"Filch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the rust come, and the separating, bony fingers of the skeleton Death filch away at last your treasure, what about you who are wrapped up with it, implicated in it; so grown into it, and it into you, that to wrench you from it opens your veins, and you bleed to death? There is a pathetic inscription in one ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 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—I will never be one of the sleeks dogs—I would never choose to withdraw myself from the labor and common burden of the world; but I do choose to withdraw myself from the rush and scramble for money and position. Any man is at liberty ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... adzactly, 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 hit's sech a handy ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... scratching, for I was not asleep, so there! Oh! my dear, my husband (he is a Salaminian) never left me an instant's peace, but was at me, for ever at me, all night long, so that it was only just now that I was able to filch his cloak. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... 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 ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... 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 ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... early trick of his Lordship to filch good things. In the lamentation for Kirke White, in which he compares him to an eagle wounded by an arrow feathered from his ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... incompatible with her constitutional liberties? It is difficult to imagine a more profligate or heartless course than the one pursued at this juncture by Henry. Secretly, he was intriguing, upon the very soil of the Netherlands, to filch from them that splendid commerce which was the wonder of the age, which had been invented and created by Dutch navigators and men of science, which was the very foundation of their State, and without which they could not exist, in order that he might appropriate it to himself, and transfer ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in arms for the nation, liable to die any day in its defence, secure them ordinary justice? Is the nation so poor, and so utterly demoralized by its pauperism, that after it has had the lives of these men, it must turn round to filch six dollars of the monthly pay which the Secretary of War promised to their widows? It is even so, if the excuses of Mr. Fressenden and Mr. Doolittle are to be accepted by Congress and ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... with refugees, and she ran here and there for passports and pardons, and beseeched ministers and archbishops for interference or assistance or amnesty or succor and all those things that great men can give or bestow or effect or filch. And when her smiles failed to win the wished-for signature, she still had tears that would ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... even was dressed. And, lest the custom that he had to steal Might cause him sometime to forget his zeal, He gives his journeyman a special charge That, if the stuff allowed fell out too large, And that to filch his fingers were inclined, He then should put the Banner in his mind. This done, I scant the rest can tell for laughter. A Captain of a ship came three days after, And bought three yards of velvet and three quarters, To make Venetians ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... one awoke, and they ate the last of their food. But the failure of the supply did not alarm them. This army was very small and if hunger pressed them hard there was the forest, or they might filch from the Indian camp. Such as they could dare anything, ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sides by those who would filch from him his good name as well as his purse, his reward was coming to him for the patience and equanimity with which he was bearing his crosses. The longing for a home of his own had been intense all through his life and now, in the evening of his years, this dream was to be realized. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... 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 pile ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... MACBETH indeed are ridiculous on the modern stage, and we doubt if the Furies of AEschylus would be more respected. The progress of manners and knowledge has an influence on the stage, and will in time perhaps destroy both tragedy and comedy. Filch's picking pockets in the Beggar's Opera is not so good a jest as it used to be: by the force of the police and of philosophy, Lillo's murders and the ghosts in Shakspeare will become obsolete. At last, there will be nothing left, good nor bad, to be desired ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... inmates, and their 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 on high, And clap his wings, and call his family To sacred rites; and vex the ethereal powers ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... smiled as he 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 ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... indifferent to the din around him, sat the boy. A careless guardian was he of the treasures confided to him. The crowd passed in Chepe; he never marked it. The sun shone on Chepe; he only asked that it should illumine the page he read. The knave might filch his treasures; he was heedless of the knave. The customer might enter; but his book was all ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... me, and 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 knows, but ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... 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
... gentil knight, Thatte of ye Golden Cyrcle hight, One day yridden forth; But ne to finde a fayre mayde, He went on errants of his trade, To fight or filch ye North. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Innocence, are great. Indeed, to the pure everything is pure. But strange to relate that as I sat in the corridor of the Hermitage and saw the light flickering on the altar, I hankered for a wafer, and was tempted to go into the chapel and filch one. What prevented me? Alas, knowledge makes sceptics and cowards of us all. And the pursuit of knowledge, according to my Hermit, nay, the noblest pursuit, even the serving of God, ceases to be a virtue the moment we begin ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... alternate morning, and the heathery slopes between the farm and the village grew familiar with the spectacle of a tall thin man in a rough tweed suit struggling, as he walked, with sheets of foreign paper which the wind was doing its best to filch away ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Calavius, impatiently. "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 ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... nothing short of criminal when they by powerful use of words magnify symptoms and feelings to be grave, serious fore-runners of awful disease, and by fright, bring in the hypochondriac to his spider-web and filch him in a manner no better than a thief uses. The thief is really more honorable, for he steals because he wants your money and ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... slow sentences on the body politic. Indeed, the fact that his seat was of fallen pine, and his draperies of butternut brown, and his audience two half-breed children, an artist, and a writer, and his body politic two hundred acres in the wilderness, did not filch from him the impressiveness of his estate. He was a Patriarch. It did not need the park of birch trees, the grass beneath them sloping down to the water, the wooded knoll fairly insisting on a spacious mansion, to substantiate Dick's fancy that he ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... is unavoidable, you cannot escape it. And here have I got of new a further assurance thereof, so that I may now hardily pronounce and affirm, without any scruple or hesitation at all, that thou wilt be a cuckold; that furthermore, thou wilt be beaten by thine own wife, and that she will purloin, filch and steal of thy goods from thee; for I find the seventh house, in all its aspects, of a malignant influence, and every one of the planets threatening thee with disgrace, according as they stand seated towards one another, in relation to the horned ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... quicke and nimble; In and out, wheele about, run, hope, and amble; Joyne your hands louingly; well done, muisition: Mirth keepeth one in health like a physicion. Elues, vrchins, goblins all, and little fairyes That doe filch, blacke, and pinch maydes of the dairyes, Make a ring in this grasse with your quick measures: Tom shall play and I'le sing for ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... 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 such a ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... home on leave, came an S O S call from a friend gaoled in Mozambique. He held the secret of a platinum find, and corrupt officials wished to filch it from him. A thrilling rescue and a neck-and-neck ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... them, is in thousands of cases a heavy tax upon their industrial life. Women working in factories, or taking work home, suffer also many wrongs by reason of their "weaker sex," and their general lack of trade organization. Unjust and arbitrary fines are imposed by harsh employers so as to filch a portion of their scanty earnings; their time is wasted by unnecessary delay in the giving out of work, or its inspection when finished; the brutality and insolence of male overseers is a common incident in their ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... Kauna, that sprite of windy Ka-u, Whose bosom is slapped by the Moa'e-ku, And that eye-smiting wind Unulau— Women by hundreds filch the bloom 5 Of Paia, hunt fruit of the hala, a-ha! That one was the gallant, at evening, This one the hero of love, in the morning— 'Twas our guardian I had for companion. Now ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... once," thundered the enraged merchant, goaded to desperation by the anguish his injury called forth. "Your name is mentioned in this letter. You are to receive the money, and share it with the scoundrel who intends to filch it from me. Vincent did not go in the vessel. ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... 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 Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... Strong—or said he did—pityingly, as a fool. He must, however, have at bottom honored the young fellow with some serious antipathy; for it was after all no laughing matter that a boy of twenty-five should come into "his Gaul, which he had conquered by arms," and filch away his home paper from under his very eyes. Moreover, though people read the editorials, laughed, and voted with the Judge just the same—they still did read them. However, Judge Garvey certainly was more civil to Strong than ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... remember mistily, with a shuddering wonder, like a passage through some inconceivable world that had no hope in it and no desire. I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... he lifted it shakingly to the light. Stiff-coiled from its long imprisonment, it unwound slowly, allowing the candle-light to filch strange hues from its dark length—glints of bronze, tinges of copper-color that gleamed elusively from the one end, where it had been roughly clipped from the head, to the other, where it still curled and twisted into little tendrils like a ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... ever known. Through its operation the companies themselves not only make and lose millions at single throws of the dice, but the bands of schemers whose services it is pretended are essential for the transaction of the life-insurance business filch for themselves huge individual fortunes. Piled on to these excessive charges are additional amounts which enable these tricksters to maintain palaces, hotels, bars, and every conceivable kind of business, to pay for armies of lackeys and employees and private servants ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... in a pale light, Rose hand in hand, and whisper'd, 'come away! The civil wars are gone for evermore: Thou last of all the Tudors, come away! With us is peace!' The last? It was a dream; I must not dream, not wink, but watch. She has gone, Maid Marian to her Robin—by and by Both happy! a fox may filch a hen by night, And make a morning outcry in the yard; But there's no Renard here to 'catch her tripping.' Catch me who can; yet, sometime I have wish'd That I were caught, and kill'd away at once Out of the flutter. The gray rogue, Gardiner, Went on his knees, and pray'd me to confess In Wyatt's ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... her window sung, With faining voice, verses of faining loue, And stolne the impression of her fantasie, With bracelets of thy haire, rings, gawdes, conceits, Knackes, trifles, Nose-gaies, sweet meats (messengers Of strong preuailment in vnhardned youth) With cunning hast thou filch'd my daughters heart, Turn'd her obedience (which is due to me) To stubborne harshnesse. And my gracious Duke, Be it so she will not heere before your Grace, Consent to marrie with Demetrius, I beg the ancient priuiledge of Athens; As she is mine, I may dispose of her; Which ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... 