"Thievish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had gone, and with it the gold which it contained and Clotilde's precious ring. In dismay Aurelian hurried to the city, reached his home, and sent his servants in all directions in search of the thievish mendicant, whom he felt sure had sought some ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... You know I have a theory that a man is known by his dog. This beast seems to have changed character when he changed masters. When Enciso had him he was little more than a puppy, and then he was thievish and cowardly. Now he will attack an Indian as savagely as Leoncico himself. Pizarro must have put the ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... thong of oxhide, which now lay in a coil on the floor. Bound round and round, twisted and intertangled, and finally tied with a special and secret knot (the ends being concealed), the thong of leather secured the contents of the chest from prying eyes or thievish hands. With axe or knife, of course, the knot might easily have been severed, but no one could obtain access to the room except the retainers of the house, and which of them, even if unfaithful, would dare to employ such means in view of the certain ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... returned his kindness by stealing his pen, which was worth three dollars. His mother appeared before the court, and plead earnestly for her boy, saving that he was a good boy to her, except that he played truant from school. He then got into the company of a gang of boys, who peddle apples,—a thievish set,—and of them he also learned to steal. He was sent to the House of Reformation; which is a prison for boys, where they are kept at work and study, but not allowed ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... (Ocydromus Australis), or the wood-hen, belonging to the class of rails, which have already become quite scarce upon North Island. In the grassy plains and forests of the Southern Alps, however, they are still found in considerable numbers. It is a thievish bird, greedy after everything that glistens; it frequently carries off spoons, forks, and the like, but it also breaks into hen-coops, and picks and ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... eloped under another name, she engaged a woman to accompany her as a servant; and this woman one day having committed some fault, was beaten by her master, who scolded her and told her she was lazy, thievish, and impudent. Smarting under the punishment, she determined to be revenged, and going to the magistrate told him: 'This man, who seems to you so respectable, is a wicked wretch who has abandoned his own wife, and run away ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... thought me damned too unutterably to have one thought left that savoured of redemption—who was to be my captain, but the knave that you saw me cudgel at the ordinary when you waited on Lord Glenvarloch, a cowardly, sharking, thievish bully about town ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... adding ish to them; which termination when added to adjectives, imports diminution, or lessening the quality; as, "White, whitish;" i.e. somewhat white. When added to nouns, it signifies similitude or tendency to a character; as, "Child, childish; thief, thievish." ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... "though every Englishman thinks he is a judge of horseflesh, and I fancy those might possess endurance, if not up to much weight. As for the men, they seem to fancy themselves more than the Egyptians; but a more villainous, blood- thirsty, thievish-looking set of scoundrels, it has never been my ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... much. If you are going to the public baths and are annoyed or hindered by the rudeness, the pushing, the abuse, the thievish propensities of others, do not lose your temper: remind yourself that it is more important that you should keep your will in harmony with nature than that you should bathe. And so with all troubles; men suffer far less from the things themselves than from ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... the dazzling expanse of white spread out before me. I watched—the specks were moving, they might be deer, or they might be wolves, but from the way they progressed I had little doubt they were men. They came from a quarter I did not like, inhabited by Dacotahs and Pawnees—treacherous, thievish rascals, who will take the scalp of an old woman if they can catch her asleep, and make as much boast of it as if they had killed a warrior in open fight. Still it was necessary to be on my guard against them. I waited till I ascertained ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... the rudest and historically the least important of these Indians, lived south of the Chickasaws. They were probably rather less numerous than the Creeks.[6] Though accounted brave they were treacherous and thievish, and were not as well armed as the others. They rarely made war or peace as a unit, parties frequently acting in conjunction with some of the rival European powers, or else joining in the plundering inroads made by the other Indians upon the white settlements. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... advance, retreat, and are, for your behoof, a magazine charged with fiery death, in the most perfect condition of potential activity; few months ago, till the persuasive sergeant came, what were they? Multiform ragged losels, runaway apprentices, starved weavers, thievish valets—an entirely broken population, fast tending towards the treadmill. But the persuasive sergeant came; by tap of drum enlisted, or formed lists of them, took heartily to drilling them; and he and you have made them this! Most potent, effectual for all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... of the richest Mechlin lace. I knew very well that no lady of elegance could occupy such apartment, or, indeed, was to be found (I mean no disrespect to the abbe) in that quarter of Paris. The window plainly belonged to some thievish den, and the lace formed a portion of the spoils. I began to be distrustful of late visits to the abbe's quarters, and full of the notion of thievish eyes looking out from the strange window—I used half to tremble as I passed along the corridor. