Example sentences of "they could only [verb] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | They invariably came from countries with no state pension arrangements for most people , so they could only start contributing towards their pensions once they arrived in Britain . |
| 2 | They could only hope , that with an improvement in the general financial situation , the position would improve in the coming year . |
| 3 | They could not hold him now , they could only hope to come off with their lives and unidentified . |
| 4 | Several of them came to London in order to discuss the possibilities of an armistice and ultimately of peace , but they could only meet junior officials from the Foreign Office and absolutely nothing transpired . |
| 5 | She was on the point of marrying another man , so they could only meet in secret . |
| 6 | They could only retain their job if they accepted a reduction of 2½d per hour . |
| 7 | The last show of the tour was in Atlanta and I decided to give a little party for the singers and musicians and the crew and I tried to rent a banquet room at the hotel , but because it was Thanksgiving Weekend , they said they could only give me a suite . |
| 8 | This was the first time that everyone else on the station at that time became aware of the danger , and they could only watch helplessly as the child stood petrified with fright between the rails . |
| 9 | Having started off making a big success with a little film , they ended up spending increasingly larger sums of money on bigger films until they had expended so much of their capital they could only go under . |
| 10 | Prisoners offered the choice very rarely preferred death to the colonies but , because they were essentially treated in the same way as indentured servants , they could only go to America if a merchant was willing to take them on the basis of a calculation that he could sell their services at the other end . |
| 11 | They had no land of their own , they had nothing to harvest of their own , they could only go and harvest , and glean what the harvesters left behind . |
| 12 | In the present climate of opinion they could only damage him . |
| 13 | The world is littered with communities which believe that if they could only separate themselves from the world , they would escape the consequences of original sin . |
| 14 | They could only speak Greek to the Romans , and it was for the Romans to decide whether they wanted an interpreter . |
| 15 | When they saw her appear at the bedroom window , they could only assume she was all right . |
| 16 | They could only think of another children 's home . |
| 17 | The Conservatives faced strong opposition within their own ranks to any major changes in boundaries : they could only contain this opposition by their readiness to accept detailed amendments throughout the process . |
| 18 | Apparently , the free spending Italian club AC Milan were so taken with him that they offered Celtic a fee of £100,000 for his services , only to recoil in fear when the club 's manager Jock Stein told him they could only rent him for one game for that amount . |
| 19 | It was a disappointing night for Swindon Town too … they could only draw nil-nil against struggling Birmingham in the league … |
| 20 | still occupy third from bottom spot after they could only draw 0–0 one place above them . |
| 21 | ‘ I wept on the night the sidh were last seen at Tara , ’ said Dierdriu , ‘ for I knew that they could only sing for one of you , and that there could only be one ruler . |
| 22 | Wills were normally made shortly before death , as many a shaky signature can testify ; some people left it so late that they could only make an oral statement ( or nuncupative will ) , which was written down and sworn to by witnesses . |
| 23 | Another aspect of Qaddafi 's theory of democracy is that parties were forbidden because they could only represent , and could represent only sectors of the people . |
| 24 | This Christian Socialist , dedicated to equal shares and to soaking the rich ( who included his own family ) , was accepted and frostily admired as an incorruptible thorn in the nation 's conscience , forever reminding them that there was no jam today and they could only expect some tomorrow if they had earned it . |
| 25 | Some studies stated quite explicitly that they had chosen to study young men only because they felt that as male ethnographers they could only portray the male point of view . |
| 26 | Trade unionists knew that they could only achieve a limited level of their ambitions through industrial means and they realized that they needed working class MPs to support them in parliament . |
| 27 | But they admit that these babies had not achieved complete and independent toileting as they could only hold on to their eliminations for a few minutes and needed help to undress and get on the potty . |
| 28 | they could only hold twenty seven . |
| 29 | Now , in the absence of ordeal , they could only await the final vindication of their cause in heaven . |
| 30 | They could only manage to smoke . |