DICTIONARY ONE.COM • More 'Second-best' Quotes from Famous Books

... reluctant to lose the Midland, and fearing their rivalry, had, a few years previously, offered them running powers in perpetuity. "No," said Mr. Allport, "it is impossible that you can reconcile the interests of these two great companies on the same railway; we are always only second-best." Second-best certainly never suited the ambitious policy of the Midland, and so the offer was rejected, and their line to London made. It was at that time thought that the Midland headquarters would be removed from Derby to London, ...

— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... about a year from the time that Martha Haydon died, Maria Durrant was sitting by the western window of the kitchen, mending Mr. Haydon's second-best black coat, when she looked down the lane and saw old Polly Norris approaching the house. Polly was an improvident mother of improvident children, not always quite sound in either wits or behavior, but she had always been gently dealt ...

— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett

... it's 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 it on a ...

— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... hitherto been an old shiny, ragged thing, and I had always taken off my shirt-cuffs when I began work, because they so soon became dirty. I rammed the old coat that night into the fire; brought my second-best coat in a brown paper parcel the next morning, and wore my shirt-cuffs all day long. Continually I had to think—only fancy, to think—once more; in a very small way, it is true, but still to think and to act upon my thought, and when Larkins came in and inquired if anybody had called, he ...

— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... have demonstrated I. 1, nor explained the action of a pump. Truly 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 send the very best to the old body, and the absolute right of the ...

— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... pointed out in various places of this book, French critics are apt to insist so much, is not always present. Of actual passion he has little, and his books are somewhat open to the charge—which has been brought against those of so many of our own second-best novelists—that they are somewhat machine-made, or, if that word be too unkind, are rather works of craft than of art. Yet the work of a sound craftsman, using good materials, is a great help in life; ...

— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... for her everywhere in the mine, anxiously, desperately. She would surely not imagine that he had slipped away from her on purpose? No! And yet, if incapable of such an enormity, why had she not waited for him on one of the platforms? However, he hoped for the best. The best was a telegram; the second-best a letter. On receipt of which he would fly to her to explain.... And besides, he wanted to see her—simply. Her answer to his suggestion of a music-hall, and the tone of it, had impressed him. And her remark, "I do feel so sorry for you all these years," had—well, somewhat ...

— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... in the little sitting-room—not the salon, but the girls' room. Being an American, Madame was almost lavish about fires. And it was a most un-French room, the most careless little place, where the second-best piano lived, and the lilacs, when they were taken in out of the cold. There were sweet old curtains, and a long sofa in front of the fireplace instead of the traditional armchairs. Anybody's books and bibelots lay about. ...

— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... discovered gold on Bonanza Creek in Ninety-six. The thud of Carmack's spade, as it hit first pay, was the 'sound heard round the world,' Miss Standish. And the gentleman with crumpled whiskers was the second-best man at Bonanza, excepting Skookum Jim and Taglish Charlie, two Siwah Indians who were with Carmack when the strike was made. Also, if you care for the romantic, he was in love with Belinda Mulrooney, the most courageous woman who ever came ...

— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... well enough to walk around with a cane, and when he'd broken Father's second-best malacca stick by vaulting over the box border with it, we decided that he was quite all right, and the summer went on again as usual. Of course we wrote to the Bottle Man at once, and told him, as respectfully as we could, just what we thought of him for ...

— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price

... beginning of the period of the world's relapse, when things were not so bad, [Footnote: Similarly he places the ideal society which he describes in the Critias 9000 years before Solon. The state which he plans in the Laws is indeed imagined as a practicable project in his own day, but then it is only a second-best. The ideal state of which Aristotle sketched an outline (Politics, iv. v.) is not set either in time or in place.] and exhibits its gradual deterioration, through the successive stages of timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and despotism. He explains ...

— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... fact is that the Tinkers' raid upon Jerry Dunne's premises, although carried out with unusual success, had led, not at all unusually, to complications when it was time to divide the spoil. Over Mrs. Dunne's second-best shawl it was that the difficulty arose. Mrs. Dunne, despite her husband's thrifty turn, owned many shawls, few of them inferior enough to be worn at all frequently, and she had pinned on this one three times only during the half-dozen years of her proprietresship. So it was ...

— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... 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 ...

— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... 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, ...

— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... surroundings of Miss Caroline that to-day they not only lounged with negligent ease in the big chairs and on the poor, broad sofas, but they talked familiarly of their household concerns quite as if they had been in one of their own second-best rooms ...

— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... with veil and wreath; behind her, girls in bright dresses bearing enormous bouquets; bridegroom and supporters, all in spick and span swallow-tail coats, with white ties and gloves, like beaux in a French comedy, backwards and forwards; the priests looking gorgeous, although in their second-best robes, their gold plates shining as they collected the money; for whether married first, second or third class, the Church exacts its due. I felt real commiseration for these middle- class, evidently hard-working people, as the gold ...

— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... full measure of confidence in the soundness of my own opinions, that great characteristic of the young journalist, and in my many encounters with the foes of my own household I always tried not to come off second-best. ...

— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... an' your head looks as rough as if you'd slep' in it. That comes from layin' on the ground same as a caterpillar. Smooth your hair down with your hands an' p'r'aps Emma Jane can braid it as you go along the road. Run up and get your second-best hair ribbon out o' your upper drawer and put on your shade hat. No, you can't wear your coral chain—jewelry ain't appropriate in the morning. How long do you cal'late to be ...

— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... those big fists of his, and commenced to dance tauntingly around as though meaning to enlist the admiration of his cronies, who had never yet seen him come out of a battle second-best, and therefore ...

— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... unroll at your feet as you sit on your verandah exquisitely soft, shimmering silks and wonderful embroideries. It was these last that caught my fancy, and the British Consul-General, himself a great collector, kindly sent to the house his "second-best" man and then his "first-best," and between the two I made a few modest purchases at even more modest prices. Imagine getting two strips of wonderful silk embroidery for twenty cents gold, or two silk squares ingeniously ornamented and pieced with gold for the same contemptible ...

— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... would produce a cheerful blaze. Then he would have proceeded to the little conservatory opening off his box of a sanctum at the back of the house—containing his roller-top desk, his papers, Borough Council and parish reports, his magazines, his best and second-best overcoats hung on pegs against the wall along with his silk hat. In the conservatory, still humming, he would have smoked his morning pipe, feeding the gold-fish in the small square glass tank—a tiny fountain in the centre of which it pleased him to set playing—and ...

— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... unsearched, no chest in a garret unopened, no file of old yellow accounts to decompose in damp and worms, so keen was the hope to discover whether the boy Shakespeare poached or not, whether he held horses at the theatre door, whether he kept school, and why he left in his will only his second-best bed to ...

— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... silver pistol from his breast, and, after the usual soliloquy of "To be or not to be," or something equally to the purpose, would point it at his temples just as the landlady came bursting into the room, begging him for all sakes not to "ruin the character of her second-best room, and the walls newly painted at that!" Remorse would then double up the manly form of Captain Dunnitt, who would fall on his knees before the landlady,—"his benefactress! his better angel!"—and then arrangements would be entered into by which he was not to commit suicide for ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... nobody seems watching. As you sit, the black outline of you is clear against the sky. Ah! now you are sitting stiffer. But you are no Calvinist. My friend, the best of life is its delights, and the best of delights is loving and being loved. And for that—this nose! Well, there are plenty of second-best things. After dark I can forget the monster a little. Spring is delightful, air on the Downs is delightful; it is fine to see the stars circling in the sky, while lying among the heather. Even this London sky is soothing at night, though ...

— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... the Lady Emmelina. So that night the Prince once more unhooked the diamond key from the nail on the nursery wall, and stole into the garden in the moonlight. This time, however, he had not forgotten to put on his shoes and stockings and his second-best court suit, for when a prince goes out into the world he must at least do his best to look like a prince. When he came to the lawn he stopped and stared with amazement; for there, in the moonlight, lay the ...

— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp

... attempted to give her one little kiss on the cheek, his lips alighting, however, on an outlying tract of her back hair by reason of an impulse that had caused her to turn her head with a jerk. "Yes, and I'll put on my second-best suit and a clean shirt and collar, and black my boots as if 'twas a Sunday. 'Twill have a good appearance, you see, and that's a great deal ...

— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... large as the stomach can stand. Such patients often have all the serious late complications which befall untreated patients. It seems almost impossible to give enough mercury by mouth to effect a cure. Thus pill treatment has come to be a second-best method, and suitable only in those instances in which we simply expect to control the outward signs rather ...

— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... on her hat which unfortunately she had chosen to trim herself, tied a white veil across the upper part of her face and got out her second-best pair of gloves: Harriet kept her best gloves for her enemies. In the front yard she pulled a handful of white lilacs (there was some defect here or she would never have carried white lilacs in soiled white gloves); and passed out of the gate. Her eyes ...

— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... boarders, Lydia Orr and the minister, were sitting on the piazza, engaged in what appeared to be a most interesting conversation, when Mrs. Black unlatched the front gate and emerged upon the street, her second-best hat carefully disposed upon ...

— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... 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

... 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