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, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... suffered, what perils had she not braved, to prove that there was honor even in thieves! It could have been at no inconsiderable danger,—a danger not incommensurate with that of robbing a tigress of her whelps,—that she had managed to filch his loot from that pertinacious and vindictive ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... is it possible that you can bend To let one woman's fairness filch from you All the resplendent fortune that attends The grandest ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... they had seen. The Witches of Macbeth indeed are ridiculous on the modern stage, and we doubt if the furies of Aeschylus would be more respected. The progress of manners and knowledge has an influence on the stage, and will in time perhaps destroy both tragedy and comedy. Filch's picking pockets, in the Beggars' Opera, is not so good a jest as it used to be: by the force of the police and of philosophy, Lillo's murders and the ghosts in Shakespeare will become obsolete. At last ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... of his affairs, his ability to do good (for himself, his friends, his neighbour), his safety, the best comforts and conveniences of his life, sometimes his life itself, depending thereon; so that whoever doth snatch or filch it from him, doth not only according to his opinion, and in moral value, but in real effect commonly rob, sometimes murder, ever exceedingly wrong his neighbour. It is often the sole reward of a man's virtue and all the fruit of his industry; so that by depriving him of that, he is ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... false, long-winded, fulsome compliment, That 'Oh, you are my subjects!' and in word Reiterating still obedience, Thwart me in deed at every step I take: When just about to wreak a just revenge Upon that old arch-traitor of you all, Filch from my vengeance him I hate; and him I loved—the first and only face—till this— I cared to look on in your ugly court— And now when palpably I grasp at last What hitherto but shadow'd in my dreams— Affiances and interferences, The first ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... not Tsang Wen filch his post? He knew the worth of Liu-hsia Hui,[139] and did not stand ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... 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 ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... 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 ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... comfort that my soul Aches, thinking it must end, for it will end, And we shall both grow old, Yasodhara! Loveless, unlovely, weak, and old, and bowed. Nay, though we locked up love and life with lips So close that night and day our breaths grew one Time would thrust in between to filch away My passion and thy grace, as black Night steals The rose-gleams from you peak, which fade to grey And are not seen to fade. This have I found, And all my heart is darkened with its dread, And all my heart is fixed to think how Love Might save its sweetness from the slayer, Time, ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... 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 want to ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... offend, seemeth it not strange that madness could so change his port and manner?—not but that his port and speech are princely still, but that they DIFFER, in one unweighty trifle or another, from what his custom was aforetime. Seemeth it not strange that madness should filch from his memory his father's very lineaments; the customs and observances that are his due from such as be about him; and, leaving him his Latin, strip him of his Greek and French? My lord, be not offended, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is the rum-shop, kept far too often by men of the developed and forward race to filch from us our hard earnings, and give us shame and misery in return. And a man who would deliberately debauch and hinder a backward race, struggling for the light, would "rob the dead, steal the orphan's bread, pillage the palace ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... "article" had a second object: it was to filch subscribers from the Tribune, which broke ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... that I refer to, do it professionally, which, you must observe, makes a wide difference. From this class I am lineally descended; and, at an early age, was duly initiated into all the mysteries of my profession. I could filch a handkerchief as soon as I was high enough to reach a pocket, and was declared to be a most ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 1774. In the Spectator's time its Bear Garden, upon the site of which there are now metal works, was a famous resort of the lowest classes. 'You must go to Hockley-in-the-Hole, child, to learn valour,' says Mr. Peachum to Filch in the Beggar's Opera.] ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... also to destroy all large associations, and to absorb their activities. The state purchase of a railway, for instance, is, in the first place, a means of exploiting the company; for there is always a hope that the State will be able to filch something out of the transaction; but its chief recommendation lies in the fact that it suppresses a whole army of the company's officials and employees, who were under no obligation to please the Government, and who had no other interest but to do their ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... 