"Alarmist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some colors are fixed in calico printing by means of an arsenical alumina mordant; it need not be mentioned that antimony, as well as arsenic, is, when administered internally, an active poison in even small quantities, and that externally both are injurious under certain conditions. An alarmist would require nothing further than this statement to feel himself justified in attributing everything bad to fabrics so colored; but the practical dyer or calico printer knows that though he employs these poisonous bodies in his business, and that some portion of them does actually ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... of people surrounded the hotel when Brett and Talbot arrived with their wounded prisoner. Fortunately the Chief of Police came in person to ascertain the cause of all this turmoil. The first alarmist report that reached his ears made out that a species of international warfare had broken ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... President. Mr. Fisher appears to much more advantage in pulling down than in building up. We have hitherto seen only the keen, fearless dissector of fraud and hypocrisy; we are now to contemplate a circumspect alarmist, who dreads to call things by their right names for fear of unpleasant consequences. He is such a master of English, so judicious in the use of middle terms,—so shrewd a fencer altogether,—that even his timidity cannot make him ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... exception of those big transatlantic liners that are auxiliary cruisers of the German navy, ships which in time of war may be transformed at short notice into good fighting machines. Let me emphasize with all due knowledge of the alarmist's fears that United States need never fear the "Yellow Peril" as long as she does not antagonize the dominant powers ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... hesitating, for he did not wish to seem alarmist, "it did seem to me as if there were a sort of reddish color in the sky, as if ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the Admiralty, as well as the Home Secretary, to make a report upon this. It will soon be necessary to consider what will have to be done for the future to complete the various plans. The Queen is no alarmist, but thinks that the necessity of our attending to our defences once having been proved and admitted by Parliament and two successive Governments, we should not relax in our efforts until the plans then ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... imminent but which never completes itself. In Dr. Crichton-Browne's opinion they connect themselves with the perplexed and scared disturbances of self-consciousness which occasionally precede epileptic attacks. I think that this learned alienist takes a rather absurdly alarmist view of an intrinsically insignificant phenomenon. He follows it along the downward ladder, to insanity; our path pursues the upward ladder chiefly. The divergence shows how important it is to neglect ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... issues dividing the people of the State; warned the opposition of the probable results of their policy, if triumphant; and, with resistless eloquence, pleaded for a firm maintenance of the principles of his own party. He was, he averred, no alarmist, but he proclaimed that the people slept upon the thin heaving crust of a volcano, which would inevitably soon burst forth; and the period was rapidly approaching when the Southern States, unless united and on the alert, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... gathered, Mr. Spencer," he said dryly, "when I was here last that you thought me an alarmist. I don't know that I blame you. We always think the other fellow may get it, but that we are safe. You might ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... urgency from what one has to say about these developments. The Tanks remove the last technical difficulties in our way to decisive victory and a permanent peace; they also afford a reason for straining every nerve to bring about a decision and peace soon. At the risk of seeming an imaginative alarmist I would like to point out the reasons these things disclose for hurrying this war to a decision and doing our utmost to arrange the world's affairs so as to make another war improbable. Already these serio-comic Tanks, weighing something over twenty ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... incident was closed, and I did greatly compliment myself upon the sagacity and coolness of head with which I extricated myself from my pretty kettle of fish. For to have denounced myself as the real alarmist would have rendered the affair more, rather than less, discreditable to my feminine companion, and I should have been arraigned before the solemn bar of a police-court magistrate, who might even have made a Star Chamber ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... know why he thought there was not an air-raid. To assume that there was not an air-raid, in the absence of proof positive of the existence of an air-raid, was with him constitutional: a state of mind precisely as illogical, biased and credulous as the alarmist mood which he disdained in others. Also he was lacking in candour, for after a few seconds the suspicion crept into his mind that there might indeed be an air-raid—and he ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... American pork products into France. Isn't it about time the Department of Agriculture at Washington sat a little down on this man who writes too much with his pen? Not that I would silence any man who sticks to facts, no matter whose soap-bubble he pricks; but a simple alarmist who rushes into print mainly for the pleasure it gives him to see his name in print, and to know that he is talked about, deserves to be squelched. For aught I know, though, Dr. Detmers has been misrepresented by the ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... desire to play the alarmist, but we would point out to Great Britain that she may at any time within the next few weeks be called upon to face a situation of great gravity, and we cannot help expressing our regret that when that time comes the country should ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... special agents, composed of credulous and inexperienced deputies, this committee, set to perform the work of a Lenoir or a Fouche, makes up for its incapacity by violence, and its proceedings anticipate those of the Jacobine inquisition.[2149] Alarmist and suspicious, it encourages accusations, and, for lack of plots to discover, it invents them. Inclinations, in its eyes, stand for actions, and floating projects become accomplished outrages. On ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... "Oh, some alarmist tale about somebody robbing father. I didn't quite make out what it was all about, but it had something to ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a Chief has to face in war is an alarmist. The Turks are indeed stout and terrifying fellows when seen, not in a poetry book but in a long line running at you in a heavy jogtrot way with fixed bayonets gleaming. But they don't frighten me as much as one or two of my own friends. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... an alarmist; but I did not fancy that even out in the Pacific, in the middle of the nineteenth century, any crew could be found who would venture to commit an act of violence on an English trader when they would be so surely discovered and brought to justice. Still, I fancied that Harry, who was ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... an alarmist," admitted young Daunt, "but all sorts of whip-whap stuff" seem to be in the air all of a sudden. I just took a run down to the foot of the hill. The bees are buzzing a little livelier there than they are in the neighborhood ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... and very able article on the subject, which, although by no means alarmist in tone, told the world, in grave and weighty sentences, that there could now be no doubt but that the problem of aerial navigation had been completely solved, and that therefore mankind stood confronted by a power that was practically irresistible, and which changed the whole aspect of ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... to the Chateau for dinner. Many guests—all of them of course of the male sex, and much talk! Some of the guests—members of Parliament, and foreign correspondents—had been over the Somme battlefield that day, and gave alarmist accounts of the effects of the thaw upon the roads and the ground generally. Banished for a time by the frost, the mud had returned; and mud, on the front, becomes a kind of malignant force which affects the ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... no means an alarmist. I believe that our system, though curious and peculiar, may be worked safely; but if we wish so to work it, we must study it. We must not think we have an easy task when we have a difficult task, or that we are living in a natural state when we are really living in an artificial ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... was naturally thrilled by these words. He knew that the leader of the Gray Fox Patrol was no alarmist, and that he seldom lost his ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... say officers are much annoyed by complaints and alarmist information from their freight of human creatures; but certainly, whether it was the idea that the sick man was one of the crew, or from something conciliatory in my address, the officer in question was immediately relieved ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... years as at present. Its people are rapidly acquiring a love of commerce, and the wealth that springs from it, which induces me to imagine that they would not be disposed to risk the advantages they possess by any measure likely to subvert the present state of things. Nevertheless, more than one alarmist like —— shake their heads and look solemn, foretelling that affairs cannot long go on as ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... against Portugal and trying to form the whole peninsula into a single state. Morier, at any rate, made it clear that England would throw the whole weight of her power against such treatment of her oldest ally. But alarmist politicians were perpetually harping on this string, and Morier, in a letter written in 1876, compares them to 'children telling ghost-stories to one another who have got frightened at the sound of their own voices, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... whirling of the "quicksand years"; but it sets these strong persons upon the "open road" in comradeship; it is the sentiment of comradeship which creates the indissoluble union of "these States"; and the States, in turn, in spite of every "alarmist," "partialist," or "infidel," are to stretch out unsuspicious and friendly hands of fellowship to the whole world. Anybody has the right to call Leaves of Grass poor poetry, if he pleases; but nobody has the right to deny its ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... sometimes another. In the many difficulties connected with our world-wide Empire this must always be more or less the case. For instance, the late Sir H. Rawlinson, a few years before the second Afghan war, took a very alarmist view of the progress of Russia, not only in Central Asia but also in Asia Minor. He considered that her advance from Orenburg was only part of one great scheme of invasion; and he averred that the conquest of the Caucasus had given her such a strong position that there was no military or ...
— Indian Frontier Policy • General Sir John Ayde
... but fixed for the 31st October. Now, who has not heard at any time within the memory of man of this expected "rising in the West"? It is the spectre rouge, or, to be more accurate as to local colour, the spectre vert of the Irish alarmist, and a poor, ragged, out-at-elbows spectre it is, altogether very much the worse for wear. Flesh and blood could not bear the mention of this shabby, worn-out old ghost with calmness, and I conveyed to the gentlemen who volunteered the information my opinion that the spectre ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... editorial columns the same paper discussed the more general aspects of the murder. This, it said, was the third club man murdered in the last fortnight. While not taking an alarmist view, the paper felt that the killing of club men had got to stop. There was a limit, a reasonable limit, to everything. Why should a club man be killed? It might be asked, why should a club man live? But this was hardly to the point. They do ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... night; for about two o'clock in the morning we heard a shout of warning from down the lane, accompanied by a chorus from all the dogs, and in a moment everybody was up and flying around to find out what the alarm was about. The alarmist was a horseman who gave notice that a detachment of Union soldiers was on its way from Hannibal with orders to capture and hang any bands like ours which it could find, and said we had no time to lose. Farmer Mason was in a flurry this ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The very name of Beketoff inflamed his resentment; and no sooner did he see that hated name attached to the despatch, than he felt himself confirmed in his former views with tenfold bigotry, and wrote instantly, in terms of the most pointed ridicule, against the new alarmist, pledging his own head upon the visionariness of his alarms. Beketoff, however, was not to be put down by a few hard words, or by ridicule: he persisted in his statements: the Russian Ministry were confounded by the obstinacy of the disputants; and some were beginning ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... sides, from the French officers, there is immense praise for the magnificent conduct of our troops, and in spite of all alarmist statements I am convinced from what I have heard that they have retired intact, keeping their lines together, and preventing their divisions from being ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... No one spoke; but if any turned his head sharply to one side or other, all the rest wheeled, like one man, in the same direction and after staring at the tumbled sea would turn reproachful glances on the false alarmist. ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... practitioners of our own days, educated in "classic" cuisine again are quite apprehensive of their traditions endangered by the spirit of revolt of the young against the old. Again and again we hear of a decline that has set in, and even by the best authorities alarmist notes are spread to the effect that "we have begun our journey back, step by step to our primitive tree and our primitive nuts" (Pennell. Does Spengler consider food in ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... stampede (of horses). intimidation, terrorism, reign of terror. [Object of fear] bug bear, bugaboo; scarecrow; hobgoblin &c (demon) 980; nightmare, Gorgon, mormo^, ogre, Hurlothrumbo^, raw head and bloody bones, fee-faw-fum, bete noire [Fr.], enfant terrible [Fr.]. alarmist &c (coward) 862. V. fear, stand in awe of; be afraid &c adj.; have qualms &c n.; apprehend, sit upon thorns, eye askance; distrust &c (disbelieve) 485. hesitate &c (be irresolute) 605; falter, funk, cower, crouch; skulk &c (cowardice) 862; let 'I dare not' ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... In the most serious case, where a young peasant had set up for a prophet and declared that the Emancipation Law was a forgery, fifty-one peasants were killed and seventy-seven were more or less seriously wounded. In spite of these lamentable incidents, there was nothing which even the most violent alarmist could dignify with the name of an insurrection. Nowhere was there anything that could be called organised resistance. Even in the case above alluded to, the three thousand peasants on whom the troops fired were entirely ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... favourable balance at the end of the yearly accounts. It is astonishing what a difference that little circumstance makes in our views of things in general. I remember when the bank in which Squills had incautiously left L1000 broke, one remarkably healthy year, that he became a great alarmist, and said that the country was on the verge of ruin; whereas you see now, when, thanks to a long succession of sickly seasons, he has a surplus capital to risk in the Great Western, he is firmly persuaded that England was never in ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... good advertising, as exemplified in all other lines of trade. The wonder grows why so many coffee advertisers have been content to remain in the defensive, controversial position into which the alarmist coffee-substitute ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... protection and the widest latitude to Astor's company. But when the Indians resented the robberies and injustices to which they were subjected beyond bearing, they were murdered. They were murdered wantonly and in cold blood; and then urgent alarmist representations would be sent to Washington that the Indians were in a rebellious state, whereupon troops would be punitively hurried forth to put them down in slaughter. In turn, goaded by an intense spirit of revenge, ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... first number Sydney Smith contributed five articles. Four of these are reviews of sermons, and the fifth is a slashing attack on John Bowles,[20] who had published an alarmist pamphlet on the designs of France. Jeffrey thought this attack too severe, but the author could not agree. He thought Bowles "a very stupid and ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... immense height so that it was quite impossible to see any pilot or passenger. It hung over the Pyramids almost motionless for three or four minutes as if about to descend, and the watching groups below made the usual alarmist prognostications of evil, taking care to look about for the safest place of shelter for themselves should the huge piece of mechanism above them suddenly escape control and take a downward dive. But apparently ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... producers. It is causing in the United States a condition frightful to contemplate. The mass of debts is piling up at a ratio that absolutely threatens, if a halt in the automatic process is not soon called, a universal insolvency. Indeed a general liquidation is already impossible. He is no alarmist who counsels a timely and rational remedy as not only demanded by justice, but as anticipatory of violent readjustment. Under such disquieting conditions is it not as criminal as it is unscientific for men to go ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... left the town and hurried into the open country, we perceived that he had only too great reason to be an alarmist. Every little rill was risen, and boiling over with the pride of harm, and the broad fields lay hid under the yellow waters that here and there washed over the road. Yet the freshet only presented itself ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... also caught up Miss Digges's information; and, breaking off abruptly an account of the Great Pyramid, which had been naturally introduced by the mention of the Thebais, and echoing the fair alarmist's words, "hope they won't fight," he rushed upon the parade, and bustled along as hard as his sturdy supporters could carry him. If the gravity of the traveller, and the delicacy of Lady Penelope, were surprised ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... influence of all the corrupt; with all the Bristol newspapers and almost all the London newspapers; with all the Corporation of the City; with all the bigoted Clergy and all their next a-kin, the pettifogging Attorneys; with all the bigots, and all the hypocrites, and all alarmist fools; with all these against him, and with hundreds of bludgeon-men to boot; opposed to all this, and to thirty or forty hired barristers and attorneys, Mr. Hunt stood the poll for the thirteen days, in the face of horse ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Petersburg. It is true he was aware how hopeless it was to write home about these things. The ambassador who writes disagreeable despatches is a bore or an old woman. He who dares to shake the security by which we daily boast we are surrounded, is an alarmist, if not worse. Notwithstanding this, he held his cards well 'up' and played them shrewdly. And now he was to turn from this crafty game, with all its excitement, to pore over constabulary reports and snub justices of ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Lord John's letter to the Bishop of Durham, in which he expressed his own strong Protestant and Erastian principles, increased his popularity; but it was unfortunate in its effect. It encouraged the bigoted alarmist outcries which had been started by the Papal Bull, although his own letter differed in tone from such protests. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, which the Government brought forward in response to popular feeling, seems to have been one of the idlest measures that ever wasted the ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... discovery, that an army may be so constituted as to be in the highest degree efficient against an enemy, and yet obsequious to the civil magistrate. We have long ceased to apprehend danger to law and to freedom from the license of troops, and from the ambition of victorious generals. An alarmist who should now talk such language, as was common five generations ago, who should call for the entire disbanding of the land force; of the realm, and who should gravely predict that the warriors of Inkerman and Delhi ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... doubtfully. I knew him to be anything but an alarmist and waited impatiently for ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve |
