"Pilfer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, like some great calamity, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... 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, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... 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 ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... 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
... 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
... 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, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... 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 and steal. ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... 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 ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... day advanced, 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 ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... 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 ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... 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 throat to the praise of your court-hero, then come our principles into ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... 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 ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... are 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 average ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... 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 came in ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... 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, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... provost-royal. From which came, under the glorious son of the said king, the office of 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, picoter, and picoree; by some Pitot ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... 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—'tis all that ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... 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)
... 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
... 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 bygone fancies, reconsidering ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... other time, however, 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
... 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 the potato, but about another vegetable, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... expensive compliment of falling very ill. They thought that 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 seem much ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... 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 embezzlement ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... peevish chits, "Can babes like us live by our wits? With perils compassed round, can we Preserve our lives and liberty? Ah! how escape the fowler's snare, And gard'ner with his gun in air, Who, if we pilfer plums or pears, Will scatter lead about our ears? And you would drop a mournful head To see your little pies lie dead!" "My dears," she said, and kissed their bills, "The wise by foresight baffle ills, A wise descent you claim; To bang a gun off takes some time,— A man must load, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... ape his cheek, 'Now God forfend,' I say, 'That of my portion aught to pilfer thou ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Dawson's Landing, she was her old self again; her blues were gone, she was in high feather. She would get along, surely; there were many kitchens where the servants would share their meals with her, and also steal sugar and apples and other dainties for her to carry home—or give her a chance to pilfer them herself, which would answer just as well. And there was the church. She was a more rabid and devoted Methodist than ever, and her piety was no sham, but was strong and sincere. Yes, with plenty of creature comforts and her old place in the amen ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... *"I saved this fellow," quoth he, "from the gallows when he ran away from his last master, because I thought he was harshly treated; but the rogue was no sooner safe under my protection than he began to lie, pilfer, and steal like the devil. When I first set him up in a warm house he had hardly put up his sign when he began to debauch my best customers from me. *Then it was his constant practice to rob my fish-ponds, not only to feed his family, but to trade with the ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... nosegays before 'em; Both cover their faces with mobs and all that, But the judge bids them, angrily, take off their hat. When uncover'd, a buzz of inquiry runs round, 'Pray what are their crimes?'... 'They've been pilfering found.' 'But, pray, who have they pilfer'd?'... 'A doctor, I hear.' 'What, yon solemn-faced, odd-looking man that stands near?' 'The same.'... 'What a pity! how does it surprise one, Two handsomer culprits I never set eyes on!' Then their friends all come round me ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... Genoese on deck, and could 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 ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... have a sharp, but 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 ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... 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 ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... 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 springs, with ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov |
