Example sentences of "may be [conj] " in BNC.

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1 Bleeders , buggers and sods they may be before they arrive but , once they 're there , it 's her lap that they always land on .
2 For the reader , however , an art defined as national , made as cohesive and marketable as possible , may be less than convincing as an entity ; it may be that within a survey or an anthology there are just a limited number of interesting and attractive works .
3 It may be that neither statement need be held to subtract from the other , but there could well be some dispute as to which of the two is the more deeply entrenched in the novel .
4 Interpretation is allowed to copy what it finds , and to distort it , and it may be that the novel can be interpreted as an entertainment which conveys that doctrines of science and improvement ca n't encompass what happens in a frightening world , where motive is dark and ill-will ubiquitous .
5 And it may be that Justin , too , has more to say , from beyond the grave .
6 It may be that Larkin 's poem and the person we meet there participate in the ventriloquism of Amis 's novel .
7 Amis also likes to write , as Larkin liked to write , about the fear of death , and it may be that this fear can be detected in the failure to notice here that both sorts of people are subject to it , as to other unavoidable misfortunes , and that both sorts die .
8 It may be that he really thinks there is nothing that he really thinks .
9 I have in fact no explanation to offer as to how he came to die , and it may be that no trustworthy explanation will ever be achieved .
10 It may be that in the protestant — loyalist case this ethnic tendency may have priority over the British component of identity or be in conflict with it .
11 And while it may be that the tragic case of the disappearing baronet is one that appears to defy all logic , it is not a case that defies the world 's greatest detective .
12 It may be that I ca n't help , but … ’
13 A further complication may be that any sideslipping to correct for drift may cause the ASI to under-read so that the speed may have to be judged .
14 It may be that you choose to obtain a mortgage , second mortgage or a loan from a bank .
15 For example , it can be argued the expansion into amalgamated police units has enlarged the organization to a point where it is no longer accessible to the man in the street ; alternatively , it may be that the use of a centralized computer and complex technical aids has alienated the public even at the same time they are increasingly fed a diet of violent news snippets which reinforce a fear of crime and generate another ‘ folk devil ’ of criminal menace , which demands the impossible : a policeman on every corner .
16 First , it may be that no one ( as yet ) has made the critical observations which would allow the pattern to become evident .
17 There is , however , a more fundamental reason why an attempt to perceive a structure within a given set of phenomena may fail ; it may be that there actually is no structure there to be perceived in the first place .
18 This may be coincidence , or it may be that the star system in French intellectual culture requires its major performers to be visibly on stage .
19 This situation is common in many academic areas , as I have discovered talking to colleagues , and it may be that this state of inflation and over-production is economically unavoidable , that many inferior books have to be published in order to let the good ones appear .
20 It may be that there is literally nothing they can say about it in the terms they are accustomed to using .
21 I 've found the increasing dogmatism and certainty that she 's right the most sinister thing about her because that so often goes with paranoid feelings , and it may be that this is one manifestation of that .
22 After hearing defence submissions that the £600,000 payout to Mrs Sutcliffe was ‘ perverse and excessive ’ , Lord Donaldson said : ‘ It may be that the general jury approach to newspaper libel at the moment is tempered by some indignation at the way some branches of the Press are run — coupled with the feeling that , if you can get £1m on the pools , why should n't you get £1m on the newspapers too ?
23 It may be that his gifts lay in the thrill and risk of live performance , losing their savour in aspic ; or , more likely , that his genius was always over-rated .
24 ‘ It may be that those involved in the sale of gilt options did not realise that they actually increased the risk to which the council was exposed rather than reducing it . ’
25 ‘ Is it safe to do that , knowing one outcome may be that at the end of the process we exclude sexual abuse ?
26 It may be that his gifts lay in the thrill and risk of live performance , losing their savour in aspic ; or , more likely , that his genius was always overrated .
27 Indeed , it may be that the collapse of the MI5/MI6 informer network in Germany and other European countries restored the IRA 's confidence in its ability to resume operations on the Continent from March 1987 , when it placed a car bomb at Rheindalen .
28 It may be that the IRA , fearing informers , had gone to such lengths to restrict the knowledge of where the ‘ active service unit ’ was that it was unable to warn them that their presence was compromised .
29 It may be that the IRA hopes that it will flush out current informants by publicising the fact that it knows the identities of some agents .
30 It may be that your enthusiasm gives that extra bit of life to your record .
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