Example sentences of "be no [adj] [conj] a " in BNC.

  Next page
No Sentence
1 You 're no better than a Hitler . ’
2 More often than not , they 're no more than a glass through which the all-important text is transmitted .
3 ‘ You 're no more than a blackmailer ! ’
4 Otherwise you may aggravate something that , with a little rest and good management , could have been no more than a minor injury .
5 It had not occurred to us that this ranging survey of the idioms of English and incidentally French verse had been no more than a ‘ prologue ’ — and to what , for heaven 's sake ?
6 But what had been no more than a slowly moving stream less than a couple of metres wide now flowed fast and dark with mud across the full thirty metres of the riverbed .
7 Continuing his tour of crowned heads , Napoleon III went from Stuttgart to Weimar , where he met Franz-Joseph of Austria , but the encounter seems to have been no more than a routine courtesy call between sovereigns and the fact that it did not even take place in Vienna underlined the private nature of the meeting .
8 The two year ban which he received has been no more than a minor inconvenience to him .
9 Or it may have been no more than a ruse to exert pressure and force him to reconsider .
10 When she 'd moved in , it had been no more than a yard full of builders ' rubbish .
11 On this occasion congress exercised its constitutional right to declare war , but , in retrospect , this seems to have been no more than a case of going through the motions — the age of crisis was well underway and the constitutional balance of powers would never be the same again .
12 Though Mosley was represented to future generations as if he had been no more than a gutter politician and demagogue , the truth was that he had first attracted sympathy — if not support from many political figures who were subsequently to disown him .
13 This done it soon became clear that Clairvaux had been no more than a pretext and that the real problems lay elsewhere .
14 Of course , this might have been no more than a diplomatic ruse by the Russians to initiate a dependence which would permit a later imposition of heavier tribute payments without negative results .
15 The account is and has been no more than a conduit , the defendant holding its funds with a Scottish bank in Glasgow .
16 Superficially such a resolution might appear to have been no more than a minimum concession by the Federation in response to the seamen 's involvement in a wave of strikes by transport workers which had reverberated around the ports of Britain in the previous summer — an undertaking that it would withdraw its " ticket " if the union would do the same , so that neither side would attempt to control the supply of seamen and free labour disputes would cease .
17 Burun guessed that Kiku had been no more than a hair's-breadth away from being impaled on the st'lyan 's gilden horn .
18 In his last memoirs , written in his second exile , he wrote that before 1953 , " I had been no more than a hereditary sovereign , but now I had truly been elected by the people .
19 On waking , it occurred to her with renewed conviction that the experience of two days before might have been no more than a temporary aberration of an exhausted mind .
20 Perhaps Piers had been no more than a struggling architect when they had first met , and she had not been content to lead a life of poverty .
21 What this would have looked like is sometimes difficult to imagine — it may have been no more than a larger-than-average farmstead , or it may have been a palace such as those found at Yeavering and Cheddar .
22 Historically , resource allocation has been the prime objective ( eg in relation to fisheries ) and environmental protection has been no more than a secondary objective .
23 To begin with , only the coincidence of the deaths of father and son within four days of each other ; beyond that his notion of a connection had been no more than a hunch , and he had been in the business too long to back his hunches far ahead of evidence .
24 Subsequently what had been no more than a name implying a certain diplomatic affiliation between the Franks and Valentinian must have been interpreted as providing a genuine indication of the origins of the Franks .
25 The US ambassador , who had marvelled at the readiness of the British to hazard so much in company with France ( a nation which they were in the habit of disparaging ) , now saw that this had been no more than a passing flirtation .
26 To Willi and Gerda she had been no more than a romantic inspiration , a cardboard figure of tinsel who ceased to exist when the curtain came down .
27 In fact , the entire evening , spent flirting and dancing with her , had probably been no more than a cynical exercise in keeping his mind off someone else .
28 If she felt hurt at the realisation that his affectionate gestures had been no more than a front — well , it could only be because her ego was wounded .
29 For her , their lovemaking might have been an almost mystical fusing of bodies and identities , yet for him it had been no more than a roll in the hay .
30 This suggests that the fall in equity prices in October 1987 may have been no more than a correction to the market .
  Next page