Example sentences of "[prep] be [adj] be [prep] [be] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | One way of being dignified is to be above it all , to be silent when provoked . |
| 2 | At every stage of the arms race the only point in being tall was to be relatively taller than neighbouring trees . |
| 3 | In private Michael still had to keep his end up against attacks , that to be religious was to be a fool , though less frequently now because Frank travelled abroad and was away much of the time . |
| 4 | It is commonplace to be second best , but to be best is to be unique |
| 5 | It is a paradox too , that because Christianity has been able to drop any mention of the physical cycles of women 's lives , secular culture has ended up with an idea that true liberation means we can forget ‘ those difficult days ’ , and ‘ carry on as normal ’ ; assuming , perhaps , that to be normal is to be more like a man . |
| 6 | The only authentic way to be good is to be good ‘ for nothing ’ : that was to become the ringing insistence of her finest treatise , The Sovereignty of Good ( 1970 ) . |
| 7 | Here the difficulty I found in talking about psychoanalytic criticism is compounded , not because I am an unbeliever , but because anything that the middle-aged male commentator says about feminism is liable to be wrong : to be approving may be condemned as patronizing , and to be critical is to be sexist . |
| 8 | Both behaviourism and ‘ humanistic ’ views would have us believe that to be affective is to be effective in setting up conditions for learning . |
| 9 | To be new was to be critical . |
| 10 | But I would place a somewhat different emphasis , and suggest that in the Chewong case fear is a positive emotion and encouraged in children because to be fearful is to be human , while the arousal of other inner states is negatively valued and discouraged — as manifest in the various rules that forbid them ( see Howell 1981 ) . |
| 11 | She wanted to be safe , and the only way she knew how to be safe was to be rich . ’ |
| 12 | To be old is to be , of necessity , unhealthy . |
| 13 | To be old is to be unhealthy . |
| 14 | Estes and Binney ( 1988 , p. 69 ) describe the image of older people in America as ‘ to be old is to be frail , sick , dependent and vulnerable ’ . |
| 15 | To be old is to be wrinkled and crabbit and heading for Parkinson 's or Alzheimer 's disease . |
| 16 | Talcott Parsons has proposed the very influential theory that of all other available institutions it is the classroom that above all converts an incomplete person into a member of the kind of society Parsons takes for granted as natural , that is , a kind of society where to be social is to be interested in achievement . |
| 17 | Dada and Aunt Tossie talked to each other with scarcely a pause , showing a concern for Maman 's silence as though to be silent was to be sick . |
| 18 | Not because we adhere to some outdated idea that to be commercial is to be tainted and somehow of no interest , but we felt we were redressing an imbalance . |
| 19 | To be slipshod is to be hounded , which is the last thing he wants . |