Example sentences of "a desire [to-vb] the [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | There are growing signs of a desire to abandon the descriptive approach to this material and to examine unknown fields rather than continuing to prove by alternative means what is already known . |
| 2 | Anger responses can quickly degenerate into self-pity , self-indulgence or self-righteousness ; a desire to teach the other person a thing or two — even an exaggerated desire to show that I am right after all , and I told you so ! |
| 3 | First , there is a concern to limit prime ministerial patronage in a number of areas ( and the concern to abolish the House of Lords is in part born of a desire to deny the Prime Minister the constitutional right to create peers ) . |
| 4 | As Derek Fraser has suggested , they were of four main types : ‘ a fear of social revolution , a humanitarian concern for suffering , a desire to improve the moral tone of the recipients and a satisfaction of some psychological or social need ’ , i.e. a desire for the confirmation of social status and superiority which came from giving to those poorer than oneself , and perhaps basking in their gratitude . |
| 5 | The visitors expressed a desire to see the farther end of the garden . |
| 6 | What makes the situation especially difficult in the case of homosexuality is that there are those who arm their homophobia by ignoring the first dimension described above — an exile which generates critique — insisting only on the second — the exile who flees one kind of discrimination only to reproduce others , and who is seen to do so in virtue of the alleged ‘ predatory ’ nature of the homosexual desire , now quintessentially defined as a desire to exploit the disadvantaged . |
| 7 | Many explanations have been given for the careful measurements and statistical information so frequent in Wordsworth 's early poetry , for example : but surely even this may ultimately go back to a desire to placate the scientific and Lockean tradition . |
| 8 | There is an argument that the development of rock in the 1960s was determined mainly by intramusical factors — from a desire to explore the technological and musical possibilities of the new conditions of production set up in the rock 'n' roll moment . |
| 9 | Now a group of major , highly competitive retailers seek to persuade the world in general that their opposition to Sunday trading stems from a desire to preserve the small shops sector . |
| 10 | Hence , over this section , it was not necessary to remove the existing ceiling , but a desire to emphasise the still lofty volume of this room caused the client to request the insertion of a ‘ minstrel 's gallery ’ upper level over part of this area . |
| 11 | They 've sent me flowers and choclates , and they 've expressed a desire to accommodate the two young men who 've done this at their own institutions |
| 12 | Like the situation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries , it was a struggle to resolve some basic contradictions , i.e. a desire to involve the working class in the control of their own education and a concern to link that education to a process of social and community action . |
| 13 | I expressed a desire to enter the religious life and decided to come to England . ’ |
| 14 | It was strange that , truly enamoured of New York as she was , she could still feel like this — choked with a desire to hear the broad vowels of her native Yorkshire . |
| 15 | But Chancellor Kohl appears to have been startled by suggestions that his letter to President Mitterrand last week implying an intention to go slow on EMU might have been inspired by a desire to play the German unity card in the West German general election next year . |
| 16 | Talk to Robin Slade and you know he 's a man who 's studied his sheep ; not from the point of view of winning awards with animals at the other end of a halter , but from a desire to produce the ideal carcass with that all-important round muscle . |
| 17 | Some claim that the spur came from a desire to raise the local content above the 20 per cent achieved by the multinationals ' assembly plants . |
| 18 | A desire to strengthen the disciplinary framework has prompted a search for ways either of restoring integrity to the model or of installing functional equivalents for owner control . |
| 19 | Consider finally how even the man of knowledge , when he compels his spirit to knowledge which is counter to the inclination of his spirit and frequently also to the desires of his heart — by saying No , that is , when he would like to affirm , love , worship — disposes as an artist in and transfigurer of cruelty ; in all taking things seriously and thoroughly indeed there is already a violation , a desire to hurt the fundamental will of the spirit , which ceaselessly strives for appearance and the superficial — in all desire to know there is already a drop of cruelty . |
| 20 | It has also been argued that the halting of peasant movement in the Ukraine and the extension to it in 1783 of the poll-tax , which doomed the Ukrainian peasant to serf status , were inspired by a desire to end the privileged position enjoyed by many border areas of the empire , and to some extent by the need to increase revenue , rather than by the extension of serfdom as a matter of policy . |
| 21 | Eccleshall and Honderich find common cause in a desire to establish the ideological nature of Conservative thought , but apart from this their approaches to the study of Conservativism are very different . |
| 22 | In the car industry , control of the labour process through machine-pacing was also not generally regarded as a viable strategy by British management in the context of the existence of powerful labour organisations at the point of production and a desire to reduce the perceived increasing antagonism of labour to capital . |
| 23 | During the AGM of the Medau Ring ( the association of Medau Teachers in Germany ) , which was very lively with much discussion , Dr Jochen Medau expressed a desire to make the close Medau links between Germany and Britain more official by appointment a Medau Society representative to serve on their Executive Committee . |
| 24 | In it I read and re-read the Greek myths and legends , consumed with a desire to understand the sexual exploits of the gods , capricious beings , sometimes part or wholly animal . |
| 25 | These two projects — on the one hand a wish to investigate the constraining influence of social wholes , and on the other a desire to understand the shaping power of individuals — answer to different sorts of concern with the social world . |
| 26 | The Labour party 's plans to nationalize British civil aviation were based both on their general policy for the nationalization of industry , and on a desire to avoid the haphazard market of the years before 1939 . |
| 27 | In Scotland a different method of assessment of need has been adopted in response to ‘ a desire to avoid the heavy dependence on statistical method implicit in the regression analysis approach in England ’ ( Midwinter 1984:67 ) . |