Example sentences of "if [pron] had [adv] been [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | ‘ I should not be alive today if I had ever been guilty of complacency or carelessness , ’ he said . |
| 2 | How would he have reacted if she had really been ill ? |
| 3 | She chewed the pencil , swallowing splinters ; what could she tell Mrs Rundle , who was now ( if she had ever been much more than ) a stranger , living at a distance , forgetting them , putting them into her past , memories packed with other memories in her bulging handbag ? |
| 4 | ‘ There she is ! ’ cried her father , as if there had ever been any doubt about her arrival . |
| 5 | If there had ever been any chance that the Whigs might lose the support of the great mass of the population , the poor , the unpropertied , the emergent working class , that possibility had now gone . |
| 6 | He might add that , if there had ever been any prospect that the class war would provide its movement , that prospect had patently disappeared except , ironically , in those eastern European countries bound to submit to Russian supervision . |
| 7 | The charge was such an obvious frame-up that he had to ask himself if there had ever been any intention to try him on it . |
| 8 | If there had only been some way they could have gone in the doors of University College together and come home on the bus each night , or better still got a flat together , life would have been perfect . |
| 9 | The table was bare again , as if there had never been good food and wine . |
| 10 | He came , towards the end of the nineties , to believe that there are erm there must be things which are in the strictest possible sense non-mental , and which would be what they were , even if there had never been any minds that were conscious of them . |
| 11 | Strange that he should seem so familiar to her now ; as if they had always been close . |
| 12 | It is almost as if they had never been wild elephants — but only the day before yesterday , they were . |
| 13 | She noticed that his hair had scissor marks in it , as if it had just been dry cut . |
| 14 | Her hatred — if it had even been that — had turned out to be as intensely personal as her love and an intrinsic part of it , Maria acknowledged privately . |
| 15 | If it had only been possible to hold the conference without him ! |
| 16 | If it had ever been necessary he could just as happily have switched sides . |
| 17 | I put my arm across his shoulders , and as he leaned against me for a moment and sobbed I wondered if he had ever been able to cry like this — like a little boy with somebody to comfort him . |
| 18 | When Leith was not mutinying against him , she was alternately engaged — while still producing a fair output of work — in wondering if he had really been serious about taking her to Parkwood to meet Travis 's parents this weekend . |
| 19 | She knew he was not actually in the red at the bank , but he was pretty near to it at times , although he was now paid a very good salary , much more than Len would ever have been paid if he had still been alive and in the job . |
| 20 | Paul wondered if he had perhaps been remiss in his lectures with all that had happened ; but it was not that , as it turned out . |
| 21 | When he arrived he put his cold , white hand in hers for a moment and said , ‘ Hello , Tessa , ’ as if he had always been aware of her as part of the background furnishings . |
| 22 | What is more , de Man argues , metaphor overcomes the opposition between inner repose and outer action because Marcel 's imagination gives him access to the outside world ; of a kind that allows him to possess it " much more effectively than if he had actually been present in an outside world that he could then have only known by bits and pieces " ( 1979 : 60 ) . |