"Duffer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... had assumed the role of Moonlighter Ryan, a notorious Queensland cattle duffer, recently hanged for his part in a disputation with a member of the mounted police. The dispute ended with the death of the policeman, who succumbed to injuries received. As Moonlighter Dick was characteristically remorseless, his courage and cunning were understood to verge upon the inhuman, ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... 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 ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... Frank, whose head was nodding forward in an uncomfortable attitude, and whose deep breathing showed him to be asleep. "If only he warn't sich a duffer," said Barney to himself, "we might do it easy," then seeing that his partner was in danger of falling, he moved nearer to him, and placed the boy's head gently against his own shoulder so that he ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... 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 he sprang ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... enough!' Then I have no 'hands,' I am told. Certainly, whenever I take up the rudder-lines to put his head for any particular course the brute takes it as a personal affront, and begins to fret, go sideways, and bore and all but tell me what a duffer he thinks me. There's my cousin Kate, who will spoon with me by the hour in a greenhouse, and dance as often as I like to ask her, but at the cover-side she is so ashamed of me she shuns me like the plague; and then, of course, next ball it is, 'Dear Harry, do ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... ol' duffer," he went on, as he pointed at the stern features of grandpa Smead. "Wouldn't ye think he'd smile now an' then. Maybe he'll cheer up after I've lived ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... alone. Behind him a dog yelped with pain, and above the noise someone shouted: "Here, you kids, let up on that! Shame on you! Let him alone! Call off your dogs, there! Poor little duffer, let him go. ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... 'Don't be a 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
... last act, ‘Ouf! I’m glad to get 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 called “Renan!” ’ ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... school, and if there is stuff in him he succeeds. He does not set a high value on learning. Even if he works and brings home prizes he will not be as proud of them as of his football cap, while a boy who is head of the school, but a duffer at games, will live for all time in the memory of his fellows as a failure. But the German boy goes to school to acquire knowledge, and he too gets what he wants. The habit of work must be strong in him when at the age of eighteen he goes to one of his many universities. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... of early morning transfigured his face, and to Philip it suddenly seemed to be most remarkably like the face of That Man, Mr. Peter Graham, whom Helen had married. He was just telling himself not to be a duffer when Lucy cried out in a loud cracked-sounding voice, 'Daddy, oh, ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... she had seen us once before. It was you she wanted, not me. Why didn't you go, you duffer? I only came in a ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... Mongol, and my earnest prayer is that I may be able to stand it all, and not get soured in temper and feeling against the Mongols. I must have patience. Some knowledge of camel's flesh also would help me not a little. As it stands, I feel an incompetent "duffer."' ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... Aristotle to William 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 ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... 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 ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... "Cautious old duffer!" he said. "Well, tell me this! I've no right to ask it. Only somehow I've got to know. You care for her, ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... the artist, with a glance about the little room. He was thinking what a dear old duffer the man was—with his curious, impracticable philosophy of life and his big, kind ways. "You'll die poor if you don't look out," ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... 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 ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... his shoulder. "Dear old duffer! When are we going for that honeymoon of ours? And what shall we do with Peggy? Don't say we've got to wait till she is safely ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... everywhere! How many dances can you give me? I've kept my programme as free as I could till I found you. I thought the pixies must have spirited you away! What did you say? I ought to ask Gwen? It isn't necessary in the least. You know I'm a duffer at it, and I should probably tread on her toes and she'd hate me for evermore. May I ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... course they are not all exactly like Levick," said Philip, who was a little ashamed of himself for having frightened his little brother; "but I was only joking when I said that about the policeman in Borsham, Dan. What a little duffer ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... of Mr. 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
... was thoroughly ashamed of himself. To be "sech a duffer" as to return that money, when by means of a little strategy he might have kept it, made him feel both humiliated and indignant. A hundred and forty dollars; When would he have a chance to get such a windfall again? Pah! he was a fool—to copy his ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... a 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 I really am." ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... Natural History Museum in London; all of them were cracked and just stuck together like a mosaic, and bits missing. Mine were perfect, and I meant to blow them when I got back. Naturally I was annoyed at the silly duffer dropping three hours' work just on account of a centipede. I hit ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... that the old man and the jockey had made a sneak from the grounds when Ted was having his fun with the big fellow, and I got my bronc and followed them. I came up with them a ways back, and made the old duffer halt, but the jock potted me and ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... Bud, across the head of the herd, "yer could slap that old duffer across the face with your ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... my saddle! Why don't he jump proper? Well, you go on. I don't know that I'm a duffer. Duffer, indeed! My word!" Heathcote had turned to the left, leaving the track, which was, indeed, the main road toward the nearest town and the coast, and was now pushing on through the forest with no pathway at all to guide him. To ordinary eyes the attempt ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... 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
... a pedestal. They think that they lose dignity if they are not able to answer every question that a child puts to them. One result is that the child develops a dangerous inferiority complex. I knew one boy who was a duffer at mathematics. His weakness was due to the inferiority he felt when he saw the learned mathematical master juggle with figures as easily as a conjurer juggles with billiard balls. The little chap lost all hope, and when he worked ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... were on the cars, I thought th' officials of the train were tars; Told them to "Coil that rope and clean the scuppers, And then go down below and get your suppers." This must be changed, or my good name will suffer, And folks will say, JIM FISK is but a duffer. To feel myself a fool and lose my head, Too, takes the gilding off the gingerbread; And makes me ask myself the reason why On earth I have so many fish to fry? The fact is, what I touch must have ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... "I am by no means a studious person; perhaps I am never so happy as when I have nothing to read. Nevertheless, I do occasionally look into books, and greatly appreciate their gentle, kindly ways. They never shut themselves up with a sound like a slap, or throw themselves at your head for a duffer, but seem silently grateful for being read, even by a stupid person, and teach you very patiently, like a pretty, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... panted, pulling her 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 ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... again, generally assumed that if a function is continuous it can always be differentiated. A comparatively unphilosophical mind may let such plausible assertions pass unexamined, but a more philosophical mind will say to itself, when it comes across them, 'You great duffer, aren't you going to ask Why?' Suppose that, by way of experiment, I assume that the fourth angle of my quadrilateral will be acute, or again obtuse, will the body of conclusions I can now deduce from my set of postulates be free from contradictions or not? If I really give my mind to the ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... about 120 baffled Klondikers, returning to the United States, there being still some sixty more, they said, down the Mackenzie River, who intended to make their way out, if possible, before winter. They had a solitary woman with them who had discarded a duffer husband, and who looked very self-reliant, indeed, being girt about with bowie-knife and revolver, but ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... humbly. "Only in a translation." Yet there was a certain falseness in his humility, for he was proud of having read the work. What sort of a duffer would he have appeared had he been obliged ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... 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," and here Malcolm doubled up his fists in ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... actually 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; ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... an empty brandy bottle outside Adams' bar, he took up a friend's pistol and hit it plumb in the centre at twenty-four paces. There were few things he took up that he could not make a show at apparently, except gold-digging, and at that he was the veriest duffer alive. It was pitiful to see the little canvas bag, with his name printed across it, lying placid and empty upon the shelf at Woburn's store, while all the other bags were increasing daily, and some had assumed quite a portly rotundity of form, for the weeks were slipping by, and it was almost ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... the only one as would come at the price. 'Tain't big wages; but I'm seein' loife. Lor', I come down here with Madame and Mounseer a fortnight ago, and Monte Carlo ain't got many secrets from me. I was a duffer, though, at first. When I 'eerd all them shots poppin' off every few minutes, up by the Casino, I used to think 'twas the suicides a shooting theirselves all over the place, for before I left 'ome, I 'ad a warnin' from my young man that was the kind of goin's on they 'ad here. But now I know it's ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... he, "but I'm afraid I should show myself such a duffer. I used to be a pretty fair trout-fisher when I was a lad," he went on to say; and then it suddenly occurred to him that the offer of her companionship ought not to be received in this hesitating fashion. "But I shall be delighted ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... instance, we may go on for days without having to touch a sail. Well, we will begin at once. We won't go aloft till you have got your togs; a fellow going aloft in landsmen's clothes always looks rather a duffer. Now, let us see what you ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... 