FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • More 'Housebreaker' Quotes from Famous Books

... the cart, because it happens to be a fast-day; a peasant prepares to rob a young attache of the Austrian Embassy in St. Petersburg, and ultimately kills his victim, but before going to the house he enters a church and commends his undertaking to the protection of the saints; a housebreaker, when in the act of robbing a church, finds it difficult to extract the jewels from an Icon, and makes a vow that if a certain saint assists him he will place a rouble's-worth of tapers before the saint's image! These ...

— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... make them sleep as sound as the dead. Burglars in all ages and many lands have been patrons of this species of magic, which is very useful to them in the exercise of their profession. Thus a South Slavonian housebreaker sometimes begins operations by throwing a dead man's bone over the house, saying, with pungent sarcasm, "As this bone may waken, so may these people waken"; after that not a soul in the house can keep his or her eyes open. Similarly, in Java the burglar takes earth from a grave and sprinkles ...

— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... blowing; hear it knock at every man's door and shout down every man's chimney. Feel how it takes liberties with everything, having taken primary liberty for itself; feel that the wind is always a vagabond and sometimes almost a housebreaker. But remember that in the days when free men had charters, they held that the wind itself was wild by authority; and was only free because ...

— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... to 'casion any personal inconwenience, ma'am, as the housebreaker said to the old lady when he put her on the fire; but as me and my governor 's only jest come to town, and is jest going away agin, it can't be helped, ...

— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... he should be entrusted, even at a pinch, with the execution of a cartoon. It is true that this was only an adaptation of Cruikshank's plate of "Jack Sheppard cutting his name on the Beam"—a design highly appreciated at a moment when the fortunes of Harrison Ainsworth's young housebreaker were being followed with breathless interest by every section of society; and it is not less a fact that the head of Lord John Russell was touched up by Henning. Still the achievement is as remarkable as coming from an artist of Mr. Birket Foster's temperament, as those other cartoons, executed ...

— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... the theft of Heaven only knew what treasure, was quite another. As to that, had she not been guilty of active complicity in the greater crime? How could she be sure (come to think of it) that the stout man had not been the lawful caretaker rather than a rival housebreaker? ...

— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... observing to Rhoda, "you might carry the box—and who would have guessed how stout it was, and me to hit it with a poker and not break it, I couldn't, nor get a single one through the slit;—the sight I was, with a poker in my hand! I do declare I felt azactly like a housebreaker;—and no soul to notice what you carries. Where you hear the gold, my dear, go so"—Mrs. Sumfit performed a methodical "Ahem!" and noised the sole of her shoe on the gravel "so, and folks 'll think it's a ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... extravagant in buying fish;' 'he allows someone to help him with his verse, and make love to his wife in return;' 'his uncle deals in crockery;' 'his mother sold herbs' (one of his pet taunts against Euripides); 'he is a housebreaker, a footpad, or, worst of all, a stranger;'"—a term of contempt which, as Balaustion reminds him has ...

— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... many whose claims to it are very slight. Archie Clavering, with his polished leather boots, had looked like a captain—had come up to her idea of a captain—but this man! The more she regarded him, the stronger in her mind became the idea of the housebreaker. ...

— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... keep a civil tongue in your head all the same. I'll take threats from nobody, blind or not. Let's knock up the Admiral and be done with it. What I want is to get rid of this dark lantern. It makes me feel like a housebreaker, by George. ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson

... snowy linen who most particularly attracted my attention, were a father and son; the former was a tall athletic figure of about thirty, by profession a housebreaker, and celebrated throughout Madrid for the peculiar dexterity which he exhibited in his calling. He was now in prison for a rather atrocious murder committed in the dead of night, in a house at Caramanchel, in which his only accomplice was his son, a child under ...

— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... who had interposed to prevent him. 'Hallo, you sir—old Nickleby!—what do you mean when you talk of "a fellow like this"? Who made me "a fellow like this"? If I would sell my soul for drink, why wasn't I a thief, swindler, housebreaker, area sneak, robber of pence out of the trays of blind men's dogs, rather than your drudge and packhorse? If my every word was a lie, why wasn't I a pet and favourite of yours? Lie! When did I ever cringe and fawn to you. Tell ...

— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... group followed, Sir Willoughby bringing up the rear. Inside he barred and locked the door, and bade the men carry their prisoner to the library. The corridors and staircase were dark, but by the time the squire had mounted on his gouty legs, candles had been lighted, and the face of the housebreaker was for the first time visible. Two servants held the man; the others, with Desmond and Dickon, looked ...

— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... for me but to turn housebreaker," he said to himself; "and the first house I'll try my hand upon ...

— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... guilt a source of unmixed pain to the bosom which harbors it? Has not your criminal, on the contrary, an excitement, an enjoyment within quite unknown to you and me who never did anything wrong in our lives? The housebreaker must snatch a fearful joy as he walks unchallenged by the policeman with his sack full of spoons and tankards. Do not cracksmen, when assembled together, entertain themselves with stories of glorious old burglaries which ...

— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... me feel I'm master of my own house already. Don't stare at me, girl, as if I was a housebreaker.' ...

— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie

... his heart—his heart, quickened by love of them, felt itself drawn more and more to Mr. Beale. Mr. Beale, the tramp, who had been kind to him when no one else was. Mr. Beale, the tramp and housebreaker. ...

— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit

... and faced me where I stood quite prepared for a rough-and-tumble. Instead of a typical housebreaker of fiction, I saw a pale, rabbit-like, decent-appearing little soul. He was neatly dressed; he seemed unarmed save for a great ring of assorted keys; and his manner was as propitiatory and mild-eyed as that of any mouse. There must be some mistake. He was some ...

— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... and housebreaker in London. He was Captain Roberts's lieutenant, and was afterwards given command of a prize, ...

— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... perhaps, that I am a thief as well as a housebreaker—that it is in the hope of royal treasure left unguarded that I ...

— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell

... more thought of flight in Lanyard's humour, but rather a firm determination to stand his ground. This was no night watchman, but a housebreaker, one with no more title to trespass upon those premises than himself; and at that an unskilled hand at such work, the rawest of amateurs practising methods as clumsy and childish as any actor playing at burglary on a ...

— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... Sikes, housebreaker, of Houndsditch, Habitually swore; But so surpassingly profane He never was before, As on a night in winter, When—softly as he stole In the dim light from stair to stair, Noiseless as boys who in her lair Seek to surprise a fat old hare - He barked ...

— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.