Thief In The Night Quotes

Yes, I read it," she replies. "I most certainly did read it. It kept me up all night, I was so angry with it. At this stage of my life, I would rather not be kept up all night. Nor do I wish to have my tears jerked at the rate at which this novel jerked them. The next time you recommend a book to me, I hope you'll keep that in mind, Mr. Fikry." "I will," he says. "And I do apologize, Mrs. Cumberbatch. Most of our customers have rather liked The Book Thief. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

They say death comes like a thief in the night, where is he? I'll hug his neck. ~ Cormac McCarthy

With her enchanting songs, her rare beauty, and clever tricks, this wild 'wanderess' ensnared my soul like a gypsy-thief, and led me foolish and blind to where you find me now. The first time I saw her, fires were alight. It was a spicy night in Barcelona. The air was fragrant and free. ~ Roman Payne

Wha Is That At My Bower-Door
1783

Wha is that at my bower-door?
O wha is it but Findlay!
Then gae your gate, ye'se nae be here:
Indeed maun I, quo' Findlay;
What mak' ye, sae like a thief?
O come and see, quo' Findlay;
Before the morn ye'll work mischief:
Indeed will I, quo' Findlay.

Gif I rise and let you in-
Let me in, quo' Findlay;
Ye'll keep me waukin wi' your din;"
Indeed will I, quo' Findlay;
In my bower if ye should stay-
Let me stay, quo' Findlay;
I fear ye'll bide till break o' day;
Indeed will I, quo' Findlay.
Here this night if ye remain-
I'll remain, quo' Findlay;
I dread ye'll learn the gate again;
Indeed will I, quo' Findlay.
What may pass within this bower-
Let it pass, quo' Findlay;
Ye maun conceal till your last hour:
Indeed will I, quo' Findlay. ~ Robert Burns

The demons, they return to haunt the crimp in my heart. No amount of burning herbs, or magic spells and bitter potions cast the beasts away. Garlic rosaries won't
remove the black infection slowly devouring within.
Only love, perfect love, casts out the monsters and the fiends that invade like a thief in the night infecting and destroying, attempting to steal my joy. But love is life and I choose life. I choose love. Throw away the herbs, release the spells, let me swallow love's divinity. ~ Melody Lee

He shook his head pityingly. "This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man's fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man's whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this naught of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draft."
"Not all men are destined for greatness," I reminded him.
"Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?"
"This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things."
"No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart's beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day? ~ Robin Hobb

2PE3.9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. 2PE3.10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. ~ Anonymous

Mad, you must see me mad; your opinion is awash to me as long as I am crazed by love. I welcome this folly that you give to me with great estate. Thief? Rascal? I did what others did and what others had me do and we are all doomed, but I do not regret for one instant the coming of events of this most splendid night. You should have seen how carefully I proceeded and how I found love in the most dreadful of streets, during my most mourning of states and on the most propitious of nights. Play samartian to the fool, champion to the underdog. So to speak, I am a hubris acolyte of love. ~ Benarrioua Aniss

He brings the greatest conflict into the history of mankind.
He will come soon to our world just like a thief in the night. ~ Toba Beta

...for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers' seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celbrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time. ~ Salman Rushdie

Death - the aftermath of it - is a strange thing to watch from the pedestal of immortality. I've seen death in every way: as a thief in the night, as the heat of fever, as the lust of a warrior. Yet I've never really understood grief, or what it does to those left behind.

But seeing Richard alone in the dark. It breaks away pieces of me. I'm a glacier, plunging, falling apart against the sea. ~ Ryan Graudin

If war comes upon us, it will come as a thief in the night. ~ Eamon De Valera

The truth is sealed.
Life goes on.
Till one day, history changed ...
Like thief in the night,
aliens invade human.
Chaos happens prior to the new order of coexistence.
The truth is sealed.
Life goes on.
Till one day, history changed. ~ Toba Beta

Grim Reaper stole her heart a long time ago and all these years later, he came back… and like a thief in the night, he took the rest of her with him. ~ Michelle Gross

She was a Jew feeder without a question in the world on that man's first night in Molching. She was an arm reacher, deep into a mattress, to deliver a sketchbook to a teenage girl. (84.25) ~ Markus Zusak

Tristan and Yvaine were happy together. Not forever-after, for Time, the thief, eventually takes all things into his dusty storehouse, but they were happy, as these things go, for a long while. And then Death came in the night and whispered her secret into the ear of the eighty second Lord of Stormhold, and he nodded his grey head and said nothing more ~ Neil Gaiman

For I have indeed been torn from all my roots, even from the earth that nourished them, more entirely than most in our times. I was born in 1881 in the great and mighty empire of the Habsburg Monarchy, but you would look for it in vain on the map today; it has vanished without trace. I grew up in Vienna, an international metropolis for two thousand years, and had to steal away from it like a thief in the night before it was demoted to the status of a provincial German town. My literary work, in the language in which I wrote it, has been burnt to ashes in the country where my books made millions of readers their friends. So I belong nowhere now, I am a stranger or at the most a guest everywhere. Even the true home of my heart's desire, Europe, is lost to me after twice tearing itself suicidally to pieces in fratricidal wars. Against my will, I have witnessed the most terrible defeat of reason and the most savage triumph of brutality in the chronicles of time. Never - and I say so not with pride but with shame - has a generation fallen from such intellectual heights as ours to such moral depths. ~ Stefan Zweig

Legends told that in the Dark Days, when the Graces walked the earth and inspired humanity to rise up and fight back against the Demons who ruled over them, the Grace of Luck would sometimes appear at people's doors in disguise - be their homes ever so humble or ever so proud - and beg for food or shelter. Those who offered hospitality were rewarded with Her blessing, and received great fortune; and as such, on the Night of Masks, every household must offer hospitality to any masked reveler who showed up at their door.
This custom had, naturally, evolved in Raverra to the throwing of lavish masquerades, made all the more exciting by the possibility that anyone could turn up at one's party, from the doge himself to a notorious jewel thief. So long as they wore an acceptable mask, they could join the festivities. Most Raverrans flitted from ball to ball throughout the night, and the revelry poured out into the streets and canals. It was a day of mysteries and surprises, of charity and cunning, of terrible mistakes to be regretted the next morning and wondrous coincidences to transform one's life. A night of intrigue and enchantment, of romance and adventure. ~ Melissa Caruso

Make no mistake, the woman had a heart. She had a bigger one that people would think. There was a lot in it, stored up, high in miles of hidden shelving. Remember that she was the woman with the instrument strapped to her body in the long, moon-slit night. ~ Markus Zusak

If there's one thing I regret it's not having told my father how much I admired and loved him. My only gesture of affection was a quick kiss on the forehead two days before he died. The kiss tasted like sugar and I felt like a thief who furtively stole something that no longer belong to anybody. Why do we hide our feelings? Out of cowardice? Out of egotism? With a mother it's different: we cover her with flowers, gifts and sweet phrases. What is it that prevents us from affectionately confronting our father and telling him, face to face, how much we love or admire him? On the other hand, why do we curse him under our breath when he puts us in our place? Why do we react with wickedness and not affection when the occasion presents itself? Why are we brave with taunts and cowards with affection? Why did I never tell my father these things but I tell them to you, who are probably too young to understand them yet? One night I wanted to speak to my father ion his room but found him asleep. As I quietly began to leave the room, I heard my sleeping father, in a desperate voice, say: "No, papa, no!" What strange, agitated dream was my father experiencing with his father? And if one thing caught my attention, beyond the enigma of the dream, was that my father was seventy-eight years old at that time and my grandfather had been dead for at least a quarter of a century. Does a man have to die to speak to his father? ~ Juan Gabriel Vasquez

