"Daft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reasonable, but he is crack-brained and cockle-headed about his nipperty-tipperty poetry nonsense. A bare crag wi' a burn jawing over it is unto him as a garden garnished with flowering knots and choice pot-herbs. And he would rather claver with a daft quean they call Diana Vernon, than hear what might do him good all the days of his life from you or me, or any other sober and sponsible person. Reason, sir, he cannot endure. He is all for the vanities ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... into competition. "It's cutting off his nose to spite his face! Why is he so anxious to be the only carrier in Barbie that he carries stuff for next to noathing the moment another man tries to work the roads? It's a daft-like thing ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... 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
... 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 ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... 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 ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... dyer, staring at me with his rainbow countenance. 'Mr. Alan, what takes you out, rinning like daft, without ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... "The mon's daft—clean daft, mon!" "Be me sowl, it's the only pair of eyes I iver wouldn't like to look at over me saw-handled friend, Joe Manton!" "He's taken the box with him," ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... Then came this stunning surprise in my discovery next day, and a week of great indecision and distress. Now, of course, the inspiration of the villany is captured, though more than ever do I suspect Celestine as being confederate, or possibly principal actor. She has been utterly daft the last four days and constantly haunting the post-office for ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... rose, took his stick, and went out, to the great astonishment of the others, who thought him daft. He ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... things which is the business, not of the Church, but of the State.... Individual synods have passed prohibition resolutions. Individual pastors have gone entirely too far in this matter. They are fanatical on the subject. Some have almost gone daft over the liquor problem." (L. u. W. 1917, 465.) The Home Missionary, December, 1916, declared that what the Lutheran Church teaches in reference to the separation of Church and State is "rot" and ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... believe we can do it; yet I have only one indisputable fact for a starter. That is why I want you to tell me whether I'm growing daft or simply adventurous. Mr. Gryce, I don't trust Brotherson. He has pulled the wool over Dr. Heath's eyes and almost over those of Mr. Challoner. But he can't pull it over mine. Though he should tell a story ten times more plausible than the one with which he has satisfied the coroner's ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... has her mother with her. Alice has embraced Theosophy and spells her name "Alys." She always is interested in something new and advanced, and whenever I meet her I am prepared to go into ecstasies over a plan to save men's souls by electricity, or something equally speedy in the moral line. She is daft on ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... 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 sea, I'm just like ane o' her ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... back door. The daughter got possession of this key while the mass was being celebrated, and entered the house. The priest's servant had laid the cloth in advance, so as to be free to attend mass, and the poor daft girl hurriedly removed the tablecloth and napkins and hid them in the manor-house. When mass was over the theft was detected at once, and caused very great surprise, the first thing noticed being that the linen alone had been taken. The ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... 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)
... daft, Lord Malcolm,' replied the Squire, retaining his hold on the boy's bridle; 'what, rin your head into the wolf's mouth again, when we've barely brought you off haill ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lord Carrick. "If I were only twenty years younger, and she'd not turn up her nose at me for a big daft of an Irishman, you'd not get her, me lad. She's the sweetest little thing I have come across this many ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "Bluff is 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 ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... "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
... 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
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... ye?' he growled in an undertone. 'Do ye call that steering, ye gomeril? Run her by Daft Sandy's boat? It is no better than a cowherd you are at ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... plied his 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
... rash only for himself. "Now who is daft?" he retorted. "The Catawba himself could never run that gantlet and ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... say You've lost your senses and both gone clean daft! I've let you fight it out to the end o' the chapter To see how far the thing could go. Oho, there, ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... 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
... 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 ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... daft, sweetheart? The goods of which you gave the list this morning, which have but now come in on the Golden Horn," spake up Catherine, sharply. I marvelled as I heard her whether it be ease or tenderness of conscience which ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... Lena until 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 ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... single week Wad mak a daft-like diary, O! I drave my cart out owre 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 pleugh, An' pleugh the drills ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... 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 pensive and ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... assuredly have laid one or other of us by the heels, and either would have been tantamount to both. As I gave Raffles a headlong lead to the baize door, I glanced down the great well of stairs, and up came the daft yells of these ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... 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
... reproachfully. "I've no use at all for cheap comforts o' that kind. What's the sharpest pangs, after all, balanced against . . . the other thing? Lighter than vanity itself; an' you know it. None better. But there . . . I'm clean daft to be talking so at this stage o' the proceedings. It's the happy woman I am, sure enough. Geoff and I are rare good friends. Always have been. But don't you talk to me again about being spared. It's one more than I can ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... thet mean?" growled Hank Kildare, as he leaped up from the couch on which he had been reclining lazily. "What derned fool is punchin' away at thet thar button like he hed gone clean daft! Hyar ther ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... 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 his old ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... Pocketbook has money, On that subject he is daft; But when one strikes him for a loan He answers, ...
