“We are always anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.”
upon being told he had a good head for business, p. 378
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010)
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Mark Twain 637
American author and humorist 1835–1910Related quotes

“We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.”
Variant: We are enriched not by what we possess, but by what we can do without.

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

Into the Fight Against Famine
6. The Kulaks - bulwark and hope of the counter-revolution
How the Revolution Armed (1923)

“And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?”

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship
Source: The Future As History (1960), Chapter IV, Part 9, The Grand Dynamic of History, p. 209
Context: In an age which no longer waits patiently through this life for the rewards of the next, it is a crushing spiritual blow to lose one's sense of participation in mankind's journey, and to see only a huge milling-around, a collective living-out of lives with no larger purpose than the days which each accumulates. When we estrange ourselves from history we do not enlarge, we diminish ourselves, even as individuals. We subtract from our lives one meaning which they do in fact possess, whether we recognize it or not. We cannot help living in history. We can only fail to be aware of it. If we are to meet, endure, and transcend the trials and defeats of the future — for trials and defeats there are certain to be — it can only be from a point of view which, seeing the future as part of the sweep of history, enables us to establish our place in that immense procession in which is incorporated whatever hope humankind may have.
“That possession which we gain by the sword is not lasting; gratitude for benefits is eternal.”
Non est diuturna possessio in quam gladio ducimus; beneficiorum gratia sempiterna est.
VIII, 8, 11.
Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt, Book VIII