“You should only boast about having nothing to boast about!”

Twelve Virtues Of Rationality http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues

"Last Things of Man" (Stories from the Second Pocket, 1932)

Source: Heart of Darkness

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

"The Sporting Spirit" http://orwell.ru/library/articles/spirit/english/e_spirit, Tribune (14 December 1945)

Source: Isaiah's Job (1936), III
Context: If a prophet were not too particular about making money out of his mission or getting a dubious sort of notoriety out of it, the foregoing considerations would lead one to say that serving the Remnant looks like a good job. An assignment that you can really put your back into, and do your best without thinking about results, is a real job; whereas serving the masses is at best only half a job, considering the inexorable conditions that the masses impose upon their servants. They ask you to give them what they want, they insist upon it, and will take nothing else; and following their whims, their irrational changes of fancy, their hot and cold fits, is a tedious business, to say nothing of the fact that what they want at any time makes very little call on one’s resources of prophesy. The Remnant, on the other hand, want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about.