Example sentences of "[vb past] [adv] [vb pp] to be [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | I 'd only wanted to be alone ! |
| 2 | ‘ I 'd kinda hoped to be alone here tonight . |
| 3 | I 'd always wanted to be famous . |
| 4 | I 'd always wanted to be famous . |
| 5 | At the same time she had fiercely wanted to be proud of Phoebe , to support Phoebe 's admirable fight on her behalf . |
| 6 | He had obviously decided to be pleasant to her . |
| 7 | The fact that the cold war lasted so much longer than the economic idyll meant that Americans never adjusted to the fact that , economically , their country had long ceased to be able to deliver the annual increase in prosperity they had come to consider a birthright . |
| 8 | ’ He was n't yet thirty when he wrote that ; he had already decided to be old before his time . |
| 9 | She had not appeared to be surprised when he told her what he intended to do , nor had she put up any resistance . |
| 10 | The uranium ore he was carrying had not proved to be radioactive , his lawyer said . |
| 11 | The newswire quotes industry executives saying that the trio plan to announce by the end of the month that they have produced a working sample of the chip , which they had not expected to be ready until early next year . |
| 12 | I had thought it would be fun , but I had not expected to be able to rock 'n' roll by the end of the evening . |
| 13 | But suppose that nearly all the entries had just happened to be nasty . |
| 14 | Broaddus — owner of Prodesco , a textile company in Pennsylvania , and an American with extensive business interests outside catering — was a friend and former hotel client of Brown , and had always wanted to be involved in the hospitality industry . |
| 15 | She had always hankered to be tall and fair , like Riborg . |
| 16 | The Christian attitude towards pain had always tended to be stoical ; as Jeremy Taylor bluntly put it : ‘ He that is afraid of pain is afraid of his own nature . ’ |
| 17 | Whether he would have been able to stick to it if he had ever risen to be national leader of the Liberal Party is not certain . |
| 18 | They were mixed because although all the vitality , the song , humour , and much of the idiom came from what E. P. Thompson has described as the traditionally ‘ rowdy ’ element in working-class culture these things had now ceased to be spontaneous and informal and had passed into other hands . |
| 19 | I had n't noticed to be honest . |
| 20 | By then she 'd had our second child for which I got blamed as she had n't wanted to be pregnant again . |
| 21 | She had n't wanted to be sensible or clever . |
| 22 | I began to feel ashamed of my nosiness but I had n't intended to be nosey : I was just curious . |
| 23 | She had n't had to be psychic to determine Margaret 's thoughts . |
| 24 | He had n't meant to be hurtful , she knew that perfectly well . |
| 25 | For once she had n't meant to be provocative , but Fen swore explosively and rage such as she had never seen filled his dark eyes . |
| 26 | These children had n't learnt to be afraid of animals because they had never heard of Earth , the Burning , or the Book of Remembering . |
| 27 | I had n't expected to be able to speak to Alan before the end of the week , but at a quarter to five Sylvia de Groot telephoned to say that he was free now if I still wanted to see him . |
| 28 | A report from the Lower Franconian town of Kitzingen in May 1943 , dealing particularly with opinion among academics , salespeople , and the bourgeoisie — groups which had earlier tended to be pro-Nazi in their sympathies — stated that ‘ a disgust about the Party was building up among the people , and a rage which would one day boil over ’ . |
| 29 | The representative insider now fears that his job , which he had previously assumed to be safe , might now be in jeopardy . |
| 30 | She had never expected to be beautiful , and she was startled to see how nearly she approached a kind of beauty . |