Top 30 Larceny Quotes & Sayings

We are all pirates at heart. There is not one of us who hasn't had a little larceny in his soul. And which one of us wouldn't soar if God had thought there was merit in the idea? So, when we see one of those great widespread pirates soaring across the grain of sea winds we thrill, and we long, and, if we are honest, we curse that we must be men every day. Why not one day a bird! There's an idea, now, one day out of seven a pirate in the sky. What puny power a man can attain by comparison. Compare a 747 with a bird and blush!

You sparkle with larceny.

The old doctrine that God wanted man to do something for him, and that he kept a watchful eye upon all the children of men; that he rewarded the virtuous and punished the wicked, is gradually fading from the mind. We know that some of the worst men have what the world calls success. We know that some of the best men lie upon the straw of failure. We know that honesty goes hungry, while larceny sits at the banquet. We know that the vicious have every physical comfort, while the virtuous are often clad in rags.

What I have learned about corporate capitalism, roughly, is that it is an act of theft, by and large, through which a very few live very high off the work, invention, and creativity of very many others. It is the Grand Larceny of our particular time in history, the Grand Larceny in which a future of freedom which could have followed the collapse of feudalism was stolen from under our noses by a new bunch of bosses doing the same old things

Catherine Land liked the beginnings of things. The pure white possibility of the empty room, the first kiss, the first swipe at larceny. And endings, she liked endings, too. The drama of the smashing glass, the dead bird, the tearful goodbye, the last awful word which could never be unsaid or unremembered. It was the middles that gave her pause. This, for all its forward momentum, this was a middle. The beginnings were sweet, the endings usually bitter, but the middles were only the tightrope you walked between the one and the other. No more than that.

I love songs about horses, railroads, land, Judgment Day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. And Mother. And God.

The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine, and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilize savage and senile and paranoidal peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells or metal mines.

His head was full of larceny, but his feet were honest.

Hidden behind the facade of pompous jargon and noble affections, there is more sheer larceny per square foot on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange than any place else in the world.

I think people like to see a little larceny in their heroes.

After watching the State of the Union address the other night [1994], I'm reminded of the old adage that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Only in this case, it's not flattery, but grand larceny: the intellectual theft of ideas that you and I recognize as our own. Speech delivery counts for little on the world stage unless you have convictions, and, yes, the vision to see beyond the front row seats.

Terrific. Now to win a larceny trial all we have to do is prove how the universe ends.

The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. Under this Republic the rewards of industry belong to those who earn them.

A man's idea in a game of cards is war, cruel, devastating, and pitiless. A lady's idea of it is a combination of larceny, embezzlement and burglary.

There is a difference between jaywalking and grand larceny.

The red squirrel is more common and less dignified than the gray, and oftener guilty of petty larceny about the barns and grain-fields.

People love gentle larceny.

Stealing a man's wife, that's nothing, but stealing his car, that's larceny.

The grand larceny that occurred in Russia, the corruption that resulted in nine or ten people getting enormous wealth through loans-for-shares, was condoned because it allowed the reelection of Boris Yeltsin.

About a veteran player thrown out trying to steal second: There was larceny in his heart, but his legs were honest.

If there is any larceny in a man, golf will bring it out.

If we use goods made from raw materials that are obtained from a poor country without the proceeds being used to benefit the people of that country, we become complicit in a particularly iniquitous form of grand larceny.

We may live like saints, but when it comes to our fantasy life, everybody's got a little larceny in their soul.

[Libertarians] don't denounce what the state does, they just object to who's doing it. This is why the people most victimized by the state display the least interest in libertarianism. Those on the receiving end of coercion don't quibble over their coercers' credentials. If you can't pay or don't want to, you don't much care if your deprivation is called larceny or taxation or restitution or rent. If you like to control your own time, you distinguish employment from enslavement only in degree and duration.

One man's larceny is another's just distribution of goods.

When it comes to recruiting people for the secret world, what the recruiters are looking for is pretty much what I had. I was unanchored, looking for an institution to look after me. I had a bit of larceny. I understood larceny. I understood the natural criminality in people - because it was - it was all around me. And I have no doubt there was a chunk of it inside me too. Once I found that identity, it took root in me. It exactly - it gelled with the world that I'd known in the past.

It is difficult for young people to live things down. We will tolerate vice, grand larceny and the quieter forms of murder in our contemporaries... but our children's friends must show a blank service record.

There is two types of Larceny, Petty and Grand. They are supposed to be the same in the eyes of the law, but judges always put a little extra on you for Petty, which is kind of a fine for stupidness.

the writer must resist this temptation [to quote] and do his best with his own tools. It would be most convenient for us musicians if, arrived at a given emotional crisis in our work, we could simply stick in a few bars of Brahms or Schubert. Indeed many composers have no hesitation in so doing. But I have never heard the practice defended; possibly because that hideous symbol of petty larceny, the inverted comma, cannot well be worked into a musical score.

The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practiced. The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not.