Example sentences of "[conj] [pers pn] [modal v] have been [adj] " in BNC.
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1 | ‘ I felt it had to be my fault : I was a weak human being with no moral fibre or I would have been able to kick the habit . ’ |
2 | In Miss Weeton 's Journal of a Governess , she writes on 15th September 1810 : ‘ I would have introduced you to Mr. Green , who keeps an exhibition of drawings ( all his own ) in that village where you might have been amused for two or three hours-for he has a great number , two rooms being kept open for the purpose . |
3 | It was a good thing she had n't known or she would have been self-conscious . |
4 | If you already have your own company sick pay scheme , it must pay the employee at least what he or she would have been entitled to on SSP . |
5 | As a result , there is also concern that the provisions of the Act are failing to provide adequate safeguards against excessive caution on the part of some magistrates who may be tempted to refuse bail even where it would have been safe and proper to grant it . |
6 | We were sad because he could not come to my room and I could not go to his home , where it would have been difficult to explain our relationship . |
7 | He was twenty — well this June — and he still had n't walked out with a girlfriend , and yet his mother was moving in very exalted circles , where it should have been possible for him to meet the pick of the debutantes . |
8 | and then while he was upstairs seeing and helping his wife , then the the stove blew up downstairs , now that might have been the house saving from a real disaster whilst attacking his wife in a minor way , or it might have been pure coincidence . |
9 | ‘ Hello , I 'm trying to clarify a rather confused report we 've picked up — I think from the local police — about an incident at the hospital last night , or it could have been early this morning . |
10 | Although I would have been surprised if London 's Charles Dickens Society required its members to put on a white tie for its annual dinner , the invitation card demanded it for the Scott dinner . |
11 | I know what kind of an ordeal you 've had tonight , and , although I might have been willing to tease you before to take your mind off it and give you something else to think about , I do n't intend to ravish you to complete the treatment ! ’ |
12 | Would n't speak to me for six months , but then his natural goodness of heart , as well perhaps as his gradual realization that I might have been right , that perhaps I had saved him from a fate worse than death , made it impossible for him to keep it up . |
13 | I was duly slapped down by my more knowledgeable tectonic seniors , and tried to forget the brief publication in question , but later work has now led me to suspect that I might have been right after all . |
14 | I knew now that I might have been foolish to have expected so much from Waite , but he had been the only person who 'd been willing to treat both kidnappers and hostages as human beings and to attempt some kind of understanding about how the situation could be resolved . |
15 | ‘ Not that I would have been able to do much anyway , that thing 's a death trap ! |
16 | ‘ You might think that I would have been happy to go on improving my golf handicap , ’ he said . |
17 | As I can remember very little about the rest of the day I presume that I must have been unconscious most of the time . |
18 | By four o'clock , I knew from the morning 's reckoning that I should have been able to see the Land Rover . |
19 | Rain rallied although she would have been happy to stay where she was , lying on the bed . |
20 | Although she might have been wise to add that even the life of a Television Presenter 2nd Class is a doddle compared to packing frozen peas , doing a 12-hour nursing shift in an understaffed hospital ward or for that matter being married to David Mellor . |
21 | Had she been expecting any apology , though , Fabia realised then that she would have been disappointed for , ‘ Hrm , ’ was all he grunted , and , handing the letter back , he scrutinised her with a hard look , and Fabia had the feeling that he thought that she was the one in the wrong ! |
22 | To herself she had to admit that she would have been willing to go further than talk . |
23 | She was so devoted to the principle that beauty is a frivolity and a sign of sin that she would have been ashamed to have it in the house . |
24 | But she thought that she would have been glad of someone to talk about her new plans with , all the same . |
25 | Sometimes she had the oddest feeling that she would have been able to confide in Paul , to pour out to him the whole bloody silly story without causing him to bat so much as an eyelid . |
26 | It is understood that Mr Major wanted her to be prisons minister , and there was speculation last night that she might have been reluctant to be back in harness with Mr Kenneth Clarke , the Home Secretary , who was her boss at the Health Department during the eggs affair . |
27 | She had hinted darkly that Wilson herself must be to blame , that she must have been weak , must not have written plain enough and as she had been instructed . |
28 | ’ Right , ’ Mala said , with more crispness than she should have been able to produce . |
29 | You might also be consistently failing to hear other sounds that you would have been able to hear ( and produce too ) had you approached the problem methodically by means of the workchart . |
30 | A jolly little incident in Kwiksave that you would have been amused at dear . |