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... a stream of warm vapour from the chimney-top, a patch where the snow melted on the roof, and a few half-obliterated footprints at the door. But within, behind the shuttered windows, Master Francis Villon the poet, and some of the thievish crew with whom he consorted, were keeping the night alive and ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whisking, with merciless squalls, Old women's bonnets and gingerbread stalls. There never was heard a much lustier shout, As the apples and oranges tumbled about; And the urchins, that stand with their thievish eyes Forever on watch, ran off each with a prize. Then away to the fields it went blustering and humming, And the cattle all wondered whatever was coming. It plucked by their tails the grave, matronly ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... crows winging their way slowly up the valley—I hope, a'gad, they have not forgotten my trunk-mails of apparel amid the ample provision they have made for their own belly-timber—Mercy, a'gad, I were finely helped up if the vesture has miscarried among the thievish Borderers!" ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Whereat the mistress of the house, A deadly foe of rats and mice, Was making ready in a trice To eat the stranger as a mouse. "What! do you dare," she said, "to creep in The very bed I sometimes sleep in, Now, after all the provocation I've suffered from your thievish nation? Are you not really a mouse, That gnawing pest of every house, Your special aim to do the cheese ill? Ay, that you are, or I'm no weasel." "I beg your pardon," said the bat; "My kind is very far from that. What! I a mouse! Who told you such a lie? Why, ma'am, I ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... that which Evan had proposed. The woman said: "A lawyer will do this"; the man said: "Splendid is the bargain and costly and thievish are ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... in truth, he felt as much pride in the title Burke the Poacher (and with as great justice too, for aught I know), as Ali-Hamet-Ghee-the-Thug eastwards, or William-of-Normandy-the-Conqueror westwards, may be thought respectively to have cherished, on the score of their murderous and thievish surnames. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower, Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk Where serpents are—chain me with roaring bears, Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house O'ercovered quite with dead men's rattling bones; Or bid me go into a new made grave; Or hide me with a dead man in his shroud;— Things that to ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... said the rascal, an accomplished, self-possessed practitioner in his thievish art; "I thought your boots might be pinching you, and only wished to ease ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... a hundred and seventy-three British vessels coming to know the reason why, though the Chinese coast was sixteen thousand miles from England. No, there is no question about the Navy's strong right arm. But it has no thievish fingers. ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... know what thievish crew claims ye, but I'll lay they'll see the marks of my hand-write under your shirt to-morrow,' said Matthew, savagely; but to his surprise the lad gave a single shriek, and sank down as if in a fit. A dash of water from the stable bucket recovered him somewhat, although ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... therefore, to commit his business thus into the hand of a false, a negligent, and a thievish servant, is like a man that travels a journey, and takes a highwayman into the coach with him: such a man is sure to be robbed, and to be fully and effectually plundered, because he discovers where he hides his treasure. Thus the tradesman places his confidence in the thief, and how should ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... say nothing of the provisions in the lockers, I think it would be best if I got down and slept in her. I don't like the looks" (here he dropped his voice to a portentous whisper) "of these black gentry; they have such a wonderful thievish way about them. Supposing now that some of them were to slip into the boat at night and cut the cable, and make off with her? That would be ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... war-field GARFIELD Guiteau murderer prisoner prison fare (half fed) well fed well read author ARTHUR round table tea cup (half full) divide cleave CLEVELAND City of Cleveland two twice (the heavy shell) mollusk unfamiliar word dictionary Johnson's JOHNSON son bad son (thievish bay) dishonest boy (back) Mac McKINLEY kill Czolgosz (zees) seize ruffian rough rider rouse ROOSEVELT size heavy ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... been heard of in England as the prophylactic against the infected Hejaz. It is admirably suited for quarantine purposes, and it has been abolished, very unwisely, in favour of "Tor harbour." The latter, inhabited by a ring of thievish Syro-Greek traders; backed by a wretched wilderness, alternately swampy and sandy, is comfortless to an extent calculated to make the healthiest lose health. Moreover, its climate, says Professor Palmer (p. 222), is very ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... reprobation. For there are tinkers and tinkers. Some of them, indeed, are stout and sturdy thieves, veritable birds of prey, whose rapacity is continually questing for plunder. But some of them have merely the magpies' and jackdaws' thievish propensity for picking up what lies temptingly in their way. And some few are so honest that they pass by as harmlessly as a wedge of high-flying wild duck. And I have heard it said that to places like Lisconnel their pickings and stealings have at worst ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... is very peculiar. Constantly employed in creeping into small holes, and daubing themselves with honey, they often lose all the bright feathers and silky plumes which once so beautifully adorned their bodies, and assume a smooth and almost black appearance; just as the hat of the thievish loafer, acquires a "seedy" aspect, and his garments, a shining and threadbare look. Dzierzon is of opinion that the black bees which Huber describes, as being so