"Duffer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a duffer. You behaved as if you expected the poor child to propose to you herself. I've been trying to make you see it for the last three and a half years, and you wouldn't. There never was such a chap for not seeing what's ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... up and down Loch Tay, while the rods fish for themselves. The angler's only business is to pick them up if a salmon bites, and when this has gone on for a few days, with no bite, Influenza, or a hard frost with curling, would be rather a relief. This kind of thing is not really angling, and a Duffer is as good at it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... me too, and they got me; they peppered me till I fell; And there I scribbled my message with my life-blood ebbing away; "Now, Billy, you fat old duffer, you've got to get back like hell; And get them to cancel that order before it's the dawn ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... to what?" she cried. "Parliament?—after that? You boy! you sentimentalist! you—you duffer! Do you think I'd let you do it for your own sake even? Do you think I want you—spoilt? We should come back to mope outside of things, we should come back to fret our lives out. I won't do it, Stephen, I won't do it. End this if you like, break our hearts and throw them away ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... right, grumble, grumble! Dawdling duffer, he sprawls across the well in one of his infernal aesthetic attitudes, picks the best swim, and girds at us who have to handle the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... sounded a little awed. He had a great respect for Fallacy Street. "Oh, they won't have any room for me," said Harry, laughing. "I'm an awfully stupid old duffer. I haven't read anything at all, except a bit of Kipling—'Barrack-room Ballads'—seems a waste of time ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... in E. D. Ah, I saw how it was done—but it would take too long to explain it now. I have seen it so well performed that you couldn't spot it. But this chap's a regular duffer! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... in London, you know. Some English spirit will perhaps be mixed. But I must not tell you the secrets of the trade till you join us. That Bios is distilled from the bark of the Duffer-tree is a certainty." ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Horn. Madge has told us all about you. Excuse my rig—we are short of men on the farm, and I took hold. I'm glad of the chance, for I get precious little exercise since I left college. You came from East Branch by morning stage, I suppose? Oh, is that your trunk dumped out in the road? What a duffer I was not to know. Wait a minute—I'll bring it in," and ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Bud, across the head of the herd, "yer could slap that old duffer across the face with your hat, ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... here. I‘ve been dining with a stupid old Senator. They told me he would be amusing, but I’ve been bored to death.’ Which reminded me of my one visit to England, when I heard a young nobleman declare that he had been to ‘such a dull dinner to meet a duffer ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... by a hostile eye have been regarded as slightly double. For the rest I was strong and fairly well—not much inclined to exercise, to be sure, but able, if occasion offered, to wield a tennis racket or a driver with a vigor and accuracy that placed me well out of the duffer class. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... and being detected, he put a bold face on it, stepped on the deck and slammed the door behind him. Lady Victoria was somewhat surprised to see him tread the slippery deck with perfect confidence and ease, for she thought he was something of a "duffer." But Barker knew how to do most things more or less, and he managed to bow and take off his sou'wester with considerable grace in spite of the rolling. Having obtained permission to smoke, he lighted ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... New Edition The Confessions of a Duffer A Border Boyhood Loch Awe Loch-Fishing Loch Leven The Bloody Doctor The Lady or the Salmon? A Tweedside Sketch The Double Alibi The ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... of you, I might come to you and say—two and two are four—let us go into partnership. But then, you see," he went on briskly, "the odds are I may never even have two thousand. Perhaps I'm as much a duffer in music as in other things. Perhaps you'll be the only person in the world who has ever heard my music, for no one will print it, Mary Ann. Perhaps I shall be that very common thing—a complete failure—and be worse off than even ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... in the whole kit of it. And first and foremost, 'tain't a bit likely the old man 'ud ha' been sich a duffer." ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... (not counting a few chaperons lying about loose) in a motor-car for a week, passing through the loveliest country in the world, and can't make her forget for his sake some other fellow she's known only a few hours longer, must be a born duffer. This ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... he resumed, "so that was the way you worked it. Wouldn't that make the doctor mad, though—what was the old duffer's name, anyway? You did tell me, but I've got such a poor memory—now, yours is good, I'll bet ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... Well, the old duffer whose watch was ticking inside my waist that very minute! Yes, sir, the same red-faced, big-necked fellow we'd spied getting full at the little station in the country. Only, he was a bit mellower than when you grabbed his chain. Well, he ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... round. 'Look at that! Well, if you're so cross you needn't, but you must be a duffer if you don't care to see what's coming round ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... without the stroke of a piston or the crunch of a paddle-wheel or a pound of steam. Nothing but grit and man-muscle to drag them a small matter of two or three thousand miles up the current of the most eccentric old duffer of a river ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... DUFF, M.P., to be Governor of New South Wales is a "positive" good, seeing that they might have appointed "a comparative Duffer." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
... show the possibility that many a duffer was led toward the production of the homunculus by erroneous interpretation of the procreation symbolism occurring in the alchemistic writings. It was merely necessary, in their limitations, to take literally one or another of the methods. ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... his ear-drums. "If she sold in a year all the pretty little pictures she paints it would barely pay for her gowns. No, that won't do. But," and a new note crept into Penfield's voice, "did you see that old duffer who was with her? That's where she shows her discretion. He is kept very much in the background. It is only occasionally that she appears ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... right," he said, "but Molyneux is a shocking duffer. We'll give you an easy place. We have some early callers, ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... would be verra unpleasant, Tonald," said Dougall, with a humorous glance from the corners of his small grey eyes, "but I duffer with ye in opeenion." ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... liveliest manifestations of appreciation. "Coming back to-night—that's what made me late—Jim Turner, who's poormaster now, called me in. Said he had something to tell me. It seems there was a queer old duffer spent one night there a while back —Jim thought it must have been a month ago. He has a secondhand bookshop in Washington, and he came to the poorhouse to look at some old books they have there—thought they might be valuable. ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... me. You see Ross will have to read the letters, and how can you say in every other line you love me, with that duffer reading ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... rid of my stock quite a while ago, an' counted on givin' Snip a chance to run in the park. The poor little duffer don't have much fun down at Mother ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... wrote to them in a famous letter, "you have crucified my God and you want my life too; I warn you that I will not be such a duffer as He was and that I will cut off your fourteen hundred ears. Accept my boot on your ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... will be if Bluff ever drops down into those claws. Why don't the duffer shoot? I can't stand it much longer, ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... in his brother's eyes. He smiled weakly, the anger gone. "Same old blind duffer you always were. I wrote an answer to her letter. In that letter I told her ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... word of what they've told you, Mr. Snelling," laughed Robert Morton. "Our friends are always over-indulgent to our faults. When I begin work under you, a thing I am greatly anticipating, you will find out what a duffer ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... you young duffer,' said Oswald, who could now smell the coffee. 'All that isn't History it's Humbug. Come on ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... most of his bigger works—the symphonies, the German Requiem, the Serious songs he wrote in his later days—he sacrificed the beauty he might have attained to the expression of emotions he never felt; he assumed the pose and manner of a master telling us great things, and talked like a pompous duffer. An exception must be made: one emotion Brahms had felt and did communicate. It was his tragedy that he had no original emotion, no rich inner life, but lived through the days on the merely prosaic plane; and he seems to have felt that this was his tragedy. Anyhow, the one ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... proceeds. The first thing, then, is for each man to peg off his claim. That done, you can work the properties conjointly under the supervision of a committee, pay the gross takings into a common account, and divide the profits. In this way the owner of a duffer claim participates equally with the owner of a rich one. In other words, there is less risk of failure—I might say, no risk at all—but also much temptation. Such a scheme would be quite impossible except amongst ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... "No, you haven't, you duffer!" put in young Bawdrey, with a laugh. "You've got eight