"Daft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... daft! Don't bother, my dear Beryl. If he tries to leave me this funny old place, instead of Aubrey, well, there are two can play at that game. I wouldn't touch it with a barge-pole. You and A. have only got to stick it a little, ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 folk aboard, and we ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... ken about it; For Britain's gude!—guid faith! I doubt it! Say rather, gaun as Premiers lead him, [going] And saying ay or no's they bid him! At operas and plays parading, Mortgaging, gambling, masquerading. Or maybe, in a frolic daft, To Hague or Calais taks a waft, To make a tour, an' tak a whirl, To learn bon ton an' see the worl'. There, at Vienna, or Versailles, He rives his father's auld entails; [splits] Or by Madrid he takes the rout, To thrum guitars and ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... 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. "Let's ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... his bark hovel; Damper, his unleavened bread baked in the ashes; Billy, his tea-kettle, universal pot and pan and bucket; Sugar-bag, his source of saccharine, a bee-tree; Pheasant, his facetious metaphoric euphism for Liar, quasi Lyre-bird; Fit for Woogooroo, for Daft or Idiotic; Brumby, his peculiar term for wild horse; Scrubber, wild ox; Nuggeting, calf-stealing; Jumbuck, sheep, in general; an Old-man, grizzled wallaroo or kangaroo; Station, Run, a sheep- or cattle-ranch; and Kabonboodgery—an ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... '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 ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... what's this aboot Francie?' 'Ow naething, father, worth mentionin! The daft loon wud hae bed me promise to merry ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... drives it from him o'er the plain, And now with spreading wings it 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, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... 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
... Dravel, are ye gane by yoursel?" cried Willy Coggle from the front of the loft, a daft body that was ayefar ben on all public occasions—"to think that our God's a Pagan image in need of sick feckless help as the like o' thine?" The which outcry of Willy raised a most extraordinary laugh at the ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... least—no, you were not there; but those looking on must have seen me get ahead of him within view of the starting-point; soon after that I lost sight of him. The river winds, you know; and of course I thought he was coming on behind me. Very daft of me, not to divine that the ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... replied 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 Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... 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
... as gospel," said Mrs. Shairp, touched by the ring of pain that came into the young man's voice as he spoke. "At half-past eight, by the clock, they brought the laird hame stiff and stark, cauld as a stane a'ready. The mistress is clean daft wi' sorrow; an' I doot but Mr. Brian will hae a sair time o't wi' her and the bonny young leddy ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... 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
... you that bad I jest want to marry you. Guess I've loved you right along. I 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, 'cos ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... that 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 ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... in Dickson memories of his youth, and he was prepared to be friendly. But the ancient would have none of it. He inquired morosely what he was after, and, on being told remarked that he might have learned more sense. "It's a daft-like thing for an auld man like you to be traivellin' the roads. Ye maun be ill-off for a job." Questioned as to himself, he became, as the newspapers say, "reticent," and having reached his bing of stones, turned rudely to his duties. "Awa' hame wi' ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... I 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 forget it. I have tried to get ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... his sisters pulled his curls and he did not feel it, his father brought a stick down on his back and he only started and stared, and his mother cried because he was losing his mind and would grow daft, and even his mother's tears he scarcely saw. He was always thinking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... that he told them he heard a raven speaking, and another raven answering him: the people laughed him to scorn, and kicked him out of their assemblies, as a one who spoke evil of dignities; and they called him a warlock, an' a daft body, to think to mak language out o' ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... 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 ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... toward Felton Falls to preach there. A 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 ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... Humphrey now thought that his customer had indeed gone daft, and was beginning to repeat an old nursery ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... shindig—tin 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 ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... be plum daft ef ye didn't stay away," remarked the Kentucky sheriff with a sharp and bellicose glance at his colleague from another state. "Virginny officers hain't got no power of arrest ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... 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 occupants and no more, the castle resembles ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... would care for't. Ye see, man, it's defiance. There's a sair spang o' the auld sin o' the warld in you sea; it's an unchristian business at the best o't; an' whiles when it gets up, an' the wind skreights—the wind an' her are a kind of sib, I'm thinkin'—an' thae Merry Men, the daft callants, blawin' and lauchin', and puir souls in the deid thraws warstlin' the leelang nicht wi' their bit ships—weel, it comes ower me like a glamour. I'm a deil, I ken't. But I think naething o' the puir sailor lads; I'm wi' the ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... better 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
