RNS Quote of the Day, 12/07/09

My father… told me …that these things were all either too far above me, or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be call’d the upper station of low life, which he had found by experience was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not expos’d to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanick part of mankind, and not embarrass’d with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind.

…He bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shar’d among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest disasters and was not expos’d to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind….

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe