Quotes & Sayings About Burglary

If you're not a criminal, then what are you doing stealing all these swords and things?" For a moment he was silent. Then he rubbed his chin and said, "There's no name for it in English." "Oh, is there not? 'Burglary' seems descriptive enough." "Kyojitsu." He looked levelly into her eyes, not wavering. "False-true. — Laura Kinsale

We poison our lives with fear of burglary and shipwreck, and, ask anyone, the house is never burgled, and the ship never goes down. — Jean Anouilh

There is an innocence in the very word "afternoon." Morning is for trains and business and hangovers, night is for love and burglary. The afternoon is the halcyon, the calm between earnestness and drama. — Adam Hall

The young love and cherish people and places from which they receive the skills and the emotional support which enable them to make it in the world or to meet their basic human needs. The same people and places are often the first recipients of the frustration and anger
violence, vandalism, disrespect
of young people who are not making it well in the world. I suspect that this is the reason that personal and school property violence is increasing more rapidly than school burglary and dropout rates. — James P. Comer

In 2001, a teenager was arrested in Pennsylvania for daytime burglary. The teenager had broken into a local home, by climbing in through a bedroom window. The teenager stole two expensive diamond rings, but instead of quickly leaving the crime scene, he decided that he needed to check his Facebook first. After he checked his Facebook, he finally left. However, not only had he signed into his actual Facebook account, he did not sign out of his account, or even close out the browser. When the police checked the scene of the crime, his Facebook profile was still open, with all of his personal information readily available. — Jeffrey Fisher

For instance, if you are a bank robber - although I hope you aren't - you might go to the bank a few days before you planned to rob it. Perhaps wearing a disguise, you would look around the bank and observe security guards, cameras, and other obstacles, so you could plan how to avoid capture or death during your burglary. — Lemony Snicket

The whole concept of some stranger making his way down our chimney - not that we had one - suggested burglary more readily than generosity. Any Santa who tried it would have gotten a bullet in his holly, jolly keister. — Thomm Quackenbush

If associations to control burglary and murder were tolerated we should take it for granted that the members should all be burglers and murderers. — George Bernard Shaw

Drug addicts driven to crime to finance their drug addiction are not often inclined toward violent crime. Violence requires all different kinds of energy, and most drug addicts like to expend their energy not on their professional crime but on what their professional crime lets them afford. Drug addicts are often burglars, therefore. — David Foster Wallace

I explained Crime 101 to the kid. "Guns escalate things. They're only good for crowd control. We're going in after closing hours, so we don't need crowd control." "Yeah," Augie said, "but what about security? What if they start bustin' caps?" Bustin' caps. I wondered how many hip-hop posters he had on his bedroom wall. "Site's handled by Gold Star Security Northwest," I explained. "They don't carry guns, just Tasers and pepper spray. They also make thirteen bucks an hour, and heroics are highly discouraged in their training manual. Their standing orders in case of a burglary are to retreat to safe ground and call the real cops. That gives us plenty of time to bug out if we get spotted and blow it." "Cool," Augie said. — Craig Schaefer

Do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy dances and theaters and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if you can enjoy nothing better; enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to the other alternative; but never learn to enjoy yourself. — G.K. Chesterton

experience has taught us that a surprisingly high percentage of all our recorded crime, especially burglary and other thefts, are committed by the people in the rogues gallery. We're not stereotyping them, they do that for themselves I'm afraid. — J.J. Salkeld

Invisible insects of diabolical activity swarm in this place. I am tickled and twitched all over. Mentally, I have now committed a burglary under the meanest circumstances, and the myrmidons of justice are at my heels. — Charles Dickens

June 17, 1972. Nine o'clock Saturday morning. Early for the telephone. Woodward fumbled for the receiver and snapped awake. The city editor of the Washington Post was on the line. Five men had been arrested earlier that morning in a burglary attempt at Democratic headquarters, carrying photographic equipment and electronic gear. Could he come in? — Carl Bernstein

Hurray! Congress is to adjourn! Only four more days of Congressional burglary on the Treasury! — Will Rogers

By the way, Doctor, I shall want your cooperation.'
'I shall be delighted.'
'You don't mind breaking the law?'
'Not in the least.'
'Nor running a chance of arrest?'
'Not in a good cause.'
'Oh, the cause is excellent!'
'Then I am your man.'
'I was sure that I might rely on you. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Jimmy O'Malley sat in the commander's office, knowing that one day, he'd move into the space. Today, however, he was waiting to hear why he'd been summoned. He hadn't been a detective long enough to screw up, so the reason eluded him. He'd been working doggedly on some property crimes that went nowhere. Most of the detectives from his class had gone on to investigate violent crimes. He'd been relegated to burglary and vandalism. — Shannyn Schroeder

