Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from pages 3-4 of Joseph Epstein’s 1999 book, Narcissus Leaves the Pool:

As for how easy my physical life has been, let me count the ways: I have never been tortured; I have never been shot or stabbed; I have never, after the age of ten, been in a serious fight; I have never fallen from a horse; I have never been hungry or thirsty for more than a few hours. Perhaps only an American in the twentieth century can make such a happy claim, but in the physical realm I have known almost nothing of pain, deprivation, or humiliation.

In the sixteenth century, certainly no one would have been so privileged.