Example sentences of "[pron] [modal v] [verb] was " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | Towards the end of his life he told Osbert Sitwell ; ‘ Any talent I may have was due to a long illness as a boy , which afforded me time to think , and subsequent ill-health , because I was not allowed to play games , and so had to teach myself , for my enjoyment , to use my eyes instead of my feet . ’ |
| 2 | Once he 'd gone , I was approached by a woman who started rubbing my stomach and putting her hand down my trousers , which I must say was enough to make me say yes immediately . |
| 3 | in Brazil the archbishop now in his late eighties I should think was renowned everywhere said that there 's a quote here from him on the Traidcraft leaflet . |
| 4 | I mean my application essentially I should think was one of the simplest |
| 5 | So I think , if I 've got ta say , mum 's I should say was maternity which you , they were very , very political animals . |
| 6 | Taste seemed irrelevant — but touch … how on earth could he expect me even to pretend to believe that what I might touch was ‘ psychic ’ ? |
| 7 | All I could manage was to haunt Rocamar like a beast with no heart . ’ |
| 8 | ‘ I was so tired by that time that all I could do was sit in a deck-chair on the sea-front and sleep all day , but it was enough . ’ |
| 9 | The only thing I could do was sit outside his house on the doorstep . |
| 10 | He was a tall , heavy-built almost surly type who spoke no English ; all I could do was listen patiently , smile , and offer a small but polite salute on departure . |
| 11 | The idea of God pursuing a whole family like a demented genealogist seemed grossly unfair , but as it was a commandment all I could do was hope that neither my father nor any of my immediate ancestors had done anything really sinful , and that if they had , God did n't know of my relationship . |
| 12 | There were no books in the room so all I could do was look out of the window and wait for the quarterly chimes from the Cathedral Clock . |
| 13 | If I was to spend race day reporting as a spectator , then the least I could do was arrive early and attempt the course myself . |
| 14 | By next morning some stray cat had eaten much of his back , so all I could do was measure him . |
| 15 | So all I could do was to prance about waving flashcards and realia like a second-rate conjuror at a children 's party , and try not to glance at my watch more than once a minute . |
| 16 | ‘ I realised he was n't going to be able to stop and all I could do was watch him come closer and closer to me . |
| 17 | ‘ All I could do was scream down the phone — God knows what the listeners made of it . ’ |
| 18 | All I could do was dig it out . |
| 19 | I wanted to run out and scream , but Mum had the key and all I could do was stand stock still , listening to the thumping of my heart . |
| 20 | All I could do was pile up small bits of information hoping it would make an understandable structure one day . |
| 21 | All I could do was to mumble that I regretted not taking my degree , and , though I could see it was irritating of me to whine , to feel stale and bored was not such a trivial thing ; that though we might have the vote now , meals still had to be prepared and children looked after and since this kind of drudgery was despised by society as not being ‘ real work ’ , we were in the hideous position of being both exhausted and imprisoned by it and also looked down on for doing it ; that I had honestly tried to be the sort of wife Richard wanted — and the sort of wife I felt I ought to be — but it was like being in a kind of airless cell and I could only see Richard as a jailer ; that I saw myself becoming progressively more and more incapable of doing anything , not just mentally , but from some kind of paralysis of will . |
| 22 | Is that what she was like ? ’ and all I could do was say well , no , not at all … but that was the licence you got at the NME , because the most important word in the paper is I . ’ |
| 23 | Tonight all I could do was make sure of Crispin . |
| 24 | There was an immediate loss of power and all I could do was to crash-land the aircraft . |
| 25 | So the least I could do was to get out and around looking for the guy . |
| 26 | All I could do was write a letter , and by the time I 'd written a letter and it got where it was going and a reply got back , a week or two weeks could have gone by . |
| 27 | But all I could do was remind people of John 's situation . |
| 28 | The only thing I could do was discuss with her yet again the best way to express our case . |
| 29 | If I did n't want it he would say that he was keeping me and the least I could do was give him sex . |
| 30 | ‘ All I could do was lie on the bed ’ , she says , ‘ it made me feel very ill and because of that I felt slightly depressed . |