
“Set a thief to catch a thief.”
Epigram 43; translation by Robert Allason Furness, from Poems of Callimachus (1931), p. 103
Epigrams
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
“Set a thief to catch a thief.”
Epigram 43; translation by Robert Allason Furness, from Poems of Callimachus (1931), p. 103
Epigrams
“4106. Set a Thief to catch a Thief.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“4788. The Thief is sorry he is to be hanged, but not that he is a Thief.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Song lyrics, The Kick Inside (1978)
“The petty thief is imprisoned but the big thief becomes a feudal lord.”
Source: The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu
13 December 1937 diary per Woods, John E. (1998). The Good Man of Nanjing: the Diaries of John Rabe. p. 67.
" Who Was Margaret Sanger? http://www.ewtn.com/library/prolife/pp04a.txt", brochure published by the American Life League, regarding The Pivot of Civilization http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1689/1689.txt.
None of those quoted phrases actually appear in the book.
Misattributed
“Do not despair: one thief was saved. Do not presume: one thief was damned.”
Attributed to St. Augustine in The Repentance of Robert Greene, Master of Arts http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Greene/Repentance_Robert_Greene.pdf (1592) by Robert Greene.
Disputed
Variant: Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned.