Example sentences of "we [modal v] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | Although we may claim that we simply publish an objective report , the inference that exceptional evil existed during the occupation of Kuwait will naturally be made by those trying to justify the devastating Allied bombardment of Iraq , now retrospectively . |
| 2 | We may be meant to think that time is simultaneous , in a way that may owe something to the simultaneity propounded , ‘ perhaps ’ , in Eliot 's Four Quartets , where ‘ History is now and England ’ ; or that it is cyclical , a turning wheel , with human depravity paling into insignificance as the wheel turns into modern times . |
| 3 | Which of these two conceptions , for that matter , we may even sometimes wonder , is which ? |
| 4 | The book indicates that duelling and gambling have been co-ordinate activities : both , we may feel , are poised on a knife-edge between accident and intention . |
| 5 | In the liberated world of radical chic , we may be intended to think , favours could be done for the right person . |
| 6 | But we may feel on reading this that it takes two to perform — that performance requires , in however regressive or circular a fashion , the self that so many people believe they have , and that this epistolary Zuckerman exhibits here , in a display of inadvertence which may or may not implicate Philip Roth . |
| 7 | I think if you come and see us tomorrow , we may yet surprise you . |
| 8 | We may slip into that fatal perspective of recognising culture as our construct , arbitrary , conventional , invented by mortals ’ . |
| 9 | We may not be here tomorrow screamed the rock-fuck bands . |
| 10 | Whatever we may make of this , it is interesting to observe that Professor Hartman of New York has established a link between those who suffer from this nocturnal disposition and a high level of creativity . |
| 11 | Whatever we may make of its influences , Leonard is clear that he ‘ never recovered ’ from its dénouements ; its ‘ illumination of human behaviour ’ ; its horror ( which he termed ‘ metaphorical ’ ) . |
| 12 | In the meantime we may note that , right or wrong , balanced or not , Leonard spoke from the heart — as did the prophets of old ; the sell-out qualities of the book demonstrated the need , as well as his astuteness in compiling his selection . |
| 13 | He admired , and we may guess coveted , the warmth of relationships he saw around him . |
| 14 | Whatever we may make of Leonard 's Judaism , he is a man seized by its traditions , its scriptures and their imagery . |
| 15 | And we may see another reason for the ambiguity in Leonard : Ashkenazi Jews expressed themselves in Yiddish , which was not merely their language ( resting on 16th-century Middle High German and many Slavic loan-words ) but in a particular sense a reflection of their world , their universe . |
| 16 | And is not the thought of , say , blue different from the thought of green in some way which we may one day be in a position to describe , just as we are now able to describe the causal conditions for the experience green which is different from the experience of blue ? |
| 17 | If we are drowsy we may not hear either the piccolo or the dog whistle . |
| 18 | We may think of consciousness as having two components : sensation and perception on the one hand and willing or agency on the other ; or input and output . |
| 19 | We may use physical methods of measuring light intensity that are apparently independent of our subjective experience — for instance photosensitive cells — but these are accepted because they correlate to a greater or lesser degree , under normal circumstances , with subjective experiences of brightness . |
| 20 | We may imagine therefore that neural dots and dashes — trains of impulses — can encode the variousness of experience . |
| 21 | We may assert that there is no such thing as truth , but we regard that as a true statement . |
| 22 | We may have no choice but to do so , though I believe that the change has been more damaging than beneficial . |
| 23 | Connolly and Wilson , we may agree , lived dangerously ; they took risks , knowing full well that they were not au fait with the latest scholarship , had not mastered ‘ the secondary material ’ . |
| 24 | We may , following Hirsch , accept that there is no such thing as a poetic or aesthetic essence ; but we can say that such texts are rewarding when approached in aesthetic terms , or , in Lewis 's words , are read in literary ways . |
| 25 | This is fair comment ; and the last clause in particular is , surprisingly , manifestly true , explain it how we may . |
| 26 | To be sure , both of these cantos are special cases — as was , we may suppose , the ‘ Envoi ’ to Hugh Selwyn Mauberley , written many years before . |
| 27 | Here , as often with the author of Thankyou , Fog , we may well suspect that Auden generalizes about English life too much on the basis of his own late-Edwardian childhood in a comfortable rentier household . |
| 28 | And when we remember what Eliot did with the gibe , taking it over in the title of Old Possum 's Book of Practical Cats , that collection of whimsical fireside charades in verse , we may well think again about Auden 's comment that in English family life ‘ it is becoming to entertain each other with witty remarks , hoaxes , family games and jokes ’ . |
| 29 | We may doubt that Beerbohm had the acumen or the catholicity to respond to this provocation as conclusively as he should . |
| 30 | In verse writing , as in virtually any other human activity we may think of , there are thresholds to be reached and crossed : below a certain threshold of practice and expertise , the attitude of the amateur produces only work that is ‘ amateurish ’ ( and heaven knows , we see plenty of that all around us ) ; above a certain threshold of facility , the attitude of the professional produces work that is glib , facile , heartless , and academic — and we see plenty of that , too . |