... has. He just can't bear what's said about us any longer —and I don't wonder! He done his best, and so's we all. The public have just gone daft—in the West End, that is, to-day. As for the papers, well, they're something cruel—that's what they are. And the ridiculous ideas they print! You'd never believe the things they asks us to ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... yielded the toaster, looking speculatively over her spectacles at her would-be helper. Here was another man gone daft, or apparently so. Then ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... not know: what they said I have told you. I incline to the opinion that they thought I might be a little daft—I am sure I must have looked so at times, from sheer sleeplessness and exhaustion. Or they thought I had no chance of establishing the truth, and would be better off to submit quietly. At all events, not one encouraged me to resist Mr. Seabrook; ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... hazardous than it naturally is. Doubtless the contesting of wills is a nuisance, generally speaking, the contestant conspicuously devoid of moral worth and the verdict singularly unrighteous; but as long as some testators really are daft, or subject to interested suasion, or wantonly sinful, they should be denied the power to stifle dissent by fining the luckless dissenter. The dead have too much to say in this world at the best, and it is monstrous and intolerable tyranny for them ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... West smilingly. "There's a heap more sense in being daft over a decent game like golf than in going crazy about football. ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... 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 up, ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... people come together again, what kind of a story will Karen tell her husband about you—what'll he think of you—what'll your friends think of you—if they all find out that in addition to behaving like a wild-cat to that poor child because you were fairly daft with jealousy, and driving her away—oh, yes you did, Mercedes, it don't do any good to deny it now—if in addition to all that they find out that you've been trying to save your face by blackening her character? Why, they'll think you're the meanest skunk ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Carlisle! Did any one ever hear the like? It would be a wild-goose chase, even if a man hoped to come to speak with a King in his palace at the end of it; but for thee to go such a journey in order to speak but for a few moments with a man thou dost not know, and in prison, it is nothing but a daft notion! What ails ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... 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
... quoth Kitty. "Where are the men nowadays, grandma? Save for the redcoats, and I am not so daft over Sir Henry Clinton's gay officers as some—no doubt't is my Quaker blood—except for the officers, where are our gallants? Some of mine are up the Hudson beyond the neutral ground, others ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... 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 ...
— 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
... 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 ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... woman looked fondly at her boy. "Ask her, then, Jamie; ask her, and give her the chance. She's a daft creature, but bonny; and you love ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... 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
... resumed, "was on the train with Scarborough when he went East to the meeting of Congress last month. He tells me it was like a President-elect on the way to be inaugurated. The people turned out at every cross-roads, even beyond the Alleghanies. And Burbank knows it. If he wasn't clean daft about himself he'd realize that if it hadn't been for you—well, I'd hate to say how badly he'd have got left. But then, if it hadn't been for you, he'd never have been governor. He was a dead one, and you hauled him out ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... 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 we have ...
— 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
... yesterday and last night. But I can't for the life of me see why you oppose it. He's really a tremendous catch, and it's no wonder Bobby's head is turned. We are all a bit daft over him since he condescended to ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... of the public gratitude. He was acclaimed from every corner of Great Britain as the national hero. The City of London presented him with a two hundred guinea sword, and a vote of thanks to himself, officers and men. There was much prayer and thanksgiving, and several women went as daft as brushes over him. One said her heart was absolutely bursting with all sorts of sensations. "I am half mad," says she, and any one who reads the letter will conclude that she understated her mental condition. But of all the many letters received by Nelson none surpasses ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... 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
... frae 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 ha' been a ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... travelled round the parish upon a hand-barrow, circulating from house to house like a bad shilling, which every one is in haste to pass to his neighbour; she, who used to call for her bearers as loud, or louder, than a traveller demands post-horses, even she shared the same disastrous fate. The "daft Jock," who, half knave, half idiot, had been the sport of each succeeding race of village children for a good part of a century, was remitted to the county bridewell, where, secluded from free air and sunshine, the only advantages he was capable of enjoying, he pined and died in the course ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... thing," Mrs. Henley said, and she turned away, angrily. "I know you are simply daft—you've lost every grain of sense ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... you cudn' tell mun from real, 'cept by the weight. The very nex' day, findin' as hes Minorcy were layin' for a brood i' the loft above the cowshed, he takes up the true egg while the old fowl were away an' sets a porc'lain egg in place of et. In cou'se, back comes the hen, an' bein' a daft body, as I told 'ee, an' not used to these 'ere refinements o' civilizashun, niver doubts but 'tes the same as she laid. 'Twarn't long afore her'd a-laid sax more, and then her sets to work ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of 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
... 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 old volumes which ought to have been eaten up by moths ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... like, and no one the wiser why. When last he come home, after being away a whole day, he seemed to me daft like,—quite," says Mrs. Nesbitt, raising her eyes and hands, whose cozy plumpness almost conceals the well-worn ring that for twenty years of widowhood has rested there alone, "quite as though he had took ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... shamefu'—aye was it! Affrontin' a man like mysel', I'm thinkin' ye're daft, for what ails ye Is past comprehension ...
— Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus • Violet Jacob
... intended to destroy the place because of its sin, and told him to gather all his family together and leave at once. Lot spoke to his "sons-in-law, which married his daughters," but they appear to have thought him daft. Early in the morning "the angels hastened Lot" who still lingered. They laid hold of his hand, his wife's, and his two unmarried daughters', led them outside the city, and said, "Escape now for thy life; ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... Mr. Daft—No, sir; I will tell you why. It would, if no other element than the simple resistance of the arcs opposed the passage of a current; then a machine that would produce an inch arc in one light, if placed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... thoo," she said, "thoo'rt as daft as a besom. Thoo hes made a botch on't, thoo blatherskite. Stick that in thy gizzern, and don't thoo go bumman aboot like a bee in ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... the late Dr Norman Macleod of Glasgow, "old" Norman that is, not the Barony Doctor, but his father:—When a boy in Morven, of which parish his father was minister, there was a well-known character in that part of the country called "Eoghann Gorach Chraigan Uibhir," Daft Ewen of Craig-an-Ure in Mull, a born "natural," who, although a veritable "fool," had yet in him much of the quiet, keen-edged satire and roguery which is not unfrequently found in the better ranks of such "silly ones." ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... three millions in her own right, and Leslie is as daft over him as she is. Leslie and my father are the ones who backed ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... daft on the subject. If she had her way, father would never put a drop of wine on the table. She says it is ruining the county—but that's ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... daft on the subject of oysters, all right. He never seems to tire of eating them in season, and yet he says he never picked one up on the spot where it grew. He seems to be coming back, Frank!" exclaimed Jerry, who was working with some fishing tackle that he had found aboard, and which Cousin ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... must be deaf, dumb, and blind not to know it. Do you suppose I believed that a man at your time of life, brought up as you have been, had suddenly gone daft on this Salvation ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... lifted his hand, and they strained their ears. "I've done that by the hour since you left and the daft gold-diggers went up trail after you. The other fellas feel it, too. Don't know what we'd have done without Kaviak. Think we ought to keep that ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... the master of the Peak hounds avoid the neighborhood. The farmers in Monsaldale, led by Jo, agreed among themselves that if it would only come on a snow, they would assemble and beat the whole country, and in defiance of all rules of the hunt, get rid of the 'daft' fox in any way they could. But the snow did not come, and the red-haired gentleman lived his life. Notwithstanding his madness, he did not lack method. He never came two successive nights to the same farm. He never ate where he killed, and he never left a track that betrayed ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Mysie!' exclaimed Mrs. Halfpenny at the same time, 'ye're daft! Gae doon canny, and keep your apron on, for if I see a stain on ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... never forget it. I thought, when the police ran down stairs and left me with him, that I was talking to Mr. Narkom. I think I nearly went daft with terror when I found out that ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... hamelike," she said, going closer, "it will be brave weather on Solwayside the noo. I mind when it would hae driven me out to play amang the wreaths like a daft year-auld collie—. Aye, and I am no sure that I wad not like a turn the noo—not o' that saft stuff that will melt and be gane the morn's mornin', but the fine kind that sifts up your sleeve and down your neck!—But for ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... 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 did ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Frankfort, and casually remarked that he was 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 appear too eager, such not being a good compliment to the success of our married ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... sae the auld carle spiel'd up the craft, And raved and stamp'd like ane gane daft, Till tears trickled owre his burning chaft, Sin' he couldna win my lo'e. "Far better be single," the folk a' said, "Than a warming pan in an auld man's bed;" He will be cunning wha gars me wed, Wi' ane that I never can lo'e; Na, na! he maun be a fine young lad, A canty lad, an' a ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 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 for ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... who barest leg calf, better to suggest * For passion madded amourist better things above! Towards its lover cloth the bowl go round and run; * Cup[FN526] and cup bearer only drive us daft with love."[FN527] ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... 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
... ne'er before had seen That royal porch, that high-built fair demesne; So in they hurried all, maz'd, curious and keen: Save one, who look'd thereon with eye severe, And with calm-planted steps walk'd in austere; 'Twas Apollonius: something too he laugh'd, As though some knotty problem, that had daft 160 His patient thought, had now begun to thaw, And solve and ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... it green; and along the dell, first of one, then of another, of these, the road, for a considerable distance, descends into this fortunate valley. The song of the waters and the familiar disarray of boulders gave us a strong sense of home, which the exotic foliage, the daft-like growth of the pandanus, the buttressed trunk of the banyan, the black pigs galloping in the bush, and the architecture of the native houses dissipated ere it could ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his hands. "Trouble!" he cried. "Why I'm simply daft with it! Look at that!" He pointed to the farthest ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... 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 ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... in the crush in the dark theyre always trying to wiggle up to you that fellow in the pit at the Gaiety for Beerbohm Tree in Trilby the last time Ill ever go there to be squashed like that for any Trilby or her barebum every two minutes tipping me there and looking away hes a bit daft I think I saw him after trying to get near two stylishdressed ladies outside Switzers window at the same little game I recognised him on the moment the face and everything but he didnt remember me yes and she didnt even want me to kiss her at the Broadstone going ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... had it! They considered him a little daft and wanted to cure him of his fixed idea. That would explain the visit to the theatre and also Femke's alleged unwillingness to come with Uncle Sybrand. But—how did she dare to interfere with the policeman? And the greeting ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... haythen rubbish and cussing. The pore fule's daft wid the hate and the dust and the welt I give him. Shure it's the way I have to be sorry ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... picturs too?" 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 ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... cried 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
... not trade a pelt— Saying, "We go to see The Great White Father in his own tepee— Heap, heap much rum!" And then they passed the pipe of peace, And puffed it, and looked glum. The traders thought the redskins must be daft; They saw the huge canoes, And, wondering at their use, Asked, "What will you do with these?" And the chief pointed east across the seas; ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... one's head; drive one 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] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... more of conscious ethical purpose than he went on, and his banter is poor. But when once we enter the village of Tully-Veolan, the Magician finds his wand. Each picture of place or person tells,—the old butler, the daft Davie Gellatley, the solemn and chivalrous Baron, the pretty natural girl, the various lairds, the factor Macwheeble,—all at once become living people, and friends whom we can never lose. The creative fire of Shakspeare lives again. The Highlanders—Evan ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 if I could 'a' got interested—really ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... the lad gane daft? God has gien to some men wisdom and understanding, to ithers the art o' playing on the fiddle and painting pictures. There shall be no painting, fiddling Crawford among ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... was daft about pretty women," continued Baird. "I never read an item about a pretty woman in the papers, or saw a picture of a pretty woman that I didn't wish I knew her—well. Can you imagine that?" ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... give it to, so I give it to you. It can come on quite sudden like, if you want it, and then you can hear what you choose and not hear what you choose. Do you see?" She leant nearer and whispered, "You're shut out of it all—of having to fetch and carry for 'em, answer their daft questions and run their errands like a dog. I've watched you, my lass. You don't get much peace, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... afterwards he met Dyck Calhoun. "Michael," said Dyck, "things are safe enough here, but we've prepared! The overseers, bookkeepers and drivers are loyal enough. But there are others not so safe. I'm going to Salem-riding as hard as I can, with six of our best men. They're not so daft at Salem as we are, Michael. They won't know how to act or what to do. Darius Boland is a good man, but he's only had Virginian experience, and this is different. A hundred Maroons are as good as a thousand white soldiers in the way the Maroons fight. There are a thousand of them, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... 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 all. Sometimes a little jolt ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... this single week, Would mak' a daft-like diary, O! I drave my cart outow'r a dike, My horses in a miry, O! I wear my stockings white an' blue, My love 's sae fierce an' fiery, O! I drill the land that I should plough, An' plough the drills entirely, O! ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... fool!" thought Gubblum. "He's as daft as a besom." Then Gubblum remembered with what lavish generosity he had bribed the pot-boy to no purpose. "He cover't a shilling dammish," he thought; "I'll dang ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... 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 ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... 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
