first of all

• “It was at ten o'clock to-day that the first of all Time Machines began its career.”

  The Time Machine

• “Shen Jie had noticed Lu Manli on the sales floor of the electronics store, first of all because she was “really beautiful,” second because she knew the prices of more than a thousand pieces of merchandise by heart, which impressed him.”

  Simon & Schuster: THE SECOND MARK

• “Ever the terrorist technocrat, KSM explained that his main concern about the attacks on Washington and New York was their mechanics: finding the pilots like Mohammed Atta, “people who would know first of all how to fly, people who would mix nicely in a Western atmosphere; people who would speak English well.””

  Simon & Schuster: The Longest War

• “Clinton generously started by saying that “Jan Egeland, Margareta Wahlström, and all their colleagues have been terrific,” and then declared, “My job is to ensure first of all that the money which has been committed by the donor countries be invested, and that we assure the donors that it is spent effectively, responsibly, and in a transparent manner.””

  Simon & Schuster: A Billion Lives

• “Like many others of that line of great French memoir-writers which he heads, such, for instance, as Commines, Sully, and Marbot, Joinville was first of all a man of action, and only in the second place a man of letters; and for this very reason his book has that directness and simplicity which appeals to the common humanity of all ages.”

  The Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville

• “Borlla was fat, pale-coated, and smelled of the milk she took first of all of us.”

  Simon & Schuster: Promise of the Wolves

• “Having arrived at the spot, the magician first of all traces the magic circle within which, we are told, no evil spirit can enter; he then commences the magic rite, involving various prayers and conjurations, a medley of meaningless words, and, in the case of the black art, a sacrifice.”

  Bygone Beliefs

• “Thanks first of all to my brothers, Jon, Land, and Scott Lindbergh, and to their families, for their unceasing patience and understanding, their wise counsel, and for visiting us often, traveling over great distances and in all kinds of weather in order to be with our mother at frequent intervals throughout the year.”

  Simon & Schuster: No More Words

• “The Scratch-Reflex dream is then to be reconstituted first of all as a memory-reaction determined by factors of recency, frequency and intensity in the dreamer's experience.”

  The Journal of Abnormal Psychology

• “So Stonehenge was first of all timbered, and even as stone gradually replaced wood from the Late Neolithic into the Bronze Age, it seems to have overlapped in time with wooden posts in the henge circle itself, and with the great timber henge at Durrington Walls.”

  Simon & Schuster: Wildwood

Show 10 more examples...