cowardly and effeminate one.

64

It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in
him.

65

What good there is in Montaigne can only have been acquired with
difficulty. The evil that is in him, I mean apart from his morality,
could have been corrected in a moment, if he had been informed that he
made too much of trifles and spoke too much of himself.

66

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at
least serves as a rule of life, and there is nothing better.

67

_The vanity of the sciences._--Physical science will not console me for
the ignorance of morality in the time of affliction. But the science of
ethics will always console me for the ignorance of the physical
sciences.

68

Men are never taught to be gentlemen, and are taught everything else;
and they never plume themselves so much on the rest of their knowledge
as on knowing how to be gentlemen. They only plume themselves on knowing
the one thing they do not know.

69

_The infinites, the mean._--When we read too fast or too slowly, we
understand nothing.

70

_Nature_ ...--[Nature has set us so well in the centre, that if we
change one side of the balance, we change the other also. _I act._ +Ta
zoa trechei.+ This makes me believe that the springs in our brain are so
adjusted that he who touches one touches also its contrary.]

71

Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give
him too much, the same.

72

_Man's disproportion._--[This is where our innate knowledge leads us. If
it be not true, there is no truth in man; and if it be true, he finds
therein great cause for humiliation, being compelled to abase himself in
one way or another. And since he cannot exist without this knowledge, I
wish that, before entering on deeper researches into nature, he would
consider her both seriously and at leisure, that he would reflect upon
himself also, and knowing what proportion there is....] Let man then
contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty, and turn
his vision from the low objects which surround him. Let him gaze on that
brilliant light, set like an eternal lamp to illumine the universe; let
the earth appear to him a point in comparison with the vast circle
described by the sun; and let him wonder at the fact that this vast
circle is itself but a very fine point in comparison with that described
by the stars in their revolution