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Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
page 3 of 356 (00%)
great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the
two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man
gave his testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when he
prayed to have neither poverty nor riches.

He bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities
of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind, but
that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not
exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of
mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and
uneasinesses, either of body or mind, as those were who, by vicious
living, luxury, and extravagances on the one hand, or by hard
labour, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet on the
other hand, bring distemper upon themselves by the natural
consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of
life was calculated for all kind of virtue and all kind of
enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle
fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society,
all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the
blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way men
went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably out
of it, not embarrassed with the labours of the hands or of the
head, not sold to a life of slavery for daily bread, nor harassed
with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace and the
body of rest, nor enraged with the passion of envy, or the secret
burning lust of ambition for great things; but, in easy
circumstances, sliding gently through the world, and sensibly
tasting the sweets of living, without the bitter; feeling that they
are happy, and learning by every day's experience to know it more
sensibly,
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