bitterly persecuted by the rest, are nothing more than these thieving ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... life also." The novel proceeds to relate how this member of a wealthy and respected family turned corsair, after losing all his capital in a mercantile speculation in Cyprus; how he, in his turn, was robbed of his ill-gotten gains on the high seas by some thievish merchants of Genoa; and how Landolfo, after passing through a variety of more or less improbable adventures, was finally rescued from drowning off the coast of Corfu by a servant-maid who, whilst washing dishes by the sea-shore, chanced to espy the unconscious merchant drifting towards the beach ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... trees with silvery rime bedight Their branches bare. By day no sun appeared; by night The hidden moon shed thievish ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... she bathed her face and hands, and leaned for a while against the southern window; listening to the exultant song of a red bird hovering near his brooding brown mate, to the soothing murmur of the distant falls, borne in on the wings of the thievish June breeze that had rifled some far-off garden of the aroma of honeysuckle. The current of air had swung the door back, leaving only a hand's breadth of open space, and while she sang to the baby, her own voice had drowned the sound of footsteps ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... to-day to say that if the weak-minded person who maintains the large, black goat which infests our streets, does not kill the beast, we will. To-day, while engaged in working off our mammoth edition out back of our building, the thievish creature approached unnoticed and consumed seventeen copies of ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... dress, their manner of speaking, and, not least, at their names; but, until the present day, I had been unacquainted with the most extraordinary point connected with them. How came they possessed of this extraordinary virtue? was it because they were thievish? I remembered that an ancient thief-taker, who had retired from his useful calling, and who frequently visited the office of my master at law, the respectable S . . ., who had the management of his property—I ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... instantly accused of having devoured the skin in question. A dog accused is generally a dog condemned; and a dog condemned is generally a dog executed. So was it in the present instance. The unfortunate cur was arraigned; his thievish looks substantiated his guilt, and he was condemned by his judges from across the river to be hanged. In vain the Indians of the hut, with whom he was a great favorite, interceded in his behalf. In vain Captain Bonneville and his comrades petitioned that his life might be spared. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... the Mariannes. Magellan called them the Ladrones (Spanish ladron, a robber), because of the thievish ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... knots his dad would have tied in his place. He unrolled his blanket and carried it to the sheltered little nook under the ledge, and dragged the bag of doughnuts and the jelly and honey and bread after it. He had heard about thievish animals that will carry off bacon and flour and such. He knew that he ought to hang his grub in a tree, but he could not reach up as far as the fox who might try to help himself, so that was out ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... made him laugh. He slightly resented this recognition and the change it worked on his emotional tone. For he was compelled to think of her as a human being and be sorry because she was plainly cold and miserable; and it was his desire to look on women with a magpie thievish eye and no concern for their souls. Considering the part that most of them played in life it was unwarrantable of them to have souls. The dinner that one eats does not presume to have a soul. But the happy freedom of the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... of Jack Dawkins, an artful thievish young scamp, in the boy crew of Fagin the Jew villain.—C. Dickens, Oliver ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... foot for a breastplate, the ears of all the rest had pendants of copper. Also, one of them had his face painted over, and head stuck with feathers in manner of a turkey-cock's train. These are more timorous than those of the Savage Rock, yet very thievish. ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... the tribes seem to have given up all idea of prosecuting a war against their new neighbours, and, gradually relinquishing their thievish habits, settled in the neighbourhood of the Fort—sometimes hunting and trapping for the pale faces, and at others labouring away at ditching and brick-making, being paid chiefly in articles of clothing and small allowances of pisco. The trapper told ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... raised a dreadful shriek: Policy commanded silence, and Quackery hastened to bind up the wound of Morality, whilst Medicine cut a shred from her robe in payment. Death stretched out his claw from under the mantle of thievish Medicine to seize Morality, but Policy gave him such a blow that he yelled aloud, and grinned most hideously. Poetry was allowed to hop about, because she was naked, and had nothing to be despoiled ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... right," Mrs. Palmer said to her husband. "You've bored him so, talking about thievish clerks, he can't even ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... hung upon the temper of the house-holder, whether she would take that apparition quietly, deceived by Lanyard's mumming into believing she had only a poor thievish fool to deal with, or with a storm of bourgeois hysteria. In the latter event, Lanyard's hand was ready planted, palm down, on the top of the desk: should the woman attempt to give the alarm, a single bound would carry the adventurer across it in full ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Danish Mission Intelligence:—Nobody can deny that the Pariers are the dregs and refuse of all the Indians; they are thievish, and ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... How like a thievish Jack he looks! I wish for my part all the cooks Would come and baste him with a ladle As long as ever they were able, To keep his fingers ends from itching After sweet ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the calm bosom of the lake; the partridges that "drummed" in the outlying copses and patches of second growth, in April, and led forth their broods in June, subject every autumn to our first excited, early efforts at gunning; and last of all, the flapping, canny, thievish, black crows that like the foxes were always about, and always at loggerheads ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... long time with his face down upon the books, when he suddenly started and listened. He heard the sound of an opening door, but not of the door in ordinary use. Thinking it proceeded from some thievish intent, he kept still. There was another door, in a corner, covered with books, but it was never opened at all. It communicated with a part of the buildings of the quadrangle which had been used for the abode of the students under a former economy. It had been abandoned now ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... conversation of the women, and in that of Antonio when he made his appearance at night. In these tertulias the grandmother was the principal spokeswoman, and astonished my ears with wonderful tales of the Land of the Moors, prison escapes, thievish feats, and one or two poisoning adventures, in which she had been engaged, as she informed me, in her ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the border, and fierce fighting now and then. There had been some thievish raids made by Mexicans upon ranches along the river not many miles away, and that reminded her how Knight had remarked some weeks ago that she had better not go alone as far ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... so a flight of crows which passed overhead, cawing, and flying so low that the children could see every feather in their bodies, which shone in the sun like burnished green-black jet, and the glancing of their thievish eyes. ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... procured the requisite number of canoes, Mr. Hunt would gladly have left this thievish neighborhood, but was detained until the 5th of February by violent head winds, accompanied by snow and rain. Even after he was enabled to get under way, he had still to struggle against contrary winds ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... swearing and thievish sinner, God hath prepared the curse, that "every one that stealeth shall be cut off as on this side according to it; and every one that sweareth shall be cut off as on that side, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... engagements. Now how worn, tarnished, greasy, rascallion-like, the costly bauble! Filled with what motley, unlovable contents: stale pawn-tickets of foreign monts de piete, pledges never henceforth to be redeemed; scrawls by villanous hands in thievish hierolgyphics; ugly implements replacing the malachite penknife, the golden toothpick, the jewelled pencil-case, once so neatly set within their satin lappets. Ugly implements, indeed,—a file, a gimlet, loaded dice. Pell-mell, with such more hideous and recent contents, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... grace, Ere twice the horses of the Sun shall bring Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring; Ere twice in murk and occidental damp Moist Hesperus hath quench'd his sleepy lamp; Or four-and-twenty times the pilot's glass Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass; What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly, Health shall live free, and ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... course, of a jackdaw or a magpie—these birds' thievish reputations made the guess natural. But the marks on the match were much too wide apart to have been made by the beak of either. I conjectured, therefore, that it must be a raven. So that, when we arrived near the coach-house, I seized the opportunity of a little ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... and lively, although they are of thicker build than the Germans. They cut their hair close on the forehead, letting it hang down on either side. They are good sailors, and better pirates, cunning, treacherous, thievish. Three hundred and upwards are hanged annually in London. Hawking is the favourite sport of the nobility. The English are more polite in eating than the French, devouring less bread, but more meat, which they roast in perfection. They put a great deal of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a sensation, not so much amongst the Gypsies, that peculiar people, for whom it was intended, as amongst the Spaniards themselves, who, though they look upon the Roma with some degree of contempt as a low and thievish race of outcasts, nevertheless take a strange interest in all that concerns them, it having been from time immemorial their practice, more especially of the dissolute young nobility, to cultivate the acquaintance ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... hopeless to cure This rust and canker of the soul, passed on, His heart with all-embracing pity filled. "O deepening mystery of life!" he cried, "Why do such souls in human bodies dwell— Fitter for ravening wolves or greedy swine! Just at death's door cursing his flesh and blood For thievish greed inherited from him. Is this old age, or swinish greed grown old? O how unlike that other life just fled! His youth's companions, wife and children, dead, Yet filled with love for all, by all beloved, With his whole heart yearning for others' good, ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... gipsies, sure, Miss,' he answered, glancing with that odd smile, half contemptuous, half superstitious, with which I have since often observed the peasants of Derbyshire eyeing those thievish ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... Hudson Bay and York Factory. From Le Grand Diable's former association with the North-West Company it was probable he would be in Robertson's brigade. Among the voyageurs of both companies there was not a more expert canoeman than this treacherous, thievish Iroquois. As steersman, he could take a crew safely through knife-edge rocks with the swift certainty of arrow flight. In spite of a reputation for