fingers—eight fingers and two thumbs. This bony Johnny has nine fingers and two thumbs. That's what makes him a freak. I say, dad, open the beggar's box, and let ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... up, you old duffer!" he answered irritably. "Can't you ever learn anything after all your long association with me? If you can't do anything else right, at least keep still, and don't ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... shoot!" said Jack to Mrs. Graves; "I'm a perfect duffer beside him; he shot four-fifths of the bag, and there's a perfect mountain of rabbits to ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... megaphone asked for me, and when I requested the name of 'the party speaking,' as Clarke says, it replied with an oily chuckle, exactly like the old duffer, 'It's ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... how few in the front rank shew'd, How endless appeared the tail, On the brown hill-side, where we cross'd the road, And headed towards the vale. The dark-brown steed on the left was there, On the right was a dappled grey, And between the pair, on a chestnut mare, The duffer who writes this lay. What business had "this child" there to ride? But little or none at all; Yet I held my own for a while in "the pride That goeth before a fall." Though rashness can hope for but one result, We are heedless when fate draws nigh us, And the maxim holds ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... of the whole business was that the little duffer in the bus, who was attached to that troop, thought that Tyson was the hero of the occasion. He was strong on troop loyalty if on nothing else. So far as he was concerned (and he was very much concerned) Tyson had saved the lives of every scout in those two troops. Subsequent circumstances favored ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... believe in first, you'll believe in the other automatically—I'm not a bit clever, Louis. I never was. Always I get puzzled, always I realize how utterly unlearned I am. Always father called me an idiot and threw things at me for it. But in spite of being a duffer I'm ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... hiding-place when one of my comrades was shot dead; shortly after, my other comrade was badly wounded, and I lay down and hid the whole day till dark, when I got back to the laager." This would go to prove that, comparing him with the Boer, the British infantry soldier is not such a duffer with his weapon as some of those in authority were in ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... augmentation. No one felt alarm at their absence. The inhabitants of Foss River were a self-reliant people—accustomed to look to themselves for the remedy of a grievance. Besides, Horrocks, they said, had shown himself to be a duffer—merely a tracker, a prairie-man and not the man to bring Retief to justice. Already the younger members of the settlement and district were forming themselves into a vigilance committee. The elders—those ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... down upon it His head is sheltered by a bonnet; And though it makes him look a duffer, He hasn't half the heat ...
— A Horse Book • Mary Tourtel
... him seem old. He looked at Teeny-bits' new friends with a kindly twinkle in his eyes and told them that they were all "lucky boys to go to such a fine school" and advised them to "study hard so as to be smart men." If he had not been Teeny-bits' father, they might have thought he was a queer old duffer. ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... for man to creep up within the killing range of modern, high-power, long-range rifles. Is it not pitiful to think of animals like the caribou, moose, white sheep and bear trying to survive on the naked ridges and bald mountains of Yukon Territory and Alaska! With a modern rifle, the greatest duffer on earth can creep up within killing distance of any of the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... the fishes alone should have him. He had been a very second-rate helmsman while alive, but now he was dead he might have become a first-class temptation, and possibly cause some startling trouble. Besides, I was anxious to take the wheel, the man in pink pyjamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at the business. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... mother. If I get into a chest, you may depend I shall know how to get out of it. That girl in the poem was a duffer for not having made more row; and her lover was a beastly sneak for ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... duffer pays fare," said the other. "There'll be a freight along pretty soon, and she stops at the water tank just below here. Why don't you ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... up with my poor game, I should enjoy playing immensely. But," she added smiling confidently and regarding him with her large, steady brown eyes, "I don't intend to remain a duffer at it long. I see," she continued after a moment, "from your expression, Mr. Randall, that you doubt this. I could tell from the ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... Dolly; 'stupid little duffer. We won't have him this time. And, mother darling, I want to dance all the time; and it's my own party. Dancing is enough—it is really,' she pleaded in a pretty frenzy of impatience. And Dolly got her own ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... reprisal I never came across! But it's clear if you can't shoot with that drilled arm of yours you can't play the concertina. Wish I could knock a tune out of the thing, Leash, for your sake—enough to make a Boer put his head up. But I'm a duffer at musical instruments—always was. What do you say, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... rushing of floods in their courses, The rattle of rain on the roofs Recalled the fierce rush of the horses, The thunder of galloping hoofs. And soon one broke out: 'I can suffer No longer the life of a slug, The man that don't race is a duffer, Let's have one more ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... severe bullying at a previous school. He was an able boy, of literary and artistic tastes, and almost painfully conscientious. He was very shy; always thought that he was despised by other boys; and was a duffer at games, which he avoided to the utmost. With my present experience I should have known him to be a victim of self-abuse. Then, I did not suspect him; and it was not until he was leaving at eighteen for ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... crank on mother's part," returned Malcolm loudly; his eyes were bright with excitement. "It was the loveliest thing you ever saw, Anna. The princess was a beauty, and no mistake; even Charles thought so, and he has seen princesses by the score. I am glad I went; the boys won't think me such a duffer when I tell them. Don't shake your head, Anna; you are a girl, and you don't understand how much one has to put up with from the fellows. They call me the Puritan, and ask if I wear pinafores at home. But I stopped that," ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... is a particular instance of the general assertion. Were I not of a profoundly indolent, restless, adventurous nature, and horribly averse to writing, I would make a great book of this and live honoured by every profound duffer in the world." ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... earth can he know about English? [Greek text] is a Cormorant: [Greek text] is a Skinflint; and your tutor is a Duffer. Hush! keep dark now! here he comes." And he went hastily to meet Edward Dodd: and by that means intercepted him on his way to the carriage. "Give me your hand, Dodd," he cried; "you have saved the university. You must be stroke of the eight-oar after me. Let me see more of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... you always manage to find out such things?" remarked the other, reflectively. "By Jove!" he added, "Hester is the name of that major duffer whose message to Sir Jeffry caused my delay; I wonder ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... "Well, you duffer, are you going to do your share? You're not O'Roon, but it seems to me if you'd lean to the right you could reach the reins of that foolish slow-running bay—ah! you're all right; O'Roon couldn't ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... "What a duffer I am to be sure!" I said to myself. "If I begin to get notions like this in my head there is no knowing where I may end. As if any girl would ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... briskly. "Keep your eyes sharp for footprints. Wynne must have struck off here into the Fens, it's the most direct course. He wouldn't have been such a duffer as to walk too far out of his way—if he was bent upon going there at all.... Hello! Here's the squelchy mark of a man's ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... off when they trotted at a coming shell, and what the officer didn't say to Hambone for trotting, which was a violation of orders, would not be worth repeating. He bellowed at him to go and search for it, and with wicked delight we watched the duffer going back over the route, peering from side to side of the road ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... given it to the old duffer for a birthday present—hundredth anniversary!" he scoffed. "That would be taking his turn at doing knight-errands. Let's go right on and not disturb the ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... care about talking to them? I can see you are a duffer still"—and one needed to see and near him to appreciate the profound, immutable contempt which echoed in this remark. He had been grown-up now two years, and was in love with every good-looking woman that he met; yet, despite ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... you could not buy that for less than thirty pounds at any shop in London. Could she, my little duck? Never mind, it is no brighter than her eyes. Now do you know what she will do with that, Master Christie? She will give it to some duffer to put in ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... your hands, you, then," he commanded Tarzan. "I ain't taking no chances with any duffer ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... evenly matched, I had a little plan through which I felt confident I could make it a dead sure thing for Barville. I was not off my base, either, and it would have worked out charmingly if that big duffer, Lander, hadn't dipped in and messed it ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... how short are the odds you get—hardly worth mentioning! Horses occasionally win with odds of forty to one against them, these are the animals of which I was in search, not the hackneyed favourites of the Press and the Public. This, I think you will find, is usually the attitude of the Duffer, who, in my time, was known, I cannot say why, as the "Juggins." I liked to bring a little romance into my speculations. Often I have backed a horse for his name, for something curious, or literary, or classical about his name. Xanthus, or Podargus, ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... high enough!" Phil said regretfully. He had been "a regular duffer" at climbing at school, and the bigger boys had often dragged him up a fairly tall tree and left him there, clinging helplessly to the boughs, until they were tired of jeering at him. He shivered now as he thought of it; then squared his shoulders. His grey eyes flashed; ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... graceful fiction, as all unskilled in the art. An instance of similar modesty is found in Mr. Andrew Lang, who entitles the first chapter of his delightful ANGLING SKETCHES (without which no fisherman's library is complete), "Confessions of a Duffer." This an engaging liberty which no one else ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... trying to be a Pomeranian—the dog Balthasar between whom and old Jolyon primal aversion had changed into attachment with the years. Close to his chair was a swing, and on the swing was seated one of Holly's dolls—called 'Duffer Alice'—with her body fallen over her legs and her doleful nose buried in a black petticoat. She was never out of disgrace, so it did not matter to her how she sat. Below the oak tree the lawn dipped down a bank, stretched to the fernery, and, beyond that refinement, became fields, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a duffer!" remonstrated Nancy, with a flare in her mild eyes. (How I wish I might have seen her as she defended me!) "He's the dearest fellow in the world, and I love him with all my heart!" (How do you like that, Mr. Robert? Bravo, ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... a gentleman, however learned, who has practised for twenty years in the Divorce Court? I know him," went on Eustace, vindictively—"I know him. He will fall in love with you himself. Why, he would be an old duffer if ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... hunderd dollars ter learn dis, an' sign a 'greement dat I wouldn't give it erway. Jem Mace tort me dis trick w'en I sparred wid him in Liverpool. He says ter me, says he: 'Buster, ye're a boid, dat's wot ye are. If you knowed der trick of breakin' a bloke's wrist dere ain't no duffer in der woild dat can do yer. I'll show yer der crack fer sixty pound.' He wouldn't come down a little bit, an' I paid him wot he asked. Since dat time I've knocked roun' all over der woild, an' it's saved me life fife times. Dat was a cheap trick wot I got from ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... bigger duffer than you are, Flo. You can't help being a girl, I know; but I'm willing to help you all I can out of a girl's foolishness. Only a girl would talk of ringing the bell, and making a row, because she can't have all her own way. Come now, I want to talk to you about the ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... apprentices ignore. One night Jones heard them rotting about 'Great Circle sailing,' and 'ice to the south'ard of the Horn,' and subjects like that, when, properly, they ought to be criticising their Old Man, and saying what an utter duffer of a Second Mate they had. Jones was wonderfully indignant at such talk, and couldn't sleep at night for thinking of all the fine sarcastic remarks he might have made, if he had thought of them at ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... I said, assuming an enthusiasm I did not feel. Put on the gloves with this strapping, skillful boxer? Not I! I was firmly resolved to stop while my record was good. In a scientific clash with the gloves he would soon find out what a miserable duffer I was. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... duffer I am on a horse, Governor,' he says. 'Well, I want to try for the Melford Cup. I'd like to build a course on the place, and school myself under ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... Then soon after: "Everything's strange. That's the trouble," he confessed. "It's only in little things that don't matter, but a fellow feels such a duffer." ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that it won't bore you, Strachan, though it does not concern you personally. You both know all about the will and its mysterious disappearance, so I need not recapitulate that. Well, I have been to Ireland and seen the lawyers—Burrows and Fagan. I could not make much of Burrows, who is a duffer; but Fagan has his wits about. He had never had to do with that branch of the business, but now the credit of the firm was at stake he busied himself in making searching and pertinent inquiry. A sharpish boy-clerk was certain ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... hall, A prosy speaker, such a duffer, A mob that loves to stamp and bawl, Noise, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... bullocks then I say No matter where you stray, You will never be impounded any more; For you’re running, running, running on the duffer’s piece of land, Free selected ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... all play for the Gentlemen," said Lord Amersteth slyly. "My son Crowley only just scraped into the eleven at Harrow, and HE'S going to play. I may even come in myself at a pinch; so you won't be the only duffer, if you are one, and I shall be very glad if you will come down and help us too. You shall flog a stream before breakfast and after dinner, if ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... spiritualism, so we could send them word. That Tennessee village would set up a monument to Billings, then, and his autograph would outsell Satan's. Well, they had grand times at that reception—a small-fry noble from Hoboken told me all about it—Sir Richard Duffer, Baronet." ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... with my own hands. I was always a lazy beggar, I'm afraid, and it was better fun to smoke and watch my man Collet making or fitting in a new part than to bother with it myself. This will be my first long trip 'on my own,' you see, and I don't want to be a duffer, especially as I myself proposed going down into Dalmatia, where we may get into no end ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... scouted the mule-skinner's person for evidence of hardware. Observing none, he said fiercely "You mutton- headed duffer!" and for the first time within the memory of the citizens of San Pasqual he had recourse to his hands. He clasped Mr. O'Rourke fondly around the neck and choked him until his eyes threatened to pop out, the while he shook O'Rourke as a ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... about life than any one I have ever met. I feel an awful duffer when I am with you, Lord Illingworth. Of course, I have had so few advantages. I have not been to Eton or Oxford like other chaps. But Lord Illingworth doesn't seem to mind that. He has been awfully ...
— A Woman of No Importance • Oscar Wilde
... limp little peasant Is bending and testing The wood for the wheel-rims. One piece does not please him; He takes up another And bends it with effort; 240 It suddenly straightens, And whack!—strikes his forehead. The man begins roaring, Abusing the bully, The duffer, the block-head. Another comes driving A cart full of wood-ware, As tipsy as can be; He turns it all over! The axle is broken, 250 And, trying to mend ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... you see, my honourable duffer, that if we did so the explosion would put all Port Arthur, and the fleet too, on the qui vive long before we could get at them, and thus spoil our chances of bagging the battleships?" I replied. "No, certainly not. Let the cruiser go; it ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... Miss Falconer, you'll have to forgive me if you can. You shall stay in Paris, and I'll be as silent as the grave concerning you; but I'd like to do more than that. Won't you let me come and call? Really, you know, I'm not such a duffer as you have cause to think me. After we got acquainted you might be willing to trust me with this business, whatever it is. And then, if it's not too desperate, I have friends who could be of help to you." Such ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... always on the watch to take him down a peg when he was pleased with himself—to hold him cheap and overpraise some duffer in his hearing—so that I might save my own self-esteem; to pay him bad little left-handed compliments, him and his, whenever I was out of humor; and I should have been always out of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... over me; they're gentlemen, and it don't try a fellow," would Rake say in confidential moments over purl and a penn'orth of bird's-eye, his experience in the Argentine Republic having left him with strongly aristocratic prejudices; "but when it comes to a duffer like that, that knows no better than me, what ain't a bit better than me, and what is as clumsy a duffer about a horse's plates as ever I knew, and would almost let a young 'un buck him out of his saddle—why, then I do cut up rough, I ain't denying it; and I ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... that's little Duffer, I know! We've seen him before! Wouldn't mind giving him a chase to-day, just for ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... exactly a Duffer. He was what might be called a sub-Duffer, or Varnish, which means that the Committee was ashamed to mark ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... was a scoffer, and would go to Gehenna. Now I don't want to go to Gehenna just for wanting to get posted in the show business of old times, do you? When Pa said Dan was saved from the jaws of the lions because he prayed three times every day, and had faith, I told him that was just what the duffer that goes into the lions den in Coup's circus did because I saw him in the dressing room, when me and my chum got in for carrying water for the elephant, and he was exhorting with a girl in tights who was going to ride two horses. Pa said I was mistaken, cause they never prayed in circus, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... Athenians who wish to have no qualms. If we have told our friends that we do eighteen holes of golf in 95, we tell them after doing the course in 110, that we are not ourselves to-day. That is to say, we are not acquainted with the duffer who foozled fifteen strokes. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... "Poor little chap wasn't putting on weight... desperately anxious.—Winkles, a frightful duffer ... former pupil of mine ... no good.... Mrs. Redwood—unmitigated confidence in Winkles.... You know, man with a manner like a cliff—towering.... No confidence in me, of course.... Taught Winkles.... Scarcely allowed in the nursery.... Something ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... "Poor old duffer! I'll bet he was disappointed," came sympathetically from Christopher. "Think of his having to stay at home and miss the fun of seeing how his ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... look at the smack lights going to sea on a dark night; pity you're such a duffer in a boat—we might go out with them. Do you a power of good! You're not looking ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 'Poor old duffer,' said his lordship. 'If he's doing so well, I think Miles ought to be made to pay up something of what he owes. I think we ought to tell him that we shall expect him to have the money ready when that bill ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Lord Hampstead had come down in an omnibus from Islington; on which occasion it was remarked that as he did not come on Saturday there must be something wrong. A clerk, with Saturday half-holidays, ought not to be away from his work on Mondays and Tuesdays. Mrs. Duffer, who was regarded in Paradise Row as being very inferior to Mrs. Demijohn, suggested that the young man might, perhaps, not be a Post Office clerk. This, however, was ridiculed. Where should a Post Office clerk find his friends except ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... duffer," said Bill. "Why, you were the one that got lost. We've been looking all over ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... interested me. It was not the letter of a duffer or a swindler—the sort of thing you can tell by its ornate pompousness; and it just caught me when I was somewhat bored by things, so that I rather welcomed it as an excitement. I expected to find you lodging in ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... as wholesome as a November pippin, and no more mysterious than a window-pane. She had whimsical little theories that she had deduced from life, and that fitted the maxims of Epictetus like princess gowns. I wonder, after all, if that old duffer ...
— Options • O. Henry
... I'd like to kick him if he wasn't such a duffer," was Nick's reluctant thought, for he had wanted to be favourably impressed by the Dook. If this were really anything like an English duke, give him a crossing-sweeper! But he must not be too hasty in his ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the huge plate, therefore, is an offence—its undertaking an unbecoming display of determination and ignorance—its accomplishment a triumph of unthinking earnestness and uncontrolled energy—endowments of the "duffer." ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... he makes money in these days when it's the swell thing to have some foreign duffer paint all the portraits," Bently said. "It makes me sick to see the way Englishmen rake ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... James, I have dipped into quite a lot of them—Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer (the thrice besotted Teutonic ass who said that women weren't beautiful), for I hate to be thought an ignorant duffer—and I have never come across in them anything worth knowing, thinking, or doing that I was not taught at my mother's knee. And as for her, dear, simple soul, if you had asked her what was the Categorical Imperative (having explained beforehand the meaning of the words), she would have said, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... rumbled lowered. Round and round The court-house paced he, followed stealthily By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step: "Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward! Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak! Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can! Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason To draw and kill you. Take your billy out. I'll crack your boar's head with a piece of brick!" But never a word the hog-eyed one returned But trod about the court-house, followed both By troops of boys and watched by all the men. All day, they walked the ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... me feel sort of glad, Miss Helen. You see, I'm not such a duffer really. I think an awful lot, and it don't come hard either. But folks have always told me I'm such a fool, that I've kind of got into the way of believing it. Now, when I saw that pine and the valley I felt ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... aw dooant care where, Its her fault aw've to suffer;" Just then a whisper in his ear Said, "Johnny, thar't a duffer," He luk'd, an' thear cloise to him stuck Wor Jenny, burst wi' lafter; "A'a, John," shoo says, "Aw've tried thi pluck, Aw'st think o' this ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... was fifteen; mining, I say—earning every slab of damper and pannikin of tea I've swallerd, not to mention 'bacca and sometimes a bender on rum, by as tough a share of graft as a man wants whose muscles ain't flabby. Fifty times I've struck a duffer on one field or another; twenty times I've struck a good show that petered out in a week; three times I struck it rich—rich enough to set me up if I'd stuck to the find, but always I've been had—had by darned dirty I-talyans from the towns on the coast, ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... make