"Second-best" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that Mrs. Brenton should remove her best clothes, before she essayed to administer justice at short range. Scott, left to himself, played on contentedly the while, until his camp was rudely invaded by a foe clad in a second-best petticoat and a shoulder shawl, and armed with a slipper which had seen better days. Even then, prudence cried out for yet another delay, for the young Indian was carrying so much of his commissariat upon his person that it seemed wise to wash him, before she proceeded to the spanking. Mrs. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... two and fourpence," said McTurk, with a glance of cold scorn at Beetle. In the hopelessly involved finances of the study there was just that sum to which both McTurk and Beetle laid claim, as their share in the pledging of Stalky's second-best Sunday trousers. But Stalky had maintained for two terms that the money was his "commission" for effecting the pawn; and had, of course, spent ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... was always in the kitchen at Ansdore. When Joanna reached home with Martin, the two tables, set end to end, were laid—with newly ironed cloths and newly polished knives, but with the second-best china only, since many of the guests were clumsy. Joanna wished there had been time to get out the best china, but there ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... decidedly over-dressed. Early as it was, she was in a heavily-flounced silk dress, a little the worse for wear. I guessed that first day, with a sort of feminine intuition, that Mrs. Thorne wore out all her second-best clothes in the morning. Perhaps it was my country bringing up, but I thought how pure and fresh Carrie's modest dress looked beside it; and as for the quiet face under the neatly-trimmed bonnet, I could see Mrs. Thorne fell in love with it at once. She scarcely looked at ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... four thousand is needlessly rare; it is sustained by far too small and undifferentiated a public. Most of the good men we know are not really doing the very best work of their gifts; nearly all are a little adapted, most are shockingly adapted to some second-best use. Now, I take it, this is the very centre and origin of the muddle, futility, and unhappiness that distresses us; it's the cardinal problem of the state—to discover, develop, and use the exceptional gifts ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... he might have become morbidly miserable. As it was, these manifestations only provoked his anger, and led him forthwith into a rough-and-tumble fight, in which, whether victor or not, he always showed unquestionable pluck. If he came off second-best a dozen times, he went confidently into the thirteenth trial, brave as Bruce, and equally successful. At length the voice of gossip was hushed. Joel became the most popular lad in the village. Every body liked him, and what is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... legislation. Objection was raised also to certain individual socialists, whose record in the first coalition government made one doubt their willingness to adhere honestly to any coalition program. This objection was withdrawn later; but the non-socialists gave only their second-best men as members of the new government. The non-socialists also had demanded that the Provisional Government be absolutely independent, its members not responsible to any councils or party committees. For the Councils of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies were as we saw exclusively socialistic, ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... "advances on you with glittering musketry, steady as on the parade-ground, and pours out fire like one continuous thunder-peal;" so that, strange as it seems, you find there will actually be nothing for you but—taking to your heels, shall we say?—rolling off with despatch, as second-best! These things are of singular omen. Here stands one that will avenge Friedrich Wilhelm,—if Friedrich Wilhelm were not already sufficiently avenged by the mere verdict of facts, which is palpably coming out, as Time peels the wiggeries away from them more ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... is—lavish in expression, are generally over-deliberate in expression. Mr. Henry James, delineating a fictitious writer clearly intended to be the ideal of an artist, makes him regret that he has sometimes allowed himself to take the second-best word instead of searching for the best. Theoretically, of course, one ought always to try for the best word. But practically, the habit of excessive care in word-selection frequently results in loss of spontaneity; ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... guesses at the cause, and promptly makes capture of Cupid. His wings clipped, his bow burnt, all his arrows broken, he is beaten and set to a task. Meanwhile the day of sacrifice has arrived and, in default of a better, a victim is found. But Neptune will have no second-best: what promises to be a tragedy changes to joy on the god's refusal to accept the proffered girl. However, the sacrifice is only postponed. Moreover the delay has given rise to a stricter search, which means increased peril for the disguised maidens. Fortunately intervention ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... among the sweepings of attorneys' offices. As I regard them (for I have tarried in their tents) and as I behold their trivialities—the exercises of men who neglect Moliere's works to gossip about Moliere's great-grand-mother's second-best bed—I sometimes wish that Moliere were here to write on his devotees a new comedy, "Les Molieristes." How fortunate were they, Monsieur, who lived and worked with you, who saw you day by day, who were attached, as Lagrange tells us, by the kindest ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... her, went forth to call upon Miss Chetwynd, with whom she had remained very friendly: she considered that she and Miss Chetwynd formed an aristocracy of intellect, and the family indeed tacitly admitted this. She practised no secrecy in her departure from the shop; she merely dressed, in her second-best hoop, and went, having been ready at any moment to tell her mother, if her mother caught her and inquired, that she was going to see Miss Chetwynd. And she did go to see Miss Chetwynd, arriving at the house-school, which lay amid trees on the road to Turnhill, just beyond ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... I'll lick you. No, I've lent my clothes to a young feller as was goin' to a party, and didn't have none fit to wear, and so I put on my second-best for ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... an elevation to look up at! It came, further, to my knowledge that the Royal Society—if I might judge by the claims made by very influential Fellows—considered itself as entitled to the best of everything: second-best being left for the newer bodies. A secretary, in returning thanks for the Royal at an anniversary of the Astronomical, gave rather a lecture to the company on the positive duty of all present to ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... old servant and two somnolent old cats. They were always excessively polite to each other and to everyone with whom they came in contact, even to the cats. Every afternoon of their lives, except Sunday, and once a month when the Ladies' Guild met at the manse, they wore their second-best black dresses, their earrings and bracelets, and sat in the parlor with the two cats and dozed and embroidered until half-past four when the tea was brought in. They always spoke slowly and carefully, and conversed upon genteel subjects. Nothing less ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... which his subjects might not presume to worship; at that King of Mexico, who swore at his coronation not only to keep the laws, but also to make the sun run his annual course; at those followers [109] of Alexander, who all carried their heads on one side as Alexander did. The natural second-best, the intermediate and unheroic virtue (even the Church, as we know, by no means requiring "heroic" virtue), was perhaps actually the best, better than any kind of heroism, in an age whose very virtues were apt to ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... to to clean the house, which was cleaner than most people's already, and I got a nice bit of dinner and took it up on a tray. But no, that wasn't right, for I'd put the best instead of the second-best cloth ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... together to Scaife's room. The second-best room in the Manor, situated upon the first floor, it overlooked the back of the garden, where there was a tangled thicket of laurustinus and rhododendron. Scaife had spent much money in making this room as comfortable as possible. It had the appearance of a man's room, and ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... infer, then, that dancing must be the primary prescription? It would not be a bad one. It was an invaluable hint of Hippocrates, that the second-best remedy is better than the best, if the patient likes it best. Beyond all other merits of the remedy in question is this crowning advantage, that the patient likes it. Has any form of exercise ever yet been invented which a young girl would not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... timid among the boys seemed to think that Scranton would come out second-best when the great meet was a thing of the past; but others only found themselves more determined than ever to win, after learning how their rivals had entered into the affair ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... after the hour of noon. Moses wore his Zouave cap, and his second-best summer clothes, and Mr. St. Clair wore a black alpaca coat, a blue neck-tie tied in a bow, a broad-brimmed straw hat, a white vest, and white trousers. Moses drove the horse, and they reached the mill without accident. While the miller was taking in the corn, Moses ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various |
