Quotes & Sayings About Settling For Second Best

This was the second stage in my life, a step in my personal evolution
abandoning the idea of being different, and settling for normal ... Gradually I drew nearer to the world, and the world drew nearer to me. — Haruki Murakami

I remember saying once to my friend Susan, when my marriage was becoming intolerable, "I don't want my children growing up in a household like this." Susan said, "Why don't you leave those so-called children out of the discussion? They don't even exist yet. Why can't you just admit that you don't want to live in unhappiness anymore? — Elizabeth Gilbert

I could not bear the deep freeze settling around my bones at the thought that yet another attempt to get out of my life alive would end in disappointment. Time became palpable and viscous. Every minute, every second, every nanosecond, wrapped around my spine so that my nerves tightened and ached. I faded into abstraction. A self-generated narcosis created a painful blank where my mind used to be. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

I would have to commit to this- commit as much of me as there was left, every one of the broken pieces. It was the only way to be fair to him. Would I? Could I?
Would it be wrong to try to make Jacob happy? Even if the love I felt for him was no more than a weak echo of what I was capable of, even if my heart was far away, wandering and grieving after my fickle Romeo, would it be so very wrong? — Stephenie Meyer

She had married him because she felt sage, because she'd had enough pain to last her a lifetime, and because although he had many faults, faults she was aware of before she married him, she knew he wouldn't hurt her.
She knew because there was no passion, and the only time she had felt passion, it had come with a price. — Jane Green

But I don't want to read faster or older or any way else that might make the story disappear too quickly from where it's settling inside my brain, slowly becoming a part of me. A story I will remember long after I've read it for the second, third, tenth, hundredth time. — Jacqueline Woodson

Mark raised his eyebrows, 'you don't know the half of it,' he further mumbled, more to himself than in reply to Frankie. 'But listen up; because this isn't about me anyway; this is about you, about how you need to sort it out, yeah? This is all about you getting yourself a girl, and settling down, right?'

Frankie offered up a wistful kind of sigh, supping his pint as those heavily suggestive words immediately grated: settle down and never settle up. — Tom Conrad

If romeo was really gone, never coming back, would it have mattered whether or not juliet had taken Paris up on his offer? Maybe she should have tried to settle into the left-over scraps of life that were left behind. Maybe that would have been as close to happiness as she could get. — Stephenie Meyer

What I look for is a man who can be a friend, someone who is an equal and one with whom I feel comfortable. I want to be happy and loved, and not settling for something second best and less than I deserve. But a relationship of and by itself is not what is going to make this gal survive - a relationship is the cherry on the top of the cake — Jennifer Aniston

His version of 'real' love isn't sufficient for me, I don't think anyone should settle for so little. It wasn't love - not in the true sense. On my part, it was neediness, insecurity, dependence, habit - desperate to feel loved by a man who was often ambivalent towards me. — Freya North

With the persistence of tensions and conflicts in various parts of the world, the international community must never forget what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as a warning and in incentive to develop truly effective and peaceful means of settling tensions and disputes. Fifty years after the Second World War, the leaders of nations cannot become complacent but rather should renew their commitment to disarmament and to the banishment of all nuclear weapons. — Pope John Paul II

Never settle for second when first is available — Lou Holtz

All the stories, all the incidents that made the life were stopped in a second - opinions stopped, and the ability to feel, all stopped without any meaning.'He wanted to make himself know what happened, for he could feel the beginning of the calm settling upon him. He wanted to cry out once in personal pain before he was cut off and unable to feel sorrow or resentment. There were little stinging drops of cold on his head. He looked up and saw that it was raining gently. The drops fell on Elizabeth's cheeks and flashed in her hair. — John Steinbeck

Sometimes I felt like the dust. Relentlessly banging my head against the walls, never getting anywhere. Always ending up in a pile somewhere, never in a corner though. There are no corners in a round world. Sleeting across the path, searching, settling for a second then pushed along, again and again. — Lauren Nicolle Taylor

Why do you bear Merripen such ill will? Is it his charming disposition, or the fact that he's a Roma? Or is it because he was taken in by your parents and raised as one of you?"
"None of that. I despise Merripen because he refused the only thing I ever asked of him."
"Which was?"
"To let me die."
Cam pondered that. "You must mean when he nursed you through the scarlet fever."
"Yes."
"You blame him for saving your life?"
"Yes."
"If it makes you feel any better," Cam said dryly, settling back in his seat, "I'm sure he's had second thoughts about it. — Lisa Kleypas

I think I'd convinced myself that all long-term relationships end up that way; I really thought I had no right to expect more. — Catherine Sanderson