The day had, in fact, reached that gentle point when it was too late for housebreaking and too early for burglary. — Terry Pratchett

Drop onto all fours and crawl the length of the court or field, as if you were climbing a wall. This prepares you, too, for light cat burgling, should your athletic career flag. — Gretchen Reynolds

As remains the case today, blacks in the past were overrepresented among those arrested and imprisoned. In urban areas in 1967 blacks were seventeen times more likely than whites to be arrested for robbery. In 1980 blacks comprised about one-eighth of the population but were half of all those arrested for murder, rape, and robbery, according to FBI data. And they were between one-fourth and one-third of all those arrested for crimes such as burglary, auto theft, and aggravated assault. — Jason L. Riley

Criminals are motivated by self-preservation, and handguns can therefore be a deterrent. The potential defensive nature of guns is further evidenced by the different rates of so-called "hot burglaries," where a resident is at home when a criminal strikes.16 In Canada and Britain, both with tough gun-control laws, almost half of all burglaries are "hot burglaries." In contrast, the United States, with fewer restrictions, has a "hot burglary" rate of only 13 percent. — John R. Lott Jr.

If you have a grateful heart (which is a miracle amongst you statesmen), show it by directing the bearer to the best wine in town, and pray let not this highest point of sacred friendship be performed slightly, but go about it with all due deliberation and care, as holy priests to sacrifice, or as discreet thieves to the wary performance of burglary and shop-lifting. Let your well-discerning palate (the best judge about you) travel from cellar to cellar and then from piece to piece till it has lighted on wine fit for its noble choice and my approbation. — John Wilmot

To show what is still needed, let us examine how an ideal system might reason about the burglar alarm situation of Figure 1.2. Upon receiving the phone call from your neighbor, only the burglary hypothesis is triggered; your decision whether to drive home or stay at work is made solely on the basis of the parameter P(False alarm), which summarizes all other (unexplicated) causes for an alarm sound. After a moment's reflection, the possibility of an April Fools' Day joke may — Judea Pearl

I was planning a death, not a burglary, but in many ways that just made it easier. Taking a life was, in my experience, a damned sight less complicated than taking jewels from a hidden strongbox. — Michael McClung

After a burglary of all her most valued and treasured possessions, Winston Churchill's aging mother wrote: "That burglar relieved me of an obsession. For years, I've had to take houses big enough to hold all these bibelots. I am almost grateful to him." — Anne Sebba

The triumph of morality: A thief who has broken into a bedroom claims his sense of shame had been outraged, and by threatening theoccupants with exposure of an immoral act he blackmails them into not bringing charges for burglary. — Karl Kraus

Confronted by an absolutely infuriating review, it is sometimes helpful for the victim to do a little personal research on the critic. Is there any truth to the rumor that he had no formal education beyond the age of eleven? In any event, is he able to construct a simple English sentence? Do his participles dangle? When moved to lyricism, does he write "I had a fun time"? Was he ever arrested for burglary? I don't know that you will prove anything this way, but it is perfectly harmless and quite soothing. — Jean Kerr

A man in Georgia was arrested for burglary after he left his Facebook account open on the victim's computer. But this is nice: He's only been in jail a few hours, and his status already says In a Relationship! — Jimmy Fallon

The best criterion by which to decide whether someone has been forced outside the pale of the law is to ask if he would benefit by committing a crime. If a small burglary is likely to improve his legal position, at least temporarily, one may be sure he has been deprived of human rights. — Hannah Arendt

After watching the house for a few days, she had concluded that the magician lived alone, but you never knew if someone had a secret lover stashed away. Or a very loud pet. That time with the peacock, for instance. Noisy birds, peacocks. — Yoon Ha Lee

Nevertheless, to commit burglary you must cross some imaginary border, or invisible plane, and enter another clearly defined architectural space - a volume of air, an enclosure - with the intention of committing a crime there. Without walls and thresholds - without doorways, floors, and window frames, or even roofs, awnings, and screened-in porches - burglary would not be legally possible. It is a spatial crime, one whose parameters are baked into the very elements of the built environment. — Geoff Manaugh

There are inquiries which are a sort of moral burglary. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Mason was a first-rate spatial voyeur, an autodidact of architectural exteriors. — Geoff Manaugh

Looking back at it, it seems to me that I was blown here and there like a dead leaf whipped about by the autumn winds till at last it finds lodgment in some cozy fence corner. When I left school at fourteen I was as unsophisticated as a boy could be; I knew no more of the world and its strange ways than the gentle, saintly woman who taught me my prayers in the convent. Before me twentieth birthday I was on the docket of criminal court, on trial for burglary. — Jack Black

His anger was still there, and he used it to break into her. He liked the way her eyes widened in alarm, as if he was forcing a lock, as if he was breaking and entering. It was the first time he'd ever slept with a woman and it felt like burglary. — Rupert Thomson

Dealing with a simple burglary can require 1,000 process steps and 70 forms to be completed as a case goes through the Criminal Justice System. That can't be right. — Theresa May

A few nights later we had a neighborhood-watch party, which is where everyone on the street gets together in the Crowleys' yard and talks and laughs and pretends that nothing is wrong, and meanwhile all our empty houses are ripe for burglary. — Dan Wells

Whenever human activity is directed exclusively to the service of the instinct for self-preservation it is called theft or usury, robbery or burglary etc — Adolf Hitler

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. — Finley Peter Dunne

This is brain surgery. Ski masks on my bullets, let 'em commit brain burglary. Emergency, it's an emergency. Someone in all black left the whole scene burgundy. — Lil' Wayne

To put this another way, burglary requires architecture. Not infrequently, only because of some aspect of a building's design is burglary even possible. A blind spot, a vulnerability, a badly placed window, a shadowy alcove, an unlocked skylight, a useful proximity between one structure and the next - the burglar sees this opportunity and pounces. — Geoff Manaugh

What's unique about Wright's disdain for endlessly proliferating microdefinitions inspired by and based on other microdefinitions is that he eventually, casually, and seemingly offhandedly suggests at the end of his article that we could simply rewrite the law altogether and eliminate the crime known as burglary. Some men just want to watch the world burn. His logic rests on the fabulous conclusion that, legally speaking, architecture is a form of "magic," one that has no place in an otherwise rational system. Architecture is the "magic of four walls," he writes, referring to its power to fundamentally transform how certain crimes are judged — Geoff Manaugh

Both Elizabeth [Smart] and Ruby [Jessop] were fourteen when they were kidnapped, raped and "kept captive by polygamous fanatics." The main difference in the girls' respective ordeals ... is that "Elizabeth was brainwashed for nine months," while Ruby had been brainwashed by polygamist fanatics "since birth." Despite the similarity of their plights, Elizabeth's abusers were jailed and charged with sexual assault, aggravated burglary, and aggravated kidnapping, while Ruby ... "was returned to her abusers, no real investigation was done, no charges brought against anyone" involved. — Jon Krakauer

Someone should have the right to choose Mexican or Chinese food for dinner, or where to live, or what kind of car to drive. Of course we are pro-choice on these and thousands of other things. But we aren't pro-choice about rape. And we aren't pro-choice about burglary. We aren't pro-choice about kidnapping children. So why should we be pro-choice about killing them? — David Platt

The source known as Deep Throat provided a kind of road map through the scandal. His one consistent message was that the Watergate burglary was just the tip of the iceberg. — Bob Woodward

But he's nice," Barby objected.

Tom Bishop smiled without humor. "Most pleasant and interesting man I ever knew was a burglar. — John Blaine

If you attempt to beat a man down and to get his goods for less than a fair price, you are attempting to commit burglary, as much as though you broke into his shop to take the things without paying for them. — Henry Ward Beecher

High finance isn't burglary or obtaining money by false pretenses, but rather a judicious selection from the best features of those fine arts. — Finley Peter Dunne

July is high burglary season because so many people leave town. To help avoid making that obvious, suspend your newspaper subscription and have your mail held. Another clear indication is if all your lights are off for an extended period. To fix that, you can buy a timer for about $30. — Jean Chatzky

We've got the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble when it comes to crime in this country. The FBI says burglary and robbery cost U.S. taxpayers $3.8 billion annually. Securities fraud alone costs four times that. And securities fraud is nothing to the cost of oil spills, price-fixing, and dangerous or defective products. Fraud by health-care corporations alone costs us between $100 billion and $400 billion a year. No three-strikes-and-you're-out for these guys. Remember the S&L scandal? $500 billion. — Molly Ivins

After the 1970s, when President Nixon's illegal campaign cash was used as a secret slush fund to pay for the Watergate burglary and cover-up, Americans have demanded to know where the money fueling our elections is coming from. — Eric Schneiderman