Example sentences of "would have [been] [to-vb] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | ‘ So I struggled on when the best thing would have been to go into the reserves and get my confidence back . |
| 2 | I mean , the sensible thing would have been to go to her room , would n't it ? |
| 3 | But the only powers they would have then had to stop contact with the abuser would have been to take the children into care . |
| 4 | Yes , it was real , it was happening : sitting with her back straight and her head up in the carriage on the way back , she thought how proud her father would have been to see her at the centre of all this pomp and splendour , and found herself mentally comparing his craggy looks and red beard with Joãs clean-shaven face and small , manicured hands . |
| 5 | Of course one effect of the making of these revelations would have been to put D's record ( if he had one ) in issue as well , so that the jury would have had even more to think about to assist them in the weighing of the evidence in this case or ( depending on how you look at it ) to distract them from it . |
| 6 | And Campbell ( 1987 ) demonstrates that indigenization in the Ivory Coast did not really challenge the dominance of foreign capital because to do so would have been to put the mode of accumulation at risk . |
| 7 | Surely , the most effective denial of this satanic allegation would have been to allow the rituals of the higher degrees to be published in full . |
| 8 | To ask Rupert Murdoch what were his ‘ goals ’ would have been to pose probably rather a difficult question ( if the answer were serious ) . |
| 9 | This , however , would have been to trivialize : the results would be of little interest . |
| 10 | Even though the reason for permitting the employees to continue work pending the appeals may have been born out of a sense of leniency , the proper course of action would have been to suspend the employees pending the hearing of the appeals . |
| 11 | In all three cases the effect would have been to create merged units of a size able to compete with the many powerful US , European and Japanese companies now increasingly dominating the world scene ; for example , the Leyland/Bedford trucks merger provides a scale that neither could achieve on its own . |
| 12 | The effect of such a marriage , had it ever taken place , would have been to create a substantial English-dominated fief on France 's northern and eastern borders which would have been a northern equivalent of Aquitaine . |
| 13 | To have made such an equation would have been to create an idol : an item in the creation ( not this time a golden calf but a person ) would have been deified . |
| 14 | He does n't seem to have expressed a wish for a studio — that would have been to declare himself too soon , to stretch his confidence too far . |
| 15 | The outcome would have been to open up 14 million hectares of rainforest , so that Cameroon could achieve the TFAP 's target of becoming ‘ the most important African exporter [ of timber ] from the start of the twenty-first century . ’ |
| 16 | To have been too radical , however , would have been to invite the same fate as the reports of previous committees . |
| 17 | This clearly might have been proceeded against as an affray , and counsel 's argument before the Court of Appeal appears to have been that once violence had actually been used , the proper course would have been to charge that offence . |
| 18 | I think it extremely likely that the plaintiff would have followed the inevitable recommendation from its officers which would have been to proceed with this action in order to avoid paying compensation . |
| 19 | This was a one-off film for Chaplin and he was well aware that to have sustained that role and that theme would have been to sacrifice much of his great following and to have become an artist with a more sectional support . |
| 20 | He points out that under John Akers , IBM has built its desktop computing business to $8,500m in worldwide sales in 1991 , giving it 19% market share ; remained the worldwide leader in information technology revenues , at $62,800m last year up nearly 30% from $48,500m in 1985 when Akers took over ; and avoided the worst crisis that could have befallen it — which would have been to sacrifice investments in research and development for the sake of a fast buck — it spent $6,600m last year . |
| 21 | Without actually opening it , which would have been to examine the beast physiologically , Hull inferred numerous relationships between levels of motivation ( drive ) and the extent of learning ( habit strength ) that rendered a response more or less probable . |
| 22 | Francis 's one idea , if he 'd lived , would have been to sell out . |
| 23 | I know this because after my machine arrived , the salesman whose job it would have been to persuade me to buy it , had I not been too quick for him , came to see me anyway . |
| 24 | The only way to keep the mine going would have been to spend perhaps £4 million on deeper tunnels plus new surface equipment . |
| 25 | Given the arguments of the sceptics , such failures are only to be expected of course ; aiming to replace anxious intellectual despair with a calm peace of mind , the traditional Pyrrhonian response would have been to advocate suspension of judgement . |
| 26 | His normal reaction would have been to swing the car in a U-turn to return and tackle the driver of the tractor . |
| 27 | ( A man 's reaction about small type would have been to point to the scale and demand it be paid extra ! ) |
| 28 | There are two members I think have spoken from the Liberal benches concerning funding bureaucracy and I would agree entirely with what that means but they 've also mentioned in the same bet , budgetary control and if you 're going to control budgets , you have to have a minimal amount of bureaucracy and the function really of the head of the er of the project , er the head of the the post that 's now slipped into oblivion with this motion , would actually have been to do two things it would have been to hold the two groups together and it would have been to have overall control of that budget and it would n't have been easy and I would n't have like the job and I wouldn't 've applied for it and certainly would have been very difficult indeed . |
| 29 | If she wanted us to blame Burrows by faking an entry point , surely the simplest thing would have been to leave the window open ? |
| 30 | The only cure would have been to leave . |