Example sentences of "[pers pn] can [verb] to be " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | I can pretend to be your uncle David . |
| 2 | Unless I can manage to be off sick again . |
| 3 | I can begin to be a real father to my girls and prepare for the day when I 'll be a grandfather to their children . |
| 4 | Then , one week , the quietest woman in the group said : ‘ This is the only place where I can afford to be honest , ’ and somehow it seemed the healing process had begun . |
| 5 | Every girl in New York who is not a singer is only waiting for the right break to come along so she can get to be one . |
| 6 | If you can not get out and about , you can continue to be active , either doing housework or gardening ( there are aids to help disabled gardeners ) or doing exercises suggested by the health visitor , district nurse or doctor . |
| 7 | Touch legering , like so many things worth doing , needs to be practised before you can expect to be proficient . |
| 8 | With both types , the lenders have your new home as security , but since they 're taking a bigger risk than normal , you can expect to be charged a higher rate of interest . |
| 9 | You can expect to be promoted within two or three years of qualifying . |
| 10 | You can decide to be imperfect , to do things in your own time , to please yourself , not to be strong and to try only as much as you like . |
| 11 | What you want is to be able to answer a few sensible questions uniquely identifying you , the trouble is there 's probably a repertoire of only ten of those questions , you 're going to get asked three or four of them , but those questions , your date of birth , your telephone number , the er address of your bank and so on and so forth , if you 're a private detective you can get those , you can have them on a sheet of paper and you can pretend to be whoever you like . |
| 12 | You can afford to be generous . |
| 13 | You can afford to be cheap and cheerful when it comes to just about every other accessory , but a bag says more about you than all the rest put together . |
| 14 | You can afford to be ca n't you ? |
| 15 | Gross has happily classified some 3,000 under various headings : Self-Love ( ’ To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance ’ — Oscar Wilde ) ; Love , Jealousy , Libido ( ’ No woman so naked as one you can see to be naked underneath her clothes ’ — Michael Frayn ) ; Secrets ( ’ There is something about a cupboard that makes a skeleton terribly restless ’ — anon ) and Criticism ( ’ In some cases taking up the trade of critic is only an embittered form of renunciation ’ — Albert Guinon ) . |
| 16 | Bear in mind that any speed limit is a maximum , it does not mean that it is safe to drive at that speed , always take into account all the conditions at the time , never drive so fast that you can not stop well within the distance you can see to be clear . |
| 17 | If you fear the threat of violence you can ask to be excluded from the public extract . |
| 18 | Or you can dare to be alone with yourself . |
| 19 | You can train to be a Navy Cook without any particular previous formal qualifications , although any knowledge you bring from a technical college will give you an advantage . |
| 20 | Given our financial priorities , we will not be challenging the big six in Europe but we can expect to be an increasingly strong player . |
| 21 | According to Goffmann , what lends credibility to our concepts of personal self is the recognition of certain rules or conventions which limit the claims we can expect to be acknowledged with respect to freedom from untoward threat , interference and so forth . |
| 22 | Deer , wild boar , so we can claim to be connoisseurs . |
| 23 | Whereas we used to have what you might call an across-the-table relationship with our customers , now we can claim to be sitting on the same side of the table . ’ |
| 24 | We can divide the components of sea water into three erm categories firstly those things which we can consider to be major constituents these are substances which are present are concentrations greater than one part per million . |
| 25 | It may be that , at least in the Western World , we have reached a level of wealth where we can afford to be concerned about the environment . |
| 26 | Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told cabinet colleagues , ‘ We can not do very much , but we can seem to be very busy — and that is half the battle nowadays . ’ |
| 27 | If we can learn to be programmers _ indeed we already are — but if we can learn to instruct the computer , then we 'll retain our dignity and our responsibility in matters rather than really abdicating it in ways that I do n't myself favour . |
| 28 | The patient wants to keep still but the pains can be so severe that they must move so sometimes they can appear to be restless . |
| 29 | I do n't know how , I do n't know how they can stand to be apart . |
| 30 | There can be nothing worse for those employed in any industry than to have their incomes drastically reduced for two years on the trot and then be left twirling their thumbs wondering whether at the end of the next year they will still be in business — whether they can continue to be farmers and produce the food that Britain can use . |