Theft is punished by Your law, O Lord, and by the law written in men's hearts, which iniquity itself cannot blot out. For what thief will suffer a thief? Even a rich thief will not suffer him who is driven to it by want. Yet had I a desire to commit robbery, and did so, compelled neither by hunger, nor poverty through a distaste for well-doing, and a lustiness of iniquity. For I pilfered that of which I had already sufficient, and much better. Nor did I desire to enjoy what I pilfered, but the theft and sin itself. There was a pear-tree close to our vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was tempting neither for its colour nor its flavour. To shake and rob this some of us wanton young fellows went, late one night (having, according to our disgraceful habit, prolonged our games in the streets until then), and carried away great loads, not to eat ourselves, but to fling to the very swine, having only eaten some of them; and to do this pleased us all the more because it was not permitted.Behold my heart, O my God; behold my heart, which You had pity upon when in the bottomless pit. Behold, now, let my heart tell You what it was seeking there, that I should be gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved to perish. I loved my own error - not that for which I erred, but the error itself. Base soul, falling from Your firmament to utter destruction - not seeking anything through the shame but the shame itself! ~ Augustine Of Hippo

42Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. ~ Anonymous

Though thereafter we may walk in the shadows, I will not go forth as a thief in the night. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man's fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man's whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this naught of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draft. ~ Robin Hobb

The book thief lay in bed that night, and the boy only came before she closed her eyes. He was one member of a cast, for Liesel was always visited in that room. Her papa stood and called her half a woman. Max was writing The Word Shaker in the corner. Rudy was naked by the door. Occasionally her mother stood on a bedside train platform. And far away, in the room that stretched like a bridge to a nameless town, her brother, Werner, played in the cemetery snow. ~ Markus Zusak

He is the thief man who steals away your youth in the middle of the night. He is the evil whose shadow engenders fear in rural areas. He is the bogyman who keeps children up at night. He is the terrorist who claims to be enforcing the Ten Commandments while he breaks most of them.
The Prophet of Life From: The Most Notorious Serial Killer You've Likely Never Heard of i ~ The Prophet Of Life

Sometimes, when I'm bored, I can't help but think what my life would be like if I hadn't written the book. Monday, I would've played bridge. And tomorrow
night, I'd be going to the League meeting and turning in the newsletter. Then on Friday night, Stuart would take me to dinner and we'd stay out late and I'd
be tired when I got up for my tennis game on Saturday. Tired and content and . . . frustrated.
Because Hilly would've called her maid a thief that afternoon, and I would've just sat there and listened to it. And Elizabeth would've grabbed her child's
arm too hard and I would've looked away, like I didn't see it. And I'd be engaged to Stuart and I wouldn't wear short dresses, only short hair, or consider
doing anything risky like write a book about colored housekeepers, too afraid he'd disapprove. And while I'd never lie and tell myself I actually changed
the minds of people like Hilly and Elizabeth, at least I don't have to pretend I agree with them anymore. ~ Kathryn Stockett

no man prepar'd for it; no man consider'd it would come like a Thief in the night, exactly as it happens in the case of death.'74 ~ Niall Ferguson

God, San Francisco was such a thief. A lady of the night, a sorceress with her hands out. Every time, all my years as a child, that we crossed the bridge, we had to pay to get in, pay to get out, pay for every little thing. Oakland was free, San Francisco was not. Pay me, pay me. Pay for the Pacific Ocean and the beach. I am expensive, the city always said, so pay me for my wonderful dark treats like the Steinhart Aquarium, with its dark wide hall lit up by tank after tank of bright gold green blue sharks dolphins whales stinger fish, cold-eyed still-as-a-corpse fish that didn't blink or budge when we tapped the thick glass with our fingernails. Pay, the voice said, to whomever took us on Saturday to the Fleischacker Zoo ... the hand of San Francisco reaches out to grab your stupid little nickels and dimes. Pay. Even as I stood in front of the Fat Lady, whose cackling gap-toothed twelve-feet-high, three-feet-wide body made me laugh for a solid hour, even as I collapsed in tears driven out of my eyes by laughter, I understood that the other name for San Francisco wasn't Frisco; it was pay you dumb jerks from Oakland pay. ~ Judy Juanita

Arin nearly got his throat cut.
"The god of life preserve you," Cheat gasped. He staggered back, his knife glinting in the shadows of his small bedroom. "What the hell are you doing here? Breaking into my home like a thief in the night. Climbing through the window. You're lucky I saw your face in time."
"There's something I have to tell you."
"Start with why you couldn't come by the auction house at a decent hour. I thought you had a free pass. What about the girl's seal ring?"
"Unavailable."
Cheat squinted up at Arin, tapping the flat of the short blade against his thigh. In the dim light of a streetlamp, a slow grin spread across his face. "Had a falling-out with your lady, did you? A lovers' quarrel?"
Arin felt his face go dark and tight.
"Easy, lad. Just tell me: are the rumors true?"
"No."
"All right." Cheat held up his hands as if in surrender, the knife held loosely. "If you say they're not, they're not."
"Cheat. I broke curfew, scaled the general's wall, and stole through a guarded city to speak with you. Don't you think we have more important things to discuss than Valorian gossip? ~ Marie Rutkoski

Love, comes to steal you like a thief in the night. It aims to take your most precious from you. It gags, you, binds you, cripples you to keep you from running away, rips off your skin making you raw, and holds you ransomed asking for so much wealth one is forced into imprisonment…isn't is beautiful? ~ Nicolenya Caltman

Don't you be wasting of me good time in the numbering of me hands," cried Freckles. "The stringth of me cause will make up for the weakness of me mimbers, and the size of a cowardly thief doesn't count. You'll think all the wildcats of the Limberlost are turned loose on you whin I come against you, and as for me cause----I slept with you, Wessner, the night I came down the corduroy like a dirty, friendless tramp, and the Boss was for taking me up, washing, clothing, and feeding me, and giving me a home full of love and tinderness, and a master to look to, and good, well-earned money in the bank. He's trusting me his heartful, and here comes you, you spotted toad of the big road, and insults me, as is an honest Irish gintleman, by hinting that you concaive I'd be willing to shut me eyes and hold fast while you rob him of the thing I was set and paid to guard, and then act the sneak and liar to him, and ruin and eternally blacken the soul of me. You damned rascal," raved Freckles, "be fighting before I forget the laws of a gintlemin's game and split your dirty head with me stick! ~ Gene Stratton-Porter

Enlightenment arrives like a thief in the middle of the dark night of the soul. ~ Stefan Emunds

Sometimes you got to lie on the outside to keep your voice loud on the inside. We don't owe the master the truth. He owes us. Nothing comes from the master. He is the thief in the night. He steals it all. And every time we have to say 'yes sir' and 'no sir,' he steals some more. But we can survive it, if we stay loud in here," she said, throwing a fist hard against her breast. ~ Jonathan Odell

Christ comes as a thief in the night, & it is not for us to know the times & seasons which God hath put into his own breast. ~ Isaac Newton

On many counts, taking a boy like Rudy Steiner was robbery
so much life, so much to live for
yet somehow, I'm certain he would have loved to see the frightening rubble and the swelling of the sky on the night he passed away. He'd have cried and turned and smiled if only he could have seen the book thief on her hands and knees, next to his decimated body. He'd have been glad to witness her kissing his dusty, bomb-hit lips.
Yes, I know it.
In the darkness of my dark-beating heart, I know. He'd have loved it all right.
You see?
Even death has a heart. ~ Markus Zusak

She had also heard other things, scary things, things that made no sense to her. Some said her father had murdered King Robert and been slain in turn by Lord Renly. Others insisted that Renly had killed the king in a drunken quarrel between brothers. Why else should he have fled in the night like a common thief? One story said the king had been killed by a boar while hunting, another that he'd died eating a boar, stuffing himself so full that he'd ruptured at the table. No, the king had died at table, others said, but only because Varys the Spider poisoned him. No, it had been the queen who poisoned him. No, he had died of a pox. No, he had choked on a fish bone. ~ George R R Martin

One day you will wonder what was so important that you put off doing the most important things. 'Someday' can be a thief in the night. ~ Deborah Brown

Mummy dying with it; Christ dying with it, nailed hand and foot; hanging over the bed in the night-nursery; hanging year after year in the dark little study at Farm Street with the shining oilcloth; hanging in the dark church where only the old charwoman raises the dust and one candle burns; hanging at noon, high among the crowds and the soldiers; no comfort except a sponge of vinegar and the kind words of a thief; hanging for ever; never the cool sepulchre and the grave clothes spread on the stone slab, never the oil and spices in the dark cave; always the midday sun and the dice clicking for the seamless coat. ~ Evelyn Waugh

I am made to sow the thistle for wheat; the nettle for a nourishing dainty
I have planted a false oath in the earth, it has brought forth a poison tree
I have chosen the serpent for a councellor & the dog for a schoolmaster to my children
I have blotted out from light & living the dove & the nightingale
And I have caused the earthworm to beg from door to door
I have taught the thief a secret path into the house of the just
I have taught pale artifice to spread his nets upon the morning
My heavens are brass my earth is iron my moon a clod of clay
My sun a pestilence burning at noon & a vapor of death in night

What is the price of Experience do men buy it for a song
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath his house his wife his children
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
And in the withered field where the farmer plows for bread in vain

It is an easy thing to triumph in the summers sun
And in the vintage & to sing on the waggon loaded with corn
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted
To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer
To listen to the hungry ravens cry in wintry season
When the red blood is filled with wine & with the marrow of lambs
It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements
To hear a dog howl at the wintry door, the o ~ William Blake

It's [a miscarriage] all very thief-in-the-night. No one really knows what to say. You go into the emergency room, you think you're going to be a mum and you walk out empty. It's all neat and tidy, there's this potential being in your life and you're empty - all cleaned up and put back together, but completely shattered. ~ Tori Amos

Celebrating something?" she asked.
A wicked smile formed on his lips, showing off his dimples. "Just a good night's sleep."
She smiled, too, though not without some reservation. Just what kind of person had they partnered with? A thief and an arsonist? Camille placed a napkin in her lap and devoured a slice of buttered toast.
Oscar hadn't returned from his walk until well after dark the night before. Camille had already turned down the lamps, pulled the blankets up to her ears, and buried her head in her pillow to avoid having to speak to or see him.
"Oscar." She felt her pulse rise. "What I said to you yesterday was miserable."
He kept his attention on his eggs.
"I didn't mean to be so thoughtless. I was just trying to avoid your question."
Oscar finished chewing. "I'm sorry, too," he whispered. "So what about Randall don't you want to talk about?"
The fork slipped between her damp fingers, and she set it on the rim of the plate.
"It's just…I haven't talked about it with anyone. I don't really know how to put it."
She wanted to be desperately in love with Randall and not just fond of him. She didn't want to need to marry Randall; she just wanted to want to. It had been her father's greatest hope for her-and for the company. There was no way to explain it all to Oscar, though, without going into her father's poor finances.
As she drew her palm into her lap, it left a handprint of sweat on the lacquered cherry table. Oscar ~ Angie Frazier

Nobody is fully ready for paradise. That is why
'the kingdom come' will be like thief in the night. ~ Toba Beta

Complacency is a slow gas leak, not a bomb blast. Like being robbed by a thief in the night who only steals a penny at a time, we awake to find the days have all gone somewhere. Things ~ Jon Acuff

In the end he slunk out of Normandy in December 1203, like a thief in the night. ~ David Carpenter

Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried.
And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear ~ Leonard Cohen

What Can Be Learned From a Thief

The saintly Rabi Zusya was originally a disciple of the tsaddik Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritsh. Once he asked his master to teach him the secret of worshipping the Creator. "There's no need for me to teach you," replied Rabbi Dov Baer, "because you can learn it from any child or thief."
"Why, how can I learn it from a child?" asked the astounded disciple.
"In three ways," replied his master. "First, a child needs no reason to be happy. Second, a child always keeps busy. And third, when a child wants something, it screams until it gets it."
"And what," asked Rabbi Zusya, "can I learn from a thief?"
"From a thief," answered Rabbi Dov Baer, "you can learn seven things. First, to apply yourself by night and not just by day. Second, to try again if at first you don't succeed. Third, to love your comrades. Fourth, to be ready to risk your life, even for a small thing. Fifth, to attach so little value to what you have that you will sell it for a pittance. Sixth, not to be put off by hardship and blows. And seventh, to be glad you are what you are instead of wanting to be something else. ~ Pinhas Sadeh