... an' now my patient steps That maiden's walks attend; My vows had reach'd that maiden's ear, Ay, an' she ca'd me friend. An' I was bless'd as bless'd can be; The fond, daft dreamer Hope Ne'er dream'd o' happier days than mine, Or joys ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... her, but I don't imagine Calliope was thinkin' much about her at the time. Hangin' round the bed was a little boy—the livin', breathin' image of Calvert Oldmoxon himself. Calliope was mad-daft over children anyway, though she was always kind o' shy o' showin' it, like a good many women are that ain't married. I've seen her pick one up an' gentle it close to her, but let anybody besides me come in the room an' see her an' she'd turn a regular ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... 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 ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... hooker should be, Take 'eed you don't ship with a skipper that drinks— You'd better by half play at fan-tan with Chinks!— For that'll mean nothing but muddle an' mess, It may be much more and it can't be much less, What with wrangling and jangling to drive a man daft, And rank bad dis-cip-line both forrard and aft, A ship that's ill-found and a crew out of 'and, And a touch-and-go chance she may never reach land, But go down in a squall or broach to in a sea, For them drunken skippers—they're ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... he did not shut his 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 ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... lift was lowerin dreary, The sun he wadna raise his heid, The win' blew laich and 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
... just where you're wrong," piped old Luke Evans in his cracked voice. "That gas can't be analyzed, because it contains an unknown isotope, and, as for yourself, you're nothing but a daft old ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... broke in, rather nervously, 'Miss Stella, dearie, you must not be angry with David; it's my fault as well as his; we only wanted to save you both worry and annoyance; and so it would, for you would never have known aught about it but for David bringing them in here. He must be daft, after my telling him he was to be sure and keep ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... are you daft. What wild nonsense are ye talkin' about. And you to be married at Christmas and everythin' settled about ...
— The Turn of the Road - A Play in Two Scenes and an Epilogue • Rutherford Mayne
... morning, and said he seed a big vessel nigh under the cliffs toward midnight, or fancied he seed her: but fustly Jonathan's a buffle-head, and secondly 'twas pitch-dark; so if as he swears there weren't no blue light, 'tain't likely any man could see, let alone a daft fule like Jonathan. But, there, 'tain't no good for to blame he; durn Government! say I, for settin' one man, and him a born fule, to mind seven mile o' coast on a night when an airey mouse cou'dn' see his hand ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 two wide plates of the ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... "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
... time I saw 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 ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... the American people are not born idiots. They saw through the whole of this Electoral Commission business, and they kept quiet. They were enraged, however, to think these politicians could imagine them so dead daft. I think, too, at one time they were within an ace of letting themselves out. If they had, there would have been ...
— The Honest American Voter's Little Catechism for 1880 • Blythe Harding
... "The crater's daft; But wow! he has the claik; Lat's see gin he can turn a han' Or only luik and craik. It's true we maunna lippen till him— He's fairly crack wi' pride; But he maun live, we canna kill him— Gin he can work, he s' bide." He ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... a complete goose I had made of myself; but, though I had been most foolish, thanks to a sober, Puritanic ancestry, I still had myself in hand; my hysterics had been occasional and secluded, and I was not wholly gone daft. I could recover; I would! and then, if ever he came to my feet, he would learn that some things don't rise, ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... thought that he might be equal to them, and might prove, though certainly a new, yet perhaps a stimulating, type of professor. But knowing the nature of his public reputation, especially in Edinburgh, where the recollection of his daft student days was as yet stronger than the impression made by his recent performances in literature, he was well aware that his candidature must seem paradoxical, and stood little chance of success. The election took place in the late autumn of the same year, and he was defeated, receiving ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an old wifey, quite a character in the village, being surprised by a disguised face suddenly thrust in at the window, looked up and after a moment's pause exclaimed, "Oh, it's jist that daft callant Andra Carnegie." She was right; my grandfather at seventy-five was out frightening his old lady friends, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... Gordon, "that the puir deil's deed, and that we'll hae to pit up wi' Ebie Farrish. Na, na, Jock's maybe daft, but ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... 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
... course, was to see King George. But King George, as it happened, was daft just then; and George his son reigned in his stead, being called the Prince Regent. Weary days did Dan'l air his heels with one Minister of the Crown after another before he could get to see this same Regent, and 'tis to be supposed that the ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mentioned his superstitious belief in the ring. I said that I was not afraid of losing money, as the Captain offered me more than my usual scale of prices; but the Captain's story and his great superstition led me to think that he was a "wee bit daft," and that there was ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... she could not possibly reverse this mental operation and be sure of the result. The ladies of Pettybaw House said that the occurrence was as Fifish as anything that ever happened in Fife. The kingdom of Fife is noted, it seems, for its "doocots [dovecotes] and its daft lairds," and to be eccentric and Fifish are one and the same thing. Thereupon Francesca told Mr. Macdonald a story she heard in Edinburgh, to the effect that when a certain committee or council was quarreling as to which of certain Fifeshire towns should be the seat of a projected lunatic ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... makes he with 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 wolves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... the matter wid Dora Mayhew than there is wid me, 'cept one," said a red-cheeked maid of "laundress row," to the eager group about her. "She's been daft about that young dude Rawdon ever since he came last ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... thought the man daft. What on earth (I asked myself) was this nonsense about Sabugal and a barber's shop? I had not been near Sabugal; as for the barber's shop it sounded to me like a piece out of the childish rigmarole about cutting a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie. Some fleeting ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... meaning of this, Peg Macllrea? Are you so daft with your fighting that you hustle ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... yer 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 ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 'Face the music like a man,' I said, 'and get out of it what you can.' I could see by his eyes that he was honin' to come back, but he was almighty afraid, I reckon mostly on Amada's account. He's plum' daft about her—and I don't know as I blame him very much—and he told me he had planned to ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... many wise men. Whoever, in 1862, or even in 1863, would have told us that we should see even what we see in these seats by which I stand—such a representation of interests acting together, would be accounted, as our Scotch friends say, 'half daft'; and whoever, in the Lower Provinces, about the same time, would have ventured to foretell the composition of their delegations which sat with us under this roof last October, would probably have been considered ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... 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 her boy's ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... to be; that's the question." Whether 'tis nobler in the Confederacy to suffer the pangs of unappeasable hunger and never-ending trouble, or to take passage to a Yankee port, and there remaining, end them. Which is best? I am so near daft that I cannot pretend to say; I only know that I shudder at the thought of going to New Orleans, and that my heart fails me when I think of the probable consequence to mother if I allow a mere outward sign of patriotism to overbalance what should be my first consideration—her ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... a hint reaching the governor's ears to that effect was amply sufficient. The manager, however, was of a different sort, he hated football like poison. He even relegated the grand game to a pastime suitable for pure and unadulterated lunatics, those, as he put it, "who were too daft to get into Gartnavel." Fancy that! Woe betide the unfortunate half-back or forward, who in a weak moment relied on the magnanimity of "Sour Plums," as he was called, to let him off to a match, without first ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... were never cut out for one another," he remarked at last. "It was a daft-like marriage." And then, with a most unusual gentleness of tone, "Puir bitch," said he, "puir bitch!" Then ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... doubt, just as a child enjoys a fairy-tale, knowing perfectly well all the time that it is not true. People in her own sphere said her mind was touched: the common people about her affirmed without hesitation that she was "daft." She rode no more, but she kept all the horses and dogs as usual. She cultivated a taste she had for antiquities; she wrote poetry—- ballad poetry—which people who were considered judges thought well of; and flinging these and other things into the awful chasm that had been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... I was but a crazy dreamer lying captive, wounded and weak in a pirate cave. Oh, yes, I know very well what my fine gentlemen dabblers in the new sciences will say—the fellow was daft and delirious—he had lost grip on reality and his fevered wits mixed a mumble-jumble of ancient symbolism with his own adventures. But before you reduce all this great universe to the dimensions of a chemist's crucible, I pray ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... of the 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, ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... continued. "Once upon a time, I would have gone to ascertain, but my old arms can now scarcely paddle a boat across the voe, and were I to attempt to go, and the tide catch me, I might be swept helplessly out to sea. It might not be a bad ending for the puir auld daft bodie, you'll be saying, cousin, and a wonder it had never happened before. But I've some work to do before that time, Hilda. 'The prince will hae his ain again! The prince will hae his ain again!' and before long too, let me ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... returned from a conference, boldly proposed the name of Horatio Seymour. The delegates, hushed into silence by the dominating desire to verify rumours of an impending change, now gave vent to long, excited cheering. "The folks were frantic," said an eye-witness; "the delegates daft. All other enthusiasms were as babbling brooks to the eternal thunder of Niagara. The whole mass was given over to acclaims that cannot even be ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander |
