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It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
Sep 28, 2025
Women now were told not to settle for second best, told that they deserved better, but at a time, it seemed, when there was so much less to go around.
Surgery is always second best. If you can so something else, it’s better. Surgery is limited. It is operating on someone who has no place else to go.
You are the only you ... You are the best you. You will always be the second best anyone else.
Why be second best at anything?
When the writer has done his best, he then should proceed to do his second best.
Not to be born surpasses thought and speech. The second best is to have seen the light and then go back quickly whence we came
Don't go for second best. Put your love to the test.
Not to have been born is undoubtedly best, but sound sleep is second best.
The second best decision in time is infinitely better than the perfect decision too late.
When it comes to renewable energy, there's no reason America should settle for second best.
We must as second best, as people say, take the least of the evils.
The best things cannot be told because they transcend thought. The second best are misunderstood because they are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which cannot be thought about. The third best are what we talk about.
.. As far as they're conserned, I've been kind of a poor second best all my life, or I don't qualify at all compared to my brother. It's rough being around them and feeling like you never measure up." Collin
There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.
Any guy, even imaginary, would just feel like second best. Second best to what? I don't even have an image of the perfect boyfriend. I just know he must exist. Because I have all these feelings-love, longing, wanting to be touched, dreaming of being kissed-yet no one to focus them on.
Afterward I told his widow, "Your husband is dead, but at least he died laughing.' I think she took some comfort in that. It is the second-best way to die, Will Henry." He did not say what the best way was.
As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope.
Of course, music is an art form, and it's not all that competitive. But we don't ever intend to be the second-best band on a stage at any show.
No man comes out of his own memorandum of conversation looking second best.
The funny thing was, you see, that Mike Fink didn't think of himself as a murderer. He thought of life as a contest, and dying was what happened to those who came out second best, but it wasn't the same as murder, it was a fair fight.
Given a conjecture, the best thing is to prove it. The second best thing is to disprove it. The third best thing is to prove that it is not possible to disprove it, since it will tell you not to waste your time trying to disprove it. That's what Gödel did for the Continuum Hypothesis.
Real life is, to most men, a long second best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.
I really reject that kind of comparison that says, Oh, he is the best. This is the second best. There is no such thing.
Celtic jerseys are not for second best, they don't shrink to fit inferior players
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
I love no one but you, I have discovered, but you are far away and I am here alone. Then this is my life and maybe, however unlikely, I'll find my way back there. Or maybe, one day, I'll settle for second best. And on that same day, hell will freeze over, the sun will burn out and the stars will fall from the sky.
When you ask one friend to dine, Give him your best wine! When you ask two, The second best will do!
The best way to learn is live, in person, cooking, feeling, smelling and tasting, but TV is the second-best thing to that; it's a halfway facsimile.
The best of all things is something entirely outside your grasp: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second-best thing for you - is to die soon.
The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race's most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must-never for sport.
Heinrich Zimmerhe had a little saying : The best things cant be told - because they are transcendent, inexpressible truths. The second best are misunderstood : myths, which are metaphoric attempts to point to the way toward the first. And the third best have to do with history, science, biography, and so on. The only kind of talking that can be understood is this last kind.
Nothing is like being out there and playing and performing and winning - nothing. But to have an interest in the player? The nerves and everything that goes with it? Seeing what he's learned and how he's done it? That's the second best thing to playing. I think.
The best things cannot be told, the second best are misunderstood. After that comes civilized conversation; after that, mass indoctrination; after that, intercultural exchange.
The most expensive thing in the world is a second-best military establishment, good but not good enough to win.
Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man; and it is first in point of occurrence; for the wife comes after.
The best thing you have to offer the world is yourself. You don't have to copy anyone else. If you do, you're second best. To achieve success is to be first, and that's being yourself.
Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.
I don't play any tournaments to come second best.
The best things in life are free - and $19.95.
The best things in life are free
This song of mine Is a song of the vine To be sung by the glowing embers Of wayside inns, When the rain begins To darken the drear Novembers. and For the richest and best Is the wind of the West That grows by the Beautiful River; Whose sweet perfume Fills all the room With a bension on the giver. and When you ask one friend to dine, Give hime your best wine! When you ask two, The second best will do.
In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer. [dedication to Isaac Asimov from Arthur C. Clarke in his book Report on Planet Three]
I was an apprentice television engineer when I decided to pack it up and go full-time, much to my father's disgust. But I'm still interested and I like messing about with TV. I can't deny it ... TV engineering was the job I'd wanted at the time, and I got what I wanted. But in the long-term it would have been second best to being a musician.
Karl Agell sang for our Blind album which was our second best selling record. He's a great guy and as a matter of fact, before Mike, Woody and I really got going on touring on the old Animosity stuff, Karl & I did about a dozen shows performing the Blind album from start to finish. He's still a good friend of mine and is now in a band called Lead Foot that's more Rock and Roll but they're fantastic, kind of Thin Lizzy or MC5 sounding.
Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.
You think you know what is just and what is not. I understand. We all think we know." I had no doubt, myself, then, that at each moment each one of us, man, woman, child, perhaps even the poor old horse turning the mill-wheel, knew what was just: all creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. "But we live in a world of laws," I said to my poor prisoner, "a world of the second-best. There is nothing we can do about that. We are fallen creatures. All we can do is to uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade.
Well, it used to be Kobe Bryant... the second best all time.... now, I have a new favorite player to play against... my former teammate, LeBron James.
We give our best affections to the beautiful, only our second best to the useful.
Learn Languages the Right Way. Language acquisition games and abstract communicative method are bullshit. The second-best way to learn a foreign language is alone in a room doing skull-numbing rote memorization of vocabulary, grammar, key phrases, and colloquialisms. The best way is in bed.