The Next Best Thing Quotes & Sayings

His eyes are cold and restless
His wounds have almost healed
And she'd give half of Texas
Just to change the way he feels
She knows his love's in Tulsa
And she knows he's gonna go
Well it ain't no woman flesh and blood
It's that damned old rodeo


Well it's bulls and blood
It's dust and mud
It's the roar of a Sunday crowd
It's the white in his knuckles
The gold in the buckle
He'll win the next go 'round
It's boots and chaps
It's cowboy hats
It's spurs and latigo
It's the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo


She does her best to hold him
When his love comes to call
But his need for it controls him
And her back's against the wall
And it's So long girl I'll see you
When it's time for him to go
You know the woman wants her cowboy
Like he wants his rodeo — Garth Brooks

Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one. — Toni Morrison

Trouble is the next best thing to enjoyment; there is no fate in the world so horrible as to have no share in either its joys or sorrows. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

That's the remarkable thing about baseball. The game has a way of having you scratch your head one minute and drive you crazy, and then the next, you're entertained beyond your wildest hopes. That's why it's the best game. — Johnny Bench

Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing. — L.M. Montgomery

The next best thing to a very good joke is a very bad one. — Julius Charles Hare

I reckon if I can't spend the day sleeping, the next best thing is to spend it reading and drinking. — Pete McCarthy

Sometimes missing things was the next best thing to having them. — Terry Bisson

The poet, when he wrote "Thou wilt come no more, gentle ANNIE," was clearly laboring under a mistake. If he had written "Thou wilt be sure to come again next season, gentle ANNIE," he would have hit it. Lecture committees know this. Miss DICKINSON earns her living by lecturing. Occasionally she takes a turn at scrubbing pavements, or going to hear WENDELL PHILLIPS on "The Lost Arts," or other violent exertion, but her best hold is lecturing. She has followed the business ever since she was a girl, and twenty-four (24) years of steady application have made her no longer a Timid Young Thing. She is not afraid of audiences any more. It is a favorite recreation of the moral boot-blacks and pious — Various

I can't go to bed with John Wayne, so I do the next best thing: I go to bed with my girlfriend, who once met the great man. That's how much I love westerns. — Clive Sinclair

I don't wear much makeup, except during work. I felt lucky to be chosen to be a model. I used to joke, 'The next best thing to winning the lottery is having a beauty contract.' — Isabella Rossellini

Anyone who says they don't enjoy the Army is mad - you can spend a week hating it and the next week it could be the best thing in the world and the best job you could ever, ever wish for. It has got so much to offer. — Prince Harry

The next best thing to being clever is being able to quote some one who is. — Mary Pettibone Poole

For the next week, try the best you can to pay attention to sounds. You will start hearing all these sounds coming in. Once you let them in, you've already done the first and most critical thing, you've honored that information by including it. And by doing that, you've actually changed the world. — Robert Irwin

Some may call you crazy if you try to reason with a dog. It is with desperate attempts that you hope they understand you. When the realization sinks in that your futile pleading goes without understanding or care, you are left with no choice but to think of the next best thing. From Finally Home: Lessons on Life from a Free-Spirited Dog — Elizabeth Parker

She bit her lower lip hard and blinked her eyes. There was such wistfulness and longing in his voice. Oh, she was going to give him back his eyes, or the next best thing, if it took her the rest of her life to do it. — Mary Balogh

The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better. — Eric S. Raymond

My readers often say to me, 'If we lived next door to each other, we'd be best friends.' That is precisely what I wanted to say to smart, funny, self-effacing Ellen McCarthy after I finished reading The Real Thing. I loved every lesson laid out in a book that wouldn't dare to call itself a field guide to marriage but amounts to as much on every page. This is a deeply useful little book. — Kelly Corrigan

There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races ... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas ... — Abraham Lincoln

Being randy is the next best thing to being drunk. — George R R Martin

I couldn't become a policeman, so being county prosecutor is the next best thing. — Robert P. McCulloch

The main thing these books have in common is their intent to help you live your best possible magickal and mundane life. We all walk very different paths as Pagans and Witches, and what is right for one person won't be right for the next. But my aim is to make it easier for you to find and follow the path that is right for you, integrating spirit and magick and heart into your everyday tasks as you walk it. — Deborah Blake

If you couldn't be loved, the next best thing was to be left alone. — L.M. Montgomery

You think the greatest thing in the whole world would be to become a baseball player - if best things already happened, what's next? — John McGraw

My car's my best friend. My office. My home. My location. I have a very intimate sense when I am in a car with someone next to me. We're in the most comfortable seats because we're not facing each other, but sitting side by side. We don't look at each other, but instead do so only when we want to. We're allowed to look around without appearing rude. We have a big screen in front of us and side views. Silence doesn't seem heavy or difficult. Nobody serves anybody. And many other aspects. One most important thing is that it transports us from one place to another. — Abbas Kiarostami

Goddamn. what is this shit?
early times, called j-bone. best little old drink they is. drink that and you wont feel a thing the next mornin.
or any morning.
whoo lord, give it here. hello early, come to your old daddy.
here, pour some of it in this cup and let me cut it with coca-cola.
can't do it, bud.
why not?
we done tried it. it eats the bottom out.
watch it suttree. don't spill none on your shoes
lord honey i know they make that old splo in the bathtub but this here is made in the toilet. he was looking at the bottle, shaking it. bubbles the size of gooseshot veered greasily up through the smoky fuel it held.
the last time i drank some of that shit i like to died. i stunk from the inside out. i laid in a tub of hot water all day and climbed out and dried and you could still smell it. i had to burn my clothes.
early times, he called. make your liver quiver.
(page 26) — Cormac McCarthy

Brought to you by raising your voice. The next best thing to being right. — Demetri Martin

The next best thing to gambling and winning is gambling and losing. — Nick Dandolos

A lot of the time, when I'm choreographing, I'm not thinking about what movement look best next to the next movement - I'm actually thinking about what song and what sound sounds right next to the next thing. So kind of choreographing as if I'm always making a mix tape, so to speak. — Kyle Abraham

Best workout ever." Darius sat next to her and rested his back against the soft mat.
She laughed and fumbled to put on her bra. He lifted the weight of her hair from her back and helped her pull down her silk shirt.
For a moment, he held the length of her hair in his hand as he had the swing rope. He tugged gently to turn her face to his, and then released it. His face was open and relaxed, his pale blue eyes warm and content.
His knees fell open to rest against hers. The feel of skin on skin, bone to bone, was easy, the most natural thing in the world. "Next time we should try the pommel horse."
Mei laughed. "You still got pommeling on your mind?"
"Oh yeah." He signed and tilted his chin to the ciling, exposing the length of his throat. "Some pommeling and tumbling would be good. We've got time to make up for. — Susannah Scott

Astronauts are taught that the best way to reduce stress is to sweat the small stuff. We're trained to look on the dark side and to imagine the worst things that could possibly happen. In fact, in simulators, one of the most common questions we learn to ask ourselves is, Okay, what's the next thing that will kill me? — Chris Hadfield

The next chamber is full of songbirds, if I remember right. Their music is like turtleweed. It will put you to sleep if you listen to it. They sleep most of the time, so the best thing is to pass through without waking them up. If they do awaken, then you must sing loud enough to drown out their music."
"Great," Han said. "Whose idea was that?"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Crow said. "I was an excellent singer. — Cinda Williams Chima

And we shall all carry on with our hearts set on the next best thing ... because we know how we have lived and understand what we have lost, and aren't willing to lose so much the second time through. — Isabel Aanya Leigh

The thing that's really kept me on my toes is how my mom would always tell me - it's not the best thing for a mother to tell you - but she'd never tell me after I'd lose a soccer game, 'You'll do better next time.' She'd always say, 'There's always somebody better.' — Brandon Flowers

The best thing you can do is to keep riding your snowboard and love what you're doing. Without a passion for the sport it's difficult to take your riding to the next level. — Mark McMorris

The next best thing to a winning day at the track is a losing day. — Virginia Clinton Kelley

He [the Doctor] groaned. 'Why does it always have to be me?'
'Mr Rory is ill. You're the next best thing,' I [Maria] said simply.
'Thank you,' he muttered. He didn't sound very pleased at all at that. — James Goss

It was like this sometimes, and I felt I should look away, but I couldn't. I wanted to be there, having my face touched, defeating a heart like Peter's, but the next best thing was seeing it for Tiger Lily. — Jodi Lynn Anderson

It had been a damned nice thing - the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life. (Waterloo 18 June 1815)

'I hope to God,' he said one day,'that I have fought my last battle.It is a bad thing to be always fighting.While in the thick of it,I am much too occupied to feel anything;but it is wretched just after.It is quite impossible to think of glory.Both mind and feeling are exhausted.I am wretched even at the moment of victory,and I always say that next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained.Not only do you lose those dear friends with whom you have been living,but you are forced to leave the wounded behind you.To be sure one tries to do the best for them,but how little that is!At such moments every feeling in your breast is deadened.I am now just beginning to retain my natural spirits,but I never wish for any more fighting. — Arthur Wellesley

What a subtle, treacherous thing it was to let yourself go that way! Because once you've started it was terribly difficult to stop; soon you were saying "I'm sorry, of course you're right", and "Whatever you think is best", and "you're the most wonderful and valuable thing int he world", and the next thing you knew all honesty, all truth, was as far away and glimmering, as hopelessly unattainable as the world of the golden people. — Richard Yates

Guilt is tricky because we confuse it with caring ... It's the next best thing to being there. — Ellyn Stern

All that can best be expressed in words should be expressed in verse, but verse is a slow thing to create; nay, it is not really created: it is a secretion of the mind, it is a pearl that gathers round some irritant and slowly expresses the very essence of beauty and of desire that has lain long, potential and unexpressed, in the mind of the man who secretes it. God knows that this Unknown Country has been hit off in verse a hundred times...

Milton does it so well in the Fourth Book of Paradise Lost that I defy any man of a sane understanding to read the whole of that book before going to bed and not to wake up next morning as though he had been on a journey. — Hilaire Belloc

If I couldn't hide from [bullies], then the next best thing was to blind them with my glorious fabulousness. — Chris O'Guinn

Just write it,Because it is the next best thing of the world. — Newpostcard

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it. — Samuel Johnson

When you are without friends, the next best thing is an enemy who knows you well. — Midnight Blue

I was in my recliner bundled up in my terrycloth robe, a gift from my great aunt Maureen, that came with some sage advice: darling, after a warm body, a terrycloth robe is the next best thing to cuddle up with on a cold night. — Suzanne M. Trauth

It was the fangirl code for every book geek: read, chat, squeal. Re-read, chat, and squeal again, until it's all over and the dreaded book funk sets in. Find the next best thing to fill the void, then repeat steps one through three as necessary. — Rachael Wade

I think life is a lot different for alternative kids nowadays. Texting and the internet mean that being a Goth or something means you're part of a big social scene, it's an inclusive thing. Back then, we all just went our different ways in the afterglow,wishing each other all the best with the next ten years of bullying. — Frankie Boyle

After owning books, almost the next best thing is talking about them. — Charles Nodier

The best thing you can give children, next to good habits, are good memories. — Sydney J. Harris

If one thing that bothers me about acting, it's that there's no clear-cut number one. The closest you can get is winning an Academy Award, and I'm going to work on that if it takes me the next 50 years. To my peers, it will mean that I'm the best! — Dana Hill

I wanted to be a psychological engineer, but we lacked the facilities, so I did the next best thing - I went into politics. It's practically the same thing. — Isaac Asimov

The man who did the shooting was a civilian, Peter Kakhovsky, a gifted intellectual of extreme purity of motive in whom the conviction of the necessity of regicide burned with a gem-like flame. Determined to kill, expecting to die, this brilliant and terrible apparition, his slender form bundled up in a sheepskin coat, his delicate features surmounted by a shabby top hat, shot to kill with that indiscriminate ruthlessness which was later to characterise a whole generation of revolutionary terrorists. If he could not yet murder the Tsar, he would do the next best thing. — Edward Crankshaw

World-class cereal-eating is a dance of fine compromises. The giant heaping bowl of sodden cereal, awash in milk, is the mark of the novice. Ideally one wants the bone-dry cereal nuggets and the cryogenic milk to enter the mouth with minimal contact and for the entire reaction between them to take place in the mouth. Randy has worked out a set of mental blueprints for a special cereal-eating spoon that will have a tube running down the handle and a little pump for the milk, so that you can spoon dry cereal up out of a bowl, hit a button with your thumb, and squirt milk into the bowl of the spoon even as you are introducing it into your mouth. The next best thing is to work in small increments, putting only a small amount of Cap'n Crunch in your bowl at a time and eating it all up before it becomes a pit of loathsome slime, which, in the case of Cap'n Crunch, takes about thirty seconds. — Neal Stephenson

The easiest thing in the world is to succeed. You can't help it if you follow the rules and play the game the best way you know how according to yourself, instead of according to the one next to you, or above you, or somewhere away from you. — George Matthew Adams

You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can't, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don't give up. — Chuck Yeager

...If a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing [for Satan and his devils to do] is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that "suits"him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches. The reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organization should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the [Lord] desires... In the second place, the search for a "suitable" church makes the man a critic where the [Lord] wants him to be a pupil. — C.S. Lewis

They say you can wish on the stars, and if you run out of stars, wishing on a rainbow is the next best thing. — Susan Pogorzelski

The worst isn't the last thing about the world. It's the next to the last thing. The last thing is the best. It's the power from on high that comes down into the world, that wells up from the rock-bottom worst of the world like a hidden spring. Can you believe it? The last, best thing is the laughing deep in the hearts of the saints, sometimes our hearts even. Yes. You are terribly loved and forgiven. Yes. You are healed. All is well. — Frederick Buechner

According to the 'food waste pyramid,' ensuring that food is eaten by people is the top priority. Failing that, the next best thing is to feed it to farm animals. — Tristram Stuart

The next best thing to talking to her is talking about her. — Graham Greene

Separate vacations have become more popular among married couples. We don't think this is a good idea. Over time, doing your own thing will cause you to lead separate lives. We are not talking about a three-day trip to Florida with your sister or best friend - if you want to take small trips like this, feel free to. But if you want to take a major vacation - say, to spend two weeks in Europe - your husband should be your travel companion. But suppose your idea of a fun vacation is going to Europe or lying on the beach in the Caribbean, while your husband loves tours of historic sites and museums. Our advice is to figure out a way to do a little of both. One year, you can go to the beach, the next year you can do a tourist package together, or go on a trip with a beach near some sites of cultural interest. Once you start planning separate vacations, you become like roommates, not lovers. — Ellen Fein

To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Skiing is the next best thing to having wings. — Oprah Winfrey

The thing I always liked best about touring abroad was constantly running into different people, different cultures, different foods. It really pumped up my batteries ... I'm constantly playing to a demographically diverse audience ... one generation is driven by nostalgia, the next by curiosity. And that's why I have no plans to retire. — Gene Pitney

I was bargaining for time away from Hollywood, and Columbia was bargaining for money. I got what I wanted and they got what they wanted. They knew I was so anxious to do Born Yesterday that I'd have done it for a dollar. They gave me the next best thing. — Judy Holliday

Learning what you don't want to do is the next best thing to figuring out what you want to do. — Anderson Cooper

This is the best, most real thing that's ever happened to me," Danny said quietly. "I've spent my whole life jumping from one bad choice to the next. Choosing this, with you, is probably the only decision I've ever been proud of making." He pressed himself closer to Miller's back, wrapping his arms around his waist. "I'll never be sorry. — Brooke McKinley

The crew knew because they had heard from other people, and when I showed up on the set the next day, they were all looking at me kind of weird. I told them that Bill always taught me that whenever something bad like that happens, the best thing to do is work. — Brandon Cruz

To be simple is the best thing in the world; to be modest is the next best thing. I am not sure about being quiet. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The script's always important, but there are some things that have come out in the past year that, when we read them, everyone was like, "Oh my god, this is going to be the next best thing!" Then the movie falls completely flat on its face. — Douglas Booth

This is true enough, but success is the next best thing to happiness, and if you can't be happy as a success, it's very unlikely that you would find a deeper, truer happiness in failure. — Michael Korda

Just Because something ends dosent mean that it's a bad thing or that someones bound to get hurt,ot that it never shold have happend in the first place or whatever. But If each step brings us to the next how can we grow if we avoid everything that can hurt us?? We pretty much have no choice but to get out there and hope for the best and who knows we may even learn a thing or two on the way — Alyson Noel

I never felt brave. I never had a moment of extreme courage or belief that this was going to be the best decision I had ever made. I just did the next thing. — Annie F. Downs

That's how I operate best. I just ignore feelings and jump right into the next thing. — Melissa Rosenberg

If you can't invent the future, the next best thing is to fund it. — John Doerr

Actually, there is no way of making vomiting courteous. You have to do the next best thing, which is to vomit in such a way that the story you tell about it later will be amusing. — P. J. O'Rourke

I'm like most women. I want a steamy romance novel, or something sweet and tender." "I knew the romance genre was big, especially with women, but I never really understood why." "Seriously? Let's just say that the next best thing to having sex, is reading about people having sex. If you're not able to snag any for yourself, you damn sure want to be reading about two people who have guaranteed odds at doing the deed. — Lustful Desires Bundle

Maddie had seen commercials for Match Made Easy on TV. They seemed like a decent business and legit. She hoped. She prayed they weren't out of her price range. Not that it mattered - time was running out. She'd pay anything to prove to her family she wasn't cursed. Plus, Ryan would be there, most likely with that cheating blonde of his. She bet anything they'd both love to see her at her lowest point: jobless and dateless. Well, no one was going to feel sorry for her. Not her cousin and certainly not the best man, either. She'd show them all. And since she couldn't find a wedding date to her sister's wedding on her own, it looked as if she'd be forced to do the next best thing. Hire one. — Jennifer Shirk

Thinking about her is the next best thing! — Jonathan Safran Foer

Among provocatives, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching. I have even more thoughts during or enduring it than at other times. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

the next best thing to being really inside Christendom is to be really outside it. And a particular point of it is that the popular critics of Christianity are not really outside it. They are on a debatable ground, in every sense of the term. They are doubtful in their very doubts. Their criticism has taken on a curious tone; as of a random and illiterate heckling. — G.K. Chesterton

Obviously, a lot of things play on your mind when you're batting. This might happen and this might not. The best thing you can do when you're batting is not to think too much, and wait for the next ball. — Yuvraj Singh

Google is my best friend and my worst enemy. It's fabulous for research, but then it becomes addictive. I'll have a character eating an orange, and next thing I'm Googling types of oranges, I'm visiting chat rooms about oranges, I'm learning the history of the orange. — Liane Moriarty

was the sort of anger that comes to a slow boil inside the hearts of good men who want justice, and finding it out of their grasp, decide vengeance is the next best thing. I — Patrick Rothfuss

The chief requirement of the good life', said Michael, 'is that one should have some conception of one's capacities. One must know oneself sufficiently to know what is the next thing. One must study carefully how best to use such strength as one has ... One must perform the lower act which one can manage and sustain: not the higher act which one bungles. — Iris Murdoch

Mental simulation is not as good as actually doing something. But it's the next best thing. And the right kind of a story is a simulation. — Chip Heath

Long distance is the next best thing to being there. But a dove in love would rather reach out and touch someone. Spring is in the air and all lines are busy with local calls as the wooing and cooing commences. — Charley Harper

[The publication of his first poem] was wonderful ... but it taught me early on that the only thing that really matters is writing the next poem. Publication is best seen as a happy accident. — Dan Beachy-Quick

Acedia is not a relic of the fourth century or a hang-up of some weird Christian monks, but a force we ignore at our peril. Whenever we focus on the foibles of celebrities to the detriment of learning more about the real world- the emergence of fundamentalist religious and nationalist movements, the economic factors endangering our reefs and rain forests, the social and ecological damage caused by factory farming - acedia is at work. Wherever we run to escape it, acedia is there, propelling us to 'the next best thing,' another paradise to revel in and wantonly destroy. It also sends us backward, prettying the past with the gloss of nostalgia. Acedia has come so far with us that it easily attached to our hectic and overburdened schedules. We appear to be anything but slothful, yet that is exactly what we are, as we do more and care less, and feel pressured to do still more. — Kathleen Norris

It's a curious thing. I suppose most people think of artists as impatient but I don't know of any first-rate artist who hasn't manifested in his career an appalling patience, a willingness to wait and to do his best now in the expectation that next year he will do better. — Mark Van Doren

"Hence," goes on the professor, "definitions of happiness are interesting." I suppose the best thing to do with that is to let is pass. Me, I never saw a definition of happiness that could detain me after train-time, but that may be a matter of lack of opportunity, of inattention, or of congenital rough luck. If definitions of happiness can keep Professor Phelps on his toes, that is little short of dandy. We might just as well get on along to the next statement, which goes like this: "One of the best" (we are still on definitions of happiness) "was given in my Senior year at college by Professor Timothy Dwight: 'The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.'" Promptly one starts recalling such Happiness Boys as Nietzche, Socrates, de Maupassant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake, and Poe."
-Review of the book, Happiness, by (Professor) William Lyon Phelps. Review title: The Professor Goes in for Sweetness and Light; November 5, 1927 — Dorothy Parker

The next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to be able to quote another's wit. — Christian Nestell Bovee

I dug out the powder blue cashmere cardigan my mother Lisa gave me the Christmas before last, pulled on my oldest, softest Levi's. Comfort clothes; the next best thing to a hug from a warm, living body. Lately there had been a shortage of hugs in my life. Lately there had been a shortage of warm, living bodies. — Josh Lanyon

( ... ) maybe the heart is an organ on constant ready, always waiting to try again, always open to the next best thing. — Kate Ellison

The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is - not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself. — George MacDonald

All you can do is take each day as it comes. Try and do the best you can with what you're given. You won't always do the right thing, but you can try. And you can try to do the right thing next time. That, and stay alive. — Joe Abercrombie

Sometimes a loss is the best thing that can happen. It teaches you what you should have done next time. — Snoop Dogg

If you can't do what you really want to do, then do the next best thing! — Stacey Culpepper