Reply To: TMBG
I once compiled this list for a pedantic friend (a huge TMBG fan, come to think) who had complained of a sentence (not mine, either) ending with “at”. I used a Project Gutenberg cd and sed(1) to generate a rough list; these are the highlights.
I loved the company, indeed, of men of mirth and wit, men of gallantry and figure, and was often entertained with such, as I was also with others; but I found by just observation, that the brightest men came upon the dullest errand–that is to say, the dullest as to what I aimed at.
— Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe
When we next met, Ralph discovered the trick we had plaid him, and Osborne was a little laught at.
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
And as to the conduct of the officers of the revenue, the provision in favor of trial by jury in criminal cases, will afford the security aimed at.
— “Federalist Papers, No. 83”, Alexander Hamilton
“At Marlborough!”–cried Elinor, more and more at a loss to understand what he would be at.
— Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
It is a good lesson–though it may often be a hard one–for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world’s dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.
— The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
(Every nerve and muscle in Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at.
— Middlemarch, George Eliot
“Sure, I couldn’t stop till tay-time. Present me, Garge, my dear fellow, to your lady. Madam, I’m deloighted to see ye; and to present to you me husband, Meejor O’Dowd”; and with this, the jolly lady in the riding-habit grasped Amelia’s hand very warmly, and the latter knew at once that the lady was before her whom her husband had so often laughed at.
— Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
But it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day, and the after punishment grew a mere thing to laugh at.
— Wuthering Heights, Emily Bront