But the middle class can sustain the search for exclusivity with the same personal gifts which in other circumstances it invests in peaceful business: order, foresight, caution, and cunning (p. 97). They go so far as to practise understatement about their real power, a style they ostensibly share more with the British than the Italian mentality. This style, moreover, has won them reputation and trust.

Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking…, loc. 2175