Infinitive as Parenthesis

1. You seem to be sick. To be on the safe side, why not make an appointment to see your GP just to be sure you're not suffering from anything serious?

2. Wild bears are reported to have been spotted in the neighbourhood. To be on the safe side, will you not allow the children to roam the forest for a while?

3. “To sum it up”, said Edward, “the greatest parties are possible with the oddest people in the strangest places at the weirdest times.”

4. Strange to say it, but after that incident we now have an even better relationship. It has brought the best out of both of us.

5. "It was very disappointing, to say the least, that our advice was not accepted as in the end everyone had to pay for the failure."

6. How could you have treated her like that! To say the least, I find it shocking.

7. To put it plainly, I want you out of this house immediately. And I assure you that I will see to it that you shall never be allowed to cross this threshold again.

8. When it made the headlines, Mary was not pleased, to put it mildly. She hadn't expected the story to be made public.

9. "To cut a long story short, they started dating and they are now happily married, and I cannot help being glad to see my daughter pleased."

10. To cut a long story short, there followed a short conversation which revealed they had absolutely no idea who I was. And needless to say, they urged me to tell as much as possible about myself.

11. Going through the city was a pain in the neck, to put it mildly. The traffic was not only heavy but mad. Motorists were only forward-centered with very little courtesy to display, Not to mention the taxi-drivers who could cut in at will. To make the matters worse, it took us 2 hours to find space to park. We were compelled to stop over at a Mcdonald's spot to buy some food as this was the only way to use their parking space.

12. How was your boyfriend’s acquaintance with your parents? – He spilt red wine on the carpet, insulted my mother, and to crown it all, broke my favourite vase.

13. He was an excellent leader? But to tell the truth/to be honest, we were all a little afraid of him.

14. Such a fate is unlikely to befall him: to begin with, his is a genuine talent.

15. The United States can tell you all about what's wrong with the British, to say nothing of the Russians (A.H. Sulzberger).

16. The ability to simplify means to be able to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak (Hans Hofmann).

17. All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments (Bill Kristol)

18. Strange to say, the luminous world is the invisible world; the luminous world is that which we do not see. Our eyes of flesh see only night (Victor Hugo)

19. There are many different kinds of radioactive waste and each has its own half-life so, just to be on the safe side and to simplify matters, I base my calculations on the worst one and that's plutonium (David Brower)

20. To begin with, you must realize that any idea accepted by the brain is automatically transformed into an action of some sort. It may take seconds or minutes or longer, but ideas always produce a reaction of some sort (Scott Reed).

21. We assume, to begin with, that the individual is at least as complex in his internal structure as the language is which he speaks – otherwise, how could he speak a language which is complex? (Kenneth L. Pike)