables that his murderous instincts brought within his power. But the spectacle is ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... desire in such as Clare and Tommy. Not one opportunity of appropriation presented itself, else it would have gone ill with Tommy, now that the eyes and ears of his guardian were on the alert. For Clare thought of him now as a little thievish pup, for whose conduct, manners, and ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... end; no, pr'ythee, hold, He was no friend of thine that thee so told. Hear thou the Word of God, that will thee tell, Without repentance thieves must go to hell. But should it be as thy false prophet says, Yet nought but loss doth come by thievish ways. All honest men will flee thy company, Thou liv'st a rogue, and so a rogue will die. Innocent boldness thou hast none at all, Thy inward thoughts do thee a villain call. Sometimes when thou liest warmly ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Pliny in a more confined, by Ammianus and Procopius in a larger, sense, has been derived, ridiculously, from Sarah, the wife of Abraham, obscurely from the village of Saraka, (Stephan. de Urbibus,) more plausibly from the Arabic words, which signify a thievish character, or Oriental situation, (Hottinger, Hist. Oriental. l. i. c. i. p. 7, 8. Pocock, Specimen, p. 33, 35. Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 567.) Yet the last and most popular of these etymologies is refuted by ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... mobs, Picking Possessive Pronouns' fobs, And Interjections as bad as a blight, Or an Eastern blast, to the blood and the sight; Fanciful phrases for crime and sin, And smacking of vulgar lips where Gin, Garlic, Tobacco, and offals go in— A jargon so truly adapted, in fact, To each thievish, obscene, and ferocious act, So fit for the brute with the human shape, Savage Baboon, or libidinous Ape, From their ugly mouths it will certainly come Should they ever get ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... which he had reared upon bread-crumbs. But one morning, being pinched with appetite (for hunger drives the wolf from the thicket), he took it into his head to sell the cock, and, taking it to the market, he met two thievish magicians, with whom he made a bargain, and sold it for half-a-crown. So they told him to take it to their house, and they would count him out the money. Then the magicians went their way, and, Minecco Aniello following them, overheard them talking gibberish together ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... most miserable coward. In spite of your generous offers, I frequently consider with a deadly terror the shrinking of my cash after my doubly prolonged journey to Paris. I feel again as I did when I came here ten years ago, and when thievish longings would often get hold of me on watching the dawn of the hot days that were to shine on my empty stomach. Ah, how this vulgarest of cares ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... condition that ever I was in through my past life; for whatever ill circumstances I had been in, I was never pursued for a thief before; nor had I ever done anything that merited the name of dishonest or fraudulent, much less thievish. I had chiefly been my own enemy, or, as I may rightly say, I had been nobody's enemy but my own; but now I was woefully embarrassed: for though I was perfectly innocent, I was in no condition to make ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... affirmative. Louville, her rival and enemy, a man of talent and ardour, but passionate, represents her as the wickedest woman on earth, to be got rid of at the earliest possible moment and at any cost, "sordid and thievish to a marvellous degree." He raises the same accusation against Orry, a clever man whom Louis XIV. had sent to Spain to put some order into her finances. These accusations seem to have been unjustifiable. The Marshal Duke of Berwick, who kept himself aloof from all these odious ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... rascal, an accomplished, self-possessed practitioner in his thievish art; "I thought your boots might be pinching you, and only wished ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the sea-strand in a voice exceeding great: "Depart, ye thralls of the battle; ye have nought to do to wait! Old, young, and good, and evil, depart and share the spoil, That burden of the battle, that spring and seed of toil. —But thou king of the greedy heart, thou king of the thievish grip, What now wilt thou bear to the sea-strand and set within my ship To buy thy life from the slaying? Unmeet for kings to hear Of a king the breaker of troth, of a ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... prince, and country, turn Turk, forsake religion, abjure God and all, nulla tam horrenda proditio, quam illi lucri causa (saith [2283]Leo Afer) perpetrare nolint. [2284]Plato, therefore, calls poverty, "thievish, sacrilegious, filthy, wicked, and mischievous:" and well he might. For it makes many an upright man otherwise, had he not been in want, to take bribes, to be corrupt, to do against his conscience, to sell his tongue, heart, hand, &c., to be churlish, hard, unmerciful, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... is as attractive as her looks I'd throw over the Salon for the sake of meeting her," he mused. "But that's frankly impossible, I suppose. At the best, she