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Thieving   /θˈivɪŋ/   Listen
Thieving

adjective
1.
Given to thievery.  Synonym: thievish.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Thieving" Quotes from Famous Books



... gendarmerie, and the police constitute a body almost equal in number; is not that strange? This antagonism of persons perpetually seeking and avoiding each other, and fighting a vast and highly dramatic duel, are what are sketched in this Study. It has been the same thing with thieving and public harlotry as with the stage, the police, the priesthood, and the gendarmerie. In these six walks of life the individual contracts an indelible character. He can no longer be himself. The stigmata of ordination are as immutable as those of the soldier are. And it is the same in other callings ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... axe, his two uniform coats, his shirts, beads and cloth, powder, pistol, and hatchet—on the ground, to go and assist the cart out of a quagmire, he had returned to the place where he had left it and could not find it, that he believed that some thieving Washensi, who always lurk in the rear of caravans to pick up stragglers, had decamped with it. Which dismal tale told me at black midnight was not received at all graciously, but rather with most wrathful words, all of which the penitent captain received as ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... with us? I say no. You can't trust his kind. I know 'em. They're a thieving, treacherous lot, smooth to your face, but ready to stab you the minute your back's turned. I'll bet you a five-dollar bill he's got a knife hid somewhere about him. He might take a notion some night to ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... knows, I have made a score of them recently; but that which I just now had so pat at my tongue's end, and was just the speech for you, has got right out of my head, which just now feels like a split mountain. What you say of my services to my country is true enough; for I am none of your thieving politicians, but a man who acts under the patronage of honesty, which heaven knows is enough for any patriot. Faith of my father! and I can tell you that these expressions of sincerity and esteem ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... a fine-looking and well-formed people; they are of good dispositions, but are much addicted to thieving, which seems indeed to be a national propensity; they are of a light copper colour, and the men wear the hair long and stained at the extremities of a reddish brown colour; sometimes they tie the hair in a knot behind, but the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various

... those who did not belong to their church did indulge themselves in sorceries, and in idolatry or idleness, and in babblings, and in envyings and strife; wearing costly apparel; being lifted up in the pride of their own eyes; persecuting, lying, thieving, robbing, committing whoredoms, and murdering, and all manner of wickedness; nevertheless, the law was put in force upon all those who did transgress it, inasmuch as ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... good, but which those other people, the men who made the laws, considered to be crimes. Such were the persons who sold spirits without a license, smugglers, those who gathered grass and wood on large estates and in the forests belonging to the Crown; the thieving miners; and those unbelieving ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... or steal; which they did by creeping into the gardens, or conveying themselves cunningly and closely into the eating-houses; if they were taken in the fact, they were whipped without mercy, for thieving so ill and awkwardly. They stole, too, all other meat they could lay their hands on, looking out and watching all opportunities, when people were asleep or more careless than usual. If they were caught, they were not only punished with whipping, but hunger, too, being reduced to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... confounded fix," murmured Mr. Haydon. "Why should this thieving rogue choose us to drop in on, ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore

... perilous business, this venturing into a camp of hostile Indians through the darkness, but Donald reflected that it would be even worse by daylight. He also argued, that while success in his proposed thieving would mean everything to him, he could not be worse off than he was a few hours since, even if he failed and was captured. So he crept forward with the noiseless motions of a serpent, until the conical lodges were plainly in view by the ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... I will allow no base, thieving miscreant to enter my house; nor will I permit a daughter of mine to hold intercourse with such villains! And more than that, I will tell you, sir, that I am not to be dictated to, as to whose company I shall keep, or whom admit to my house, by any such worthless, gallows-deserving ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... and with his riches grew so Keen the desire to see his home again, He thought himself in duty bound to do so, And not be always thieving on the main; Lonely he felt, at times, as Robin Crusoe, And so he hired a vessel come from Spain, Bound for Corfu: she was a fine polacca, Manned with twelve hands, and laden ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... that gives value or ownership to things. You can only own that which expresses you. For that reason you cannot own the palaces of which you dream. Their service will require a hundred thieving hirelings whose very names you cannot know. This house is mine because I have built it as a work of love and art and expressed myself in it with infinite tenderness and infinite pains. It is not a palace in size, but it is a palace, ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... entertainment," said he. "I happen to be the boss, or have been hitherto, and if you will condescend to tell me what you want I shall consider whether it is worth while to supply you or to be shot by you. I shall be sorry to meet my death at the hands of a thieving blackguard, but one can't pick and choose in that matter. Before it comes to choosing, however, is it any good asking what you've done with the real bishop and the real chaplain? If ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... thieving there is going on here is committed by the Arabs and slaves. There are three or four of these latter most determined date stealers. One of these slaves was brought up yesterday and received two hundred bastinadoes; but it had not much effect upon him. When these offenders ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... can illustrate farther either their deeds or their religion, I must for an instant meet the objection which I suppose the extreme probity of the nineteenth century must feel acutely against these men,—that they all lived by thieving. ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... trouble on him. He might tell too much if he was here. They couldn't get the money back, even if he has it; but no one ever will believe that David Lawrence profited by it. That money belongs to the people of Yerbury, who have earned it, and saved it; and I say thieving and roguery have more to do with hard times than 'surplus of labor.' The big men have taken the money that belonged ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... buildings, and that Knox cared little for any of these things. The watch of the preacher at the door of the Bishop's girnel or storehouse, keeping back the rioters by his exhortations, is a curious illustration of this point. He would not have the people soil their souls with thieving, with the Bishop's meal and malt; as for the historical walls, the altar where the old kings had been anointed or the sanctuary where their ashes lay, what were they? Knox was too much intent on setting Scotland loose from all previous traditions—from the past which ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... them say that they were quite contented to work on the clove plantations, and preferred that to loafing about the streets of Zanzibar, where hundreds of them are to be seen every day, with nothing to do and very little to eat, unless they take to thieving!" ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson

... the poor creature is strictly honest and well tempered. And, indeed, there are some animals much more moral in their disposition than others. Some are kind, affectionate, benevolent, and grateful; and some, on the other hand, are thieving robbers and murderers. No, sir, I admit that I was wrong, and, so to speak, I owe Freney an apology for having given him a bad name; but then again I have made it up to him in other respects. Now, you'll scarcely ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... the shadow of the wall of life, was meant to stand in the shadow. He saw the men and women in the houses of lust, sensed their casual and horrible love affairs, saw boys fighting and listened to their tales of thieving and drunkenness, ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... turning very red. "Yes, of course; we are engaged!" And, won over by the kindly manners of the lady, he made up his mind to speak out, his fingers still playing with his cap. "You know it's an old story. When we were quite children, we used to go thieving together. We used to get switched; oh yes, that's true! I must tell you that the Lacours and the Pichons lived in the same lane, and were next-door neighbors. And so Rosalie and myself were almost brought up together. Then her people died, and her aunt Marguerite took her in. But she, the minx, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... a lot of thieving, rascally scoundrels, too lazy to work, and too dishonest to pay their way, even when they have ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... name is Dan Egan. He was mixed up in some brutal outrage on an inoffensive farmer, had to leave the county, went to Dublin, and enlisted. He went out to Spain with his regiment, was flogged twice for thieving, then he shot an officer who came upon him when he was ill-treating a Portuguese peasant; he got away at the time, and it was months before he was heard of again. It was thought that he had deserted to the French, but I suppose he got down to a port somewhere ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

... cross the street without undergoing inspection. Augustine, for example, who, once having turned her back on the inn windows, believed herself entirely cut off from observation, was perilously exposed to our mercy. We knew all the secrets of her thieving habits; we could count, to a second, the time she stole from the Mere, her employer, to squander in smiles and dimples at the corner creamery. There a tall Norman rained admiration upon her through wide blue eyes, as he patted, caressingly, the pots of blond butter, just the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... King had finished his story, Szabo, his eldest son, said to him: 'Forgive me, father, if I say I think you are mistaken. I am sure there are many men in your kingdom who could protect these trees from the cunning arts of a thieving magician; I myself, who as your eldest son claim the first right to do so, will mount guard over ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang

... is simply a braggart, and will meet a braggart's fate. He announces his purpose to subsist his army in our country, and moreover, he intends to shoot or hang our non-combating citizens that may fall into his hands, in retaliation for the killing of any of his thieving and murdering soldiers by our avenging guerrillas. He says his headquarters will be on his horse, and that he will make no provision for retreat. That he has been accustomed to see the backs of his enemies! Well, we shall see how he ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... violating the rules of the jail, Daley is guilty of misdemeanour, and the thieving has been aggravatingly continued. If we put one, we must put ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... of laboring men the iniquitous, outrageous, thieving "Plantation Credit System" was a plague and a crime. Deprived of homes and property the Negroes were compelled to "work the crops on the shares." A plantation store was kept where the Negroes' credit was good for any article it contained. He got salt meat, corn ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... nature, since it will neither disguise you at the time nor wash off afterwards—it will be obvious that the dangers and delights of the adventure were sufficient to blunt, for the moment, our sense of the fact that we were deliberately going a-thieving. ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... meet with day by day, we mount daily the nearer to God by that exact degree of evil which we have overcome by good—that is to say, by practice of forgiveness, compassion, patience, humility, endurance, held out over against the invitation of evil to do the exact opposite. A negligent, thieving, lying servant that we have to deal with calls forth forgiveness, and humility also, for are we a perfect servant to our Lord? The evil of a drunken husband may be used by the wife as a sure ladder to God, ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley

... Duca's voice filled the room—"to do that which my priests were unable to do. And the moment has come when the Gods will no longer trifle with you. You dog! You thieving intruder! You—" ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... about 1,400 fat cattle were driven along in triumph, followed by the admiring population of thieving niggers, who hail his arrival as the harbinger of fat times, Gondokoro being the general depot for all stolen cattle, slaves. &c., and the starting point for every ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... tales of land and sea As may not ever perish utterly. Of still more dubious caste, "Jack Sheppard" drew Full admiration; and "Dick Turpin," too. And, painful as the fact is to convey, In certain lurid tales of their own day, These boys found thieving heroes and outlaws They hailed with equal fervor of applause: "The League of the Miami"—why, the name Alone was fascinating—is the same, In memory, this venerable hour Of moral wisdom shorn of ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley

... Priapea which should probably be assigned to this period. The third may indeed have been an inscription on a pedestal of the scare-crow god set out to keep off thieving rooks and urchins in ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... to understand some of the sane business reasons that guaranteed the immunity of Aholiah Luce, so long as he stuck to petty thieving. But this international matter of the town of Vienna seemed to the first selectman of Smyrna to be another sort of proposition. And he surveyed the recalcitrant Mr. Luce ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... could catch the thieving rascals! Look ye, the tree is mine, and it does but hang over the road a scantling; and, as sure as nights are dark, comes me some ragged pilferers, that have not to pay an honest drunkenness, and basely steal ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... "The crafty, thieving swindler!" exclaimed Mr. Mason. "She has been sharp enough if it is as we think," said Round, laughing; and then there was nothing more done in the matter for some time, to the great disgust both of Mr. Dockwrath and Mr. Mason. Old Mr. Round had kept his promise to Mr. Furnival; ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... Methodist exhorter and formidable Rebel marauder, is said to be forty miles south of us with a small force, and some of the Union farmers came into camp to-day asking for protection. Zagonyi, the commander of the body-guard, is anxious to descend upon Johnson and scatter his thieving crew; but it is not probable he will obtain permission. The Union men of Missouri are quite willing to have you fight for them, but their patriotism does not go farther than this. These people represent that three-fourths of the inhabitants of Miller County ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... good in The Rat, but no one else had. Policemen had moved him on whenever they set eyes on him, the wretched women of the slums had regarded him as they regarded his darting, thieving namesake; loafing or busy men had seen in him a young nuisance to be kicked or pushed out of the way. The Squad had not called "good" what they saw in him. They would have yelled with laughter if they had heard any one else call it so. "Goodness" ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... The amusing thing is that Du Monstier himself was a book-thief. He used to tell how he had lifted a book, of which he had long been in search, from a stall on the Pont-Neuf; "but," says Tallemant (whom Janin does not seem to have consulted), "there are many people who don't think it thieving to steal a book unless you sell it afterwards." But Du Monstier took a less liberal view where his own books were concerned. The Cardinal Barberini came to Paris as legate, and brought in his suite Monsignor Pamphilio, who afterwards became Innocent X. The Cardinal paid a visit ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... it was a hoary-haired scoundrel of a bus; a very reprobate of a bus; an envious, evil-thinking, ill-conditioned, flagrantly thieving, knavish blackguard of a bus. Under no circumstances am I proud of the acquaintance. But then, in extenuation, be it said that it was never anything but an acquaintance of Shadow-Land, conjured up, perhaps, by a material repast that had been ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... the Queen cover her lips with the tips of her fingers, bright as the blossom of a lily, as if she were afraid of something? [Looking more closely.] Oh! I see; a vagabond bee, intent on thieving honey from the flowers, has mistaken her mouth for a rosebud, and is ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... thine own, but trouble me no further. But look well to it, Master Sheriff, for I will have my laws obeyed by all men within my kingdom, and if thou art not able to enforce them thou art no sheriff for me. So look well to thyself, I say, or ill may befall thee as well as all the thieving knaves in Nottinghamshire. When the flood cometh it sweepeth away grain as ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... the worse our meat got, till at last we had to carry a dog-chain to chain it up at night. Then it got worse and broke the chain, and then we had to train the blessed dogs to shepherd it and bring it back. But we fell in with another chap with a bad old dog—a downright knowing, thieving, old hard-case of a dog; and this dog led our dogs astray—-demoralized them—corrupted their morals—and so one morning they came home with the blooming meat inside them, instead of outside—and we had to go ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... condemned to imprisonment in irons; are exempt from the penalty of being marked. This punishment is said to produce considerable effect on the culprits, as well as on the spectators. Previously to its being revived, persons convicted of thieving were insolent ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... account of his absence. As he was going to the clergyman's house, he began to think that it could be of no use to go thus a begging, and, if he should borrow money, he was not sure he should be able to pay it, which he thought would be as bad as thieving. At this instant a thought struck into his head, that he was young and hearty, stout and able-bodied, and therefore could see no harm if he entered on board a man of war for a few years, where he might stand a chance of getting a fortune for his wife and children, at least get enough to ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin

... "I heard Pete tellin' little Sam last night what he'd done. It's come to a pretty pass, so it has, if you are goin' to uphold that bad boy in thieving——" ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... attain to the reward—the end of the said exertion? Not one in a hundred. And then, in nine cases out of ten, how does that one do it? By fraud, and thieving, and over-reaching, and sycophancy—in short, by running through the whole gamut of the scale of rascality—rascality of the meaner kind, mark you. Then when this winner in the battle of life comes out top, the world crowns him with fat and fulsome ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... cot and castle alike. You would not stand in your place for a moment, were not an army behind you. Being a fool, you think the common people love honesty, whereas, they only curse that they have not a share in the thieving." ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... south, and half as much in breadth. It has several harbours, and is intersected by considerable valleys of a fertile appearance. The natives, who are at present dependent on Otaheite, are said to be as much addicted to thieving as those of that island. The women are inferior in attractions to any in their neighbourhood. The harbour of Taloo on the north coast is very eligible for vessels—it is situate in 17 deg. 30' latitude, and 150 deg. west longitude. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... men and women are toiling for the Eagle, giving their lives for the pittance that he grudges them; in countless mines and mills, the Eagle is trading human lives for coal and flour; in Wall Street yonder, the Eagle is juggling as he will with life's necessities—thieving from the farmer, thieving from the consumer, thieving from the poor fools who try to play the Eagle's game, and driving them at will to despair and ruin and death: look whither you may, men die that the Eagle may grow fat. So the Eagle thrives, and daily the rich grow ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell

... a rib broken here," he said to the Mistress, "unless I am much mistaken. When the post office opens in the morning we must wire for Turle, the vet. Thieving's bad enough, but—there are some ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... that is well known to hunters of "big game" by various names such as "Whiskey Jack", "Moose Bird", "Camp Robber", etc. During the winter months, owing to the scarcity of food, their thieving propensities are greatly enhanced and they remove everything from the camps, which looks as though it might be edible. Birds of this genus are smoky gray on the back and lighter below, shading to white on the throat; the forehead and part of the crown is white and the nape blackish. ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed

... tried to coax it into one berth or the other, but the poor brute wouldn't take to nobody. You know, sir, a cat doesn't like to change so he wandered about the ship, mewing all day, and thieving all night. At last, he takes to the master's cabin, and makes a dirt there, and the master gets very savage, and swears that he'll kill him, if ever he comes ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... than to stare at him occasionally and make a great noise about it. That they recognize him as a thief and cannibal I have no doubt. But he thieves by night when other birds are abed, and as they practise their own thieving by open daylight, it may be that they are denouncing him as an impostor. Or it may be that the owl in his nightly prowlings sometimes snatches a young crow off the roost. The great horned owl would hardly hesitate to eat an old crow if he could ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... arrivals and departures, to make themselves acquainted by means of spies with the movements of every suspected person in the city, and to raise a body of paggis (trackers), who could follow the footprints of thieves even when they wore thieving shoes,[FN96] till they came up with and arrested them. And lastly, he gave the patrols full power, whenever they might catch a robber in the act, to slay ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... feeding, Jan would have seen to it that order was preserved and no thieving done. Each dog should have had his own "whack," and none have been molested. But with all his genuine love of order and discipline, Jan was no magician. He could not possibly apportion out a scattered refuse-heap. He had necessarily to grab a share for himself; ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... the next full moon, should bear fruit. The tree was planted, but seven years passed before the nuts appeared. These were eaten by the king, and on that very night a strange man was arrested on a charge of thieving and taken before the king for sentence. All through the questioning a dog with one white eye and a green one kept close beside the prisoner, appearing to understand every word that was spoken. The intelligence ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... his not thieving from me or mine, I believe the fact to be as he has stated; but there are singular circumstances connected with some of his other productions, of which the account ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... owned," he concluded, "that she has now lost this superiority; for it is long indeed since she produced an architect. The men who assume the name are mere thieving bunglers, builders devoid of all individuality and learning. They are not even able to pilfer skilfully from their precursors. What are they nowadays? Patchers up of chapels, church ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... one on tea or on silver plate. Character, genius, high parts in history are all assessed upon. Nature lets out her houses and lands on liberal terms; but resorts to distraint, if her dues be not forthcoming. Be sure, therefore, that little success and little honor will wait upon any would-be thieving from God. He who attempts to purloin on this high scale has set all the wit of the universe at work to thwart him, and will certainly be worsted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... once a knowledge of them. They are great thieves and, if they cannot lay hold of any thing with their hands, they try to do so with their feet, as we have oftentimes learned by experience. I am of opinion that, if they had any thing to exchange with us, they would not give themselves to thieving. They bartered away to us their bows, arrows, and quivers, for pins and buttons; and if they had had any thing else better they would have done the same with it. It is necessary to be on one's guard against this people, and live in a state of distrust of them, yet without letting them ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain

... believed herself bad enough to have shut her memory's eyes to the haggard peasant-mother of the dirty half-clad children—to all the hundreds of them who doubtless lived just like the one she had seen, all upon her lands; she could have forgotten the busy-thieving, sodden-faced crowd that thronged the chambers wherein her fathers had been born and had feasted kings and had died—the very room where her own father had lain dead. She could have shut it all out, she thought, if she had held in her hands the gold ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... search her pocket. You opened that paper and took out the bright yellow piece, and put in another. You didn't think I was looking at you, ha! ha! How I laughed as I stood behind the door and saw you tremble for fear some one would catch you thieving. You didn't think of ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger

... discovering these pranks, Mrs. Lobkins trembled for the future bias of the address they displayed, or whether she thought that the folly of thieving without gain required speedy and permanent correction, we cannot decide; but the good lady became at last extremely anxious to secure for Paul the blessings of a liberal education. The key of knowledge (the art of reading) she had, indeed, two years prior to the present date, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... than the last, until on the 3d of November he was arrested. This martyrdom in the cause of labor increased his power, and when he was released he was drawn by his followers in triumph through the streets on one of his own drays. His language became more and more extreme. He bludgeoned the "thieving politicians" and the "bloodsucking capitalists," and he advocated "judicious hanging" and "discretionary shooting." The City Council passed an ordinance intended to gag him; the legislature enacted an extremely harsh riot act; a body of volunteers patrolled the streets of the city; a committee ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... the Serbs for ever. It is probably from these ancestors that their noble bearing and perfect manners, in even strange and unaccustomed surroundings, are derived. Their notion of honour is of the highest, and thieving and ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... lover tell When age or death his reckoning shall write Than thus, 'Love taught me only to rebel Against these things,—the thieving of delight Without return; the gospellers of fear Who, loving, yet deny the truth they bear, Sad-suited lusts with lecherous hands to smear The cloth of gold they would but dare not wear. And love gave me great knowledge of the trees, And singing birds, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... what you think, Jack?" she said. "Why don't you call him a thieving scoundrel and me a poor, ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... Campbell, Sheriff, Casper, Wyoming, 1932. Much of the "Johnson County War" between cowmen and thieving nesters. OP. ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... crime and not in the punishment," he said. "At our great public schools in England fellows are flogged. Well, there is no disgrace in it if it's only for breaking the rules or anything of that sort, but it would be a horrible dishonour if it were for thieving. All that sort of thing is absurd. I believe flogging is the best punishment there is. It is a lot better to give a man a couple of dozen and send him about his business, than it is to keep him for a year in prison at the public expense, and to have to maintain his wife and children ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... worst thing you could have done—lift your hand against the parson's son! I'm sure he must have deserved it, but—still you shouldn't have done it. Unless he's accused you of thieving, for no honest man need stand that from any one, not even the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... "to think of her alone with that thieving Indian! He took flour and bacon too! And if she ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... many other things, he was troubled by the thieving propensities of the slaves. September tenth of this year he records that because of the scarcity of apples and the depredations that were being committed "every Night upon the few I have, I found it necessary (tho much too early) to gather and put them up for ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth

... Rennie's Range, but he was hardly prepared for the suspicion and danger which stood between him and his father. As hotheaded as his father, Drew was ready to move on to California—until the day all proof of his Rennie name was stolen from him, and his unwarranted arrest for horse-thieving brought on the accusations of the one man whose trust ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... audience in good humor by presenting all this in a spirit of crude comedy and, to increase the comedy element, he introduced a number of trained cats. Although the thieving proclivities of cats are well known, Dufour's pets showed no desire to share his repast, and he had them trained to obey his commands during mealtime. At the close of the meal he would become violently angry with one of them, seize the unlucky ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... touch the broth, which sorely vexed him, so that he set it down on the ground cursing, and ran out of the room. It was not long before his squint-eyed wife came in at the front door, and when she saw the pot still steaming on the ground, she cried out, "Thou thief, thou cursed thieving carcass!" and would have flown at the face of my maid. But I threatened her, and told her all that had happened, and that if she would not believe me she might go into the chamber and look out of the window, whence she might still, belike, ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold

... point to catch a plack; Abuse a brother to his back; Steal thro' a winnock frae a whore, But point the rake that taks the door; Be to the poor like onie whunstane, And haud their noses to the grunstane, Ply ev'ry art o' legal thieving; No ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... Thieving from strangers is a commendable talent among savages in general, and bespeaks an address which they much admire; though the strictest honesty with regard to the property of each other is observed among them. There is no doubt but they ransacked ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... Ramabai and Ahmed had found the horses half a dozen miles away; and they had thrashed the thieving natives soundly and instilled the right kind of fear in their breasts. At rifle point they had forced the natives back to the rest house. The crack of their rifles soon announced to Kathlyn that the dread ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... theft, when it is effected with secrecy and slyness; robbery, when there is a suggestion of force or violence. The swindler is he who appropriates another's goods by methods of gross deception or false pretenses while the embezzler transfers to himself the funds entrusted to his care. Petty thieving is called pilfering or filching; stealing on a large scale usually has less dishonorable qualificatives. Boodling and lobbying are called politics; watering stock, squeezing out legitimate competition, is called financiering; wholesale confiscation and unjust conquest is ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... he says the wares were "dog-cheap." These fairs continued for six days, and merchants came to them from Flanders and France, as well as from England. He gives the Waterford people the palm for commerce, declares they are "addicted to thieving," that they distil the best aqua vitae, and spin the choicest rugs in Ireland. A friend of his, who took a fancy to one of these "choice rugs," being "demurrant in London, and the weather, by reason of a hard hoar frost, being ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... a cheap flat," he laughed, "and no ties in the world. I can turn the key and disappear. No one cares or knows—no one but the thieving caretaker. And he's long ago found out that ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... and stick to the essentials. By the nonessentials I mean the little potty spies, actuated by sheer hunger or mere officiousness, the neutral busybody who makes a tip-and-run dash into England, the starving waiter, miserably underpaid by some thieving rogue in a neutral country—or the frank swindler who sends back to the Fatherland and is duly paid for long reports about British naval movements which he has concocted without setting foot outside ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... village of Mudros East. It proved to be a collection of ramshackle dwellings, as little habitable as English cowhouses; of stores, where thieving Greeks sold groceries to the soldiers; and of taverns, whose vines hung heavily clustered over porch and window. There was an ornate and lofty Greek Orthodox Church, and a little, unconsidered cemetery, where the bones of the dead were working their ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... our child welfare exhibits are so persistently—and rightly —showing the wrongdoing child as the helpless victim of heredity and environment that hasty thinkers are jumping to the conclusion that, since a child is not to blame for his thieving tendencies, it is our duty, rather than punish, to let him go on stealing; since it is a natural instinct for a boy to like the sound of crashing glass and the exercise of skill needed to hit a mark, we must not reprove him for throwing stones at windows; ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... etc., both in their original state and made up into garments. But the most extraordinary articles were human skulls, and hands not quite stripped of the flesh, and which had the appearance of having been recently on the fire. Thieving was practiced at this place in a more scientific manner than they had before remarked; and the natives insisted upon being paid for the wood and other things supplied to the ships, with which Captain Cook scrupulously complied. This inlet ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous

... Germany, the constant infringement of concordats, and so on. The demand itself was refused, and in addition to this, an address was presented to the Diet from the bishop and clergy of Liege, inveighing against the lying, thieving, avaricious conduct of the Romish minions, in such sharp and violent tones that Luther, on reading it afterwards when printed, thought it only a hoax, and not really an ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... none of yours,' cried the master, in a rage; 'you've just been a family of paupers and squatters, living up here by poaching and thieving. I'll unearth you, I promise ye; you have been a disgrace to the manor long enough. So it is ten pounds or nothing for your old hole; and you ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton

... after Motherwell's version entitled Catherine Johnstone. Other renderings are given by Scott, Maidment, and Buchan. In Scott's version the name of the English suitor is Lord Lochinvar, and both name and story the thieving poet has turned, as everybody knows, to excellent account. The two closing stanzas here seem to betray the hand of an English balladist. Weel-faur'd, well-favored. Lave, ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)

... detected in two or three attempts to steal a knife, and various pieces of iron. It is evident, from the above and other traits, that the natives of this island, like all other savage nations, are naturally addicted to thieving: from the fear of detection, however, the instances of their venturing to indulge the propensity, do not ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... half filled with a most curious collection of small articles for which the birds could have no use, but which the thieving Jackdaws had stolen during many years from the homes of men. And as the nest was safely hidden where no human being could reach it, this lost property would never ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... tear, Striving in vain his cloud of debt to clear, At last He woke to find his foolish dreaming past, Beheld his best-of-life the easy prey Of quacks and scamps, and all the vile array That line the way, From thieving statesman down to petty knave; Yea, saw himself, for all his bragging brave, A gamester's catspaw and a banker's slave. Then, worn and gray, and sick with deep unrest, He fled away into the oblivious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... he said, wriggling the back of his head against the cold stone of the floor, from which the straw had worked away. "I dunno could you gather it up a bit, Father." He grinned. "I'd ask you to put me boots under me for a pillow, but if them thieving guards found them loose, ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce

... little sickness, and very seldom downright sin. The expression downright sin is Mrs. Morrison's own,—heaven forbid that I should have anything to do with such an expression—and I suppose she meant by it thieving, murder, and other grossnesses that would bring the sinner, as she often told her awe-struck Dorcas class, to infallible gallows, and the sinner's parents' grey hairs to sorrowful graves. "Please mum, will the parents go too?" asked a girl one day ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... are apt to creep up to tents, and, putting their hands under the bottom of them, to steal whatever they can: a hedge of thorn-bushes is a protection against this kind of thieving. In some countries a net, with three or four bells attached to it, is thrown over the packages inside a tent. Strings tied horizontally, a foot above the ground, from package to package, are found effective in tripping intruders, See ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... his fellow for wicked practices. He was a ready liar, and yet very sharp in gaining credit for his fictions. He thought it a point of virtue to deceive, and would delude even those nearest to him. He had an aptitude for thieving," and so forth. Whenever the historian mentions the name of his rival, he rattles his box of abusive epithets until the reader is wearied by the image of the monster conjured up before him. But, unfortunately for his credit, Josephus also records John's deeds, and these reveal ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... the now silent Watling Street and the deserted Ad Fines Camp. In its windings along the bases of the hills it is joined by the Usway Burn, said to be named after King Oswy, between which and the little river Alwine lies the famous Lordship of Kidland, once desolate on account of the thieving and raiding of its neighbours of ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... received them, made them clean themselves, taught them to smile and put on pleasant ways, besides penning them in their various rooms and preventing them from eating too much. From morn till night he was ever prowling about, scolding and terrorizing those dirty, ill-behaved, and often lying and thieving women. The building, a dilapidated private house, with a damp ground floor, to which alone clients were admitted, had two upper stories, each comprising six rooms arranged as dormitories, in which the nurses and ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... thieves to recover stolen cattle, and the other half of them to steal, in order to make this agreement and black-mail contract necessary. The estates of those gentlemen who refused to contract, or give countenance to that pernicious practice, are plundered by the thieving part of the watch, in order to force them to purchase their protection. Their leader calls himself the Captain of the Watch, and his banditti go by that name. And as this gives them a kind of authority to traverse the country, so it makes them capable of doing any mischief. These ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... their own good; but here it's the other way. Here's Mike the Finn, and Jansen the Swede, and Hansen the Dane, and Giuseppe the dago, and Pat the Irishman the boss of the whole dirty gang. Before God I take shame to myself for being an honest man and American born, and having this thieving gang to tell me how long I can work, and where I can buy, with a swat in the jaw and a knife in my back for daring to say my soul is my own and sticking to it against ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... king. [5] With such examples before them, all the Asiatics have turned to injustice and impiety. For what the leaders are, that, as a rule, will the men below them be. Thus has lawlessness increased and grown among them. [6] And injustice has grown, and thieving. Not only criminals, but men who are absolutely innocent are arrested and forced to pay fines for no reason whatsoever: to be known to have wealth is more dangerous than guilt, so that the rich do not care to have any dealings with the powerful, and dare not even risk appearing ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... hid in a taro swamp till the next night. He meant to steal food and a canoe—and seek for Oneata. But the Manono people found him, and, though he fought desperately, they overcame and bound him, and the women cursed him for a Tafito{*} devil, a thieving beast, and beat and pelted him as the men carried him back to the plantation, tied up like a wild boar, to get their ten dollars reward for him from the manager. And Burton gave him thirty lashes as ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... simplicity of the Indian were remarkable. Kenton said he had been happy among the Indians. Col. Zane had many Indian friends. Isaac Zane, who lived most of his life with the Wyandots, said the American redman had been wrongfully judged a bloodthirsty savage, an ignorant, thieving wretch, capable of not one virtue. He said the free picturesque life of the Indians would have appealed to any white man; that it had a wonderful charm, and that before the war with the whites the Indians were kind to their prisoners, and sought only to make Indians of them. He told tales of ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... the efforts of the Rev. Charles Beecher to educate his enfranchised negro neighbors; of his inviting them to his house, and laboring for the welfare of their souls. All the patient and Christian efforts of the philanthropist had proved unavailing, and thieving and lying were still ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... and carted there, and put out of this town, and put out of that town, and stuck in the stocks, and whipped and worried and drove. I've no more notion where I was born than you have—if so much. I first become aware of myself down in Essex, a thieving turnips for my living. Summun had run away from me—a man—a tinker—and he'd took the fire with him, and left me ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... She looked at Dasinger. "They're not shooting me right off, you know," she told him. "They're annoyed with me, so they're taking me along for something a little more special. But they'll have to skip the fun if the Spy shows up, or I'll be telling twenty armed Fleetmen exactly what kind of thieving cheats they have leading them!" She looked back at Calat, smiled, placed the tip of her tongue lightly between her lips for an instant, then pronounced a few dozen Fleet words in a clear, ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz

... could, till one day he fell in with Mick, who offered him his food and the chance of more by degrees, as he wanted a sharp lad to help him in his various trades—of pedlar, tinker, basket-maker, wicker-chair mender, etc., not to speak of poultry-stealing, orchard-robbing, and even child-thieving when he got a chance that seemed likely to ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth

... height from the stem of the midship boat, in endeavouring to seize fowls or meat that was hung on the mainstay, always alighting on the point she sprang from. At other times she would attempt to crawl up it like a cat, in order to steal what was there. Her proneness to thieving was very great; I have frequently seen her eating stolen things when she would refuse what was offered her; it was never safe to take ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... about him some evil-looking youths): Hark ye, young cut-purses, lend an ear, while I give you your first lesson in thieving. ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... and carrying in his right hand, with all the solemnity that he could muster, his excellency's hat. He was a footman in gold-laced livery, and we beg leave to give a brief sketch of his history. Trespolo was the child of poor but thieving parents, and on that account was early left an orphan. Being at leisure, he studied life from an eminently social aspect. If we are to believe a certain ancient sage, we are all in the world to solve a problem: as to Trespolo, he desired ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... everybody except thieves and ill-doers, against whom he waged incessant war, and with whom he was admirably qualified to cope, from the knowledge he possessed of their ways and habits, from having passed so many years of his life in the exercise of the thieving trade. In his youth he was much addicted to poetry, and a great many pennillion of his composition, chiefly on his own thievish exploits, are yet recited by the inhabitants of certain districts of the shires of ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... duel the following day had reached her. Her presence, however, and at that moment, aroused in Maud a feeling of indignation so impassioned that her first impulse was to enter, to drive out Boleslas's mistress as one would drive out a servant surprised thieving. Suddenly the thought of Alba presented itself to her mind, of that sweet and pure Alba, of that soul as pure as her name, of her whose dearest friend she was. Since the dread revelation she had thought several times of the young girl. But ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... ought to be done at the common labour, expense, and charges of these Iconoclasts—because their depredations are a grand impediment to another who should attempt it: and if this gout for prints and thieving continues, let private owners and public libraries look well to their books, for there will not remain a valuable book ungarbled by their connoisseuring villany: for neither honesty nor oaths restrain them. Yet these fanciers, if prints ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... with him by a harmless little Owl and a Rattlesnake of questionable amiability. The Owl sits by the mouth of the hole till driven away by your approach, when he follows his confrere's example by diving; the Rattlesnake stays usually below, to give any prowling, thieving prairie-wolf, or other carnivorous intruder, the worst of the bargain, should he attempt to dig out the architect of this subterranean abode. But for this nice little family arrangement, the last prairie-dog ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Gnat, with her tenacious lying-in-wait and her reckless burglaries, is not to feed herself at the harvester's expense: she could get her living out of the flowers with much less trouble than her thieving trade involves. The most, I think, that she can allow herself to do in the Halictus' cellars is to take one morsel just to ascertain the quality of the victuals. Her great, her sole business is to settle her family. The stolen goods are not for ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... he thought of the coyote, that thieving scavenger of the prairie which is ever on the prowl at night. But the next instant he remembered the chicken killing going on in the village. He ran to the door of the roost and flung it wide open. Without waiting for a light he stooped down and made his way in. And that act of ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... on the part of many foreigners and negroes to raid the houses, and do an all around thieving business, but the measures adopted by the police had a tendency to frighten them ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... Mr. Wakefield said. "Now I am about to place in the witness box a very respectable woman, one Jane Tytler, who is cook to our esteemed fellow townsman, Mr. Samuel Hawkins, whose residence is, as you know, not far from this school. She will tell you that, having for some time been plagued by a thieving cat which was in the habit of getting into her larder and carrying off portions of food, she, finding it one day there in the act of stealing a half chicken, fell upon it with a broomstick and killed it, or as she thought killed ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty



Words linked to "Thieving" :   misappropriation, pilferage, petit larceny, biopiracy, grand larceny, felony, embezzlement, defalcation, peculation, larceny, dishonorable, shoplifting, breach of trust with fraudulent intent, thieve, shrinkage, robbery, skimming, petty larceny, misapplication, petty, dishonest, grand theft, rustling



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