— Fun and Nonsense • Willard Bonte
... mon was a bit daft," said Sandy, "when he said tae Janie, 'Mind ye sing the lessons I gie ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... turn 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] maniacal; delirious, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... as if he were half daft then, but he answered: "Yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am, certainly, ma'am, no danger at all, ma'am." Then he went on ordering the men: "A leetle more to the right, ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... some daft natives lingered about the site of the town of Taal till the last, and two men were sepulchred in the Government House ruins. A woman left her house just before the roof fell in and was carried away by a flood, from which she escaped, and was then struck dead by ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... 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 ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... 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 far back in the church the night before—a face full of the liveliest ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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 ...
— The Honest American Voter's Little Catechism for 1880 • Blythe Harding
... a writer; there could be no doubt about that. Everybody had noticed it. The Vicar had said, "Johnny will never do any good at Polwollop, I fear"; and the farmer for whom John scared rooks had said, "Thiccy la-ad seems daft-like," and one after another of Mrs. Penquarto's friends had given similar testimony. And now here he was, at twenty-six, in the little bed-sitting-room in Bloomsbury, ready to write the great novel which should take London by storm. Polwollop ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... brought 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 old volumes which ought to have ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... her reproaches, with the comparative sang-froid of one who knew that, after all, he was the only carrier on the road, and that the vicarage was five miles from the necessaries of life; 'it's a bad job, and I's not goin' to say it isn't. But ya jest look 'ere, mum, what's a man to du wi' a daft thingamy like that, as caan't teak a plain order, and spiles a poor man's business as ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... might be two. I'm no reckoner of time, that keeps its own score like an innkeeper, without my help. Lawks! how he did gallop off, working those long spurs he wore right into the ribs of the horse. And little wonder, poor man, and he daft, not being able to speak, but only to bleat sheeplike, and fallen upon by robbers on the king's roads, and in broad daylight. But Billy cut him loose and caught his horse and set him on it, and got this piece for his good charity. Lawks! ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... encountered in fiction, and I at once classed it with Stendhal's "Chartreuse de Parme" and Dostoievsky's "Crime and Punishment" as one of the supreme marvels of the world. Nevertheless, certain aspects of it puzzled me. When I mentioned it to friends I was told that I had gone daft about it, and that it was not a major work. Happening to meet Mrs. Garnett, the never-to-be-sufficiently-thanked translator of Tourgeniev and of Tolstoy, I made inquiries from her about it, and she said: "It is his masterpiece." We were then separated by a ruthless host, with ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... which the track rails form part of the circuit, a considerable increase in the tractive adhesion of the driving wheels is manifested, due to the passage of the return current from the wheels into the track. In the Baltimore and Hampden electric railway, using the Daft "third rail" system, this increased tractive adhesion enables the motors to ascend without slipping a long grade of 350 feet to the mile, drawing two heavily loaded cars, which result, it is claimed, is not attainable by steam or other self-propelling motors of similar weight. In the two ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... round hastily, his hands busy with the rope, and saw in the doorway the figure of Daft ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... would shee had bestowed this dotage on mee, I would haue daft all other respects, and made her halfe my selfe: I pray you tell Benedicke of it, and heare what he ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... same class o' stone as the specimen Henderson found in the back paddock twelve years ago, that sent everyone daft after a ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... Clara, ye see, there'll be nobody to see that his lordship pits on dry stockings; and he's always getting over the tops of his water-boots, being young and daft, as we've all been, and no offence to you; and to tell you truth, I can stand all temptations—in moderation, that is, save an' except the chance o' ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... fine 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, and it just means that when ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Deppingham, arising and lighting a fresh cigarette, "you have gone clean daft. You're loony with love. You've got marriage on the brain. I'd advise you to ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... sufficed to make 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 ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... hare, poor fellow, And should be in chains," you say. I haven't a doubt of your statement, But who isn't mad, I pray? Why, the world is a great asylum, And people are all insane, Gone daft with pleasure or folly, Or crazed with passion ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... that this young man was daft, but it was not his business to say so; he took down his erratic customer's address and said that all his instructions ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... reading not to esteem the Life for one of the best of books. But he was also a master of the art of brilliant and picturesque misrepresentation; and he did not neglect to prove that the Life is only admirable because Boswell was contemptible. It was, he argued, only by virtue of being at once daft and drunken, selfish and silly, an eavesdropper and a talebearer, a kind of inspired Faddle, a combination of butt and lackey and snob, that Boswell contrived to achieve his wretched immortality. And in the same way Boswell's hero was ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... how! this was the last happy summer that we had for many a year in the parish; and an omen of the dule that ensued, was in a sacrilegious theft that a daft woman, Jenny Gaffaw, and her idiot daughter, did in the kirk, by tearing off and stealing the green serge lining of my lord's pew, to make, as they said, a hap for their shoulders in the cold weather—saving, however, the sin, ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... Humphrey now thought that his customer had indeed gone daft, and was beginning to repeat an old nursery rhyme that ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... that improbable that there'll be a marriage in the church before long. Perrowne's just clean daft and infatuated with his occasional soprano. He's sent her the 'Mirror of Devotion' and the 'Soul's Questioner,' and a lot of nicely bound trash, and walks home with her whenever he has the chance, to the scandal and rage of all his ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... great fuss about bairns, till I cannot be surprised at anything they say or do, but the joy of the father over the wee Emily was beyond anything I ever saw. To see the great bearded man taking the hour-old infant in his arms, kissing it over and over again, and speaking to it in the most daft-like language, and calling on every one to admire its beauty! No doubt the bairn had as much beauty as a thing of that age can have, but I don't think any of the men he showed it to admired it much. I know Powell, for one, when he came with his master's ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... 