"Daft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her I went clean, stark, raving, blind, drunken daft over her. I tried to argue and reason myself out of it, but it was no go. I didn't even know who she ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... proof, Captain, no more than smoke; and the family up at Mardykes wouldn't allow the king to talk o' them like that, sir; for though they be lang deod that had most right to be angered in the matter, there's none o' the name but would be half daft to think 'twas still believed, and he full out as mich as any. Not that I need care more than another, though they do say he's a bit frowsy and short-waisted; for he can't shouther me out o' the George while I pay my rent, till nine hundred and ninety-nine year be rin oot; and a man, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... his daughter's arm hung on his own, stalk'd by; The blushing "Alice" veils her face from "Julian Peveril's" eye: "Alack-a-day," 'Daft Davie' cries—"come, follow, follow me, We'll strew his grave with cowslip buds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... what d'ye mean?" shouted Mr Macdougall, when he had recovered from the surprise which the unexpected order of the boatswain, so rapidly carried out, had caused. "Are ye gone clean daft?" ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Mrs. Crook, in merry disdain. "Dicky Darrah never dares oppose Evvy—let alone his wife. Kate Darrah says it just serves Hal Willett right. It's no fault of hers that he's daft about Evvy, who's simply bent on giving him a lesson he richly deserves. When the Archers come she'll ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... in business at Louisville, early in the century; but in 1812, he failed in this venture, and moved to Henderson, where his neighbors thought him a trifle daft,—and certainly he was a ne'er-do-well, wandering around the woods, with hair hanging down on his shoulders, a far-away look in his eyes, and communing with the birds. In 1818, the botanist Rafinesque, on the first of his several tramps down the Ohio valley,—he had a favorite saying, that ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... church pulpit aboard that they were taking down to Mazatlan for some chapel or other, and this here pulpit was lashed on deck aft. Well, Billy had been most kinds of a fool in his life, and among others a play-actor; called himself Gaston Maundeville, and was clean daft on his knowledge of Shakespeare and his own power of interpretin' the hidden meanin' of the lines. I ain't never going to forgit the day he gave us Portia's speech. We were just under the tropic, and the day was a scorcher. There was mostly men ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... too," resumed the other, still wistfully. "I'd read books—if I could stay awake long enough to do it—and I'd find out what there was in 'em to make a good sensible man like Jim Blaisdell daft over 'em—and Maggie Duff, too. Why, that little woman used to go hungry sometimes, when she was a girl, so she could buy a book she wanted. I know she did. Why, I'd 'a' given anything this last year ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... who he is," she replied. "Father agrees with you. He says he talks sometimes as if he was daft, but that, I believe, is only because he is so learned. He has a house a way back in the forest, where he lives occasionally; but the greater part of the year he wanders about the ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... loved you when I picked you up in these arms nigh seven years ago. I loved you when I bandaged up that golden head o' yours. An' I've loved you—ever since. Rosie, gal, I jest don't know what I'm sayin'. How ken I? I'm daft—jest daft wi' love of you. I've tried to be honest by you. I've tried to do my duty by you—but I jest can't no longer, ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... a merchant in Edinburgh, and pretended that he had come to learn to be a farmer wi' a neighbour o' ours. He was a wild, thoughtless, foppish-looking lad, and I didna like him; but Margaret, silly thing, was clean daft about him. Late and early I found him about the house, and I tauld him I couldna allow him nor ony person to be within my doors at any such hours. Weel, this kind o' wark was carried on for mair than a year; and a' that I could ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... of the people—Abe Lincoln! You have said it now. I would as soon think of Johnnie Kongapod! A leader of the people! Are you daft? When the prairies leap into corn-fields and the settlements into banks of gold, and men can travel a mile a minute, and clodhoppers become merchants and Congressers, and as rich as Spanish grandees, then Abraham Lincoln ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... millions iv men, women, an' childher rowlin' on th' flure, hands an' feet goin', ice-picks an' hurlin' sticks, clubs, brickbats, an' beer kags flyin' in th' air! How manny iv thim was kilt I niver knew; f'r I wint as daft as a hen, an' dhreamt iv organizin' a Mickrobe Campaign Club that 'd sweep th' prim'ries, an' maybe go acrost an' free Ireland. Whin I woke up, me legs was as weak as a day old baby's, an' me poor head impty as a cobbler's purse. I want no more iv thim. Give me anny bug fr'm a cockroach to ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... at me with his rainbow countenance. 'Mr. Alan, what takes you out, rinning like daft, without ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... until they were at the mouth of the harbor that something occurred which seemed likely to turn this fine setting out into ridicule. This was Daft Sandy (a half-witted old man to whom Robert MacNicol had been kind), who rowed his boat right across the course of the Mary of Argyle, and, as she came ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... trainers can let it be, Why can't these owners abstain the same? It can't be aught but a losing game. He'll finish ninth; he'll be forced to sell His horse, his stud, and his home as well; He'll lose his lady, and all for this A daft belief ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... "Daft is a little strong, Laura. But you know that I wouldn't touch this bill if it were not for the public good, and for the good of the colored race; much as I am interested in the heirs of this property, and would like ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... replied the captain, pulling himself together after his last outbreak. "The doctor is daft about him; and besides him, as I told ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... observed in the churches. The New Year, however, is still the national holiday, and January 1 a great day for visiting and feasting, the chief, in fact, of all festivals.{24} New Year's Day and its Eve are often called the "Daft Days"; cakes and pastry of all kinds are eaten, healths are ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... Westphalia. The impoverished Baron Schnuck-Puckelig-Erbsenscheucher, a faithful representative of the narrow-minded and prejudiced nobility, lives with his prudish, sentimental daughter, Emerentia, in the dilapidated castle, Schnick Schnack-Schnurr. Their sole companion is the daft school-teacher, Agesel, who, having lost, from too much study of phonetics, the major part of his never gigantic mind, imagines that he is a direct descendant of the Spartan King Agesilaus. With these ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the man must have been clean daft to have trusted himself to one of those savage beasts of the country," said Mr. Buchanan. "And he was no so young either—about sixty, I should say. It didna look even respectable, I remember, when we met him the other day, careering over the country for all the world like one of those crazy Mexicans. ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... Your foreman here is spending every dollar in a way to make you two in spite of your daft notion—begging your pardon, sir—about not taking profits. The subscribers are coming along for stock, but fingering it gently, as though they can't well believe there's no catch in it. They say it doesn't look reasonable, and I tell them no more ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... Sullivan would not give her up to him with the good grace of a man, Mackenzie said, smiling and smiling like a daft musician, he would take her from both of them and ride away with her into the valleys of the world which she was so hungry in her ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... taking it, both the ladies must have thought, with his quick orders about the luggage and his waiting cab. Mrs Kilbannon said so. "I'm sure," she told him, "we are better off with you than with Hugh. He was always a daft ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the news, Rob? Nora's going away to be a fine lady. The Camerons have been daft about her all summer, and now they ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with him? What was going on in that closed-up head? When she had been thus two or three hours sitting opposite him, she felt herself getting daft, and longed to rush away and to escape into the open country in order to avoid that mute, eternal companionship and also some vague danger, which she could not define, but of which she ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... exuberant frolics of Meg's temper, which were to them only "pretty Fanny's way"—the dulces Amaryllidis irae. And Meg, on her part, though she often called them "drunken ne'er-do-weels, and thoroughbred High-street blackguards," allowed no other person to speak ill of them in her hearing. "They were daft callants," she said, "and that was all—when the drink was in, the wit was out—ye could not put an auld head upon young shouthers—a young cowt will canter, be it up-hill or down—and what for no?" was her ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... no twenty years," said the landlady. "It's no abune seventeen in this very month. It made an unco noise ower a' this country. The bairn disappeared the very day that Supervisor Kennedy came by his end. He was a daft dog! Oh, an' he could ha' handen' off the smugglers! Ye see, sir, there was a king's sloop down in Wigton Bay, and Frank Kennedy, he behoved to have her up to chase Dirk Hatteraick's lugger. He was a daring cheild, and fought his ship till she blew ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... dropped, her strong, body shook. She gazed at Ralph as one might look at an intimate friend gone suddenly daft. She had heard of people who lost their reason without warning. Was it possible that she was in the room with ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... a copy of this great curiosity, telling me it was silly and childish of me to be so pleased with old trash), and many more marvels, which were so little esteemed in Princeton, that one of the professors, seeing me daft with delight over my finds, told me I was quite welcome to keep them all; but I, who better knew their great value, would not avail myself of the offer, reflecting that a time would come when these treasures would be properly ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... chevalier's daughter was on the verge of hysterics, and the chevalier's prospective son-in-law, was alternately hugging the great beast-tamer and then shaking his hand and generally deporting himself like a respectable young man who had suddenly gone daft. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... a friend, who was as mad about old books and first editions, as he; a stuffy, elderly thing, who had never seen Lord Mountstuart's treasures before. As both were perfectly daft on the subject, they must have kept me lying there an hour, while they fussed about from one glass-protected book-case to another, murmuring admiration of Caxtons, or discussing the value of a Mazarin Bible, with their noses in a lot of ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... my room in the garret I've heard his futsteps comin' and gangin', comin' and gangin' doon one passage and up anither frae midnight till cockcraw. It was weary wark to lie listenin' tae his clatter and wonderin' whether he was clean daft, or whether maybe he'd lairnt pagan and idolatrous tricks oot in India, and that his conscience noo was like the worm which gnaweth and dieth not. I'd ha' speered frae him whether it wouldna ease him to speak wi' the holy Donald McSnaw, but it might ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at the hunter where he lounged against the window, a figure straight and lithe as an Indian, not tall, but gifted with a pantherish grace, and breathing a certain tawny brightness as of sunshine through pine needles. "You're daft!" he said; then after a moment, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... of the finest collection of armour