Example sentences of "desire to be " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | So where does the desire to be up and doing come from ? |
| 2 | It was my desire to be active , to earn my way in life , which encouraged me into these new fields , that is it was a positive impulse which drove me on . |
| 3 | ‘ When we had ascended a little more than half-way , I was much afraid we should have been doomed to return , on account of the masses of rock , over which we had to climb , beginning to increase in size ; we knew , however , that a descent would have been attended with infinite danger , and being urged on partly by eagerness in our pursuit , but more from a desire to be at the top , we determined to brave every difficulty . |
| 4 | In their futile endeavour Joseph Chamberlain and his contemporaries were only re-enacting in modern dress the plot of the mideighteenth-century drama , by proceeding as if a common will and desire to be subordinate existed when it did not . |
| 5 | What had begun as a schoolgirl crush had grown into a profound and romantic desire to be Charles 's bride . |
| 6 | In On the Night of the Fire ( 1939 , The Fugitive in US ) , Ralph Richardson plays a small-town barber whose desire to be shot of a miserable life , ‘ earning a few quid a week and no hope of making anything more ’ leads him first to an act of casual theft , then murder . |
| 7 | In his statement , broadcast live to the colony , the Foreign Secretary struggled to balance his ‘ desire to be as effective as possible in restoring confidence ’ with what he politely called ‘ our ability to accept the individuals concerned for settlement in this country — should that ever be necessary ’ . |
| 8 | The desire to be sixteen forever has caused the sound of being sixteen — noisy guitar primitivism with no added knobs or frills — to become fetishized , petrified . |
| 9 | The desire to be everything for somebody , the yearning for ultimate closeness , reached its lunatic peak in the sublime schizophrenia of ‘ If I Was Your Girlfriend ’ ; ‘ if I was your one and only friend would U run to me if somebody hurt U even if that somebody was me ? ’ |
| 10 | Moreover , the Germans had no desire to be saddled with more of BAOR 's sector of the front : they had enough on their hands under-pinning the Dutch and Belgian corps , whose military worth they had good reasons to doubt in the late 1950s . |
| 11 | It is perfectly clear that long before the procession came into sight , long before the procession had formed , these people in the Markets in their desire to be offended had come down from the side streets and had taken great trouble to he offended , and not only were prepared to be offended but were prepared to throw missiles , stones and other weapons … |
| 12 | But a desire to be fair , a wish to be absolutely certain , and an understandable reluctance to accuse someone of perfidy who has been a friend of mine for six difficult years made me pull the telephone back to my mouth . |
| 13 | The desire to be alone with nature , which Karajan 's elder brother took to the point of eccentricity , was there in Karajan too ; an impulse , at once delighted and dispassionate , to slough off mundane things . |
| 14 | In other words Dannii had no desire to be packaged as Kylie Mark 2 . |
| 15 | I am an advocate of an arm 's length relationship with a Labour government and I have no desire to be knocking the door of No 10 on a whole range of issues . ’ |
| 16 | ‘ It is difficult to judge how far this attempt to appeal to the baser sort is dictated by the mere desire to be re-elected ( which , though by no means admirable , is , we suppose , understandable enough ) , rather than by any firm conviction ; or how far a re-elected Tory government would seek to put these detestable principles into practice . |
| 17 | A small proportion of the boys — seven per cent — wanted to be fatter , but ‘ it would seem their desire to be heavier was not for fatness but for a more athletic and muscular build ’ . |
| 18 | They genuinely tried to become , to use a horrid word , acculturated with the white invaders , even if they had no desire to be assimilated . |
| 19 | A large , fleshy , amiable bloke with a shock of gingery brown hair and a chummy manner which concealed a burning desire to be somebody , to get on in the world , Mick ( how his new girlfriend , Amanda , hated that nickname ! ) had no real interest in the ideological struggle . |
| 20 | In this predominantly part-time area only 47% of wives would have tackled an emergency themselves yet 74% indicated a desire to be able to do more on the farm . |
| 21 | Four out of ten wives felt that attending the course would help them assist their husbands , indicating that : ( a ) they saw a need to help their husbands , and ( b ) they most probably felt a desire to be more helpful on the farm . |
| 22 | His desire to be always in absolute control made it impossible for him to seek the medical and psychological help he needed and he had no close friends to persuade him . |
| 23 | As it was your generous gift of the physic Garden to the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries that encouraged the supporting of that Garden for the improvement of Botany and so consequently was the Occasion of my being employed in a service so agreeable to my natural inclinations , so the favourable opinion you have had of my abilities , when you was pleased to recommend me to that worshipful Company , with the several instances I have since had of your generous inclinations to encourage the Art and me , will ever lay me under the greatest obligations to endeavour to answer that character you was please to give of me and herein humbly hoping to approve myself what I most desire to be thought of … |
| 24 | It is the fear of exclusion rather than the positive desire to be included that is driving these countries to apply for EC membership . |
| 25 | Nothing other than an obvious desire to be rid of me . |
| 26 | About agoraphobia and claustrophobia and the paradoxical desire to be let out into unconfined space , the wild moorland , the open ground , and at the same time to be closed into tighter and tighter impenetrable small spaces — like Emily Dickinson 's voluntary confinement , like the Sibyl 's jar . |
| 27 | There was a fondness for the strict classical style , as seen in Moscow Kiev Station , affirming a desire to be recognized as a fully-fledged European power . |
| 28 | He had a strong desire to be a ‘ peace-keeper ’ . |
| 29 | The customers were all men , heavily robed , standing in groups or leaning on the counter with no apparent desire to be served . |
| 30 | In ‘ Suggestions for Helpers ’ , Birmingham care workers were advised to make parents feel that their visit was the result of a desire to be ‘ really helpful and friendly ’ . |