"Crack-brained" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with, "The big thing the Legion's got to teach is Americanism and let those crack-brained fools know just what this country stands for." While still another injected, "The average 'long-beard' has been so crazed by persecution in Russia that he would mistake Peacock Alley in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York for a Siberian ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... some pictures on the walls, and there are yellow stains where others hung. Where are they? for I think I heard a man say he bought them on account of their handsome frames, from that crack-brained officer at Cucumber Lake; and he shut his eye, and looked knowing and whispered, 'Something wrong there, had to sell out of the army; some queer story about another wife still living; don't know particulars.' Poor Dechamps, you are guiltless of that charge ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... captain steering the schooner and listening with greedy ears to every word which fell from my lips, as, seated directly fronting him, my back supported by the binnacle, I read in a clear and distinct voice, and with due emphasis, the crude absurdities of a crack-brained religious enthusiast. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... inquisitive gentleman. "Never!" replied the Baronet, with a pensive shake of the head: "I never saw him again." "And pray what has all this to do with the picture?" inquired the old gentleman with the nose—"True!" said the questioner—"Is it the portrait of this crack-brained Italian?" "No!" said the Baronet drily, not half liking the appellation given to his hero; "but this picture was inclosed in the parcel he left with me. The sealed packet contained its explanation. There was a request on the outside that I would not open it until six ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the building of it, or those that inhabit it, were the maddest? and, whether the name and thing be not as disagreeable as harp and harrow." By another—the no less facetious Ned Ward—it was termed, "A costly college for a crack-brained society, raised in a mad age, when the chiefs of the city were in a great danger of losing their senses, and so contrived it the more noble for their own reception; or they would never have flung away so much money to so foolish a purpose." ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... let us hear the wise man's reasoning for it:—'for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart; sorrow is better than laughter, for a crack-brained order of enthusiastic monks, I grant, but not ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... they are all crack-brained," thought Mrs. Cliff, as she went to the front door to ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... 'Lusty Stukeley' (the name was spelt in several ways) was far from among the worthiest of his family, but distinctly the most entertaining. His ideas were certainly 'spacious' enough for the great days in which he lived, though he was too crack-brained and full of self to fall into line with his betters, whose deeds still bear rich fruit. 'He was,' says Fuller severely, 'one of good parts, but valued the less by ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Frenchman" was smiling, too. He had elaborated the scheme already discussed with Winter. It was much to his liking, though unorthodox, rather crack-brained, more than risky, and altogether opposed to the instructions of the Police Manual. Each of these drawbacks was a commendation to Furneaux. In fact, the Steynholme mystery had taken quite a favorable turn during that talk ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... in France. This bit of diplomacy was so cheap and successful that Louis Philippe tried it again, this time on Russia. His government favored a plot, hatched in Paris, for the freeing of Poland. Espronceda, who had not yet had his fill of crack-brained adventures, enlisted in this cause also, desiring to do for Poland what Byron had done for Greece; but the czar, wilier than Ferdinand, immediately recognized Louis Philippe. The plot was then quietly rendered innocuous. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... or indiscretion become vicious. According to Socrates, love is the appetite of generation by the mediation of beauty. And when I consider the ridiculous titillation of this pleasure, the absurd, crack-brained, wild motions with which it inspires Zeno and Cratippus, the indiscreet rage, the countenance inflamed with fury and cruelty in the sweetest effects of love, and then that austere air, so grave, severe, ecstatic, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... declivity, because I knew I was a good swimmer, into a lake; but, like a blockhead, never perceived that I should get stunned by the shelving of the rock, and consequently drowned. And for what, truly? Why to prove to a vapouring, crack-brained French Count, that he was a coward; because perhaps he had not learned to swim! When I look back I have absolutely no ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... it was abandoned. The relief act excited discontent in England, and protestant fanatics, encouraged by the success of their party in Scotland, agitated for its repeal. A protestant association was formed, a crack-brained member of parliament, Lord George Gordon, was made president, and a petition for the repeal of the act was ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... to his eldest son, "Let our followers be ready to repel this gross affront." The General's eye danced in telling it. The thing of the firing had been done—nobody was hurt—nobody was in fact in hostile array; and far less was the party itself alarmed. It had been some crack-brained Indian, I believe Sassaba, who yet smarted at the remembrance of the death of his brother, who was killed with Tecumseh in ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... shipbroker, with a half-indulgent, half-humorous glance. "Anything to get rid of you. It's a crack-brained scheme, and could only originate with a young man whose affections have ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... the mystery, to go back home. It did not enter my head that I might be shot as a burglar. My original intention, you must remember, had only been to stop the works of the ghost. It was later on that my intention became criminal, instead of merely boyish, or, in other words, crack-brained. As to stopping the ghost, I could not stop the revolving pipe. I could do no more than take away the light from the ghost-face. As for the owl on the lower floor, when I came to it, could not do so much, for it was a great big picture on board, done in some shining paint. I had nothing with ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... affection his selfish nature allowed. And Benneville returned it frankly, in his open boyish fashion. They were ever together, and their adventures and daring escapades more than once nearly threw them into serious trouble. But what cared they, crack-brained as they were? Why, on one pitch dark night, masked and mounted, my Lords Kenneth and Benneville held up the Royal Mail, frightened the passengers almost to death, and alarmed the whole countryside; sober folk who ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... reiterated protestations, he has put up our very priests at auction and sold them off to the highest bidder, in order that his Huguenots might have on whom to wreak at leisure their diabolic hatred. He thinks himself King of France; it is a malady common to the crack-brained to fancy themselves kings of the first realm they spy and to fashion them seigniories in the air. Beware trusting ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... again and eyed me darkly, and then went on in his crack-brained way, "What is life but a challenge to pretense, a constant exercise in duplicity, with so few that come to master it as an art? Every one goes about with something locked deep in his heart. Take yourself, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... girl," she said, "you are not going to be so... crack-brained... as to stand here... arguing and contracting... rheumatism, lumbago... and other absurd complaints... when you know PERFECTLY well that we had already arranged to go... to supper!" She turned to the smiling Max. "This girl needs... DRAGGING ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... me darkly, and then went on in his crack-brained way. "What is life but a challenge to pretense, a constant exercise in duplicity, with so few that come to master it as an art? Every one goes about with something locked deep in his heart. Take yourself, Captain Barnaby. You have your ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... to me what Krespel had to do with violins, and particularly with Antonia. "Well," replied the Professor, "not only is the Councillor a remarkably eccentric fellow altogether, but he practises violin-making in his own crack-brained way." "Violin- making!" I exclaimed, perfectly astonished. "Yes," continued the Professor, "according to the judgment of men who understand the thing, Krespel makes the very best violins that can be found nowadays; formerly ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... beautiful Serafina, to whom Don Fernando was betrothed. He was one of those perverse, matter-of-fact old men who are prone to oppose every thing speculative and romantic. He had no faith in the Island of the Seven Cities; regarded the projected cruise as a crack-brained freak; looked with angry eye and internal heart-burning on the conduct of his intended son-in-law, chaffering away solid lands for lands in the moon, and scoffingly dubbed him Adelantado of Lubberland. In fact, he had never really relished the intended ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... loudly, "do maintain the good sense and extraordinary wisdom of that most learned William against the crack-brained fantasies of the muddy Scotchman, who hath hid such little wit as he has under so vast a pile of words, that it is like one drop of Gascony in a firkin of ditch-water. Solomon his wisdom would not suffice to say what ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the world for a poor, simple, well-meaning, half-witted, crack-brained fellow. People were strangely surprised to find him in such a roguery—that he should disguise himself under a false name, hire himself out for a servant to an old gentlewoman, only for an opportunity to poison her. They said that it was more generous ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... it came, saw, to their unspeakable astonishment, the old prime minister turning a somerset in the air. He got up, walked a few steps, and went head-over-heels again; while the fairies, ready for any fun, thought he had become crack-brained and was doing it on purpose, ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... indifferent, others he had known only socially. Yet others had withdrawn themselves from him more and more of late. He had attributed it to their envy or their folly. He suddenly thought of old Dr. Templeton. He had always ignored that old man as a sort of crack-brained creature who had not been able to keep up with the world, and had been left stranded, doing the work that properly belonged to the unsuccessful. Curiously enough, he was the one to whom the unhappy man now turned. Besides, he was a ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... reputation in the whole surrounding vicinity of a dangerous, crack-brained fellow, haughty and quarrelsome in the extreme. He had served a very short time in the army, and had retired from the service through 'difficulties' with his superiors, with that rank which is generally regarded as equivalent to no rank at all. He came of an old family, once rich; his forefathers ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... were socialists, or communists, who, like those of the present day, wished to abolish private property, and establish "an equal division of unequal earnings," while others declared and acted out their belief in the coming end of the world. Eventually Cromwell had to deal with these crack-brained enthusiasts in a decided way, especially as some of them threatened to assassinate him in order to hasten the advent of the personal reign of Christ and ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... the men, just another five hundred," replied the Commissioner, tapping the map before him with his finger, "we should hold this country safe. But what with these restless half-breeds led by this crack-brained Riel, and ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... forsooth! The shame of her has gone throughout the land. She is no maid, but a witch, a light-of-love, a blasphemer. By the Rood, Sir Guy, you choose this instant between me and your foul peasant. A daughter of Beaumanoir does not share her lover with a crack-brained virago." ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... put the Bootees on your foot, Elope with Virgo, strive to shoot That arrow of O'Ryan's, Drain Georgian Ciders to the lees, Attempt what crackbrained thing you please, But dream not you can e'er appease An angry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various |
