thieves quotes

Fures fores, frugi intro! Thieves out, profit in!

-Anonymous
c.1c  AD  Graffito found in Pompeii. In Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum I V, 4278.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew 6:19^21.

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew 21:12^13.

And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Luke10:30^31.

Alliance, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third.

- Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
  The Cynic's Word Book. Retitled  The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

- G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton
  The Man who was Thursday, ch.4.

Welcome, thou kind deceiver! Thou best of thieves; who with an easy key, Dost open life, and, unperceived by us, Even steal us from ourselves.

-John Dryden
  Cleopatra speaking of love.  All for Love, or The World Well Lost, act 5, sc.1.

   Jean Cocteau me croit un mauvais voleur. C'est parce qu'aupre'  s de lui je suis d'abord un e  crivain. Les voleurs me croient un mauvais e  crivain. Jean Cocteau thinks that I am a poor thief. That's because next to him I am primarilya writer.Thieves think that I am a poor writer.

-Jean Genet
  Journal du voleur.

   TheTwentyThousand Thieves.

-William known as Lord Haw Haw Joyce
c.1941  Of the  Australian 9th Division troops who were besieged at Tobruk, North  Africa. Radio broadcast from Nazi Germany.

If a man knows he will sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much gained upon the thieves.

- Robert Louis Stevenson
  An InlandVoyage,'The Oise in Flood'.

These Mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to beg Sustenance for their helpless Infants; who, as they grow up either turnThieves for want of Work; or leave their dear native country, to fight for the Pretender in Spain; or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

-Jonathan Swift
  A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country.