Example sentences of "be [adv] great a [noun sg] " in BNC.
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| 1 | Such an outcome would have been so great a blow to Edward II 's prestige that he decided to throw all his resources into reaching the garrison and destroying the besiegers . |
| 2 | Never had they been so great a power in the country . |
| 3 | ‘ Never has there been so great a need for the talented people universities can provide and nurture , ’ he says . |
| 4 | Edwin , ’ she added , without moving her gaze , ‘ Louisa has been so great a comfort to me I can hardly bear this parting . ’ |
| 5 | Monday afternoon in the House of Commons had been as great a triumph for him ( although he had said practically nothing ) as it had been a disaster for Churchill . |
| 6 | Young Daniel 's death had been as great a tragedy , but had not taken him like this . |
| 7 | Instability in those countries , caused by shortages and discontent , could be as great a threat to world peace as the armed communism that has now disappeared . |
| 8 | By the end of the century some might still moan that ‘ it would shock many to suggest that a plain dissenting preacher might be as great a man as an Archbishop ’ but this was simply twaddle . |
| 9 | It is surprising how many people go through life breathing inadequately and , although in many instances this does not prove to be too great a problem , in the case of someone with a stammer it can increase their difficulties enormously . |
| 10 | It would not be too great a distortion of the facts to say that the main thrust of twentieth century sensory physiology has been to move the application of the doctrine of specific energies inwards from the sensory ending towards and into the cortex . |
| 11 | Although Woolf stated that ‘ there is no single cause of riots ’ ( para 9.23 ) it may not be too great a distortion to say that he saw the lack of legitimacy of the prison for its inmates as the key factor in explaining the disorders . |
| 12 | It may be too great a temptation to human frailty , apt to grasp at power , for the same persons who have the power of making laws , to have also in their hands the power to execute them , whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make , and suit the law , both in its making and execution , to their own private advantage . |
| 13 | This would not be too great a bother if morels could be collected in the wild for a reasonable length of time each year , but the fruiting bodies of the morel make only a brief appearance , sometime between March and May . |
| 14 | Pulling it open would be too great a risk and Turner could not trust his own hands to hold the bag steady . |
| 15 | In fact , the effect of many past lives upon the child 's mind may already be too great a burden for him or her to have ever possessed much capacity for direct mental perception . |
| 16 | Great was the smiting and slaying in short time ; but by reason that the Moors were so great a number , they bore hard upon the Christians , and were in the hour of overcoming them . |
| 17 | In spite of all the exercise Signor Grignaffini took on his bicycle he never lost any weight : food and wine were too great a temptation for him . |
| 18 | The political ambitions of the CLB can be deduced from its interpretation of the Edwardian crisis : ‘ At so critical a period in British history as the present , when there is so great and unfortunate a tendency to slackness , ease , and carelessness as to religion , morals , and work , when there is so great a craving for pleasure 's sake , when so serious a social problem as the great army of the unfit and unemployed has become a national scandal and a public danger ’ , it was necessary to provide men of the future with ‘ that spirit of self-denial , self-control and definiteness of righteous purpose ’ which had put Britain in the lead among nations . |
| 19 | It has been suggested that the experience of repeated , if relatively short , spells of unemployment is as great a problem as the experience of single , long spells , and that precisely because temporary work is the way in which many of the unemployed re-enter work , it might increase the chance of unemployment being repeated ( OECD , 1985 ) . |
| 20 | In some cases , and especially where the witness has no interest in the outcome of the case , the lost opportunity to assess demeanour is of no great significance ; in others it is too great a price to pay . |
| 21 | Actually , that is too great a relaxation , sinced it allows genetic values to range from minus infinity to plus infinity . |
| 22 | It is too great a challenge to their image of themselves as healers . |
| 23 | Over-awed , converted both by her persuasion and her gold , Boult remains in prose ( any change would have been too great a transformation ) , yet agrees to help her . |
| 24 | After Hugh 's dismissal in 1172 Louis VII kept the office vacant for some years : Hugh had been too great a man for it to be wise or safe to raise up a successor to him . |
| 25 | During the hundred fifty years in question , there was so great a diversity of views about nature that , on closer inspection , it becomes difficult to achieve a succinct characterization . |
| 26 | With the proliferation of puritan sects during the 1640s and 1650s , there was so great a range of extreme demands , from the nationalization of land to the emancipation of women , that it would be surprising if the natural philosophers had not begun to appear as moderates . |
| 27 | Yet it was so great a task that only Zeus , chief of the gods , could master it . |
| 28 | He would swing from a despairing belief that he was so great a sinner that it was too late to hope to go to Heaven , to elation as he overcame his great vice of swearing and started to read the Bible . |
| 29 | And if you think I 'm to be taken in that easy , Miss Jennifer , then think again ! " and muttering to himself that it was as great a pity to see women weep as geese go barefoot , he took Ann by the arm and went back into his house . |
| 30 | Thomas Telford was as great a canal builder as he was road maker , and in 1818 became the first president of the Institution of Civil Engineers . |