embodying the vices of white man and red—which gave him his unsavory title—it seemed unlikely that the Hudson's Bay ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... he had been cherishing for a long time that Burgundy wine alone was good for him and kept his malady in check. There is something pathetic in the proportions which this wine-question gradually assumes: that it is so dear at Basle might be overlooked, but the thievish wagoners drink up or spoil what ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... I'll not maltreat Yon pseudo-Tinker, though the Cheat, Ay sly as thievish Reynard, Instead of mending kettles, prowls To make foul havock of my ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... solid layer of white, brown, purple and rosy shells, which cracked and rattled under our horses' feet. Tantura is a poor Arab village, and we had some difficulty in procuring provisions. The people lived in small huts of mud and stones, near the sea. The place had a thievish look, and we deemed it best to be careful in the disposal of our baggage ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... whole air and impression are healthful. Here come the sentimentalists, and the invalids. Here is Elise, who caught cold in coming into the world, and has always increased it since. Here are creep-mouse manners, and thievish manners. "Look at Northcote," said Fuseli; "he looks like a rat that has seen a cat." In the shallow company, easily excited, easily tired, here is the columnar Bernard: the Alleghanies do not express more repose than his behavior. Here are the sweet following ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... and took our final leave of these People, after a stay of just three Months, the most part of which time we have been upon good terms with them. Some few differences have now and then hapned owing partly to the want of rightly understanding each other, and partly to their natural thievish disposition, which we could not at all times bear with or guard against; but these have been attended with no ill consequence to either side except the first, in which one of them was kill'd, and this I was very sorry for, because from what had hapned to them by the Dolphin ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... also, of a charioteer, from the excavations at Delphi, amazingly full of life in spite of hieratic and traditional execution. But the most conspicuous thing of all was a mutilated Eros, by a late Rhodian artist—subtle, thievish, lovely, breathing an evil and daemonic charm. It stood opposite the Nike, 'on tiptoe for a flight.' And there was that in it which seemed at moments to disorganize the room, and lay violent and exclusive ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... your people. It will, for example, be necessary that you should enforce with the utmost earnestness the Seventh Commandment, which treats of stealing, when you are teaching workmen, dealers and even farmers and servants, inasmuch as many of these are guilty of various dishonest and thievish practices. So, too, it will be your duty to explain and apply the Fourth Commandment with great diligence, when you are teaching children and uneducated adults, and to urge them to observe order, to be faithful, obedient and peaceable, as well as to adduce numerous instances mentioned ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... the history of Phelim's abrupt engagement with the housekeeper, was conveyed by Fool Art to Sally Flattery. Her thievish character rendered marriage as hopeless to her as length of days did to Bridget Doran. No one knew the plan she had laid for Phelim, but this fool, and, in order to secure his silence, she had promised him a shirt on the Monday after ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... says: 'Mountaineers are thievish because they are poor; and, having neither manufactures nor commerce, can grow rich only by robbery. They regularly plunder their neighbours, for their neighbours are commonly their enemies; and, having lost that reverence for property by which the order of civil life is ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... after the abdication at Fontainebleau: "I always desired the return of that excellent Prince, Louis XVIII., and his august family." But these things are mere shadows of the incomparable villainy of this thievish human jackdaw. ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... is as attractive as her looks I'd throw over the Salon for the sake of meeting her," he mused. "But that's frankly impossible, I suppose. At the best, she would not forgive me if she knew I had watched her in this thievish way. I could never explain it, never! She wouldn't even listen. Well, it's better to have dreamed and lost than never to ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... the most dangerous condition that ever I was in through all my past life; for whatever ill circumstances I had been in, I was never pursued for a thief before; nor had I ever done any thing that merited the name of dishonest or fraudulent, much less thievish. I had chiefly been mine own enemy; or, as I may rightly say, I had been nobody's enemy but my own. But now I was embarrassed in the worst condition imaginable; for though I was perfectly innocent, I was in no condition to make that innocence ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... stormy Atlantic that Magellan called it the Pacific. Across this the explorers sailed for five months before they came to a group of islands which Magellan called the Ladrones (Spanish for robbers) because the natives were so thievish. [9] Ten days later they reached another group, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... in private even with thy sons, Pradyumna and Samva. Thou shouldst form attachments with only such females as are high-born and sinless and devoted to their lords, and thou shouldst always shun women that are wrathful, addicted to drinks, gluttonous, thievish, wicked and fickle. Behaviour such as this is reputable and productive of prosperity; and while it is capable of neutralising hostility, it also leadeth to heaven. Therefore, worship thou thy husband, decking thyself in costly garlands and ornaments and smearing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and tedious course, "lurking in the thievish