From Montaigne, Right Before My Final

"Despite all my entrenchments, I feel it gaining on me foot by foot. I resist for as long as I can, but I do not myself know to what it will reduce me at last. But come what may, I am glad that the world will know the height from which I shall have fallen."

(from the end of "On Repentance")

Yeah, that's about right - I'm heading for a fall, but from such great heights!