a golfer—it only helps. You may chip, you may wallop the ball if you will, But the slash of the duffer will cling round it still. Look before you cheat. Every water hole has a silver lining—ask the boat boy. To stymie is human; to lift up divine. Half a stroke is better than none. He laughs last who putts best. When in doubt, ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... indeed! Moxon has coached him well: I sent him to poor Moxon. He wanted to read with me, but—you understand—I could not exactly receive him while Lord Rafferty and Mr. Duffer are in my house. So I sent him to poor Moxon, who is glad of a pupil ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... is a duffer," she said sharply, pointing a very earthy trowel at the unconscious figure of the gardener, who was busy in the middle distance digging potatoes. "A man," she continued, "who calls a plain, every-day squash ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... And John learnt. John could manage a public meeting, but he could not manage Ellis. Besides, there was plenty of money; and Ellis was so ingratiating, and had curly hair that somehow won sympathy. And, after all, Ellis was not such a duffer as all that at the works. John knew other people's sons who were worse. And Ellis could keep order in the paintresses' 'shops' as order had never ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... out of her way. They say dogs and horses are all honest, and it's only us as teaches 'em to do wrong. My notion's they're a deal like ourselves, and some of 'em fancies the square racket dull and safe, while some takes a deal kindlier to the other. Anyhow, no cattle-duffer in the colonies could have had a better pair of mates than old Sally and Crib, if the devil himself had broken 'em ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... stories at night," came McKnight's voice from the doorway. "Really, Mrs. Klopton, I'm amazed at you. You old duffer! I've got you to thank for the worst day of ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... you, you duffer! Do you think my father would return to England without thanking the man who was kind to his dear lad? And you would give the whole snap away. Yes; I'll call upon him as Cartwright, the administrator of the late Tudor Crisp's estate. If it were not for that confounded grave ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... experience of being weak. I dare say that nasty things might have happened—but I should have known more what the world was like, I should have depended more upon other people, I should have made friends. As it was, I left school entirely innocent, very solitary, very modest, thinking myself a complete duffer, and everyone else a beast. It got a little better at the end of my time, and I had a companion or two—but I never dreamed of telling anyone what I was really ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... have had half a chance—" began Barton, and then didn't know at all how to finish it. "Why, you're so plucky—and so odd—and so interesting!" he began all over again. "Oh, of course, I'm an awful duffer and all that! But if we'd had half a chance, I say, you and I would have been great pals in ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... revising his inventory of the old "duffer." Wayland was laughing openly. The old man had become oblivious of both, with a triangling of sharply intersected lines between his brows and tense compression of ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... one of the doors of Liberal Arts hall. While he was standing there two dapper young men came walking hastily by. One caught sight of Uncle and quickly uttered a low whistle. His companion stopped short as the first one said: "Der's de old duffer; let's ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... not! I haven't been able to get a dollar out of the old duffer since I left college. He is icy toward me, and he says I can go it for ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... out-door amusement is considered an interminable bore, the game of Football has, of course, no charm. There is too much hard work for him, and the training required to put one in condition, fraught with all that is called self-denial, he could never endure. The musty old duffer, too, looks upon the game in the light of a deadly sin, which can never be associated in his mind with anything short of idiocy and the most virulent fanaticism. To some of his young men he remarks—"And you call that a grand ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... out again. "I'll go t'ump hell outa deh mug what did her deh harm. I'll kill 'im! He t'inks he kin scrap, but when he gits me a-chasin' 'im he'll fin' out where he's wrong, deh damned duffer. I'll wipe up deh street ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... can't," he retorts, amiably rubbing his hands together. "Anyhow, I won't, which means about the same thing. Where's the little duffer?" ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... solemnly. "Granny Cronk used to talk about him. He's the Man what's a sleepin' in the grave with the kid with the same name as that bright-eyed duffer who ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... said his new acquaintance, "to the little chap learning his French. I've forgotten mine. One feels a hopeless duffer knowing no, languages." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
