Example sentences of "i have [been] able [verb] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | She said sharply , ‘ My romantic novels enabled you girls to have a carefree life , the sort of life I wish I 'd been able to give your father . ’ |
| 2 | I 'll tell Sheila straightaway ’ made me feel that , at last , I 'd been able to give them some good news . |
| 3 | Maybe if I 'd been able to do some kind of planche , like your painter friend did on your … back , it would have been easy , but what I had to do was first try to get something akin to an erection standing at the copier of a deserted office on a holiday . |
| 4 | Feeling pleased for them , I lowered the binoculars through which I 'd been able to see even the tears on Mrs Unwin 's cheeks , and there below me and in front of the grandstand was the man with the gaunt face looking up towards the Clubhouse windows . |
| 5 | I wished I 'd been able to take a photograph of gaunt-face , but I 'd been more keen to listen . |
| 6 | I 'd have told Jamie as much , too , if I 'd been able to talk and had n't been concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other . |
| 7 | Retracing my steps , I realized with a shock that I was no more able to find my way back to the village than I 'd been able to find the place we 'd been raking . |
| 8 | Assuming that I 'd been able to drag the dinghy in a fairly straight line — though I might have gone astray a bit when I was stumbling in the mud — Joanna should be lying more or less straight ahead , and a good deal nearer than when I 'd left , for it was near high water then , and now it was about the last of the ebb . |
| 9 | She said , with a catch in her voice , ‘ I — I wish very much that I 'd been able to meet him . ’ |
| 10 | Mala asked , her voice as raw as I 'm sure men would have sounded , if I 'd been able to speak . |
| 11 | If I 'd been able to guess at the future , the turning point would have been right there — wheeling the ship around and moving as fast as possible away from anything to do with Fraxilly . |
| 12 | If I 'd been able to think straight five years ago , I 'd never have married you . |
| 13 | I was surprised I 'd been let in at all , surprised that I 'd been able to wander freely about the second and first floors of the cold labyrinthian building of stairwells , escalators and concrete locker-lined corridors . |
| 14 | It was so light , compared to the heavy duty G3 , that I 'd been able to forget I was carrying it . |
| 15 | I knew that I could achieve results despite the difficulties , and I knew that I had been able to demonstrate the ability to work with people of other countries . |
| 16 | If I had been able to see a copy of the local Communist party paper , I would have learned that I — with many others — had been unmasked as a conspirator and an enemy of the state . |
| 17 | One afternoon we had been taken for a walk up to the top of the mountain behind the camp , which had been good exercise ; from the top I had been able to see the sea . |
| 18 | And , as far as I had been able to judge , the feeling was pretty mutual . |
| 19 | Since those days I have sometimes wished that I had been able to record on tape the conversations I had with Gilbert Harding , who was an intellectual . |
| 20 | But I wished fervently that I had been able to do more , and as I passed my hand along the richly coloured coat over the ribs the vast bandaged finger stood out like a symbol of my helplessness . |
| 21 | I could have run away , but I had no money and , even if I had been able to borrow it , I should still have been too frightened because I had nowhere to run to . |
| 22 | It was the first time I had been able to attend a pub meet at this particular hostelry , and I thought it was very nice , full of young people without being a noisy ‘ fun pub ’ . |
| 23 | I accept that you do n't want my condolences , but if I had been able to speak the right words , they would not have been insincere . ’ |
| 24 | I wish I had been able to help . |
| 25 | ‘ If I had been able to run my own theatre , like Alan Ayckbourn or Neil Simon , I would definitely have directed all my plays myself . |
| 26 | It is possible for the race to be won at very long odds , and on two or three occasions , assisted by Wigg , I had been able to locate the winning horse , or at least a horse in the first three , which , if the odds were long enough , nevertheless produced a satisfactory result . |
| 27 | I had been able to have a couple of hours ' sleep here and there since the landings and , most important , I was able to move around more or less as I wanted to . |
| 28 | During the previous six months I had been able to keep a more watchful eye on the whereabouts of the elusive Charlie , thanks to the help of a young officer Daphne had introduced me to who worked in the War Office . |
| 29 | In spite of the rain 's best efforts , I was pleased that I had been able to observe and film interesting mink behaviour . |
| 30 | Before returning from England I had been able to recruit a very competent English journalist , F.W. Benton , who soon improved the quality of our English daily . |