Stealing Quotes

“Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances. Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it would be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window

“Enter, stranger, but take heed
Of what awaits the sin of greed,
For those who take, but do not earn,
Must pay most dearly in their turn,
So if you seek beneath our floors
A treasure that was never yours,
Thief, you have been warned, beware
Of finding more than treasure there.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“Tell me what I must slay, what I must steal, tell me the riddle I must solve or the hag I must trick. Only tell me the way, and I will do it, no matter the danger, no matter the hardship, no matter the cost.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“I've got kids that enjoy stealing. I've got kids that don't think about stealing one way or the other, and I've got kids that just tolerate stealing because they know they've got nothing else to do. But nobody--and I mean nobody--has ever been hungry for it like this boy. If he had a bloody gash across his throat and a physiker was trying to sew it up, Lamora would steal the needle and thread and die laughing. He...steals too much.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“Nobody steals books but your friends.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Guns of Avalon

“The robb'd that smiles, steals something from the thief; He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“Do you not know that God entrusted you with that money (all above what buys necessities for your families) to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to help the stranger, the widow, the fatherless; and, indeed, as far as it will go, to relieve the wants of all mankind? How can you, how dare you, defraud the Lord, by applying it to any other purpose?”
― John Wesley

“I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains.”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“She looked around. They had drifted far away from the bank of the canal. "Are we stealing this boat?"
"Stealing' is such an ugly word," he mused.
"What do you want to call it?"
He picked her up and swung her around before putting her down. "An extreme case of window-shopping.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Lost Souls

“The thief, as will become apparent, was a special type of thief. This thief was an artist of theft. Other thieves merely stole everything that was not nailed down, but this thief stole the nails as well.”
― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

“Just because you have stolen someone's heart, luckily owned and occupied as a home, doesn't give you the audacity to enforce hurtful policies.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“The petty thief is imprisoned but the big thief becomes a feudal lord.”
― Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

“But there are some things, child, that you should steal. That you must steal, if you have enough love and courage in your heart. You must snatch freedom from the hands of the tyrant. You must spirit away innocent lives before they are destroyed. You must hide secret and sacred places.”
― Lian Tanner, Museum of Thieves

“Steal not this book for fear of shame

For on it is the owners name

And when you die the Lord will say

Where is the book you stole away

And when you say you do not know

The Lord will say go down below.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

“To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.”
― Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book

“The bread which you hold back belongs to the hungry; the coat, which you guard in your locked storage-chests, belongs to the naked; the footwear mouldering in your closet belongs to those without shoes. The silver that you keep hidden in a safe place belongs to the one in need. Thus, however many are those whom you could have provided for, so many are those whom you wrong.”
― Saint Basil

“Stealers, keepers.”
― Ilona Andrews, Fate's Edge

“I miss the north side cliff and the waves below, and I miss the way the wind steals your breath like it never belonged to you in the first place.”
― Rory Power, Wilder Girls

“Shelving books incorrectly is as good as stealing them. It's almost worse.”
― Paul Acampora, I Kill the Mockingbird

“If you don't get caught, you deserve everything you steal.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Another Faust

“Most people, in my opinion, steal much of what they are. If they didn't what poor items they would be.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“If theft is advantageous to everyone who succeeds at it, and adultery is a good strategy, at least for males, for increasing presence in the gene pool, why do we feel they are wrong? Shouldn't the only morality that evolution produces be the kind Bill Clinton had - being sorry you got caught?”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God

“Don't sell yourself short. No one will value you. Set a fair price for you, your book, your services, whatever it is that you have to offer. Most of us set way too low a price. Put it a little higher than you would normally be inclined to do. The worst that can happen is someone will come along and steal it.”
― John Kremer, 1001 Ways to Market Your Books: For Authors and Publishers, 6th Edition

“My name is Danielle. I'm eighteen. I've been stealing things for as long as I can remember.”
― Elizabeth Scott, Stealing Heaven

“The food we were given was no more than eatable, but the patron was not mean about drink; he allowed us two litres of wine a day each, knowing that if a plongeur is not given two litres he will steal three.”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“There’s just so much I could be stealing right now if I didn’t have social obligations with the man who tried to poison me earlier in the week. And if it weren’t for the curse. And, I suppose, the law, though really we all know my concern for that is cosmetic at best.”
― Margaret Owen, Little Thieves

“You see, it is my passionately held belief that the right to possess property is at best a contingent one. When disparities become too great, a superior right, that to life, outweighs the right to property. Ergo, the very poor have the right to steal from the very rich.”
― Mohsin Hamid, Moth Smoke

“Some people just needed to be stolen from.”
― Eoin Colfer, The Opal Deception

“Yes, but none of them can steal my ship.

None of them are smart enough to know that it was the right thing to do at the time.”
― Howard Tayler, Resident Mad Scientist