Example sentences of "he would [vb infin] prefer " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | On balance he 'd have preferred to have seen them take on a top world fast bowler to ease the new-ball burden on him — as indeed they intended before negotiations with Australia 's Craig McDermott broke down months before the start of the season — but sees at least one advantage in having a star batsman rather than bowler . |
| 2 | He 'd have preferred Bernard to say nothing rather than patronize him . |
| 3 | Denis , who watched my part of the show every night , would often give me odd notes on inflections he 'd have preferred done another way or phrasing he thought I could improve on . |
| 4 | But he would have preferred Lord Halifax to Churchill as prime minister in 1940 and even in retrospect believed that the country would have fought the war better under Halifax and that the admirals and the generals would have had a less neurotic time . |
| 5 | For one who was nervous with aristocrats , it was unusual that he made a special friend in the diocese of the hereditary lay leader of the Anglo-Catholics in England : the Earl of Halifax at Garrowby , whom he would have preferred to Churchill as a war leader . |
| 6 | Angels — or ‘ angelicals ’ as he would have preferred to call them in his strange idiolect — were as real to him as omnibuses or mortgage repayments — and far more likely to obtrude into his consciousness . |
| 7 | He would have preferred it had their arguments led directly to immaterialism , and showed not merely that we do not know what qualities material objects have , but indeed that they have none , or even that there are no such objects . |
| 8 | He would have preferred a special health-service pay factor , but had to settle for an above-average offer to the nurses , who most certainly were the priority group , having fallen badly behind over the previous ten years . |
| 9 | He would have preferred a showdown with Gina , but it was fun to watch Eleanor fighting her by stealth . |
| 10 | Rather than dropping his company 's commission bearing charge completely , he would have preferred to have reduced it and moved it from the front to the back end of his unit trusts — that is , charging investors as they leave the fund rather than as they enter . |
| 11 | He would have preferred holding her back but that could n't be done without her getting frightened that something bad had happened . |
| 12 | He would have preferred fresh garlic but there was n't any . |
| 13 | The poem is Coleridge 's tribute of friendship to his ‘ gentle-hearted Charles ’ — Lamb complained later that he would have preferred ‘ drunken-dog ’ to ‘ gentle-hearted ’ — but it is a tribute equally to : the quickening power of the natural beauty which the poem so memorably evokes.7sup9 ; |
| 14 | He would have preferred Grégoire to go to school and mix with other children . |
| 15 | He would have preferred to lead into the topic more subtly , but did not wish his Uncle to overhear the discussion . |
| 16 | He would have preferred a spinning wheel for her to sit at , but one had to move forward with the times . |
| 17 | He would have preferred an outdoor job . |
| 18 | He would have preferred , I knew , to keep them at home , but Ruth , his wife , had overruled him in that , as she did in quite a few other matters . |
| 19 | He would have preferred to stay at Lyons , but he set out at once in mid-March , and arrived in Rome about the end of April 1098 . |
| 20 | He would have preferred the phrase ‘ taking into account ’ instead . |
| 21 | The judge complimented Keith on his very professional titling and presentation of the exhibition but said he would have preferred to have judged them loose , before they were hung . |
| 22 | He would have preferred , in short , not to have run into Alice . |
| 23 | On the one hand he was glad of an ally ; on the other he would have preferred someone a bit more the Punk 's size . |
| 24 | The YCs speaker was implicitly emphasizing the commonality between national and international interests within capitalism ( or ‘ the west ’ , as he would have preferred a term which suggest geography rather than politics ) . |
| 25 | Under different circumstances he would have preferred to cover things over , the illegitimacy for one . |
| 26 | He would have preferred that the children be positioned a greater distance away from them , but she had insisted , particularly in view of Cissie 's broken nights and fits of terror following the fire in Larkhill . |
| 27 | He would have preferred chess , but Sheldukher could not provide a board , and they both disliked playing on computer grids . |
| 28 | In many ways , he would have preferred to have been able to give himself over to the delusion and accept it as truth ; but there seemed to be a definite boundary here , and it was n't his choice whether or not he crossed it . |
| 29 | But he would have preferred to spend the extra time in bed none the less . |
| 30 | And if he would have preferred it not to be Frizingley , to be , in fact , anywhere else but there , he managed to quell his initial misgivings by the grim reminder that he would be unlikely to know anyone in St Jude 's now . |