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 on the ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... 'Duffer, Cis!' cried Hilary, contemptuously, for Cecily had appointed herself professional peacemaker to the family, and her efforts were about as successful as ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... answered the boy, with a shake of his head. "Just clean cleared out, that's all. Pretty hard luck, I call it. Just at the end of things too—when he had a right to expect the fellows home. Pretty tough luck. I wish I could find the poor old duffer and do something ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... 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
... You see Ross will have to read the letters, and how can you say in every other line you love me, with that duffer ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... of course. Bring your dunnage into the first mate's room and take his place. Put his dunnage into the second mate's room, and make that duffer in the scuppers bundle his traps into the forecastle. I want no weaklings aft ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... makes 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 sort of queer. It struck me then it was sort of mysterious. Just as though the hand of Fate ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... have had the humiliation of it always before his eyes. If it had been any sort of a decent accident, I believe I could bear it better, but to be knocked over in a football match, like the precious duffer ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... cables fouling the anchor stock, or flukes, thereby pulling it out of the ground and causing it to drag. It was also the occasion of many bitter quarrels between master and mate. The former may have been a duffer at the manoeuvre himself, but that did not bother him now that the position had changed. Even a consciousness of the mate's knowledge of his fallibility did not qualify his hostile remarks; indeed, the recollection of it never failed ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... truth 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
... James Stuart proudly. "I was a duffer at it till she showed me what she was after. I wanted to buy brocaded silk furniture, like that in her home—while my money held out. But she would have nothing but this sort of thing. Homelike, ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... 8th.—The treaty payment goes on, although it is Sunday. Indian men sitting down on the grass before the commissioner. He asks each one what right he has to claim money from the Great Father, I suppose. Once in a while he turns to the clerk and says, 'We'll give this old duffer twenty bucks.' This doesn't look to me like very much money. I don't think they get much help. They are poor and dependent. If they couldn't rustle well out of doors they all would die. Much trade finery among the natives, ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... 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 a vegetable marrow isn't fit to run ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... '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 ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... if I felt I had grown worthy 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 you ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... 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; ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... doubt; but I believe it to be broader, deeper, more worthy of the great Demiurgus than that which pictures him telling a priest how to carve his pantaloons or sacrifice a pair of pigeons, than standing idly by with his hands under his coat-tails, while some drunken duffer beats the head of his better half with a bootjack, or a bronze brute rips the scalp from a smiling babe. If that's the kind of a hairpin who occupies the throne of Heaven, I don't blame Lucifer for raising a revolution. I would have taken a fall out of him myself, even had I known that my viscera ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... separated us was one solid tangle of scrub-bushes interwoven with brambles. It would have taken at least forty seconds to tear through them, and in that time he could most assuredly snap off all six chambers, however big a duffer he might be. This would bring up some of the country people without fail; and besides, out of the six, he might fluke one shot into me. About that last possibility I didn't trouble my head much, as it was remote; ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... 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 Hyde's ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... "Thorough old duffer, you mean. Look at him. What with his gold spangles and his talking to Mr. Goodwyn-Sandys, he's as proud as ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... if trouble came he'd quickly shin up the nearest tree. No hale man ever loves him; he stirs the sportsman's wrath; the whole world kicks and shoves him and shoos him from the path. For who can love a duffer so pallid, weak and thin, who seems resigned to suffer and let folks rub it in? Yet though he's down to zero in fellow-men's esteem, this fellow is a hero and that's no winter dream. Year after year he's toiling, as toiled the slaves of Rome, to ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason |
