Example sentences of "all i could [vb infin] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | The district was sinister enough at any time ; now , with the feeling that any and every form of menace , from a cut-throat to a coal-hole , might be within inches for all I could tell , my small remaining resource of courage were exhausted within minutes . |
| 2 | ‘ I lay on my nail scissors by mistake — they were under the rug — and just at the moment , well , to be graphic , an awful pain from outside was all I could feel . ’ |
| 3 | All I could feel were five soft muzzles have a friendly sniff . |
| 4 | Her touch became lighter until all I could feel was the heat radiating from her palms . |
| 5 | I tried to feel sorry for her , but all I could feel was envy . |
| 6 | All I could admit to was boredom , and the belief that school was more fun . |
| 7 | I had to or all I could go somewhere else . |
| 8 | All I could manage in return was a sickly smile and a feeble , ‘ Thank you , Ma'am . ’ |
| 9 | ‘ Aunt Kit was drunk , ’ was all I could manage . |
| 10 | Later Wendy admitted that ‘ four or five boys in a row was all I could manage ’ . |
| 11 | All I could manage was to haunt Rocamar like a beast with no heart . ’ |
| 12 | ‘ I was so tired by that time that all I could do was sit in a deck-chair on the sea-front and sleep all day , but it was enough . ’ |
| 13 | ‘ Lemurs are a delicacy in Madagascar and it was all I could do to stop my fellow passengers eating them , ’ he says . |
| 14 | He was a tall , heavy-built almost surly type who spoke no English ; all I could do was listen patiently , smile , and offer a small but polite salute on departure . |
| 15 | The idea of God pursuing a whole family like a demented genealogist seemed grossly unfair , but as it was a commandment all I could do was hope that neither my father nor any of my immediate ancestors had done anything really sinful , and that if they had , God did n't know of my relationship . |
| 16 | There were no books in the room so all I could do was look out of the window and wait for the quarterly chimes from the Cathedral Clock . |
| 17 | By next morning some stray cat had eaten much of his back , so all I could do was measure him . |
| 18 | So all I could do was to prance about waving flashcards and realia like a second-rate conjuror at a children 's party , and try not to glance at my watch more than once a minute . |
| 19 | ‘ I realised he was n't going to be able to stop and all I could do was watch him come closer and closer to me . |
| 20 | ‘ All I could do was scream down the phone — God knows what the listeners made of it . ’ |
| 21 | All I could do was dig it out . |
| 22 | I wanted to run out and scream , but Mum had the key and all I could do was stand stock still , listening to the thumping of my heart . |
| 23 | All I could do was pile up small bits of information hoping it would make an understandable structure one day . |
| 24 | ‘ That 's all I could do , without alerting everyone in the neighbourhood . |
| 25 | With my father I had more difficulty : all I could do with him was to argue about literature , citing my teachers ' opinions as being more up-to-date and therefore more valid than his own . |
| 26 | All I could do was to mumble that I regretted not taking my degree , and , though I could see it was irritating of me to whine , to feel stale and bored was not such a trivial thing ; that though we might have the vote now , meals still had to be prepared and children looked after and since this kind of drudgery was despised by society as not being ‘ real work ’ , we were in the hideous position of being both exhausted and imprisoned by it and also looked down on for doing it ; that I had honestly tried to be the sort of wife Richard wanted — and the sort of wife I felt I ought to be — but it was like being in a kind of airless cell and I could only see Richard as a jailer ; that I saw myself becoming progressively more and more incapable of doing anything , not just mentally , but from some kind of paralysis of will . |
| 27 | Is that what she was like ? ’ and all I could do was say well , no , not at all … but that was the licence you got at the NME , because the most important word in the paper is I . ’ |
| 28 | Over the first four days it was all I could do to get Dawn to step off the perch I 'd set up in the field , with my glove just a few inches away from her . |
| 29 | It was all I could do to keep my feet . ’ |
| 30 | Tonight all I could do was make sure of Crispin . |