Literary notes about LARCENY (AI summary)
Literary authors employ the term "larceny" in a variety of ways that blend legal precision with broader social and moral commentary. In some works, it appears in formal, almost clerical language that underscores legal judgments and distinctions—such as differentiating petty from grand offenses—while in other texts it serves as a metaphor highlighting the betrayal of trust or the erosion of ethical standards [1], [2], [3]. At times, writers invoke larceny to critique the injustices inherent in economic and social systems or to underscore the irony of how minor crimes are weighed against greater moral failings [4], [5]. In both factual discourses and imaginative narratives, the term becomes a tool for probing the complexities of crime, punishment, and human behavior [6], [7].
- There has always been a law against larceny, because the laborer wishes to enjoy the fruit of his toil.
— from Ingersollia Gems of Thought from the Lectures, Speeches, and Conversations of Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, Representative of His Opinions and Beliefs by Robert Green Ingersoll - For Flask to have presumed to help himself, this must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first degree.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville - He was indicted for larceny, on the ground that he exercised a control over the property of the owner against his will.
— from Trial of the Officers and Crew of the Privateer Savannah, on the Charge of Piracy, in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York by A. F. (Adolphus Frederick) Warburton - This man knows me, and knows that I committed larceny, and grand larceny at that, and was going to have me arres—" "Larceny, did you say?"
— from Twenty Years of Hus'ling by J. P. (James Perry) Johnston - “Was such petty larceny a very great crime?”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - Now, government is by nature so incapable of directing labor that every reward bestowed by it is a veritable larceny from the common treasury.
— from System of Economical Contradictions; Or, The Philosophy of Misery by P.-J. (Pierre-Joseph) Proudhon - "You seem to have devoted a lot of study to the larceny in the Earthman's soul," Jerry put in.
— from The Pilot and the Bushman by Sylvia Jacobs
