"Pilfer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... survive! The central idea of this modern folly about the potato is that you must pilfer the root. Let us work the idea of the healing or magical herb backwards, from Kensington to European folklore, and thence to classical times, to Homer, and to the Hottentots. Turning first to Germany, we note the beliefs, not about ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... sins, for they lay at his overindulgent mother's door line in a great measure; so she softened the tone of her voice, and added, with a little slap on the fat hand, as she used to do when it was small enough to pilfer lumps of sugar ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... can, if you'll only hold them in your hand and let us pilfer with our brushes. You won't lose a single poppy and we ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... toys and pulls the calves' tails, Yasoda and Rohini all the time showering upon him their doting love. When he can walk, Krishna starts to go about with other children and there then ensues a series of naughty pranks. His favourite pastime is to raid the houses of the cowgirls, pilfer their cream and curds, steal butter and upset milk pails. When, as sometimes happens, the butter is hung from the roof, they pile up some of the household furniture. One of the boys then mounts upon it, another climbs on his shoulders, ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... small fowl on the wing, are always within reach; you will never find me without well-tenanted pill-boxes in my pocket, and perhaps a buzzing captive or two stuck in spinning thraldom on my castor; you are petty larceners, I profess the like metier of intellectual abstractor; you pilfer among a crowd of volumes, manuscripts, rare editions, conflicting commentators, and your success depends upon reusage of the old materials; whereas I sit alone and bookless in my dining-parlour, thinking over ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... head a great graceful basket of yellow treasures. Opposite our window there is a wall by which they rest themselves, after their three-mile walk from the gardens. There they lounge and there they chatter. Little boys come slyly to pilfer oranges, and are pelted away with other oranges; for a single orange has here no more appreciable value than a single apple in our farmers' orchards; and, indeed, windfall oranges are left to decay, like windfall apples. During ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... thievishness, rapacity, kleptomania, Alsatia[obs3], 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 &c. (lay violent ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... knew, That they to Duty are more true, Who from a filial Love obey, And serve for Gratitude, than they Who from a coward Dread of Law Owe all their Virtue to their Awe; Who, tho' they seem so true, and just, So strictly faithful to their Trust, Will, if you take the Gallows down, Out-pilfer half the Rogues in Town). With saucy boldness will presume To pass th' impenetrable gloom, And lift the Curtain which we see Is drawn betwixt the World and Thee; Of nought but endless Torments speak, To frighten and appall the weak; Dwell on the horrid Theme with glee, And ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... be ruined for life; but he very shortly found that he was a gainer by the maiming. For being by nature disposed to pilfer from his companions, it would come within his experience to have many misadventures wherein his ears would be torn in ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... the houses of the natives. The cry was, that they belonged to Waheatoun the Earee de hi, or king, and him we had not yet seen, nor, I believe, any other chief of note. Many, however, who called themselves Earees, came on board, partly with a view of getting presents, and partly to pilfer ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... to save her a deal of trouble: skeleton keys are so exasperatingly slow, particularly when used by inexpert hands. But how to bring herself to make use of these? All's fair in war (and this was a sort of war, a war of wits at least); but one should fight with one's own arms, not pilfer the enemy's and turn them against him. To use these keys to ransack Maitland's desk seemed an action even more blackly dishonorable than this ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... Stewart himself, who, having left his studio but a few minutes before, was now returning to his work; and as his eyes fell upon this unexpected guest, he at first was disposed to believe him some young vagabond who had come in to pilfer. But the statue-like attitude of the boy, the fixed look with which he surveyed the picture, and the gaiter boots which dangled by their connecting string from his arm, his whole appearance making him a fit subject for study, soon banished ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... even in whose faults or vices there was nothing mean or petty, never having been suspected of corruption, who as Macaulay said of the younger Pitt, "If in an hour of ambition they might have been tempted to ruin their country, never would have stooped to pilfer from her," could not brook the sight of a Legislature made up of ignorant negroes who had been their own slaves, and of venal carpet- baggers. They could not endure that men, some of whom had been bought and sold like ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... up his mind that if this pilgrim to whom they had given shelter and food as become generous campers, showed any disposition to pilfer he would treat him in a summary manner, and chase him into the woods, just as any rascal should be made to decamp; and the fact of Stackpole's gigantic figure made not a particle of ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... inveighs.) They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works. Ineruditi fures, &c. A fault that every writer finds, as I do now, and yet faulty themselves, [81]Trium literarum homines, all thieves; they pilfer out of old writers to stuff up their new comments, scrape Ennius' dunghills, and out of [82]Democritus' pit, as I have done. By which means it comes to pass, [83]"that not only libraries and shops are full of our putrid ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... bad as they declare, O girls and boys of Chester Square! Be sure some little good we do, Even though we pilfer buds a few. Don't grudge them, since your trees we clear Of vermin that would cost you dear: So throw us out a crumb or two, And, as you would be ...
— The Nursery, February 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... number of men and children who crowded about the steamer watching for opportunities to pilfer or pick up food became so great that it was necessary to clear the pier and put a guard of soldiers there to exclude the public altogether. Then the hungry people formed in a dense mass in the street opposite the steamer, and stood there in the blazing sunshine for hours, watching ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... the count, his cheek first reddening, and then becoming deadly pale with anger; "is the blood of the gitano asserting its claim? Has he begun to pilfer? The dog shall hang from the highest battlement of ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... Since then they had had nothing. Substantially, I believe, he spoke the truth, for these poor fellows are kept just above the starvation-to-death point. It is not surprising they wish to return to their homes, or Tripoli, and that they pilfer about the town. Asking him why the Rais did not give them a few karoobs, he replied naively, "The Rais has none for us, but plenty to buy gold for his horse's saddle." To-day, nor yesterday, could ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... beyond their usual haunts. The partridge comes to the orchard for buds; the rabbit comes to the garden and lawn; the crows and jays come to the ash-heap and corn-crib, the snow-buntings to the stack and to the barn-yard; the sparrows pilfer from the domestic fowls; the pine grosbeak comes down from the north and shears your maples of their buds; the fox prowls about your premises at night, and the red squirrels find your grain in the barn or steal the butternuts from your attic. ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... kolombejo. Pigmy pigmeo. Pike (fish) ezoko. Pike (tool) pikilego. Pike (weapon) ponardego. Pile up amasigi. Pile (logs) sxtiparo. [Error in book: stiparo] Pile (support) paliso, subteno. Pile (heap) amaso—ajxo. Pile (electric) elektra pilo. Piles hemorojdo. Pilfer sxteleti. Pilferer sxtelisto. Pilgrim pilgrimanto. Pilgrimage pilgrimo—ado. Pill pilolo. Pillage rabegi—ado. Pillar kolono. Pillory punejo. Pillow kapkuseno. Pillow-case kusentego. Pilot piloto, gvido. Pimple akno. Pin pinglo. Pince-nez ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... greater number of whom were condemned to death, and were accordingly hung in chains, as the custom of those days was, to be a terror and warning to like evil-doers, as dead crows and other birds are stuck up in a field to scare away the live ones wishing to pilfer the farmer's ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... pilfer the wand of a fairy, I'd have a pair of those beautiful wings; Their summer days' ramble is sportive and airy, They sleep in a rose when the nightingale sings. Those who have wealth must be watchful and wary; Power, alas! naught ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... bath-tubs in its hotels, can testify to this. It is a city that enticed and still entices the mighty of the earth; Roman Emperors in the past came to appease the wrath of its gods, a German Emperor to-day comes to pilfer its temples. For the Acropolis in the poplar grove is a mine of ruins. The porphyry pillars, the statues, the tablets, the exquisite friezes, the palimpsests, the bas-reliefs,—Time and the Turks have spared a few of ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... providing for the immediate wants of nature; beyond which even their roguishness does not extend; and, only endeavouring to save themselves the trouble of labour, they are contented if they can procure food by showing feats of dexterity; and only pilfer to supply themselves with the trifles they want; so that they never render themselves liable to any severer chastisement, than that of whipping, for having stolen chickens, linen, &c. Most of the men have a smattering of physic and ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... need. Above all things avoid quacks. The policy they pursue is to frighten you, to work upon your imagination, and to make such alarming and unreliable statements as will induce you to purchase their nostrums and subject yourself to such a series of humiliations and impositions as will enable them to pilfer your purse and without rendering you in return any value received, but likely leave you in a much worse ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... Blood-thirstiness was a passion unknown to him; but that tenderness which with us creates a horror of blood was equally unknown. Pleasure was sweet to him; but he was man enough to feel that a life of pleasure was contemptible. To pillage a city, to pilfer his all from a rich man, to debauch a friend's wife, to give over a multitude of women and children to slaughter, was as easy to him as to forgive an enemy. But nothing rankled with him, and he could ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... if they were not stopped drifting to the abyss while still young, with the evil training that depraved tramps gave them, it would be merely a matter of time before they too would have learned to destroy and pilfer railroad property; rob box cars and stations, and thus repay with almost brutal ingratitude those who had permitted them to travel unmolested ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... planned, He to the camp-bed silently repaired, And found the belle by Morpheus not insnared; Coletta taught a play that mortals find Fatigues the body more than plagues the mind: A truce succeeded, but 'twas quickly o'er: Those rest not long who pilfer Cupid's store. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... Will, There was wit i' your skull, When ye pilfer'd the alms o' the poor; The timmer is scant, When ye're ta'en for a saunt, Wha should swing in a rape for ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... feet, and caught hold of me. "Sha'n't go, Tom, impossible—come along with me to my lodgings, and breakfast with me. Here, Pilfer, Pilfer," to his black valet, "give me my stick, and massu the chair, and run home and order breakfast—cold calipiver—our Jamaica salmon, you know, Tom—tea and coffee pickled mackerel, eggs, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... you must, for my sake, try again; and I shall then be most ready for a rummage of your Irish treasures. Already, indeed, I have been drawing a little upon your 'Researches in the South of Ireland;' and should be very glad to have more books of yours to pilfer. ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... of all parties is to regard repetitions of phrases as examples of borrowing, except, of course, in the case of the earliest poet from whom the others pilfer, and in other cases of prae-Homeric surviving epic formulae. Critics then dispute as to which recurrent passage is the earlier, deciding, of course, as may happen to suit their own general theory. In our opinion these passages are ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... of the populace as it shapes itself into momentary demand—if, in jealous rivalry with neighbouring States, or with other producers, you try to attract attention by singularities, novelties, and gaudinesses—to make every design an advertisement, and pilfer every idea of a successful neighbour's, that you may insidiously imitate it, or pompously eclipse —no good design will ever be possible to you, or perceived by you. You may, by accident, snatch the market; or, by energy, command it; you may obtain the confidence ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... fomented by Rale, both because he shared it himself, and because he was prompted by Vaudreuil. Yet, dreading another war with the English, the Indians kept quiet for a year or two, till at length the more reckless among them began to threaten and pilfer ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... niggers and Grandma Maria say, 'Why shouldn't they—it was their money.' She say there was plenty Indians here when they settled this country and they bought and traded with them without killin' them, if they could. The Indians was poor folks, jus' pilfer and loaf 'round all the time. The niggers was a heap sight better off than they was, 'cause we had plenty to eat and a place ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... Where did you get that notion? I will rather burn everything in the fire, before I'll give them a kopek. Transfer the merchandise, sell the notes, let 'em pilfer, let anybody steal who wants to; but I'm not ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... is having needless bother. How miserable! Our slaves are a burden, not worth the trifles they pilfer. I wish they would all run away, then we might have an ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... the most numerous in Alaska and are even more graceful in flight than are the Gulls and Terns, floating, skimming, sailing, plunging, and darting about with incredible swiftness and ease. Like the others of this family, they pilfer their food from the Gulls, and are also very destructive to young birds and eggs. Their eggs are either laid on the bare ground or in a slight depression, scantily lined with grasses. The eggs are indistinguishable from those of the preceding species except that they ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... a quaint old German physician, who lived in a fine old-fashioned house near a public play-ground. Connected with the doctor's premises was an extensive peach orchard, and, sad to say, naughty boys would sometimes climb over the orchard wall and pilfer his peaches. To guard against this practice the doctor had the top of his wall adorned with a row of very ugly iron spikes. Not far from Doctor Schroeder's place lived a family known as "the Jones's". One member of the family was a small boy nicknamed "Scramble;" so named, ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... Saumarez, in a hard voice. Then, after a little, she cried, suddenly: "Oh, Billy, Billy, it shames me to think of how we lie to her, and toady to her, and lead her on from one mad scheme to another!—all for the sake of the money we can pilfer incidentally! We're all arrant hypocrites, you know; I'm no better than the others, Billy—not a bit better. But my husband left me so poor, and I had always been accustomed to the pretty things of life, and I couldn't—I couldn't give them up, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... had occurred on almost any part of our own coasts, a similar result would have taken place? Is it not notorious, and a deep and indelible stain on the great proportion of our population on the coast, that on a wreck taking place, the natives not only pilfer all that they can lay their hands upon, but sometimes do not even hesitate, it is alleged, to extinguish any glimmering sparks of life that may be perceptible in the bodies of the unfortunate mariners who have been washed ashore—with a view to protect themselves ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... want no more masters!' We only could stop him By giving him vodka 580 (His weakness was vodka). The devil must needs Fling him straight at the Barin. One morning Petrov Had set out to the forest To pilfer some logs (For the night would not serve him, It seems, for his thieving, He must go and do it In broadest white daylight), 590 And there comes the carriage, On ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... my own, a lecturer in a technical school, spoke to me to the same effect. He told me, as an illustration, of a parcel sent to him which had become quite shattered in transit (p.p. 7). The Germans transferred the contents to a sack, and, as he said, the temptation to pilfer the sorely-needed foodstuffs must have been great. My informant also spoke of the ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... abundance of praise of our principles. To live in seeming fellowship and secret rivalry; to have a hand for all, and a heart for none; to be everybody's acquaintance, and nobody's friend; to meditate the ruin of all on whom we smile, and to dread the secret stratagems of all who smile on us; to pilfer honours and despoil fortunes, not by fighting in daylight, but by sapping in darkness: these are arts which the court can teach, but which we, by 'r Lady, have not learned. But let your court-minstrel tune up his ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... condition of Adam and Eve before the fall. One of the women carried a little squirrel monkey. She put it up the big tree some distance from the tents; and when she called, it came scampering to her across the grass, ran up her, and clung to her neck. They would have liked to pilfer; but as they had no clothes it was difficult for them to conceal anything. One of the women was observed to take a fork; but as she did not possess a rag of clothing of any kind all she did do was to try to bury the fork in the ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... fat soldier attempted to pilfer a horse from a dooryard. He planned to load his knap-sack upon it. He was escaping with his prize when a young girl rushed from the house and grabbed the animal's mane. There followed a wrangle. ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... Echeloot chiefs remained with the white men to guide them on their way down the river. These were joined by seven others of their tribe, to whom the explorers were kind and attentive. But the visitors could not resist the temptation to pilfer from the goods exposed to dry in the sun. Being checked in this sly business, they became ill-humored and returned, ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... appropriate here to afford you some notion of Ormskirk's exterior. I pilfer from Loewe's memoir of him, where Horace Calverley, who first saw Ormskirk at ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... all the qualities of his nobler nature, transmuting them into rank and noisome products. All love for Christ, all care for the poor, all thought of his fellow-disciples, were quenched before that remorseless passion; and at last he began to pilfer from those scant treasures, which were now and again replenished by those that loved to minister to the Master's comfort. At first, he must have been stung by keen remorse; but each time he sinned his conscience became more seared, until he finally reached the point ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... No wonder therefore that they will eat almost anything however tough or filthy, and that neither whipping nor shouting will prevent their turning out of the road, even when going at full speed, to pick up whatever they espy. When at the huts they are constantly creeping in to pilfer what they can, and half the time of the people sitting there is occupied in vociferating their names and driving them by most unmerciful blows out of the apartments. The dogs have no water to drink during ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... holding helm and plough'; while Lewis, early in the last century, tells us they made 'two voyages a year to the North Seas, and came home soon enough for the men to go to the wheat season.' With genial tolerance the Georgian historian adds, 'It's a thousand pities they are so apt to pilfer stranded ships.' Piracy, which ran in the Thanet blood, seemed to their good easy local ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... keyboard and strings of a piano while I watched a number of thieves break into the remnants of houses and pilfer them, while others again had got at a supply of fine groceries and had broken into a barrel of fine brandy, and were fairly steeping themselves in it. I met quite a number of Pittsburghers in the ruins looking for ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... there's an alms-box to open or a matter of gold plate to pilfer." Guy Tabarie hurriedly interrupted him with a warning cry of "Cave!" and a significant glance at the strangers, but Villon derided ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... secure as much as possible of what they accidentally leave on the stubble. I am not inclined to quarrel with the condition that requires the stocks to be removed ere the gleaners gain admittance; because many would be tempted to pilfer, and besides, the ground on which they stand could not be reached. But there is no doubt that the custom of gleaning was originally a public enactment; while the fact that it has spread over the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... expect? you pilfer the man too much, and he's going to protect himself," replied the officer. "It will be a bad business for you in the end; government ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... canja. His cabin had close latticed windows made not only to admit fresh air, but to be a defence against a set of robbers on the Nile, who were wont to swim under water in the dark or on goatskins to pilfer any passing boats. Then, unfurling her vast sails, the canja bore Bruce on the first stage of his great journey. The explorer spent some time in trying to find the lost site of old Memphis, but this was difficult. "A man's heart fails him in looking to ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... low and dirty prostitution, in the age of Dodington and Sandys, it was something to have a man who might perhaps, under some strong excitement, have been tempted to ruin his country, but who never would have stooped to pilfer from her, a man whose errors arose, not from a sordid desire of gain, but from a fierce thirst for power, for glory, and for vengeance. History owes to him this attestation, that at a time when ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... he a Dago, Billy Buttons? An' I put in that patch myself. I sewed it a hour, with strings out the garbage boxes, a hull hour. Hi, there! you leave them goobers be!" cried the girl, swooping down upon the few youngsters who had returned to pilfer the scattered nuts and, at once, the two larger boys came to ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... person shall, within this Commonwealth, or, being a citizen thereof, shall without the same, wilfully destroy,* or run** away with any sea-vessel, or goods laden on board thereof, or plunder or pilfer any wreck, he shall be condemned to hard labor five years in the public works, and shall make good the loss of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... members themselves have sometimes been deceived by unscrupulous agents representing their wares as the regular productions of the valid society. The audacious promoters of this so-called Society had the boldness not only to pilfer the name of the legitimate society, but also the name of its president, which was ostentatiously printed upon their letter heads, together with the name of Dr. Richard Garnett. Both of these gentlemen have recently published their denunciations ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... sleepless enemies of the unfortunate householders condemned to employ them. She thought they ate and drank to their villanous utmost, in order to ruin their benefactors; that they lived in one constant conspiracy with one another and the tradesmen, the object of which was to cheat and pilfer. Miss Starke was a miserable woman. As she had no relations or friends who cared enough for her to share her solitary struggle against her domestic foes; and her income, though easy, was an annuity that died with herself, thereby reducing various nephews, nieces, or cousins to the strict ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... so many of them are received into our houses. The first is the tribe of wicked boys, wherewith most corners of this town are pestered, who haunt public doors. These, having been born of beggars, and bred to pilfer as soon as they can go or speak, as years come on, are employed in the lowest offices to get themselves bread, are practised in all manner of villainy, and when they are grown up, if they are not entertained in a gang of thieves, are forced to seek for a service. The other nursery ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... can see the result of your dreadful example. Even this innocent child has learnt to pilfer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... and, undoubtedly, if any propensity to mistake the tuum for the meum had been exhibited, there were among us sufficient of the stamp of my old friend "who had served with Rodney," to have flung the culprit where men pilfer no more; whatever ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... fretted about him. But she turned and met his gaze squarely. She noted now for the first time how oddly his left eyebrow drooped. Katharine said: "And that is the king whom you have conquered! Is it not a notable conquest to overcome so wise a king? to pilfer renown from an idiot? There are cut-throats in Troyes, rogues doubly damned, who would scorn the action. Now shall I fetch my mother, sire? the commander of that great army which you overcame? As the hour is late, she is by this time tipsy, but ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... their account that he was tempted to steal, and this, though it would not justify, might in some degree palliate the act for which he was slain; or that he had been badly brought up, having never received any proper instruction, but had been trained and taught from his boyhood to pilfer ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... that keen-sighted animal would quickly have observed the child, if its attention had not at the moment been attracted by other and equally mischievous game. A troop of baboons came down the kloof to pilfer the white man's fruit and vegetables. They had evidently risen late for breakfast, and were in a hurry to reach their breakfast parlour before the white man should awake. There were a dozen or so of females, ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... some small purchase, expecting to find a great emporium, but, to my surprise, found that all the goods were in the show-window. That's one trouble with my subject—all the goods seem to be in the show-window. But, I'll do the best I can with it, even if I am compelled to pilfer from the ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... the tunnel the army of gigantic Growleywogs, with their Grand Gallipoot at their head. They were dreadful beings, indeed, and longed to get to Oz that they might begin to pilfer and destroy. The Grand Gallipoot was a little afraid of the First and Foremost, but had a cunning plan to murder or destroy that powerful being and secure the wealth of Oz for himself. Mighty little of the plunder would the ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... those men whose plans come to nothing. He had prospered as a rogue of old in England, really his native country, though he called himself an Afrikander. Reared in the gutters of the Irish quarter of Liverpool, he had early learned to pilfer for a living, had prospered in prison as sharp young gaol-birds may prosper, and returned to it again and again, until, having served out part of a sentence for burglary and obtained his ticket-of-leave, he had shifted his convict's ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... picture of the farmer, when the tenth of his grain is levied? Worms have destroyed half of the wheat, and the hippopotami have eaten the rest; there are swarms of rats in the fields, the grasshoppers alight there, the cattle devour, the little birds pilfer, and if the farmer lose sight for an instant of what remains upon the ground, it is carried off by robbers;* the thongs, moreover, which bind the iron and the hoe are worn out, and the team has died at the plough. It is then that the scribe steps out of the boat at the landing-place to levy the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... I would die. They tell me even to-day I did not die. I almost question it." He shrugged. "And to-day I must continue to write plays, because I never learned any other trade. And so, at need, I pilfer." The topic did not ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... son," said the priest: "fearest thou not to disturb thy mother's rest? and wouldst thou pilfer and purloin even before she is ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... thin pale lips, which grace and love made sweeter than the most sparkling laugh of unsanctified beauty. Still, what he heard so constantly on the lips of those better educated than himself left its mark; he began to long for things out of his reach, and to pilfer a little and then a little more of what was in his reach, not money, but drink. Indeed he heard so much about betting and gambling, his master's guests seemed to find the cards and the dice box so convenient a way of slipping a few pounds out of a friend's pocket ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... the lateral ridge of the Pink Hills upon our right, and travelled through a good deal of brush. Four or five natives joined us, and two followed us to the end of our day's journey. In the course of the evening, they endeavoured to pilfer whatever was in their reach, but were detected putting a tin into a bush, and soon took to their heels. This was the first instance we had of open theft among the natives of ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... know I have lost a foolish Daughter, And with her all my patience, pilfer'd away By a mean Captain of ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... counterfeited his buffoons, whom they called Egeums. This kind of farce so much pleased my master, that he made me repeat it as often as he found opportunity. He made use of this stratagem to divert those among them, whom he suspected as inclined to pilfer, and thus cunningly occupied their attention. No sooner did he make known my talent for imitating the Egeums, than I was surrounded by men, women, and children, who constantly bawled out to me ganne, (sing then). I had no sooner ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... of a magazine belonging to a friend of the family. In the great eastern desert the Aeneze Bedouins are not so severe in such instances; but they would punish a Bedouin who should pilfer any thing from ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt |