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 ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... colony. The bees alighted with care on the lower petals of the flowers, and thence climbed quickly to the hidden sweets; but the flies, heedless adventurers, dropped haphazard among the sprays, and were content to filch the specks of pollen dust and the tiny drops of nectar scattered by the honey-bees. A spirit of restlessness, of strife, of strange, unsatisfied desire, possessed all Nature's children; it raised the primrose from amid the deep-veined leaves close-pressed on the carpet of the grass, it tuned ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... that Mr. Cops, the 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 was delicately heightened with rouge, and the loveliest ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... 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 meaning ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... 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, For ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... lie in wait to assassinate a pilgrim of peace? That, your Honor, is what the prosecutor purposes. He would blacken the reputation of his brother who happens to be of a different political complexion. He would filch from the ex-Vice-President of the United ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... 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
... management of their fishing jagts, those square-sailed slow craft, and for days they would cruise about the haunts of the eider-duck—not to kill it, for that is forbidden, the bird being too valuable, but to filch from the sides of its nest the lovely down which the birds pluck ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Chia Jung 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
... believe you are right; and were you some years older, I think you would not have favoured me with the same disclosure you have done now; but you may be quite easy on that score. If you were made of gold, the rascals would not filch off the corner of your garment as long as you were under my protection. Does this assurance ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is pleasant in this 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 the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... 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 the sweet conceits of Philippe Desportes, whose ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... the way, and taking other people's apples to make her own little pie, had defrauded Lenny of his due; and now Susceptibility, who looks like a shy, blush-faced, awkward Virtue in her teens—but who, nevertheless, is always engaged in picking the pockets of her sisters, tried to filch from him his lawful recompense. The case was perplexing; for the Parson held Susceptibility in great honor, despite her hypocritical tricks, and did not like to give her a slap in the face, which might frighten her away forever. So Mr. Dale stood irresolute, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... 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, male and female. One of the best things ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... larceny, shoplifting. thievishness, rapacity, kleptomania, Alsatia^, den of Cacus, den of thieves. blackmail, extortion, shakedown, Black Hand [U.S.]. [person who commits theft] thief &c 792. V. steal, thieve, rob, mug, purloin, pilfer, filch, prig, bag, nim^, crib, cabbage, palm; abstract; appropriate, plagiarize. convey away, carry off, abduct, kidnap, crimp; make off with, walk off with, run off with; run away with; spirit away, seize ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... like the magician's art; but he who ponders on religion cannot speak falsely. To 'covet much,' brings sorrow; desiring little, there is rest and peace. To procure rest, there must be small desire—much more in case of those who seek salvation. The niggard dreads the much-seeking man lest he should filch away his property, but he who loves to give has also fear, lest he should not possess enough to give; therefore we ought to encourage small desire, that we may have to give to him who wants, without such fear. From this desiring-little-mind we find ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... FILCH. Sir, Black Moll hath sent word her Trial comes on in the Afternoon, and she hopes you will order Matters so ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... closet, this same Philemon aforesaid, a very marvellous painting, wherein was limned a young Faun in act to filch away with a craftie hand a light cloth did cover the belly of a sleeping Nymph. 'T was plain to see he was full fain of his freak and seemed to be saying: The body of this young goddess is so sweet and refreshing as that the fountaine springing in the shade of the woods is not more delightsome. ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... 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 ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... 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 has nought beside To answer their small wants. To view the graceful deer come tripping by, Then stop, and gaze, then turn, they know not why, Like bashful younkers in society. To ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... 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 ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... little ones, quick and nimble, In and out wheel about, run, hop, or amble. Join your hands lovingly: well done, musician! Mirth keepeth man in health like a physician. Elves, urchins, goblins all, and little fairies That do filch, black, and pinch maids of the dairies; Make a ring on the grass with your quick measures, Tom shall play, and I'll sing for all ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... 