These four verbs do not have much in common other than that they are followed by 'te'. The reason why they get their own page is that they could not be categorized anywhere else.
durven | to dare | hij durft niet in het openbaar te spreken | he does not dare to speak in public
hebben | to have | ik heb vandaag veel te doen | I have got a lot to do today
hoeven | to need to | wij hoeven niet te wachten | we do not need to wait
komen | to come (to) | het komt te vervallen | it (will) comes to expire
Durven is a regular verb, hoeven is a [strong verb](#/lesson/Verbs.Ir03) and [hebben](#/lesson/Verbs.Ir07) and [komen](#/lesson/Verbs.Ir12) are completely irregular.
A few notes:
- The construction _hebben te_ always means _to have to_ (and has nothing to do with _to possess_). It is used in combination with a quantity, e.g. "I have a lot to do", "We do not have much to clean", etc.
- The verb _hoeven_ can only be used in a [negating sentence](#/lesson/WordOrder.45) (with 'not', 'never', 'nowhere', etc.).
- We use the verb _komen_ also without _te_. In fact, that is the most common use of _komen_. It has the same meaning as _to come_ in English.
- _Komen te_ always means _to be about to_ in the sense that something will happen.
The perfect tense
Because a past participle cannot serve as an auxiliary verb, we have to use infinitives instead. In the perfect tense, we drop _te_.
Hij heeft niet in het openbaar durven spreken. | He has not dared to speak in public.
Wij hebben niet hoeven wachten. | We did not need ('have not needed') to wait.
Het is komen vervallen. | It has come to expire.
The observant reader may have missed _hebben_ in the list. The reason why I did not give an example is because it would have been an ugly construction that we would never use: The present perfect of _hebben_ is _heb gehad_. If we turn the past participle (gehad) into an infinitive, we would get "Ik heb hebben..."