"Pilfer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... others angry: I excus'd them too; Well might they rage, I gave them but their due. A man's true merit 'tis not hard to find; But each man's secret standard in his mind, That Casting-weight pride adds to emptiness, 175 This, who can gratify? for who can guess? The Bard whom pilfer'd Pastorals renown, Who turns a Persian tale for half a Crown, Just writes to make his barrenness appear, And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year; 180 He, who still wanting, tho' he lives on theft, Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left: And He, who now ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... bearing on the 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
... pilfer, filch, purloin, peculate, swindle, plagiarize, poach>. (With this group, which excludes the idea of violence, compare the ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... servitude, which, in all early periods of society, were uniformly imposed on the female. "Why," would he say, "did the boy, Tam Rintherout, whom, at my wise sister's instigation, I, with equal wisdom, took upon trialwhy did he pilfer apples, take birds' nests, break glasses, and ultimately steal my spectacles, except that he felt that noble emulation which swells in the bosom of the masculine sex, which has conducted him to Flanders with a musket on his shoulder, and doubtless will ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... more than four hundred Indians, of fine stature and nearly white, and who while presenting cocoa-nuts and other fruits to the sailors, appeared to entreat them to disembark. The natives no sooner came on board than they began to pilfer, and it was necessary to fire a cannon to get rid of them; a wound which one of the natives received in the fray soon changed their disposition, and a discharge of musketry was the reply to the shower of arrows which ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... whom they hold in perpetual slavery. 7. Where they have ceased to kill quickly by the sword, they kill slowly by personal servitude and other unjust and intolerable vexations. And till now the King has not succeeded in preventing them because all, small and great, go there to pilfer, some more, some less, some publicly and openly, others secretly and under disguise; and with the pretext that they are serving the king, they dishonour God, and rob and ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... the Swedes are from having a just conception of rational equality. They are not termed slaves; yet a man may strike a man with impunity because he pays him wages, though these wages are so low that necessity must teach them to pilfer, whilst servility renders them false and boorish. Still the men stand up for the dignity of man by oppressing the women. The most menial, and even laborious offices, are therefore left to these poor drudges. Much of this I have seen. In the winter, I am told, they take the linen down to the ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... of 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 anything short of direct ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the 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
... He never stooped to pilfer, until exposure and decay had weakened his hand. In his first week at Dublin he carried off L1000, and it was only his fateful interview with Sir John Fielding that gave him poverty for a bedfellow. Even at the end, when he slunk from town to ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... like theirs whose volumes rest Like treasures in the Franch'mont chest, While gripple owners still refuse 220 To others what they cannot use; Give them the priest's whole century, They shall not spell you letters three; Their pleasure in the books the same The magpie takes in pilfer'd gem. 225 Thy volumes, open as thy heart, Delight, amusement, science, art, To every ear and eye impart; Yet who, of all who thus employ them, Can like the owner's self enjoy them?— 230 But, hark! I hear the distant drum! The day of Flodden Field is come.— Adieu, dear ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... people, no disposition to take advantage of the misfortune of the stranger. Although they beheld what must in their eyes have been inestimable treasures, cast, as it were, upon their shores, and open to depredation, yet there was not the least attempt to pilfer, nor, in transporting the effects from the ships, had they appropriated the most trifling article. On the contrary, a general sympathy was visible in their countenances and actions; and to have witnessed their concern, one would ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... suppose I'll make it do?" said Mr Webster, beginning to feel hot, too. "You think you can come to my shop, and pilfer my things like so many young pickpockets; and then you have the impudence to come and offer me part of the price to say nothing about it. No, thank you. That's not ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... exhibited in the greatest intensity in the whisky-john. He will jump down almost under your nose, and seize a fragment of biscuit or pemmican. He will go right into the pemmican-bag, when you are but a few paces off, and pilfer, as it were, at the fountain-head. Or if these resources are closed against him, he will sit on a twig, within an inch of your head, and look at you as only a ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... added: "This disposition to pilfer was, to a large extent, a part of the history of slavery. It was rare when colored people who belonged to a white family where they served as cooks, butlers, or in some other form of household service, did not feel that everything belonging to the white family ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... 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 ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... their memory, Those glorious Greeks of old— On shore and sea the Famed, the Free, The Beautiful—the Bold! The mind or mirth that lights each page, Or bowl by which we sit, Is sunfire pilfer'd from their age— Gems splinter'd from their wit. Then drink we to their memory, Those glorious Greeks of yore; Of great or true, we can but do ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... 