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 in the hour appointed ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... no crossin'. I 'as sold her!" groaned Beck. "I be's good for nothin' now but to cadge about the streets, and steal, and filch, and hang like the rest on us! Thank you kindly, sir," and Beck pulled his forelock, "but, please your honour, I vould rather ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and all their prayers, And old men wept. A maiden train snow-garbed, Her steps attending, whitened plain and field, As when at times dark glebe, new-turned, is changed To white by flock of ocean birds alit, Or inland blown by storm, or hunger-urged To filch the late-sown grain. Her convent home Ere long received her. There Ethembria ruled, Green Erin's earliest nun. Of princely race, She in past years before the font of Christ Had knelt at Patrick's feet. Once more she sought ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... no such intentions. I hate usury, nor care I to earn money for others to filch from me. I get my wealth by honest trade; and if any man comes to me for aid, all the help I can give him is to put him in the way of ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... An old woman was standing with a wonderfully beautiful maiden, looking out of one of the windows. The old woman, however, was a witch and said to the maiden, "There comes one out of the forest, who has a wonderful treasure in his body, we must filch it from him, my dear daughter, it is more suitable for us than for him. He has a bird's heart about him, by means of which a gold piece lies every morning under his pillow." She told her what she was to do to get it, and what part she had to play, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... to do so, as all of you are adorned with talents 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." This passage serves to ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... week as a business man labours in a day. Not one man in a hundred is proof against the seduction of those idle hours, during which literature and art and a cultivated society plead for some share of his attention and filch away his will. And, after all, why not? he begins to ask himself. In a commercial age and a country that thinks upon the surface, his profession receives no adequate recognition. Life is short; he had better reap the reward of his laborious and expensive preparation by enjoying ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... a base counterfeit? And will they also inform us that Lenine and Trotzky are unprincipled adventurers and cold-blooded blackguards who have hidden behind the mask of Socialism to blackjack a great people and filch a wealth they never did ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... 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. Filching mort; a ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... the tents of the Macedonians when Alexander's veteran general, Parmenio, came to him and proposed that they should make a night attack on the Persians. The King is said to have answered that he scorned to filch a victory, and that Alexander must conquer openly and fairly. Arrian justly remarks that Alexander's resolution was as wise as it was spirited. Besides the confusion and uncertainty which are inseparable from night engagements, the value of Alexander's victory ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... triumphant alibi. But vanity was too strong for discretion, and 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 ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... 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 ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... our neighbour colonies round about us, who are in a combination united together to swallow us up." The colony had not been asked to join the New England Confederation, and its leaders were convinced that the members of the Confederation were in league to filch away their lands and, by driving them into the sea, to eliminate the colony altogether. Plymouth, seeking a better harbor than that of Plymouth Bay, claimed the eastern mainland as well as the chief islands, Hog, Conanicut, ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... into Sihon's possession so did a part of Ammon fall into Og's hands, and because Israel had appropriated these land, the Moabites feared they would filch from them all their land. In great alarm they therefore gathered together in their fastnesses, in which they knew themselves to be safe from Israel's attacks. [716] Their fear was in reality quite without foundation, for Israel ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... sat, mending one of his traps. Along the top of the roof perched a row of whisky-jacks, most impertinent of birds, who, when a man has carried his food almost to his mouth, will flash down, light on his hand, and, before he knows that they have arrived, filch away the morsel. Somewhere across the river a whippoorwill kept on uttering its plaintive cry, as it were Beorn's lost soul come back, pleading insistently for permission to take up its residence in his body once again. And over against the farther bank a brood of yellow ducklings swam ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... 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 to preserve ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... operatic pastoral stuff, about a pretty Dolly in ribbons, a lover with a wooden leg, and an heroic locksmith. For these latter, the only elements of good, or life, in the filthy mass of the story,[BM] observe that the author must filch the wreck of those old times of which we fiercely and frantically destroy every living vestige, whenever it is possible. You cannot have your Dolly Varden brought up behind the counter of a railway station; nor your jolly locksmith trained at a Birmingham brass-foundry. ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... carts was impeded for some time by the care necessary on the part of the drivers to prevent these people from stealing. Everything, no matter what, they were equally disposed to carry off. Although watched sharply they contrived to filch out articles and hand them from one to another. Even the little sticks in the horns which carried grease for the wheels did not escape their hands; and the iron pins of the men who were measuring with the chain were repeatedly seized in their ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... with bent shoulders and a withered face, trudged to and fro, clawing down into the black waters with a huge rake. He was the rack-tender—it was his task to keep the ribs of the guarding rack clear of the refuse that came swirling down with the water, for flotsam, if allowed to lodge, might filch some of the jealously guarded power away from the mighty turbines which growled and grunted in the depths of the wheel-pits. With rake in one hand and a long, barbed pole in the other the old man bent over the bubbling torrent that the rack's ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... defied the Galilean, vowed that she would conquer this heart and filch it from the allegiance it had sworn, vowed that she would make it Caesar's first and then her own, that she would break it and crush it first and then wrest it from ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... elms, whelm, whelms, film, films. lp, lpd, lpst, lpdst.—Help, helped, help'st, help'd'st. lv, lvz, lvd.—Valve, valves, valved, delve, delves, delved. lch, lchd.—Belch, belched, filch, filched, gulch, gulched. lth, ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... she requested, Wherewith the king of gods and men is feasted. He, ready to accomplish what she 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, 440 Complain'd to Cupid: Cupid, for his sake, To be reveng'd on Jove did undertake; And those on whom heaven, earth, and hell relies, I mean the adamantine ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... was done, and even the soil of the forest so cleverly arranged that none could guess at the existence of that deep grave. And who would guess the secret of that tangled forest? Even were it thought that the gold and silver had been hid, who would have such skill as to guess the spot, and go and filch it thence? And yet it must have been carried away full soon. For Nicholas Trevlyn, in his anxious greed, visited the spot not many weeks later—visited it by stealth, for he and his brother were alike in hiding, waiting for the ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... forth on your pleasant plain; The whiles an hundred little winged loves, Like divers-feathered doves, Shall fly and flutter round about your bed, And in the secret dark, that none reproves, Their pretty stealths shall work, and snares shall spread To filch away sweet snatches of delight, Concealed through covert night. Ye sons of Venus, play your sports at will! For greedy pleasure, careless of your toys, Thinks more upon her paradise of joys, Then what ye do, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... in the world theyr fortune they must try, Perhaps they better shall abide the tuch, Wearing your name, theyr gracious liuery. Yet these mine owne: I wrong not other men, Nor trafique further then thys happy Clyme, Nor filch from Portes, nor from Petrarchs pen, A fault too common in this latter time. Diuine Syr Phillip, I auouch thy writ, I am no Pickpurse of anothers wit. Yours deuoted, ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... heart in his breast? Prate a lie into shape Lest truth should cumber the road; Play at the fast and loose Till the world is strangled with tape; Maim the soul's complete To fit the hole of a toad; And filch the dogman's meat To feed ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... distinct. A man knows that he should get up in the morning,—he lies abed; he knows that he should not lose his temper, yet he cannot keep it. A laboring man knows that he should not go to the ale-house, and his wife knows that she should not filch when she goes out charing, but, nevertheless, in these cases, the consciousness of a duty is not all one with the performance of it. There are, then, large families of instances, to say the least, in which men may become wiser, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... indiarubber-like salt-marshes of native Jaalam. To this soul also the Necessity of Creating somewhat has unveiled its awful front. If not Oedipuses and Electras and Alcestises, then in God's name Birdofredum Sawins! These also shall get born into the world, and filch (if so need) a Zingali subsistence therein, these lank, omnivorous Yankees of his. He shall paint the Seen, since the Unseen will not sit to him. Yet in him also are Nibelungen-lays, and Iliads, and Ulysses-wanderings, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... soul. Harp much upon these highest interests. Feed them spiritually upon such brimstone and treacle as the late Bishop of Winchester's Sunday stories. You hold all the trump cards, or if you do not you can filch them; if you play them with anything like judgement you will find yourselves heads of happy, united, God-fearing families, even as did my old friend Mr Pontifex. True, your children will probably find out all about it some day, but not until too late to be of much service ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... son is there! When I have spoken he will say the sacred words whose power shall bring thee even unto Osiris and thou shalt say: "I did not filch the fillets from the mummies, I did not use false weights, I did not snare the sacred birds. ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... rations at each meal to a half of one of my cakes for each man. Potokomik agreed with me that this was a wise and necessary restriction and protected me in it. Kumuk thought differently, and he was seen to filch once or twice, but a close watch was ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... and a filch of bacon which they had brought from Winnipeg. She would make some toast, too. Very likely he didn't care for it, they certainly never had it at Gertie's, but in her house—— She smiled to think how quickly, in her mind, she had ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... 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 ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... fairly do? 'Twill buy you bread, and vegetables too, And wine, a good pint measure: add to this Such needful things as flesh and blood would miss. But to go mad with watching, nights and days To stand in dread of thieves, fires, runaways Who filch and fly,—in these if wealth consist, Let me rank lowest ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... 