would not forgive me if she knew I had watched her in this thievish way. I could never explain it, never! She wouldn't even listen. Well, it's better to have dreamed and lost than never to have dreamed ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... and triumph, self-aggrandisement and self-obliteration, are here as well as in the noisy world we have left. Lessons these are for us, too, if we bring the keen eye and listening ear. Among Mackenzie tribes no Yellow-Knife, Dog-Rib, or Slavi starved while another had meat, no thievish hand despoiled the cache of another. A man's word was his bond, and a promise was kept to the death. Not all the real things of life are taught to the Cree by the Christian. Courage is better than culture, playing the ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... holes, and daubing themselves with honey, they often lose all the bright feathers and silky plumes which once so beautifully adorned their bodies, and assume a smooth and almost black appearance; just as the hat of the thievish loafer, acquires a "seedy" aspect, and his garments, a shining and threadbare look. Dzierzon is of opinion that the black bees which Huber describes, as being so bitterly persecuted by the rest, are ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... "though every Englishman thinks he is a judge of horseflesh, and I fancy those might possess endurance, if not up to much weight. As for the men, they seem to fancy themselves more than the Egyptians; but a more villainous, blood- thirsty, thievish-looking set of scoundrels, it has never been my luck to ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... the illusion which he had been cherishing for a long time that Burgundy wine alone was good for him and kept his malady in check. There is something pathetic in the proportions which this wine-question gradually assumes: that it is so dear at Basle might be overlooked, but the thievish wagoners drink up or ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... voice that said, Close by, in Willie's heart, "Don't tear the hole—don't take the plum— Don't play a thievish part!" The little voice—it spoke in vain! He reach'd his mother's door; She did not see the hole he'd made, His trouble then ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... beautiful than ever danced through Mohammedan dream of Paradise, to dig pitfalls for the unwary feet of some misshapen country wench who was striving to lead an honest life. As a muley cow will turn from a manger filled with new-mown hay, and wear out her thievish tongue trying to coax a wisp of rotten straw through a crack in a neighbor's barn, so will man turn from consenting Venus' matchless charms to solicit ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... alto horns from the calm bosom of the lake; the partridges that "drummed" in the outlying copses and patches of second growth, in April, and led forth their broods in June, subject every autumn to our first excited, early efforts at gunning; and last of all, the flapping, canny, thievish, black crows that like the foxes were always about, and always ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... discovered Islands on their first meeting with Europeans. Whitburne, when expressing his readiness to adopt measures for opening a trade with the Indians, incidentally mentions an instance where their thievish propensities were displayed.—He says, "I am ready with my life and means whereby to find out some new trade with the Indians of the country, for they have great store of red ochre, which they use to colour their bodies, bows, arrows, and canoes. The canoes are built in shape like ...
— Lecture On The Aborigines Of Newfoundland • Joseph Noad
... all actors in the first rebellion moved and raised in the Lewis against the gentlemen venturers who were directed by his Majesty there, and did prosecute that rebellion against them with fire and sword and all kinds of hostility, for the which and for other thievish and treasonable crimes committed by them they and every one of them were upon the second day of February, 1612, orderly denounced rebels and put to the horn - they have now combined and banded themselves ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... names of Hemp. [b] Neckweed (ahalter) [c] is good for thievish apprentices, [d] for swashbucklers past grace, [e] and all scamps. [f] Also for young spendthrifts [g] who after their parents' death [h] waste their all with harlots [i] and in gambling [k] which makes men beggars, or thieves. [l] A life of reckless debauchery ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... commit his business thus into the hand of a false, a negligent, and a thievish servant, is like a man that travels a journey, and takes a highwayman into the coach with him: such a man is sure to be robbed, and to be fully and effectually plundered, because he discovers where he hides his treasure. Thus the tradesman places his confidence in the thief, and how should ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... my dear, that monkeys have never been among my favorites. There are a great many kinds, but all are mischievous, troublesome, and thievish. The dispositions of some of them are extremely bad, while others are so mild and tractable as to be readily tamed and taught a great variety of tricks. They live together in large groups, leaping with surprising agility from tree to tree. Travellers ...
— Minnie's Pet Monkey • Madeline Leslie
... lute-players and pipers, judges of painting, men of much noble sentiment and 'honest virtue, and they show me much honour and friendship. On the other hand there are also amongst them some of the most false, lying, thievish rascals; I should never have believed that such were living in the world. If one did not know them, one would think them the nicest men the earth could show. For my own part I cannot help laughing at them whenever they talk to me. They know that their knavery ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... ceaselessly to watch over that which is committed to our charge. For, depend upon it, if for an instant we turn away our heads, the thievish birds that flutter over us will be down upon the precious seed that is in our basket, or that we have sown in the furrows, and it will be gone. Watch, that ye ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to enjoy freedom as we enjoy it, the habits of mind and of action, however baneful they may be, that have been long exercised, are not to be suddenly broken or changed; and the slave who was idle, and lying, and thievish in the South, will not obtain opposite qualities forthwith by crossing the line ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... in England as the prophylactic against the infected Hejaz. It is admirably suited for quarantine purposes, and it has been abolished, very unwisely, in favour of "Tor harbour." The latter, inhabited by a ring of thievish Syro-Greek traders; backed by a wretched wilderness, alternately swampy and sandy, is comfortless to an extent calculated to make the healthiest lose health. Moreover, its climate, says Professor Palmer ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... he threw his own, And loud in anger cried, 'Take this one too, you thievish crew, ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... tribes seem to have given up all idea of prosecuting a war against their new neighbours, and, gradually relinquishing their thievish habits, settled in the neighbourhood of the Fort—sometimes hunting and trapping for the pale faces, and at others labouring away at ditching and brick-making, being paid chiefly in articles of clothing and small allowances of pisco. ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... pen, which was worth three dollars. His mother appeared before the court, and plead earnestly for her boy, saving that he was a good boy to her, except that he played truant from school. He then got into the company of a gang of boys, who peddle apples,—a thievish set,—and of them he also learned to steal. He was sent to the House of Reformation; which is a prison for boys, where they are kept at work and study, but not ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... whirled the covering from the object in front of him and showed to their horror that it was a newly-severed human leg. "By God's tooth!" he continued, with a brutal laugh, "you ask me if I am a man of quarterings, and it is even so, for I am officer to the verderer's court at Lyndhurst. This thievish leg is to hang at Milton, and the other is already at Brockenhurst, as a sign to all men of what comes of ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rudest and historically the least important of these Indians, lived south of the Chickasaws. They were probably rather less numerous than the Creeks.[6] Though accounted brave they were treacherous and thievish, and were not as well armed as the others. They rarely made war or peace as a unit, parties frequently acting in conjunction with some of the rival European powers, or else joining in the plundering inroads made by the other Indians upon ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... grew more doubtful still. This apparently deserted building, which he was asked to enter by the back way, might be a thievish den of the worst possible character, and this girl, innocent as she certainly looked, might be a thieves' decoy. Something in his face or in his manner must have betrayed his thoughts to the shrewd Londoner; ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... Martialist is fiery and choleric, naturally delighting in war and contention, but generous and magnanimous. This when Mars is well aspected; should the planet be evil aspected, then will the native be treacherous, thievish, treasonable, cruel, and wicked. The persons signified by Mars are generals, soldiers, sailors (if he is in a watery sign), surgeons, chemists, doctors, armourers, barbers, curriers, smiths, carpenters, bricklayers, sculptors, cooks, and tailors. When afflicted with Mercury ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Poetry with her flaming torch. Both raised a dreadful shriek: Policy commanded silence, and Quackery hastened to bind up the wound of Morality, whilst Medicine cut a shred from her robe in payment. Death stretched out his claw from under the mantle of thievish Medicine to seize Morality, but Policy gave him such a blow that he yelled aloud, and grinned most hideously. Poetry was allowed to hop about, because she was naked, and had nothing to be despoiled of. At length History took ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... wrong. From all observations, I should incline to say that the earliest Ellington who settled in England was a big ruffian who disliked work, and who had a sharp eye to business; whilst the earliest Caselys were probably thievish fellows, who loved moonless nights, and objected to the use of cold water. Under the influence of softening generations, the Caselys and Ellingtons had dropped their predatory tendencies, and lived peaceful lives. Furthermore, it is ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... bride who ought to have worn the cloak at her wedding feast; but the king was so pleased with it that he would not part from it; and to the end of his life was never seen without it. After his death, Pinkel became king; and let up hope that he gave up his bad and thievish ways, and ruled his subjects well. As for his brothers, he did not punish them, but left them in the stables, where they grumbled ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... had anything to do with the sea, would ever think of paying for a passage." I give the statement as Mackay's, without endorsement; yet I am tempted to believe that it contains a grain of truth; and if you add that the man shall be impudent and thievish, or else dead-broke, it may even pass for a fair representation of the facts. We gentlemen of England who live at home at ease have, I suspect, very insufficient ideas on the subject. All the world over, people are stowing away in coal-holes and dark corners, and when ships are once out to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their sister's lord and husband, listening uncomplainingly to his abuse of Gypsies, whom, though he lives amongst them and is married to one by whom he has several children, he holds in supreme contempt, never speaking of them but as a lying, thievish, cowardly set, any three of whom he could beat with one hand; as perhaps he could, for he is a desperate pugilist, and has three times fought in "the ring" with good men, whom, though not a scientific fighter, he beat with ease by dint of terrible ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... a difference becomes manifest in the character of the people. Commercially speaking, the Persian is considerably more of a Jew than the Jew himself, and along a route frequented by travellers, the person possessing some little knowledge of the thievish ways of the country and of current prices, besides having plenty of small change, finds these advantages a matter for congratulation almost every hour of the day. The proprietor of a wretched little mud hovel, solemnly presiding over a few thin sheets of bread, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... one I have hitherto received, was very badly addressed. Here nature is benevolent, but the people are thievish. They never see any strangers, and therefore do not know what to ask of them. For instance, an orange they will give you for nothing, but ask a fabulous sum ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... civilization. The mediaeval plan was to extort a toll from every luckless traveler in the name of baron or bandit. In our day Algerine corsairs, Italian brigands, Chinese pirates and Mexican guerillas have continued the thievish custom of "tributes," and not long ago even Montana Indians established themselves on the leading roads and levied tolls from the passers-by. The civilized differs from the savage or feudal practice in rendering an equivalent for the contributions exacted—that is, it provides from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various |
