“Better to put things at the worst at first, and reserve the best for a surprise.”

— Jules Verne , book The Mysterious Island

Mieux vaut mettre les choses au pis tout de suite, répondit l’ingénieur, et ne se réserver que la surprise du mieux.
Part I, ch. IX
The Mysterious Island (1874)
Context: Better to put things at the worst at first," replied the engineer, "and reserve the best for a surprise.

Original

Mieux vaut mettre les choses au pis tout de suite et ne se réserver que la surprise du mieux.

The Mysterious Island (1874)
Context: Mieux vaut mettre les choses au pis tout de suite, répondit l’ingénieur, et ne se réserver que la surprise du mieux.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

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Jules Verne 44

French novelist, poet and playwright 1828–1905

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

“Work is the best and worst of all things; the best of it is voluntary, the worst of it is servile.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

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Alain On Happiness (1928)

“You'll learn, honey. Love can be the best thing in life. And it can be the worst. The absolute worst.”

Clive Barker book Abarat

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“The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race. Their first and strongest impulse is to make the best of a bad situation—to put a better face on evil than it normally wears.”

Theodore Dreiser book The Financier

Source: The Financier (1912), Ch. XXVI

“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

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).
This appears to derive from a 1910 advertisement by writer Alfred Henry Lewis for a forthcoming series of biographical articles about Roosevelt: "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". (e.g. in La Follette's Magazine https://books.google.com/books?id=RV4CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA183&dq=%22best+thing%22+%22right+thing%22+%22worst+thing%22+nothing&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjNksu-nZrMAhVDy2MKHSl1Df8Q6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&q=%22the%20best%20thing%20is%20to%20do%20the%20right%20thing%22&f=false (28 May 1910)
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