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 ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... their sinister cry—pi-yoroyoro, 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 ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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 ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... the harbor, Aden baked under the sun, but Kettle was not the man to filch his employer's time for unnecessary strolls ashore. The salvage steamer rolled at her anchor at the opposite side of the harbor, and Kettle and two portmanteaux were transhipped direct in one of the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... did Shooba and I, who thus had undisturb'd Access to my Aunt's room, work swiftly until Dawn. Three nights and a half night did we two work, before our Task was compleat'd, the Kernell's filch'd from the Nuts, and the Empty Shells left for my lady's adorning of herself at my lord's ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... The foreign merchants who reside there make very great gains, but the inhabitants are 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... say to you. During the last quarter of a century there has grown up in this free and fair land of ours a system by which the few take from the many the results of their labours. The men who take have no more license, from God or man, to take, than have those from whom they filch. They are not endowed by God with superior wisdom, nor have they performed for their fellow-men any labour or given to them anything of value that entitles them to what they take. Their only license to ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... let her in! After ten years' service, and never a 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 which I advised our general by letter, requesting him to reserve a sufficiency for the ship, in case he sold it to the emperor. We landed several other things, which the master thought had best be sent ashore, as our men began to filch and steal, that they might go to taverns and brothels. This day Mr Melsham the purser and I dined with Semidono, who used us kindly. The master and Mr Eaton were likewise invited, but did not go. The great festival ended this day, when three troops of dancers went about the town, with flags ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... time to make war is heavy upon them. There are many cogent reasons for the belief that before the coming of the white man there were no general or long-continued wars among the Indians. There was no motive for war. Quarrels ensued when predatory tribes sought to filch women or horses. Strife was engendered on account of the distribution of buffalo, but these disturbances could not be dignified by the name of war. The country was large and the tribes were widely separated. Their war implements were of the crudest sort. A shield would stop a stone-headed ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... window, leaning far forward, to catch the thunder of the tramp. I know the footfalls as of old. I see the suicide pace to and fro, to nerve herself for the deed. I hear her sleek betrayer, and detect their wretched offspring as he first essays to filch a ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... 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 boast, Dr. Annister, ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... oh, 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 infamy and ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... and if one more manly than the rest dared to mingle curses with his groans, to mark him for slaughter, as a wolf that threatened danger to the fold; to lurk, an assassin, about his home, to dog his walks, to fall on him unawares, to strike him from behind, to filch away his life, to bury him in the ravines, so that murder might leave no trace; when upon this initiating campaign, the virgin trials of our youth, I first set forth, my mother drew near, and girding me herself with my grandsire's sword, 'Go forth,' she said, 'as the young hound ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... the novel and the play, tracing their influence on each other and making a catalog of their mutual borrowings. Altho the record has no special significance, it may be noted that they have never hesitated to filch plots from each other, the playwrights appropriating the inventions of the novelists and the novelists levying on the works of the playwrights,—Shakspere, the dramatist, finding the action of his 'As You Like It' ready to his hand in a tale of Lodge's, and Le Sage, the story-teller, ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... he concluded, perhaps rightly, that they had left the nuggets where he had found them, because neither could trust the other not to filch a few, if he had them in his own possession, and they could not make a nice division without a pair of scales. "At any rate," he said to himself, "there will be a pretty quarrel when they ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... that is what one rather feels, but surely Professor Ray Lankester should say "in trying to filch while pretending to oppose and to amend." He is complaining here that people persistently ascribe Lamarck's doctrine to Mr. Darwin. Of course they do; but, as I have already perhaps too abundantly asked, whose fault is this? If a man knows ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... branch of the Osborne family were in a far less hopeful condition. John Wittleworth drank to excess, and did not attend to his business. It was said that he gambled largely; but it was not necessary to add this vice to the other in order to rob him of his property, and filch from him ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... alike there. He scarce left it save to go abroad, or perchance to have a few hours' sleep in his bed. But the treasure is buried somewhere nigh at hand down in those cellars, though the spot I know not. And he fears to leave it night or day, lest some stealthy hand filch away the ill-gotten gain. Men thought he had the secret whereby all might be changed to gold, and indeed he would ofttimes bring pure gold out from the crucibles over his fire; but he had cast in first, unknown to those who so greedily watched him, the precious baubles he ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... those mild, dark eyes, and then 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 well-nigh ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard |
