“Smile. it's the second best thing you can do with your lips.”

Birgitte Silverbow
Variant: If you must mount the gallows, give a jest to the crowd, a coin to the hangman, and make the drop with a smile on your lips.
Source: The Fires of Heaven (15 October 1993)

As quoted by John M. Kost http://www.mackinac.org/bio.aspx?ID=104 (25 July 1995) in S. 946, the Information Technology Management Reform Act of 1995: hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management and the District of Columbia of the Committee on Governmental Affairs (1996). <br class="br">This appears to derive from a 1910 advertisement by writer Alfred Henry Lewis for a forthcoming series of biographical articles about Roosevelt: &quot;All activity, Mr. Roosevelt has often shown that it is better to do the wrong thing than do nothing at all. In politics this last is peculiarly true. The best thing is to do the right thing; the next best is to do the wrong thing; the worst thing of all things is to stand perfectly still&quot;. (e.g. in La Follette&#x27;s Magazine https://books.google.com/books?id=RV4CAAAAIAAJ&amp;pg=PA183&amp;dq=%22best+thing%22+%22right+thing%22+%22worst+thing%22+nothing&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjNksu-nZrMAhVDy2MKHSl1Df8Q6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&amp;q=%22the%20best%20thing%20is%20to%20do%20the%20right%20thing%22&amp;f=false (28 May 1910) <br class="br">Disputed

as quoted by [Steven Chu and Charles H. Townes, Biographical Memoirs V.83, National Academies Press, 2003, 0-309-08699-X, 201]

On how he would recommend Colbert Report guests approach interviews, on A Conversation with Stephen Colbert (1 December 2006).
Context: Answer honestly... Disabuse me of my ignorance. Don’t let me get away with anything. Don’t try to play my game. Be real. Be passionate. Hold your ideas. Give me resistance. Give me traction I can work against. The friction between reality, or the truly held concerns of the person, and the farcical concerns that I have, or my need to seem important, as opposed to actually understanding what’s true... Where those two things meet is where the comedy happens. So be real. That's the best thing you can do. And call me on my bullshit.

Source: Watchmen

笑顔にはかなわない(egao ni wa kanawanai), Life is Lovely
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