Re: input methods per file

[Johan Bockgård]

to find the just proportions of the discourse which we
wish to adapt to them. We must put ourselves in the place of those who are
to hear us, and make trial on our own heart of the turn which we give to our
discourse in order to see whether one is made for the other, and whether we
can assure ourselves that the hearer will be, as it were, forced to
surrender. We ought to restrict ourselves, so far as possible, to the simple
and natural, and not to magnify that which is little, or belittle that which
is great. It is not enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to
the subject, and there must be in it nothing of excess or defect.

17. Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go.

18. When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is of advantage that there
should exist a common error which determines the mind of man, as, for
example, the moon, to which is attributed the change of seasons, the
progress of diseases, etc. For the chief malady of man is restless curiosity
about things which he cannot understand; and it is not so bad for him to be
in error as to be curious to no purpose.

The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote is the
most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftenest
quoted, because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common
talk of life. As when we speak of the common error which exists among men
that the moon is the cause of everything, we never fail to say that Salomon
de Tultie says that, when we do not know the truth of a thing, it is of
advantage that there should exist a common error, etc.; which is the thought
above.

19. The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in
first.

20. Order.--Why should I undertake to divide my virtues into four rather
than into six? Why should I rather establish virtue in four, in two, in one?
Why into Abstine et sustin