in the world. We are not going to dive into these matters; we will rather say roundly, that ever since armour came to be disused, we think military men have gone clean daft in equipping themselves. Only look at the uniforms of the campaigns of the Grand Monarque or William of Orange; see what inconvenient coats those glorious fellows that won Blenheim and Ramilies wore; recollect the absurd turn-out of Charles XII., and even of Frederick the Great. Convenience ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... listening to the old woman with mingled feelings of wonder and curiosity, raised his hand to silence her. Whether she had gone daft or was more than usually excited he could ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... fact was coming on apace and climbing shadows crept round the grotesque masonry. Unheeding the lad's fear, I was strongly impelled to talk with the daft creature. It was an impulse born not wholly of idle curiosity. I felt ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... nasal whine, The wars of David and the Jews. At last the floundering carrier bore The village paper to our door. Lo! broadening outward as we read, To warmer zones the horizon spread; In panoramic length unrolled We saw the marvels that it told. Before us passed the painted Creeks, And daft McGregor on his raids In Costa Rica's everglades. And up Taygetos winding slow Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, A Turk's head at each saddle-bow Welcome to us its week-old news, Its corner for the rustic Muse, Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, Its record, mingling ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... been forever too late. If Ready saw that with his wary eye, turned now and then, as he trotted before,—if he had any terror in his dumb soul, (or whatever you choose to call it,) or any mad joy, or desire to go clean daft with rollicking in the snow at what he had done, he put it off to another season, and kept a stern face on his captive. But Yarrow watched it; it was the first home-face ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Quarrelsome f. Strouting f. Unmannerly f. Wood f. Captious and sophistical f. Greedy f. Soritic f. Senseless f. Catholoproton f. Godderlich f. Hoti and Dioti f. Obstinate f. Alphos and Catati f. Contradictory f. Pedagogical f. Daft f. Drunken f. Peevish f. Prodigal ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... while before he will make one of his empty sacks stand upright. If he were not half daft he would have left off that job before he began it, and not have been an Irishman either. He will come to his wit's end before he sets the sack on its end. The old proverb, printed at the top, was made by a man who had burned his fingers with debtors, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... was, however, driven from her thoughts by present necessities. The din and bustle of the crowded wharf, would have been sufficient to "daze" the sober-minded country-woman, without the charge of little Will, and unnumbered bundles, and the two "daft laddies forby." On their part, Norman and Harry scorned the idea of being taken care of, and loaded with baskets and other movables, made their way through the crowd, in a manner that astonished the ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... she said that I fairly stared at her, for I had thought that she could never have quite forgiven me for the way I used to carry on. That anyone out of a daft house could have liked it, was clean beyond my understanding. I thought of how when she was reading by the door I would go up on the moor with a hazel switch and fix little clay balls at the end of it, and sling them at her until I made her cry. And then I thought ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fisherman, had been lost at sea, and his mother was a poor woman, with neither energy nor gumption, who occupied a miserable shanty about a mile from the village, in which hardly a mean dwelling could be found. The woman was believed to be a little "daft," for she always hid herself when any of the town's people appeared near her shanty. She had a garden, in which she raised potatoes and corn, and kept a pig and a cow; and these furnished her subsistence, with the trifle which her son earned by odd jobs. The woman's name was Nancy Monk, and ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... Thorpe, "I don't think you ought to encourage him. He's daft enough on the subject now, and your ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... he began to make mistakes in his work; had to stay at the bank until after dark to make his books balance. He was daft about her, and every one knew it. To escape from his predicament he ran away with a widow six years older than himself, who owned a half-section. This remedy worked, apparently. He never looked at Lena again, nor lifted his eyes as he ceremoniously tipped his hat when he happened ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... this room," said the colonel. "I thought I was going daft. You're the first person who has heard it besides myself." He looked at Pinto. "A hell of a prospect, isn't it?" he said gloomily. ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... the bellows, and an unmerciful beating between my shoulders,—I, who can but with much difficulty and many a retrogression make my way among the olden mazes of tenor, alto, treble, bass, and who stand "clean daft" in the resounding confusion of andante, soprano, falsetto, palmetto, pianissimo, akimbo, l'allegro, and il penseroso,—I was bidden to Camilla's concert, and, like a sheep to ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... craft; The demagogue still schemed and lied; The patriot wept, the traitor laughed; The coward to his covert hied, And statesmen went distract or daft. ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... going on to see the most all-fired old Methuselah of a town in Yurrup, and that he guessed that so much travelling alone was enough to send an intelligent, active citizen into the melancholy ward of a daft house, we took the pretty broad hint and suggested that we should join forces. We found, on comparing notes afterwards, that we had each intended to speak with some diffidence or hesitation so as not to ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... human dools, Ill har'sts, daft bargains, cutty-stools, Or worthy friends rak'd i' the mools, Sad sight to see! The tricks o' knaves, or fash o' fools, Thou bear'st ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... o' the consequences 'at's no ashamed o' the deed. Mony ane cud du the sin ower again, 'at canna bide the sicht or even the word o' 't. I hae seen a body 't wad steal a thing as sune's luik at it gang daft wi' rage at bein' ca'd a thief. An' maybe she wadna care gien 't warna for the oogliness o' 'im. Sae be he was a bonny sin, I'm thinkin' she wad hide him weel eneuch. But seein' he 's naither i' the image o' her 'at bore 'im nor him 'at got 'im, but beirs on 's back, for ever in her sicht, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the old man; "but he's kind o' daft about the river. When he was little he was allers buildin' dams in the brook, an' sailin' chips, an' runnin' on the logs; allers choppin' up stickins an' raftin' 'em together in the pond. I cai'late Mis' Waterman ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... sheathing of various kinds put on in varied modes. The most practicable of these is a system prepared by Daft. Most iron vessels are now constructed by every other plate lapping the edges of the one between. He proposes, instead of having the plates all the same width, to have one wide and one very narrow plate. This would leave a trough between the ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... laboratory force made high holiday and scrambled for foothold on the locomotive for a trip; but the friction gearing was not equal to the sudden strain put upon it during one run and went to pieces. Some years later, also, Daft again tried friction gear in his historical experiments on the Manhattan Elevated road, but the results were attended with no greater success. The next resort of Edison was to belts, the armature shafting ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... hoos, Robert Rawling! Ye're daft! Gin you met this ganglin' assassinator, wha'd be for maister? San's no to lack a father. Gae to yer ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... stare, the drooping, drooling mouth, the unsteady gait, the sensual look, the emptiness of mind,—all these you will well remember. Did you ever stop to think how idiots are made? It is by this very vice that the ranks of these poor daft mortals are being recruited every day. Every visitor to an insane asylum sees scores of them; ruined in mind and body, only the semblance of a human being, bereft of sense, lower than a beast in many respects, a human being hopelessly lost to himself and to the world!—oh, most terrible thought!—yet ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... daft night-running will always be blank in Christopher's mind; moments and moments, like islands of clarity, remain. He brings back one vivid interval when he found himself seated on his father's gravestone among the whispering grasses, staring down into the pallid ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... eerie. In's pooch he had a plack or twa— I vow he hadna mony, Yet Andrew like a linty sang, For Lizzie was sae bonny! O Lizzie, Lizzie, bonny lassie! Bonny, saucy hizzy! What richt had ye to luik at me And drive me daft and dizzy? ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... sake, what's come over you, Peter Roney?" she exclaimed. "Are you daft? Don't make such a noise! You'll wake the young ones, and I don't want them waked till need be, with no Christmas ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... four years since. He's finished school, and teaching in his college. Silas declares you'll have to get him back. He says they two will make a team for work: Between them they will lay this farm as smooth! The way he mixed that in with other things. He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft On education—you know how they fought All through July under the blazing sun, Silas up on the cart to build the load, Harold along beside to pitch it on." "Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot." "Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream. You wouldn't think they would. How some ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... confession; but the expression on his face when informed that the man had admitted that he and Sergeant Gower were the only ones guilty of the crime—that Clancy and Gower divided the guilt as they had the money—was a puzzle to the colonel. Captain Rayner seemed daft: it was a look of wild relief, half unbelief, half delight, that shot across his haggard features. It was evident that he had not heard at all what he expected. This was what puzzled the colonel. He had been pondering over it ever since the captain's hurried departure "to tell ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... alane for that. The young lord said he was maist daft wi' luv o' me. He wanted to gie me a conny ring wi' a beautiful stone in it. But, drat it, I was sic an awpy I wudna tak it, and he a ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... firmly—"preejudice! They're no' that daft but they're well aware o' who's the cleverest physeecian in the deestrict, an' they come to nane other than Dr. Keppel Stuart when they're sair sick and think they're dying; but ye'll never establish the ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... noa doctors wi ther craft, Nor yet misen wi' scythe or shaft, E'er made as monny deead or daft, As Gin an Rum, An if aw've warn'd fowk, then they've lafft At me, ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... up before one realizes," conceded Whitewater's acknowledged social dictator. "But what I wanted to say is this: that poor daft partner of yours has mortally offended every woman in town except three, with that silly screed of his. I've seen nearly all of them that count this morning, or they've called me by telephone. Now, why couldn't he ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... disputing. Some said "it was the right thing," and more said "it was the foolish thing," and among the latter was Andrew's mother; though as yet she had said it very cautiously to Andrew, whom she regarded as "clean daft and senselessly touchy about ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... a lilac dove This Corsair desperate and daft? Behold the conning tower above The big stern chasers pointing aft! This is not he that saved mankind With pards and pigs from tempests blind, But rather he that forged a flood, And not of water but of blood, And filled with worse than ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... the younger of Germinie's sisters took her to the Rue Saint-Martin, to the house of a repairer of cashmere shawls, with whom she lodged, and who, being almost daft on the subject of religion, was banner-bearer in a sisterhood of the Virgin. She made her lie beside her on a mattress on the floor, and having her there under her hand all night, she vented upon her all her long-standing, venomous jealousy, her bitter resentment ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Lewis was noisily affectionate and hopelessly clumsy; Jim could pull splendidly when he chose, but he was up to all the tricks of the trade and was extraordinarily cunning at pretending to pull; [Page 110] Spud was generally considered to be daft; Birdie evidently had been treated badly in his youth and remained distrustful and suspicious to the end; Kid was the most indefatigable worker in the team; Wolf's character possessed no redeeming point ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... were very bad, and continually worrying the men we had shepherding. One of these was rather daft. One night the rams did not return. I got on their tracks the next day and brought them to camp, but there was no sign of the shepherd. Two evenings after we were surprised to see a couple of Myalls bringing in ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... he burst out. "Do you know, Honora, I think marriage turns certain kinds of people, the redheads in particular, quite daft. This one is never done talking about her husband, her baby, her experience, her theory, her friends who are about to marry, or who want to marry, or who can't marry. She can't see two persons together without patching up a ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... handwriting! Do you think I am as crazy as you are!" She tore the paper into shreds and scattered them from her, feeling a relief in the violence of her action. The next moment she remembered how patient her mother had always been with her daft kinswoman and seeing tears in the blurred old eyes, went to put placating arms about the other's neck. "Never mind, Cousin Parnelia," she said with a vague kindness, "I know you mean to do what's right—only we don't believe ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... returned his sister. "He's daft about San Francisco. He calls it his Golden City. I think"—she leaned nearer, "but you must not say I told you—I think he has written ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... little ken about it: For Britain's guid!—guid faith! I doubt it. Say rather, gaun as Premiers lead him, (p. 194) An' saying aye or no's they bid him: At operas an' plays parading, Mortgaging, gambling, masquerading! Or, may be, in a frolic daft, To Hague or Calais takes a waft, To make a tour an' tak a whirl, To learn bon ton, an' see the worl'. Then, at Vienna or Versailles, He rives his father's auld entails; Or by Madrid he takes the rout, To thrum ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... possessed the man! Oh, you do distress me so. How could you do such a thing, Limuel? I do believe you have gone daft. But you go right out there now and dig up them good-for-nothin' chickens and bring me that curtain. Go right ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... hurrying toward him. "That's the enclosure Milo made years ago for his experiments in evolving the 'perfect orange' he is so daft about. He's always afraid some other grower may take advantage of his experiments. So he keeps that little grove walled in. He's never even let ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... must hear it again. You must not think I am growing daft, but that song has haunted me all day in the strangest way. There is something in the way you sing it—the words and your voice together—that recall some association too faint for me to grasp. I can neither remember what it is, nor ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... never saw his like either in Heaven Or upon earth for knavery or craft:— Out of the field my cattle yester-even, 445 By the low shore on which the loud sea laughed, He right down to the river-ford had driven; And mere astonishment would make you daft To see the double kind of footsteps strange He has impressed wherever he ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... O my Father, don't kill me! I have but one child, Oh, have pity upon him! My poor boy is daft, Without wits the Lord made him, And sent him so into The world. He is crazy. Why, straight from the bath 390 He at once begins scratching; His drink he will try To pour into his laputs Instead of the jug. And of work he knows nothing; He laughs, and that's all He can do—so God made ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... na daft, I tell ye this, mother, that I be forty-six year o' age this back-end, and there be some things I will na listen to. Rosa Blencarn's bonny ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... he had assumed. If he could sustain it, if he could baffle his captors, so that they were at a loss whether he was a man really daft or an agent with promises of help and arms to the disaffected tribes of Kordofan—then there was a chance that they might fear to dispose of him themselves and send him forward to Omdurman. But it was hard work. ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... church," Mr Sharnall went on, "I don't care to practise much in the evening by myself. It used to be all right when Cutlow was there to blow for me. He is a daft fellow, but still was some sort of company; but now the water-engine is put in, I feel lonely there, and don't care to go as often as I used. Something made me tell Lord Blandamer how his water-engine contrived ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... low—no haste, no hate—the ghostly whisper went, Just statin' eevidential facts beyon' all argument: "Your mither's God's a graspin' deil, the shadow o' yoursel', Got out o' books by meenisters clean daft on Heaven an' Hell. They mak' him in the Broomielaw, o' Glasgie cold an' dirt, A jealous, pridefu' fetich, lad, that's only strong to hurt, Ye'll not go back to Him again an' kiss His red-hot rod, But come wi' Us" (Now, who were They?) "an' know the ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... a man in a motor-cawr. He speired whae had ta'en my place that day, and I let on I thocht him daft. But he keepit on at me, and syne I said he maun be thinkin' o' my gude-brither frae the Cleuch that whiles lent me a haun'. He was a wersh-lookin' sowl, and I couldna understand the ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... she replied; "and fighting between the two parts of one land is just the worst fighting there can be. Pray it may not come, Daisy; but those people are quite daft." ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... "I'm just daft when I get to the cartes," he answered in his brogue, and we fell to piquet. Now my Scot wore a very fine coat, and on the same very large smooth silver buttons, well burnished. Therefore, perceiving ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... eyes that he might not see, and he believed what his eyes told him. He saw that Pantagruel worked very hard and spent all his time at it, and yet he got no good by it. And what was worse, he was becoming daft, silly, dreamy, and besotted through it. So Pantagruel was taken away from his former masters and handed over to Ponocrates, a teacher of quite a different sort, who was bidden to take him to Paris to make a new creature of him and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to walk or ride out alone, I shall 'gang daft!' I know I shall! Was ever such a dull, lonesome, humdrum place as this same Hurricane Hall?" complained Cap, as she sat sewing with Mrs. Condiment ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... gone daft over a girl in a red hat," said young Haight, as they got up and began to walk. "Have you ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... and singing. Wherever we stopped how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody! He aye did as the lave did; never made himsel' the great man or took ony airs in the company. I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk—(this, however, even in our wildest rambles, was but rare)—but drunk or sober, he was aye the gentleman. He looked excessively heavy and stupid when he was fou, but he was never out o' gude humor." After this, we are not surprised to hear that Scott's father told ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... the mon was a bit daft," said Sandy, "when he said tae Janie, 'Mind ye sing the lessons I gie ye, an ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... "He's very daft," said the grandmother. "And what to do for him I don't know. We've nothing to eat ourselves. I might wet his foot and ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... "No, a'm no daft; ye needna be feared; but yir tae get yir first lesson in medicine the nicht, an' if we win the battle ye can set up ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... Charlie and I were in Paradise the house kept itself, and very nicely it did it too, but by the time we were ready to come back to earth the perfect servants, who had been taking such good care of themselves, and our two daft selves into the bargain, were found to be sadly demoralized. The discovery came upon us gradually. I think my husband noticed the decadence as soon as I did, but I wasn't going to invite his attention to the fact; and he, I suppose, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... spring her engagement to Bronson Perkins was announced, though everybody said they didn't see what use it was for folks to get engaged that couldn't ever get married. Mr. Perkins, Bronson's father, was daft, not enough to send him to the asylum, but so that he had to be watched all the time to keep him from doing himself a hurt. He had a horrid way, I remember, of lighting matches and holding them up to his bared arm until the smell of burning flesh went sickeningly ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... I wasn't altogether daft. But knowing where I was, I did think I could ride out to Debbleby's. So I hired the bronco and set out—and that reminds me: the horse will have to be sent back to the liveryman in Twin Buttes, ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... morning, when the starboard watch went below again, we found the poor chap daft, and babbling, and on fire with fever. The mate gave up his efforts to arouse him, and admitted to Lynch that "the damn little stock fish is a bit off color. Needs a ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... only left for him to do a decent amount of urging, and then acquiesce with dignified melancholy and go off laughing in his sleeve. What is he thinking of to stand there gazing at her downcast face as if he were daft? ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... "you see yon big black-eye deevil? The savages call him Pichou because he's ugly as a lynx—'LAID COMME UN PICHOU.' Best sledge-dog and the gurliest tyke on the North Shore. Only two years old and he can lead a team already. But, man, he's just daft for the fighting. Fought his mother when he was a pup and lamed her for life. Fought two of his brothers and nigh killed 'em both. Every dog in the place has a grudge at him, and hell's loose as oft as he takes a walk. I'm loath to part with him, ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... nuts [Coll.]. Adj. insane, mad, lunatic, loony [Coll.]; crazy, crazed, aliene^, non compos mentis; not right, cracked, touched; bereft of reason; all possessed, unhinged, unsettled in one's mind; insensate, reasonless, beside oneself, demented, daft; phrenzied^, frenzied, frenetic; possessed, possessed with a devil; deranged, maddened, moonstruck; shatterpated^; mad-brained, scatter brained, shatter brained, crackbrained; touched, tetched [Coll.]; off one's head. [behavior suggesting insanity] maniacal; delirious, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... can be known about the copy of the ballad which, in 1805, Scott received from Hogg. Up to stanza xxiv. it is as given by the two old reciters. The crazy man may be the daft man who recited to Hogg Burns's Tam o' Shanter, and inspired him with the ambition to be a poet. The deranged woman, like mad Madge Wildfire, was rich in ballad scraps. From stanza xxv. to xxxiv., Hogg confessedly "harmonises" what he got in ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... a fine scene—the swaying victoria, the impetuous, daft horses plunging through the line of scattering vehicles, the driver stupidly holding his broken reins, and the ivory-white face of Amy Ffolliott, as she clings desperately with each slender hand. Fear has come and gone: it has left her expression ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... not know), my lord," she replied, "unless, Heaven save us! he takes you for the Lord of lords. I didna think the bairn was so heathenish and so daft (foolish). You maun forgie (must forgive) ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... than a daft woman. Peter Benny sent me. He took down the news to Mrs. Purchase, and she told him where you was gone. He called out the horse-boat and packed me across ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is!" cried the soldier. "I'm going for my war bag." And before the steamboat had hove into sight he was back with his scanty bundle of baggage, behaving like one daft, talking and laughing and running here and there. Lee watched him closely, then went behind the bar and poured out a stiff glass of whiskey, which he made Burrell drink. To Gale he whispered, ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... little surprises upon them, just where the road looked blocked! The trouble is that I've no gift for organised charity. I have a pretty middling strong will of my own ("pigheadedness" Aunt Emmeline calls it!) and committees drive me daft. They may be useful things in their way, but it's not my way. I want to get to work on my own, and not to sit talk, talk, talking over every miserable, piffling little detail. No! If I play fairy, I must at least ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of the boat, as he turned shoreward, "if a fellow is daft enough to sacrifice everything else for speed, on a long cruise like this, he must expect to put up with all sorts of trouble. But I'm ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... down the swords. "Are you a' daft, gentlemen? The lad came with Balmerino. He is no spy. Put up, put up, Chevalier! Don't glower at me like that, man! Hap-weel rap-weel, the lad shall have his chance to explain. I will see ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... you did it. How can I tell you're right in your intellecks now? You see, 'twould be mighty unpleasant to have anything happen to either Puttenham or me, if we crossed you in any way. I don't feel inclined to risk it. I mind when owd Sammy Drewitt was daft. They did up a sort of a black hole, and stuck he in, and fed him through a kind of a winder in the side, and they had the place cleaned out once a month, and fresh straw littered for him to lie on. Folk ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... found her here," said Jeanne. "It was an ill bit of luck that took her away; and that Pierre, he is like to go mad about her, since these three days under one roof. I knew not he was so daft, or I had ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... 'She's been daft for gi'ein' pah-ties since ever I can mind,' Mr. Robinson put in, 'an' the Kaiser hissel' couldna stop her, Still, Macgreegor, she's an auld frien', an' it wud be a peety to offend her. Ye'll be mair at hame there nor ye was at yer Aunt Purdie's swell affair. Dod, Lizzie, ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... mile out of town he had been accosted by a big, bearded man who had yet a singularly childish look—who urged that he come to his cabin to minister to a sick friend. He knew the fellow for one that the village of Edom called "daft" or "queer," yet held to be harmless—to be rather amusing, indeed, since he could be provoked to deliver curious harangues upon the subject of revealed religion. He remembered now that the man's face had stared at him from far back in the church the night before—a face full of the ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... BELL: Does the daft beast fancy That just because he's in his own calfyard He can turn his horns on me? Michael, my son, You've got your way: and you're to be a herd. You never took to horseflesh like a Haggard: Yet your mother must do her best for ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... the forest grows; Her een the clearest blob of dew outshines; The lily in her breast its beauty tines; Her legs, her arms, her cheeks, her mouth, her een, Will be my dead, that will be shortly seen! For Pate looes her—waes me!—and she looes Pate And I with Neps, by some unlucky fate, Made a daft vow. O, but ane be a beast, That makes rash aiths till he's afore the priest! I darna speak my mind, else a' the three, But doubt, wad prove ilk ane my enemy. 'Tis sair to thole;—I'll try some witchcraft art, To break ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... nae sigh did he gie; He mounted his mare—he rade cannily; And aften he thought, as he gaed through the glen, She 's daft to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... was own brother to her—and they two and Miss Martineau are fairly scouring the place for that poor little tot Miss Daisy, who it seems 'as run away from home. Why, Hannah—Hannah Martin, woman! are you daft?" ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... Mr. Lilburn, putting himself to his utmost speed to overtake Harold in time to prevent him from plunging into the sea, "are ye mad? are ye daft? There's nobody there, lads; 'twas only Cousin Ronald at ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... that my man-servant, the ex-soldier, the old farmer you have just seen, fell madly in love with this girl, perfectly daft. The first thing we noticed was that he forgot everything, he paid no ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... at your hair, Ellie—blown wild about your ears like a daft woman's, and your kirtle all over mortar and smut. My certie, you would be a bonnie lady to be Queen of Love and Beauty ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... guid man, ye daft fule!" exclaimed Rose Cameron, in a rage. "Wha else suld I bide wi'? And noo, ye'll speer nae mair questions anent my ain preevit life, for I'll nae answer any sic. A woman maunna gie testimony in open coort against her ain husband, ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... and soul. For him, no doubt, the service, though hard, might bring some share of profit, but for the friends who gave this unselfish decision, all would prove loss. For one, Adams on that subject had become a little daft. No one in his experience had ever passed unscathed through that malarious marsh. In his fancy, office was poison; it killed — body and soul — physically and socially. Office was more poisonous than ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... "'Er? Plumb daft! Of course, as Mother 'Oward says, there 's times when she 's straight—but they don't last long. And, if she 'd given 'er testimony in writing, Mother 'Oward says it all might 'ave been different, and we 'd not 'ave 'ad anything to ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... comes again, With maddened fury; fierce its eyeballs glare. It rides upon the monarch's pointed spear; The scales the point have turned, and broke the haft. Then as a pouncing hawk when sailing daft, In swiftest flight o'er him drops from the skies, But from the gleaming sword it quickly flies. Three hundred warriors now nearer drew To the fierce monster, which toward them flew; Into their midst the monster furious rushed, And through their solid ranks resistless pushed To slay Heabani, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... floor; and after a resentful whisky at the Royal, where they laughed at his scrooging bushy eyebrows, fierce black eyes and his deadly-in-earnest denunciation of all humbugs and imposters, he returned to the aforesaid van, let down the flaps, buttoned the daft and "feekle" world out, and himself in, and then retired some more and slept, as I have said, rolled in his blankets and overcoats on a bed of cushions, ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... queried Uncle Terry, suddenly interested. "Telly's daft on doing that, an' is at it all the time she can git!" Then he added with a slight inflection of pride, "Mebbe ye noticed some o' her picturs in ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... Phemie, "but she's fair off her heid. Dae ye ken she's just like a daft body. Did you see the look in her e'en?" and so they discussed poor Mag, who had drawn their attention by the strangeness ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... Mariquita, impatiently, "we all know thou art daft about that witch! And we know how she looks. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... this way, lassock: Ah've jist got to mak' ma' way in the warld. Wully is a kind brither, but the hoose is too fu' already. An' the bairns are aye merryin' here an merryin' there, an' yon daft Peter 'll be bringin' yon harum-scarum girl o' yours in ane o' thae days—not but that she's a guid honest lass, but ah dinna see whit he wants wi' an Eerish thing like yon; an' the land jist owerrun wi' guid Scotch lassies that ye ken ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... her. One moment he said to himself that he was the happiest of men. In the next he cursed himself as the most wretched. And so alternately smiling and cursing, he wandered about the village during those last days of January like one daft, too much absorbed in the inward struggle to be more than half ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... round hastily, his hands busy with the rope, and saw in the doorway the figure of Daft Jimmy, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... is mad, your Highness. I don't say but what a trifle of madness is salt to a man; but O'Toole's clean daft to be firing his pistols off to let the whole world know who we are. Here are we not six stages from Innspruck, and already ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... "It's surely daft the man is!" remarked Myra to the ceiling, before looking again into the bright eyes of her partner. "Pardon me, Don Carlos, but you are carrying your extravagant nonsense too far," ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... race Esther walked through the streets like one daft, stupidly interested in the passers-by and the disputes that arose between the drivers of cabs and omnibuses. Now and then her thoughts collected, and it seemed to her impossible that the mare should win. If she did they would have L2,500, and would ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... woundit?" says I. "I've lost ma wee whustle," says Sandy McGraw. "'Twas oot by yon bing where we pressed the attack, It drapped frae ma pooch, and between noo and dawn There isna much time so I'm jist crawlin' back. . . ." "Ye're daft, man!" I telt him, ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... unexpected was the movement, that, though the fall of the cord was the simplest thing in the world, a visible quiver passed through the bowed ranks of the bearers. "It was his ain boy Wattie come to lay his faither's heid i' the grave!" cried Daft Jess, the parish "natural," in a loud sudden voice from the "thruch" stone near the kirkyaird wall where ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... hundred dollars; but for the King's sake it should go for two. So the King got the block and traveled home with it. He bade guests again, made a feast, and set the pot on the chopping-block in the middle of the room. The guests thought he was both daft and mad, and they went about making game of him, while he cackled and chattered around the pot, calling out, "Bide a bit! Now it boils, now it boils ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... does," Holati said. "But when he starts in on those subjects, I find him difficult to follow." He looked soberly at Trigger. "There are times," he confessed, "when I suspect Professor Mantelish is somewhat daft. But probably he's just so brilliant that he keeps ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... lass!—But what's this aboot Francie?' 'Ow naething, father, worth mentionin! The daft loon wud hae bed me ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... he reflected, "she always had that combination of something homely and sensible, and something utterly wild and daft. But I never thought she'd do anything. She hadn't much ambition then, and she was too fond of trifles. She must care about the theatre a great deal more than she used to. Perhaps she has me to thank for something, after ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... do. An' I feel it's my place t' tell you that it ain't a bad chance fur you. Mark's a steady, slow fellow, but he ain't lackin'. You're dreadful giddy an' don't take t' house ways. Mark's father is the best housekeeper I know on. He's sort of daft; but all the sense he has left is gone t' cookin' an' managin' a house. He ain't old an' the soft-headed kind last longer than keener folks: it would fit int' your ways right proper. Mrs. Jo G.'s girl couldn't stand it. She is so brisk an' contrivin', an' Mrs. Jo G., being right here on hand, ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock |
