Rogue

A Rogue is a vagrant person who wanders from place to place rejecting conventional rules of society in favor of following their own personal goals and values. In England, the 1572 Vagabonds Act defined a rogue as a person who has no land, no master, and no legitimate trade or source of income. In modern English usage the term is used pejoratively to describe a dishonest or unprincipled person whose behavior one disapproves of, but who is nonetheless likeable or attractive.

I would like to know what business an honest man would have in the Police as it is an old saying it takes a rogue to catch a rogue. ~ Ned Kelly

For the marvel comics character, see Rogue (comics)

Quotes

• Demosthenes: A demagogue must be neither an educated nor an honest man; he has to be an ignoramus and a rogue.
  • Aristophanes Knights, line 191-193, O'Neill translation (1938)

• A more praeternotorious rogue than himself.
  • John Fletcher, Fair Maid of the Inn, IV

• Through all the Employments of Life
  Each Neighbour abuses his Brother;
  Whore and Rogue they call Husband and Wife:
  All Professions be-rogue one another:
  The Priest calls the Lawyer a Cheat,
  The Lawyer be-knaves the Divine:
  And the Statesman, because he's so great,
  Thinks his Trade as honest as mine.
  • John Gay, in lines for the crime-boss Peachum, in The Beggar's Opera (1728)

• You know, the Cathars believed that the world was not created by God but by a demon who had stolen a few technological secrets from Him and made this world — which is why it doesn’t work. I don’t share this heresy. I’m too afraid! But I put it in a play called This Extraordinary Brothel, in which the protagonist doesn’t talk at all. There is a revolution, everybody kills everybody else, and he doesn’t understand. But at the very end, he speaks for the first time. He points his finger towards the sky and shakes it at God, saying, “You rogue! You little rogue!” and he bursts out laughing. He understands that the world is an enormous farce, a canular played by God against man, and that he has to play God’s game and laugh about it.
  • Eugène Ionesco, in "Eugene Ionesco, The Art of Theater No. 6" interviewed by Shusha Guppy, in Paris Review (Fall 1984), No. 93; canular refers to hoaxes, humorous deceptions.

• I would like to know what business an honest man would have in the Police as it is an old saying it takes a rogue to catch a rogue.
  • Ned Kelly, in Jerilderie Letter (1879)

• What a frosty-spirited rogue is this!
  • William Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV, II.iii

• He was an instance that a complete genius and a complete rogue can be formed before a man is of age.
  • Horace Walpole, on Thomas Chatterton, in a letter to William Mason(24 July 1778); published in (ed. William Hadley) Horace Walpole: Selected Letters (1963) p. 191

• We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?
  • Jessamyn West, in To See the Dream, part 1 (1956)