It is almost possible to predict one or two days in advance, within a rather broad range of probability, what the weather is going to be; it is even thought that it will not be impossible to publish daily forecasts, which would be very useful to soci.
Imagination, on the contrary, which is ever wandering beyond the bounds of truth, joined to self-love and that self-confidence we are so apt to indulge, prompt us to draw conclusions which are not immediately derived from facts.
We must trust to nothing but facts: These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.
Thus, while I thought myself employed only in forming a Nomenclature, and while I proposed to myself nothing more than to improve the chemical language, my work transformed itself by degrees, without my being able to prevent it, into a treatise upon the Elements of Chemistry.
Mathematicians come to the solution of a problem by the simple arrangement of the data, and reducing the reasoning to such simple operations, to judgments so brief, that they never lose sight of the evidence that serves as their guide.
In performing experiments, it is necessary… that they be simplified as much as possible, and that every circumstance that could complicate the results should be completely removed.
It is not only by the pores of the skin that this aqueous emaciation takes place. A considerable quantity of humidity is also exhaled by the lungs at each expiration.
Experiments upon vegetation give reason to believe that light combines with certain parts of vegetables, and that the green of their leaves, and the various colors of flowers, is chiefly owing to this combination.
This theory [the oxygen theory] is not as I have heard it described, that of the French chemists, it is mine (elle est la mienne); it is a property which I claim from my contemporaries and from posterity.
Sulfur, when burning, absorbs oxygen gas; the resulting acid is considerably heavier than the sulfur burned; its weight is equal to the sum of weights of the sulfur burned and the oxygen absorbed.
The whole art of making experiments in chemistry is founded on the principle: we must always suppose an exact equality or equation between the principles of the body examined and those of the products of its analysis.
One succeeds in obtaining an equivalent production at a lower price by improving the arts, trades and agriculture and by developing the physical and moral qualities of workers, farmers and craftsmen.
![Antoine Lavoisier Quote - This theory [the oxygen theory] is not as I have heard it described, that of the French chemists, it is mine (elle est la mienne); it is a property which I claim from my contemporaries and from posterity.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/this-theory-the-oxygen-theory-is-not-as-i-have-hea-683x1024.jpg)