corners of the streets," like evil-doers, if we saw any one coming. The moon was dangerously bright, but the shadows were proportionately dark, and at length we reached Les Arenes, with their depths of ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... the withes of osier fell far from him and began to grow at once from the ground beneath their feet in that very place. And intertwining with one another, they quickly grew and covered all the wild-roving cattle by the will of thievish Hermes, so that Apollo was astonished ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... took for the hampered and filibustered bill to come up for its passage or defeat), is known to those who have tried to do it. The railroads were outraged and incensed by the measure; they sincerely believed it to be monstrous and thievish. "Let the legislature try to confiscate two-fifths of the lawyers', or the bakers', or the ironmoulders', just earnings," said they, "and see ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... fear but I will watch for an opportunity. The Society Islanders are light-hearted, merry, and fond of social enjoyment, but, at the same time, indolent, deceitful, thievish, and addicted to the excessive use of ardent spirits. The highest ambition of an Otaheitan is to have a splendid 'morai,' or family tomb. The funerals, especially those of the chiefs, have a solemn and affecting character. Songs ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... employ him, but added, "Why don't you work, massa?" "Oh!" says the Governor, "my head works; but come, if you are good for any thing I will give you employment." He accordingly took him into his service, but soon found him to be an idle and thievish vagabond. For some tricks one day, his Excellency found it necessary to order him a whipping, which he did by a letter he desired him to carry, addressed to the provost marshal. Jack's guilty conscience made him suspect the ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... he threw his own, And loud in anger cried, 'Take this one too, you thievish crew, Since ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... are black, or at least of a mixed colour, except only some few of the better sort, namely the governor, the bishop, some gentlemen, and some of the padres; for some of these also are black. The people about Praya are thievish; but these of St. Jago Town, living under their governor's eye, are more orderly, though generally poor, having little trade: yet besides chance ships of other nations there come hither a Portuguese ship or two every year, in their way to Brazil. These vend among them a few European ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... the vicinity of the settlements and sunk into precarious and vagabond existence. Poverty, repining and hopeless poverty, a canker of the mind unknown in savage life, corrodes their spirits and blights every free and noble quality of their natures. They become drunken, indolent, feeble, thievish, and pusillanimous. They loiter like vagrants about the settlements, among spacious dwellings replete with elaborate comforts, which only render them sensible of the comparative wretchedness of their own condition. Luxury spreads its ample board ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... allotting a seashore to Bohemia—an error over which Ben Jonson and many later critics have made merry. {251b} A few lines were obviously drawn from that story of Boccaccio with which Shakespeare had dealt just before in 'Cymbeline.' {251c} But Shakespeare created the high-spirited Paulina and the thievish pedlar Autolycus, whose seductive roguery has become proverbial, and he invented the reconciliation of Leontes, the irrationally jealous husband, with Hermione, his wife, whose dignified resignation ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Pliny in a more confined, by Ammianus and Procopius in a larger, sense, has been derived, ridiculously, from Sarah, the wife of Abraham, obscurely from the village of Saraka, (Stephan. de Urbibus,) more plausibly from the Arabic words, which signify a thievish character, or Oriental situation, (Hottinger, Hist. Oriental. l. i. c. i. p. 7, 8. Pocock, Specimen, p. 33, 35. Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 567.) Yet the last and most popular of these etymologies is refuted ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... itself, as it her hand did hit, But smote it full, and quite did sunder it. The more kind Neptune raged, the more he razed 230 His love's life's fort, and kill'd as he embraced: Anger doth still his own mishap increase; If any comfort live, it is in peace. O thievish Fates, to let blood, flesh, and sense, Build two fair temples for their excellence, To robe it with a poisoned influence! Though souls' gifts starve, the bodies are held dear In ugliest things; sense-sport ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... old lady, "there's poor Sally Bent, the henwife, she's driven distracted with Mike's thievish tricks. This week only he stole seven eggs, three on 'em turkey's eggs no less. He set himself on the watch, he did, and as soon as an egg was laid he nipped it up warm, and away with it! If 'twasn't for master's anger I'd strangle that evil bird, I should. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... along the plain met a heifer, and forthwith laying thievish hands upon it, led it straight to his house, where he slaughtered it and stripped off the skin. The proprietor soon appeared before the Cogia's house, making a loud cry and lamentation. 'Who would have thought,' ...
— The Turkish Jester - or, The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi • Nasreddin Hoca
... coming over the doorstep. At first he thought it was a dog, because of the peculiar sniffing sound it made, but a second glance showed it to be Wise Eye in search of plunder. Gradually, gradually he edged himself inside, creeping so silently that there was no sound at all, and a thievish hand had just shot out to annex a bag of rice that stood within reaching distance, when Katherine emerged into view and said quietly: "You can't have that rice unless you pay for it, Wise Eye; ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... culprit, who combined with an innocent taste for green peas a thievish method of acquiring their usual savory accompaniment, is reported to have been addressed by an English judge in the following felicitous terms:—"Prisoner at the bar, Providence has endowed you with health and strength, instead of which you go about the country ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... civilization. The mediaeval plan was to extort a toll from every luckless traveler in the name of baron or bandit. In our day Algerine corsairs, Italian brigands, Chinese pirates and Mexican guerillas have continued the thievish custom of "tributes," and not long ago even Montana Indians established themselves on the leading roads and levied tolls from the passers-by. The civilized differs from the savage or feudal practice in rendering an equivalent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... sometimes affects cattle, when they are permitted to exist in a half-wild condition, as on the Pampas. I was out with my gun one day, a few miles from home, when I came across a patch on the ground where the grass was pressed or trodden down and stained with blood. I concluded that some thievish Gauchos had slaughtered a fat cow there on the previous night, and, to avoid detection, had somehow managed to carry the whole of it away on their horses. As I walked on, a herd of cattle, numbering about three hundred, appeared moving slowly on to a small stream a mile away; ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... standing breathless and unmoved on some unknown wharf on the left bank of the Hudson might fairly be described as superlatively honest persons, nor had they done any act which could be construed as wrongful by the most captious critic; yet McCulloch's concealment of the lamp suggested something thievish and illicit, and, though he alone could give a valid reason for exercising extreme discretion, because he realized, better than the others, what a choice morsel this adventure would supply to the press if ever it became known, both Curtis ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... as an orator he pleased his hearers. This turned his head, and a spendthrift's blood runs in his veins. To bring his fair young bride to a stately mansion, he undertook the bad cause of the thievish tax-collector ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... father, prince, and country, turn Turk, forsake religion, abjure God and all, nulla tam horrenda proditio, quam illi lucri causa (saith [2283]Leo Afer) perpetrare nolint. [2284]Plato, therefore, calls poverty, "thievish, sacrilegious, filthy, wicked, and mischievous:" and well he might. For it makes many an upright man otherwise, had he not been in want, to take bribes, to be corrupt, to do against his conscience, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... thou mad? Was, then, our enterprise some thievish act of villany? Was it not our country's cause? Was Andreas the object of thy hatred, and not the tyrant? Stay! I arrest thee as a traitor ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... given of their prudent regulations for the administration of their domestic affairs, are sufficiently confuted by their transactions with Mr Anson: For we have seen that their magistrates are corrupt, their people thievish, and their tribunals crafty and venal. Nor is the constitution of the empire, or the general orders of the state, less liable to exception: Since that form of government, which does not in the first place provide for the security of the public against the enterprises of foreign ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... dwarf-stone. Certain stones are in Denmark called dwarf-hammers. They borrow things and seek advice from people, and beg aid for their wives when in labor, all which services they reward. But they also lame cattle, are thievish, and will carry off damsels. There have been instances of dwarf females having married and had children with men. ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... O thievish Night, Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end, In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars Which Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps With everlasting oil to give due light To ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... not: We have but seen the barren coasts of life; Like some wild roving crew of lawless pirates, Who, crowded in their narrow noisome ship, Upon the rude sea, with rude manners dwell; Naught of the fair land knowing but the bays, Where they may risk their hurried thievish landing. Of the loveliness that, in its peaceful dales, The land conceals—O Father!—O, of this, In our wild voyage ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... this piteous one?" Then answer made the charioteer, "Sweet Prince! This is no other than an aged man. Some fourscore years ago his back was straight, His eye bright, and his body goodly: now The thievish years have sucked his sap away, Pillaged his strength and filched his will and wit; His lamp has lost its oil, the wick burns black; What life he keeps is one poor lingering spark Which flickers for ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... and boards. She was as red in the face as Birkenbog himself, for a cur with a kettle tied to its tail had taken refuge under her stall, and she had been serving a writ of ejectment with the same old umbrella with which she whacked thievish boys and sheltered her ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... kindness from the inhabitants, and show as great a contrast to their boorishness, as the handsome and docile merlin (which is the smallest of the falcon tribe, anciently denominated "noble"), among a crowd of noisy, cunning, thievish crows; neither remarkable for their beauty nor their politeness. The words "after Michaelmas" are used because "the merlin does not breed here, but visits us in October." Bewick's British Birds, vol. i. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... in the first rebellion moved and raised in the Lewis against the gentlemen venturers who were directed by his Majesty there, and did prosecute that rebellion against them with fire and sword and all kinds of hostility, for the which and for other thievish and treasonable crimes committed by them they and every one of them were upon the second day of February, 1612, orderly denounced rebels and put to the horn - they have now combined and banded themselves in ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... destitution into the ranks of crime. Add to these the great bulk of juvenile offenders convicted of theft, and that peculiar class of people who steal, not because they are in distress, but merely from a thievish disposition, and it will he manifest that half the cases of theft in England and Wales are not due to the ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... of Amsterdam, they were not entirely free from the thievish disposition which had so often been remarked in the islanders of the Southern Ocean. The instances, however, of this kind, which occurred, were not of such a nature as to produce any extraordinary degree of trouble, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... the Kafirs?" cried Mrs Merton sternly. "Do you flatter yourself that either the plough or the rifle will stop their thievish propensities? Have we not learned, when too late—for here we are, and here we must bide,—that the black wretches have been at loggerheads with the white men ever since this was a colony, and is it not clear that gentle treatment and harsh have ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... up in any chest, Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art, Within the gentle closure of my breast, From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part; And even thence thou wilt be stol'n I fear, For truth proves thievish for a ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... night, a negro whom we had suspected of thievish propensities, presented eight full-day tickets as the representative of his ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... well off where I was, adding they thought I did not want to re-enter the service of his Majesty. Incensed by these presumptuous words, which were none of my saying, the King exclaimed: "Since he left us without any cause, I shall not recall him; let him e'en stay where he is." Thus the thievish brigands brought matters exactly to the pass they desired; for if I had returned to France, they would have become mere workmen under me once more, whereas, while I remained away, they were their own masters and in my place; consequently, they did everything in their power to ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... beautiful than ever danced through Mohammedan dream of Paradise, to dig pitfalls for the unwary feet of some misshapen country wench who was striving to lead an honest life. As a muley cow will turn from a manger filled with new-mown hay, and wear out her thievish tongue trying to coax a wisp of rotten straw through a crack in a neighbor's barn, so will man turn from consenting Venus' matchless charms ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... made head against a new host of Danes who landed on their coast; killed their chief, and captured their flag; on which was represented the likeness of a Raven—a very fit bird for a thievish army like that, I think. The loss of their standard troubled the Danes greatly, for they believed it to be enchanted—woven by the three daughters of one father in a single afternoon—and they had a story among themselves that when they were victorious ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... the thievish sultans and followed by my train of quarrelling servants, I at last reached Uzinza, which is ruled by a Wahuma chief of Abyssinian stock, and here I found the petty chiefs quite as extortionate in extorting hongo (tax) as ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... tribe Zakka Khel is devoted to this dishonest calling, and at birth every male child is consecrated to thievish practices by a peculiar ceremony, in which the new-born infant is passed through a breach in the wall of his father's house, whilst the words "Become a thief" are chanted three times in chorus. Amongst the ancient Germans, according to Tacitus, thefts perpetrated outside the ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... evil thing has befallen the Popsipetels. Our neighbors to the southward, the thievish Bag-jagderags, who for so long have cast envious eyes on our stores of ripe corn, have gone upon the war-path; and even now ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... the Italian cabbies and porters fill me with terror for the time when I may have to fall alive and unassisted into their hands: they have neither conscience nor gratitude, and regard thievish demands when satisfied merely as ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... and wine [sacro facto ... pane vinoque]. He must by no means cut the sacred stem with a knife, but pluck it, and that not with bare fingers, but through the folds of his tunic, his right hand being protruded for this purpose beneath his left, "in thievish wise" [velut a furante]. Another herb, "samolum," which grew in marshy places, was of avail in all diseases both of man and beast. It had to be gathered with the left hand, and fasting, nor might the gatherer on any account look back ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... I had forgotten the dates; I've heard that reason given; and another excuse is the fear of a conspiracy among the negroes to rob and murder the whites: and I think you can't deny that they are thievish." ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... fortune that all his fixtures and moveables consisted only of a short-legged cock, which he had reared upon bread-crumbs. But one morning, being pinched with appetite (for hunger drives the wolf from the thicket), he took it into his head to sell the cock, and, taking it to the market, he met two thievish magicians, with whom he made a bargain, and sold it for half-a-crown. So they told him to take it to their house, and they would count him out the money. Then the magicians went their way, and, Minecco Aniello following them, overheard them talking gibberish together and saying, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... skill, thine arrow's sharp head dip In yonder thievish Frenchman's guilty blood, I promise thee thy sovereign shall not slip To give thee large rewards for such a good;" Thus said the spirit; the man did laugh and skip For hope of future gain, nor longer stood, But from his quiver ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso |