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 ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reserved look-out kept on doubtful characters as they go over the side on leave, for there will ever be found at the great naval stations a certain number of regular-built swindlers, who wander from port to port expressly to pilfer. These vagabonds enter on board newly-commissioned ships, make a great show of activity, and remain a certain time to lull suspicion. They then take up slops, that is, obtain from the purser as many shirts, trousers, shoes, and other ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... possession of your key, and was sufficiently familiar with the bearings of the office to move about in the dark, or by the dim fire-light, to enter that office, remove the surgeon's knife from its case, pilfer a handkerchief from the ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... that; "Enacted" sends him to the Revised Statutes, or the Reports, and there it ends. The latter gives a bit of information; the former a step in development. Laws are necessary; but laws which are not necessary are more and worse than unnecessary;—they pilfer power from the soul; they intercept the absolute uses of life; they incarcerate men, and make Caspar Hausers of them. Now in America not only is there already much emancipation from those outside regulations which supersede moral and private judgment, but the tendency ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... 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 traditional formulae, as in our own old ballads ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... dead. 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 forgive an enemy. Of courage ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... declare that your offers are inadmissible"? No such thing appears. Your Lordships will further remark, that Mr. Hastings refused the 200,000l. at a time when the exigencies of the Company were so pressing that he was obliged to rob, pilfer, and steal upon every side,—at a time when he was borrowing 40,000l. from Mr. Sulivan in one morning, and raising by other under-jobs 27,000l. more. In the distress [in?] which his own extravagance and prodigality had involved him, 200,000l. would have been a weighty ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... certain days, Trumence could not find either kind-hearted topers or hospitable housewives. Hunger, however, was ever on hand; then he had to become a marauder; dig some potatoes, and cook them in a corner of a wood, or pilfer the orchards. And if he found neither potatoes in the fields, nor apples in the orchards, what could he do but climb a fence, or scale ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... 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
... that had been pointed out to us as Wordsworth's residence, we began to peer about at its front and gables, and over the garden wall, on both sides of the road, quickening our enthusiasm as much as we could, and meditating to pilfer some flower or ivy-leaf from the house or its vicinity, to be kept as sacred memorials. At this juncture a man approached, who announced himself as the gardener of the place, and said, too, that this was not Wordsworth's house at all, but the residence ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 young ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... 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 ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... guilty alike regarded him with indignant eyes. To the mysterious feminine reasoning it appeared there were different degrees in the crime of theft. To pay a debt by means of a worthless cheque was evidently less reprehensible than to pilfer a brooch from a dressing-table. Guest knew himself condemned before he heard the ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... soldier 3 Tunisian piastres, about 1s. 10d. 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 I buy any eatable meat. I mean mutton, for this is the ordinary meat of the place, and upon ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... 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
... yet to learn," said Dennis, fully aware of the renewed look of doubt in the faces of the men, "that a Red Cross nurse has any right to pilfer a field letter-box, or that she usually carries a Browning pistol for that purpose. Besides——" And at a venture he suddenly transferred his grip from her left wrist to the nurse's headgear ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... 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 Nome King get, ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... 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 condition than ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... 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 the potato, but about another vegetable, the mandrake. Of all roots, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... stayed, our allowance was somewhat bettered, by a daily proportion of Bisket, which the sailers would pilfer to sell, giue, or exchange with vs, for money, Saxefras, furres, or loue. But when they departed, there remained neither taverne, beere house, nor place of reliefe, but the common Kettell. Had we beene as free from all sinnes as gluttony, and drunkennesse, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... libros suos per se graciles alieno adipe suffarciant (so [80]Jovius 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 papers, but every close-stool and jakes," Scribunt ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... 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 ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... I didn't say as she did pilfer. I think that 'ere podgy gel as honest as the day. But now, can't yer guess where ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... rebels before them, and, in the midst of great excitement, vowing vengeance. Then came the inevitable result: some good soldiers were carried away into acts of unwarrantable violence, and a few unprincipled scoundrels seized upon the opportunity to plunder, pilfer, and steal. But the mass of the forces entered the place under the impression (as appears from the testimony before the court-martial) that it was to be sacked and burned, as a just and proper military punishment. This impression was, unfortunately, not corrected by Colonel Turchin, because it was, ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... wretch whom avarice bids to pinch and spare, Starve, cheat, and pilfer, to enrich an heir, Is coarse brown paper, such as peddlers choose To wrap up wares which better men ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... 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
... perhaps as much from mismanagement, as by the weather; for, with very few exceptions, it was impossible to select from among the prisoners, or those who had been such, any who would feel an honest interest in executing the service in which they were employed. They would pilfer half the grain entrusted to their care for the cattle; they would lead them into the woods for pasturage, and there leave them until obliged to conduct them in; they would neither clean them nor themselves. Indolent, and by long habit worthless, no dependance could be placed on them. ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... the priest: "fearest thou not to disturb thy mother's rest? and wouldst thou pilfer and purloin even before ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... what I'm doing, Father Beret," said Alice, "I am preventing a great damage to you. You will maybe lose a good many cherry pies and dumplings if I let Jean go. He was climbing the tree to pilfer the fruit; so I pulled him down, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... must, therefore, I presume, have practised a studied reserve as to his deepest admirations; and, perhaps, at that day (1803-8) the occasions would be rare in which much dissimulation would be needed. Until Lord Byron had begun to pilfer from Wordsworth and to abuse him, allusions to Wordsworth were not frequent in conversation; and it was chiefly on occasion of some question arising about poetry in general, or about the poets of the day, that it became difficult to dissemble. For my part, hating the necessity for dissimulation ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Primrose had never reckoned on a certain grave difficulty which here confronted her. Hitherto her dealings had been with honest tradespeople; now it was her misfortune, and her sisters', to get into a house where honesty was far from practised. In a thousand little ways Mrs. Dove could pilfer from the girls—she would not for the world have acknowledged to herself that she would really steal; oh, no—but she did not consider it stealing to use their coal instead of her own—of course, by mistake; she by no means considered it stealing when she baked a little joint for them ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... 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 whatever ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... him then with more than a hundred rakes; They said: "It here behoves thee to dance covered, That, if thou canst, thou secretly mayest pilfer." ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... 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 ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... Will,[92] Holy 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... British New Guinea, a man who has killed a snake will burn it and smear his legs with the ashes when he goes into the forest; for no snake will bite him for some days afterwards. If a South Slavonian has a mind to pilfer and steal at market, he has nothing to do but to burn a blind cat, and then throw a pinch of its ashes over the person with whom he is higgling; after that he can take what he likes from the booth, and the owner will not be a bit the wiser, having ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... not as 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 ...
— The Nursery, February 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... could either go, or well stand, such extreme weakness and sicknes oppressed us. And thereat none need marvaile if they consider the cause and reason, which was this: whilst the ships stayed, our allowance was somewhat bettered, by a daily proportion of Bisket, which the sailors would pilfer to sell, give, or exchange with us for money, Saxefras, furres, or love. But when they departed, there remained neither taverne, beere-house, nor place of reliefe, but the common Kettell. Had we beene as free from all sinnes as gluttony, and drunkennesse, we might have been canonized ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 difference in ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... Paimosaid,—a permutative form of the Indian substantive, made from the verb pim-o-sa, to walk. Its literal meaning is, he who walks, or the walker; but the ideas conveyed by it are, he who walks by night to pilfer corn. It offers, therefore, a kind of parallelism in expression to the preceding term." — ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... feminine curiosity filled her soul to know something of the nature of that work which demanded so stern a noiselessness. Observing rigorously the printed Rule of the Dining-Room, she could not forbear to pilfer glance after glance at the promulgator of it. Mr. Queed was writing, not reading, to-night. He wrote very slowly on half-size yellow pads, worth seventy-five cents a dozen, using the books only for reference. Now he ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... own vice, without drawing upon their capital. The poor are not quite such servile imitators as they take them for. Some of them are very clever artists in their way. Here and there we find an original. Who taught the poor to steal, to pilfer? They did not go to the great for schoolmasters in these faculties surely. It is well if in some vices they allow us to be—no copyists. In no other sense is it true that the poor copy them, than as servants may be said to take after their masters and mistresses, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Marillac himself blubbered that it "was all about a little straw and hay, a matter for which a master would not whip a lackey." Marshal Marillac was executed. So, when statesmen rule, fare all who take advantage of the agonies of a nation to pilfer a nation's treasure. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... o'er? You fear to come to want yourself, you say? Come, calculate how small the loss per day, If henceforth to your cabbage you allow And your own head the oil you grudge them now. If anything's sufficient, why forswear, Embezzle, swindle, pilfer everywhere? Can you be sane? suppose you choose to throw Stones at the crowd, as by your door they go, Or at the slaves, your chattels, every lad And every girl will hoot yon down as mad: When with a rope you kill your wife, with bane Your aged mother, are you right in brain? ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... porcelain bath-tubs in its hotels, can testify to this. It is a city that enticed and still entices the mighty of the earth; Roman Emperors in the past came to appease the wrath of its gods, a German Emperor to-day comes to pilfer its temples. For the Acropolis in the poplar grove is a mine of ruins. The porphyry pillars, the statues, the tablets, the exquisite friezes, the palimpsests, the bas-reliefs,—Time and the Turks have spared a few of these. And when the German Emperor came, Abd'ul-Hamid blinked, and the Berlin ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... pilfering here we had none; we were all "men of honour;" and, undoubtedly, if any propensity to mistake the tuum for the meum had been exhibited, there were among us sufficient of the stamp of my old friend "who had served with Rodney," to have flung the culprit where men pilfer no more; whatever may be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... 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
... corruption, all manner of petty chicanery, especially in matters connected with the Army and Navy; and then they expect us unfortunate officers to do our work with any old material that the high officials have not thought it worth while to pilfer! It is heart-breaking. There, in order to replenish the pockets of Prince Hsi, lies one of the finest cruisers in our Navy, wrecked, and likely to be lost entirely if it comes on to blow again. But," he went on, still more ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... have classified the crimes that the boy commits. It is scarcely worth the while. He learns to steal or becomes a burglar largely for the love of adventure; he robs because it is exciting and may bring large returns. In his excursions to pilfer property he may kill, and then for the first time the State discovers that there is such a boy and sets in action the machinery to take his life. The city quite probably has given him a casual notice by arresting him a number of times and sending him ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... catch at every humour 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 Two Paths • John Ruskin
... not possibly overpower them before they had time to give the alarm to other vessels. At night, when we can unite, we cannot gain the deck, for the hatch is not only closed, but would almost certainly be fastened, so that men should not get down to pilfer among ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... 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 throat ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... by the owner. We suspect, though this is a point difficult to prove satisfactorily, that merriami does not always store food supplies for itself, but visits the burrows of spectabilis regularly to pilfer the seed stored therein. The observed facts thus far recorded which suggest this are that in no merriami burrow examined has a store of food been found, and also that in trapping for spectabilis ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... disagreeable consequences, were prevented: we were also indebted for many advantages to the old man, whose caution kept our people perpetually upon their guard, and soon brought back those who straggled from the party. The natives would indeed sometimes pilfer, but by the terror of a gun, without using it, he always found means to make them bring back what was stolen. A fellow had one day the dexterity and address to cross the river unperceived, and steal a hatchet; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... One would have said that it was a pile of herbs which drifted down stream, in the midst of floating islets. Such was the ingenious arrangement of the thatch, that the birds were deceived, and, seeing there some grains to pilfer, red-beaked gulls, "arrhinisgas" of black plumage, and gray and white halcyons frequently ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... 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 friends and relatives. If the skiffs which ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... had 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 ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... miserable condition of life as outcasts from the more civilised communities. Changars are, in general, petty thieves and pickpockets, and have no settled vocation. They object to continuous labour. The women make baskets, beg, pilfer, or sift and grind corn. They have no settled places of residence, and live in small blanket or mat tents, or temporary sheds outside villages. They are professedly Hindus and worshippers of Deree or Bhowanee, but ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... 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
... too big and too dangerous. I shirk King George; he has a fat pocket, but he has a long arm. [You pilfer sixpence from him, and it's three hundred reward for you, and a hue and cry from Tophet to the stars.] It ceases to be business; it turns politics, and I'm not a politician, Mr. Moore. (RISING.) ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... and innocent-looking as Spring herself are these bright flowers. Alas, for the tiny creatures that try to climb up the rosy tufts to pilfer nectar, they and their relatives are not so innocent as they appear! While the little crawlers are almost within reach of the cup of sweets, their feet are gummed to the viscid matter that coats it, and here their struggles end as flies' do on sticky fly-paper, or birds' ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... then, ye classic Thieves of each degree, Dark Hamilton[Sec.1] and sullen Aberdeen, Come pilfer all the Pilgrim loves to see, All that yet consecrates the fading scene: Ah! better were it ye had never been, Nor ye, nor Elgin, nor that lesser wight. The victim sad of vase-collecting spleen. House-furnisher withal, one Thomas[Sec.2] hight, Than ye should ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... countless rows of narrow cells with iron gratings for doors; and the gimlet gaze of two stalwart young females pierced each newcomer. It was their business to see that Peter Rolls's hands did not pilfer each other's belongings. The gimlet eyes must note the outdoor clothing each girl wore on arrival, in order to be sure that she did not go forth at evening clad in the property of a comrade. Being paid to cultivate ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... to the Greek deputies, Orlando and Luriottis, who had been sent to England to raise the money and to see that it was properly expended, but who, as was well known, had sought only their own advantage and enjoyment, and, pilfering themselves, had allowed others to pilfer without restraint. He urged that the innocent holders of the Greek stock ought not to suffer on this account, and showed also, that, if there had been great abuse of the loan, it had enabled the Greeks ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... not,' replied the Doctor. 'But do not suppose me so unwary as to adopt him out of hand. I am, I flatter myself, a finished man of the world; I have had all possibilities in view; my plan is contrived to meet them all. I take the lad as stable boy. If he pilfer, if he grumble, if he desire to change, I shall see I was mistaken; I shall recognise him for no son of ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we were sent out to pilfer, to deceive the credulous, and to decoy others to the den. Some were instructed by Hag Zogbaum to affect deaf and dumb, to plead the starving condition of our parents, to, in a word, enlist the sympathies ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... it is, indeed, among most of the people in all parts of the archipelago. It is a brutal sport, if sport it can be called. These people seem to treat their birds better than they do their wives; and so great is their passion for this abominable proceeding, that they will cheat and pilfer and commit all sorts of crimes in order ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the wild creatures become outlaws, and roam abroad 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. In fact, winter, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... disturbance, called Faithful back. She obeyed instantly, and again lay down by his side. The intention of the midnight intruder was apparently either to murder him or to pilfer his baggage, though the dagger ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... wolf, how many the sheep be. The army of the Persians, in the plains of Arbela, was such a vast sea of people, as it did somewhat astonish the commanders in Alexander's army; who came to him therefore, and wished him to set upon them by night; and he answered, He would not pilfer the victory. And the defeat was easy. When Tigranes the Armenian, being encamped upon a hill with four hundred thousand men, discovered the army of the Romans, being not above fourteen thousand, marching towards ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... rising here in the morning—and had only the like six ounces in prospect between him and starvation. That hundreds so situated should unite with seeming fervor in praise to God shames the more polished devotion of the favored and comfortable; and if these famishing, hopeless outcasts were to pilfer every day of their lives (as most of them did, and perhaps some of them still do), I should pity even more than I ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... 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 suspicion, and with ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... incoherent fragments of faith, which we cling to in cowardice, without believing, and make pictures of in vanity, without loving. False and base alike, whether we admire or imitate, we cannot learn from the Heathen's art, but only pilfer it; we cannot revive the Christian's art, but only galvanize it; we are, in the sum of us, not human artists at all, but mechanisms of conceited clay, masked in the furs and feathers of living creatures, and convulsed with voltaic spasms, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... parents pursue their daily toil. In these public thoroughfares, during the part of their lives which is most susceptible of impressions and most retentive of them, they acquire dirty, immoral, and disorderly habits; they become accustomed to wear filthy and ragged clothes; they learn to pilfer and to steal; they associate with boys who have been in prison, and who have there been hardened in crime by evil associates; they learn how to curse one another, how to fight, how to gamble, and how to fill up idle hours by vicious pastimes; they acquire no knowledge except the knowledge ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... when we consider from what nurseries 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 ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... crime. At first the Govt. would not give much ear to his demands, but he goes to them in person, stripped of his arms, telling them he is no longer a soldier, that he would turn barber for he could shave; he said he would get an honest livelihood as a poor man but not pilfer &c. as some of his friends did who had neither patriotism or virtue, and who thought of nothing but aggrandizing and enriching themselves. Such was his opinion of this Govt., and he assured me himself that not one of their heads ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... don' know 'bout that," contested Abel. "Git somebody kind o' spry an' he could pad out weth a pilfer. A pussy man 'd find it rather onhandy comin' down that chimbly an' hoppin' hether an' yan takin' things off o' the tree. Need somebody with a good strong voice, too, to call off the names.... Woosh's you'd git them things up to the house soon 's you kin, Otho. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... himself to 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 a ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... 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, and ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... his vivid lines assume The garb and dignity of ancient Rome.— Let college verse-men trite conceits express, Trick'd out in splendid shreds of Virgil's dress; From playful Ovid cull the tinsel phrase, And vapid notions hitch in pilfer'd lays: Then with mosaick art the piece combine, And boast the glitter of each dulcet line: Johnson adventur'd boldly to transfuse His vigorous sense into the Latian muse; Aspir'd to shine by unreflected ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Captain Smith to Jamestown, and he gave her such news of the settlers as he had heard from the Indians who loafed about Jamestown. They were on friendly terms with the white men, who let them come and go at will as long as they were peaceful and did not try to pilfer ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... time, therefore, no hostile disposition had been manifested by the savages; and their intercourse with the ship had been carried on with every appearance of friendship and cordiality, if we except the propensity they had shown to pilfer a few of the tempting rarities exhibited to them by their civilised visitors. Their conduct as to this matter ought perhaps to be taken rather as an evidence that they had not as yet formed any design of attacking the vessel, as they would, in ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... occasionally some miserable tale for the day, in order meanly to sneak out of difficulties into which they had proudly strutted. And they were put to all these shifts and devices, full of meanness and full of mischief, in order to pilfer piecemeal a repeal of an act which they had not the generous courage, when they found and felt their error, honorably and fairly to disclaim. By such management, by the irresistible operation of feeble counsels, so paltry a sum as Threepence in the eyes of a financier, so insignificant an ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... shot a wolf. The Indians brought corn, beans, and squashes, which they very readily gave for getting their axes and kettles mended. In their general conduct during these visits they are honest, but will occasionally pilfer ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... 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 and steal. ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... rose ape his cheek, 'Now God forfend,' I say, 'That of my portion aught to pilfer ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... returned the musician; "for with the callow poets of our day the way is for every one to write as he pleases and pilfer where he chooses, whether it be germane to the matter or not, and now-a-days there is no piece of silliness they can sing or write that is not set ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... pocket save her own. She had neither kith nor kin, nor friends, nor even acquaintances; but, being something of a miser, scraped and screwed to amass money she had no need for, and dwelt in a wretched little apartment in a back slum, whence she daily issued to work little and pilfer much. ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... larceny, grand 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 &c (lay violent hands ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Porter sits down on the weight which he bore; The Lass with her barrow wheels hither her store;— If a Thief could be here he might pilfer at ease; She sees the Musician, ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... you shall 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
... provost of the hotel, in which behaved rather harshly my lord Tristan of Mere, of whom these tales oft make mention, although he was by no means a merry fellow. I give this information to the friends who pilfer from old manuscripts to manufacture new ones, and I show thereby how learned these Tales really are, without appearing to be so. Very well, then, this provost was named Picot or Picault, of which some made picotin, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... unless 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 ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... other sects employed in the same kind of business; and perhaps a more dangerous set of cheats could 309 scarcely be pointed at, as their chief business really is to prowl about the houses and stables of people of rank and fortune, in order to hold out temptations to their servants, to pilfer and steal small articles not likely to be missed, which these fellows are willing to purchase at about one-third of their real value. It is supposed that upwards of 15,000 of these depraved itinerants among ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... plants and men Rooted in that which fed them yesterday. Not even Memory shall follow Delphis, For I will yield to all impulse save hers, Therein alone subject to prescient rigour; Lest she should lure me back among the dying— Pilfer the present for the beggar past. Free minds must bargain with each greedy moment And seize the most that lies to hand at once. Ye are too old to understand my words; I yet have youth enough, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... once to make 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 pages of ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... like other children, riding gayly about on sticks for horses, playing with toys, torturing flies, or impaling butterflies on pins, that the brilliant circles of their dying pangs may amuse thy young soul? Why dost thou never romp and sport upon the grassy turf, pilfer sugarplums and sweetmeats, and wet the letters of thy picture book from A to Z with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and, in exchange for them, gave knives, axes, brass kettles, needles, and other articles; and then added such presents as they considered might be further serviceable to them. Though they appeared anxious to possess whatever the visitors had to give they did not exhibit any disposition to pilfer. And, in some of the bargains, particularly for a sledge and a dog, the articles, though previously paid ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... must secure our provisions, or he, having discovered our store, would perhaps return with many companions to pilfer it. I heard afterwards that only one species of baboon is found thus far east, probably introduced by Malay seamen, who constantly carry baboons and monkeys on board their vessels. We agreed, indeed, that it was now time to begin a hut, in which we could sit more ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... I have met with are the most inveterate beggars. They will flock around strangers, and, in the most importunate manner, ask for every thing they see, especially tobacco and sugar; and, if allowed, they will handle, examine, and occasionally pilfer such things as happen to take their fancy. The proper way to treat them is to give them at once such articles as are to be disposed of, and then, in a firm and decided manner, let them understand that they are ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... and securely lashed, that it may be impossible to pilfer from them. The packages of those that are in use, should be carried in one pair of saddle-gabs, to be devoted to that purpose. These should stand at the storekeeper's bivouac, and nobody else should be allowed ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... was 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". ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... Pigeon-house 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. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... of the day, and is not exhibited for money. There might be some excuse for this, where any of the subjects of exhibition are portable, and such as might be carried away. But who would feel any disposition to pilfer the wig of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, or the hat of General Monk, in Westminster Abbey? Why, therefore, is not this disgraceful practice thrown aside? Why is a nation converted into a puppet-show? The English Minister would doubtless be ashamed to bring the ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... Presents of shirts and axes were made to several who called themselves chiefs, or earees, and who promised to bring off hogs and fowls, which, however, they did not do. These earees did not scruple to pilfer whatever came in their way, and one of them, who pretended to be very friendly, was found handing articles which did not belong to him out of the quarter-galley. As his companions on deck were behaving ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... had died, and given a step to the officers under him. Thus, Ensign Pistol becomes lieutenant, Corporal Bardolph becomes ensign, and Nym takes the place of Bardolph. He is an arrant rogue, and both he and Bardolph are hanged (Henry V.). The word means to "pilfer." ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... creatures become outlaws, and roam abroad 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 barnyard; 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. In fact, winter, like some great calamity, ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... 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 newly-sown seed. ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... ejaculated, as he drew a long, deep breath, "that's good, but you forgot to send it through the skipper's pilfer." ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... by the presence of our white protector said, "You may be sure we didn't pilfer 'em ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... beautiful than I can say. It is a country where the women are not veiled. Their marriage is at their own choice, and takes place between their twentieth and twenty-fifth year. They seldom quarrel or shout out. They do not pilfer from each other. They do not tell lies at all. When calamity overtakes them there is no ceremonial of grief such as tearing the hair or the like. They swallow it down and endure silently. Doubtless, this is the fruit of ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... you rightly, for your hungry love of pelf; For your gross and greedy rapine, gormandizing by yourself— You that, ere the figs are gathered, pilfer with a privy twitch Fat delinquents and defaulters, pulpy, luscious, plump, and rich; Pinching, fingering, and pulling—tempering, selecting, culling; With a nice survey discerning which are green and which are turning, Which are ripe for accusation, forfeiture, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... and the genuine, and even the 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 through the columns of the ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... with 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, and in this way gets the ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... remarks, "In justice to Joseph Smith I cannot say that I ever heard him teach, or even encourage, men to pilfer or steal ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Master Pilfer the Tailor: he's above with Sir Godfrey praising of a Doublet: and I must trudge anon to fetch Master ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... of Zagathai we travelled directly north, and our attendants began to pilfer largely from us, because we took too little heed of our property, but experience at length taught us wisdom. At length we reached the bounds of this province, which is fortified by a deep ditch, from sea to sea[1]. Immediately ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... opportunity for proving that the Church in England was a Protestant Church more than nine hundred years before the Reformation; while the zeal of Mr. Haslam led him to an unfortunate attempt at restoring the oratory. Then followed neglect, and the tourists who came hither were left to pilfer and carry away the sacred stones piecemeal; now, when it is almost too late, such depredation is stopped. The church was a ruin when it was found; it is something almost less than a ruin now. As revealed by the shifting sand, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... suspected, not without cause, that she took away from his house such scraps of food and pots and pipkins as were not likely to be missed. The woman justified her conduct to herself by the argument that she was inadequately paid in coin, and that she was forced to pilfer in order to recoup herself for the outlay of time and muscle in her brother's habitation. Thomas Rocliffe was a quiet, harmless old man, crushed not only by the derision which had clung to him like a robe of Nessus ever since his escapade with the ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... the above, our friend "E. V. K." has shown himself curiously unaffected by "that last infirmity of noble minds,"—his "clear spirit" heeds all too little its urgent "spur." The following sonnets are all we can pilfer from him. They ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... see the result of your dreadful example. Even this innocent child has learnt to pilfer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... fast. rood, fourth of an acre. sloe, a kind of fruit. serf, a slave; servant. sun, the source of light. surf, a swell of the sea. son, a male child. serge, a kind of cloth. steel, refined iron. surge, to rise; to swell. steal, to rob; to pilfer. sheer, pure; clear. stile, steps over a fence. shear, to cut or clip. style, manner of writing. side, a part; a margin. stare, to look fixedly. sighed, did sigh. stair, a step. slew (slu), did slay. sweet, pleasing to the taste. slue, to ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... 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 ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... sits down on the weight which he bore; The lass with her barrow wheels hither her store. If a thief could be here, he might pilfer at ease: She sees the ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... no longer be C. R., (Charles Rex.) The great fire of London had been the work of the Jesuits, who had employed eighty or eighty-six persons for that purpose, and had expended seven hundred fire-balls; but they had a good return for their money, for they had been able to pilfer goods from the fire to the amount of fourteen thousand pounds: the Jesuits had also raised another fire on St. Margaret's Hill, whence they had stolen goods to the value of two thousand pounds; another at Southwark: and it was determined ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... And besides, there is the moral side of it. Imitation is the sincerest flattery, but the dividing line between it and dishonesty is not always clear. And the law cannot every time prosecute the offender, for there is a kind of cleverness that enables a man to pilfer the ideas of another and recast them just sufficiently to "get by." It would be very stupid for a man not to profit by the experience of other men, but there is a vast difference between intelligent adaptation of ideas and stealing them. This is more a question ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... every man of you," he cried. "What are you doing here? You are Frenchmen. Why are you not in France? Did we invite you to Venice? By what right are you here? Where are our pictures? Where are the horses of St. Mark? Who are you that you should pilfer those treasures which our fathers through so many centuries have collected? We were a great city when France was a desert. Your drunken, brawling, ignorant soldiers have undone the work of saints and heroes. What have you ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... where were Memory, the sweetest of lesser pleasures? You are the only medicine for many a woe, many a sore heart. And surely you have a right to reap where you alone have sown? Our strength, our wit, our comeliness, all those virtues and graces that you pilfer with such gentle hand, did you not give them to us in the first place? Give, do I say? Nay, we knew, even as we clutched them, they were but a loan. And the great immortality of the race endures, for every day that we see taken ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... an old man to sit down by me and gave him a clasp-knife in order to check the search he was disposed to make through my pockets. Meanwhile the others came around the forge and immediately began to pilfer whatever they could lay either hand or foot upon. While one was detected making off with a file another seized something else, until the poor blacksmith could no longer proceed with his work. One set his foot on an axe and thus, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... and the prince; so that the parallel is by no means adequate between a prince's court and a private family. And yet if an insolent footman be troublesome in the neighbourhood; if he breaks the people's windows, insults their servants, breaks into other folk's houses to pilfer what he can find, although he belong to a duke, and be a favourite in his station, yet those who are injured may, without just offence, complain to his lord, and for want of redress get a warrant to send him to the stocks, to Bridewell, or to Newgate, according to the nature ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift |