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 you. A mattress Under a roof; and sheep to keep you ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... blazed; "are you plumb daft to stickle for little niceties now? I tell you I just helped to pick up Judge Amidon and his son, murdered in their own hayfield not three miles from here, the boy as full of arrows as a cushion of pins. This ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... tresor, I wish that I could take you flying with me this evening. You'd be daft about it! Lots of it's a rotten bore, of course, but there's something in me that doesn't live at all when I'm on this too, too solid earth. Something that lies there, crouched and dormant, waiting ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... Such sternness as her letter betrayed was not characteristic of her; she didn't understand, and never would. Catherine's step awoke him; the awaking was painful, and he couldn't collect his thoughts enough to answer Catherine; and feeling that he must appear to her daft, he tried to speak, but his speech ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... I do 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; and to overflow my cup of misery, he contrived ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... either laughing or roaring 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 ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... Scott is turned renegade, and, with his stories made up of half-and-half, like Nathaniel Gow's toddy, is trying to throw cold water on the most certain, though most impalpable, phenomena of human nature. The bodies are daft. Heaven mend their wits! Before they had ventured to assert such things, I wish they had been where I have often been; or, in particular, where the Laird of Birkendelly was on St. Lawrence's Eve, in the year 1777, and sundry times subsequent ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... with Scotland, will enjoy a record of the quaint sayings and eccentric acts of her past humorists,—"her original and strong-minded old ladies,—her excellent and simple parish ministers,—her amusing parochial half-daft idiots,—her pawky lairds,—and her old-fashioned and now obsolete domestic servants and retainers." Indeed, the Yankee is sufficiently allied, morally and intellectually, with the Scotchman, to appreciate everything that illustrates the peculiarities of Scottish ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... 'Daft or 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 ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... Humboldt after a brief investigation of the Esmeralda mines. He had been paying heavy assessments on his holdings there; and, with a knowledge of mining gained at Unionville, he felt that his personal attention at Aurora might be important. As a matter of fact, he was by this time fairly daft on the subject of mines and mining, with the rest of the community ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... spice an' bloom: "M'Andrew, come awa'!" Firm, clear an' 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 Leevin' God, ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... mouth twitched. "I'm an auld man," he cried, "and I canna see ye a' again. There's burns and mair burns in the high hills that I'll never win to." Then he remembered my presence, and stopped. "Ye maunna mind me," he said huskily, "but the sicht o' a' thae lang blue hills makes me daft, now that I've faun i' the vale o' years. Yince I was young and could get where I wantit, but now I am auld and maun bide i' the same bit. And I'm aye thinkin' o' the waters I've been to, and the green heichs and howes and ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... daft. She was waving aloft a copy of the Times, and scarce could speak for excitement. But she managed to point to a ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... "I'm not daft about voting myself," Mostyn laughed, "and to save my life I can't be enthusiastic about ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... 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 ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... for the cause wi' them slippery rascals o' dragoons and their Laodicean commander, of whom I have my ain thoughts. I fear me, indeed, to say what I have found, and what I am suspecting, for ye hae reason to conclude that my head is full o' plots, and that broodin' ower treachery has made me daft." ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... "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 to have ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... other person, in any other circumstances whatever, equalled that which overcame the thin cheeks of the disconsolate seneschal when he beheld this accession of guests to the castle, and reflected that the dinner hour was fast approaching. "Is he daft?" he muttered to himself;—"is he clean daft a'thegither, to bring lords and leddies, and a host of folk behint them, and twal o'clock chappit?" Then approaching the Master, he craved pardon for having permitted the rest of his people to go out to ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 from the emperor? And how ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... 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 like that does one good. She was a daft, ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... 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 ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... somewhat suspicious of their recruit at first, but he went on industriously with his task, and made no attempt to communicate with anybody. They soon saw that he was an expert workman, and a quiet, innocent, half-daft, harmless creature, so he was given other things to do, such as cleaning up their rooms and going errands for beer and ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... for them in what constituted their life. Failing to do this, why should a line of my books be read? Who reads a modern novel from sense of duty? There are classics which all must read and pretend to enjoy whether capable of doing so or not. No critic has ever been so daft as to call any of my books a classic. Better books are unread because the writer is not en rapport with the reader. The time has passed when either the theologian, the politician, or the critic can take the American ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... It's daft when chaps that sit i' Parliament Weant tak advice frae lads that talk farm-twang; If t' coontry goes to t' dogs, it's 'cause they've sent Ower mony city folk to mend ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... 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 of ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... 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 who ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... ken (do 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 ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... ones now," muttered the old Manxman. "One daft with strength, the other daft with weakness. But here's the end of the rotten line—all dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best have a new line altogether. I'll see Mr. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... honest siller by Black Michael for the using of ma face and figure—sic time as his Majesty is tae worse frae trink! And I'm commeesioned frae Michael to ask ye what price YE would take to join me in performing these duties—turn and turn aboot. Eh, laddie—but he would pay ye mair than that daft beggar, Spitz." ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... 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 ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... her cousin observed, sauntering up to her side as soon as the recital was ended. "They say that this Thayer is daft upon the subject of him. Anyway, he manages to interpret him fairly well. What did ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... 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 ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... found him deid i' his bed early this morrow. She's come up to tell ye, an' to ask gin' ye can spare me to go and gi'e a haun', for that puir witless body, Mr Anthony Parmenter, seems all but daft." ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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 dose ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... grief to see him lying in his coffin, with closed hands upon his purple vestments. His face had not changed, and, as he never knew he was dying, it showed no pain or fear. It was Amory's dear old friend, his and the others'—for the church was full of people with daft, staring faces, the most exalted seeming ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... regard her with respect, and on no account to smile at anything odd in her appearance or behaviour. "Poor Miss Barnicroft" she was generally called, though Andrew spoke less politely of her as the "daft lady." ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... therefore, and come yourself to me with few attendants. For I will judge between you, if you have any blame to impute to each other, and I will compel the party at fault, however unwilling, to grant justice." Lavinius wrote the following reply to Pyrrhus: "You seem to me, Pyrrhus, to have been quite daft when you set yourself up as judge between the Tarentini and us before rendering to us an account of your crossing over into Italy at all. I will come, therefore, with all my army and will exact the appropriate recompense both from the Tarentini and from you. What use can I have for nonsense ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... rantin' wicked wit; Are thy works, thy fame livin' yet? Will thae daft people never quit An ne'er ha'e done Disturbin' me in my black pit ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... landlord. 'I beg your pardon, my lord; I didn't know it was your lordship,' he added, hurriedly. 'We're in sore trouble, and it makes a man daft-like; but if there's anything we ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the matter?" said Mr. Menteith, sharply. "You're gone daft, man;" for the big Highlander was trembling ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... 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 ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... daft aboot her,' observed McIntosh, querulously; 'and she's ganging tae look all thro' the toun tae find the puir ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... you don't all but drive me daft!" she said, flinching from a twinge of neuralgia and raising her voice querulously. "Why can't you take yourselves off and give me some rest? Nannie, you and Jake go out to the old oak and see if all the turkeys air up. Be sure and count 'em—and take Jubal (the youngest) 'long with you. If you ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... 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, ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... 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. "Let's talk about ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... 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
... predictions of so 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 equally demented. But the thing came about; and if those gentlemen ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... about something; do anything! only don't stand there and stare at me, as if you had gone daft!" ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... "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 for ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... 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 bowl ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... 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 ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not till the morning of the second day that Edward learned the whole history of this reconciliation, which had at first been so welcome to him. It was Daft Davie Gellatley, who, by the roguish singing of a ballad, first roused his suspicions that something underlay Balmawhapple's professions of regret for ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... 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 no ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... daft," he asked, "like a' the lave o' thae puir bodies? When I go into that wild it will not be in a crowd like this or on such a sordid mission. Ah! my old friend, they'll be spoiling ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... 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 ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... intellectual exploitation than any writer. It is a ruinous process—for the poet. "He so well repays intelligent study." That is it, unfortunately. There are many, like the old Scotch lady who attempted to read Carlyle's French Revolution, who think they have become "daft" when they encounter a passage such as, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... 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 ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 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
... oot 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. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... capable 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
... their back bones never so stiffly on the throne, well know the rascals, to be at bottom royal good fellows; capable of a vinous frankness exceeding that of base-born men. Was not Alexander a boon companion? And daft Cambyses? and what of old Rowley, as good a judge of wine and other matters, as ever sipped claret ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville |
