cannot help but

past could not help but

1. alternativeno past participleno present participleAlternative form of cannot but.

   I cannot help but follow such panopticism to its ultimate conclusion: a Nineteen Eighty-Four scenario.

   2008, Ilan Kapoor, The Postcolonial Politics of Development, Routledge, →ISBN, page 69

   5 more examples

   As we drove at breakneck speed through the streets, I could not help but be overwhelmed by the gaunt and desperate faces of the people, the endless squatter settlements of cheek-by-jowl, single-room shacks surrounded by ankle-deep mud, and the occasional glimpses of the rich apparently oblivious to the suffering around them.

   1991, Robert C. Linthicum, City of God, City of Satan, page 64

   Radulph could not help but notice how the breasts of a lady flugelhornist trembled whenever she blew into her instrument.

   1993, Rikki Ducornet, The Jade Cabinet, Dalkey Archive Press, page 109

   Standing on top of Trash Mountain (our local megadump) and affirming the Messianic promise of the kingdom of heaven, we cannot help but take responsibility for recycling and reducing consumption.

   2000, Ari Elon, Naomi M. Hyman, Arthur Waskow, Trees, Earth, and Torah, page 414

   One cannot help but wonder whether the concerns ultimately had root in the presence of a diminutive, pileous, and swarthy Mediterranean atop a military vehicle, instead of our accepted Anglo-Saxon image of leadership and might.

   2008, John Tehranian, Whitewashed: America's Invisible Middle Eastern Minority, page 17

   The first thing Joe noticed was the seating arrangements — Katz at the head of the long antique cherry wood table, John Nagoshi to his right, Peter Nagoshi next to his father (and Joe could not help but study the younger Nagoshhi as he entered the room, his smooth expressionless face barely turning to acknowledge their entrance), and across the table FBI Boston Field Office Special Agent in Charge Leo King and Special Agent Ned Jacobs — the Feeb's resident profiler.

   2009, Sydney Bauer, Alibi, page 103