
“4106. Set a Thief to catch a Thief.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
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)
A Way to be Free, the Autobiography of Robert LeFevre (1999) in the “Epilogue”
“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)
“The petty thief is imprisoned but the big thief becomes a feudal lord.”
Source: The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu
“He sets a thief to guard his purse
Who trusts a dial with his hours”
The Golden Ass (1999)
Context: He sets a thief to guard his purse
Who trusts a dial with his hours
Or bids a sand-glass bleed away his nights,
His days, his loves, his pleasures and his powers.
The burthen of his years
Is Time's soft footfall, Time's soft
Falling
Through his joys and tears.
“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.
“Once a thief, always a thief, only now I steal from the enemy.”
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Escape (2003)
Context: Until two days ago,' she went on suddenly, 'I thought that my life depended on other people. On employers. Now I think it depends on me. You taught me that. But I still need money.'
'Money's easy,' said Sharpe dismissively.
'That is not the conventional wisdom,' Sarah said drily.
'Steal the stuff,' Sharpe said.
'You were really a thief?'
'Still am. Once a thief, always a thief, only now I steal from the enemy. And some day I'll have enough to stop me from doing it and then I'll have to stop others from thieving from me.'
'You have a simple view of life.'
'You're born, you survive, you die,' Sharpe said. 'What's hard about that?
“Even if he was a thief, he was my thief. I could not push him away anymore.”
Source: Dragonswood