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.
Interpretation
Imagination can lead us to conclusions that are not based on reality, fueled by our self-love and confidence.
In this quote, Antoine Lavoisier reflects on the nature of imagination and its tendency to drift beyond factual truths. He suggests that our self-love and confidence can cloud our judgment, prompting us to make assumptions and draw conclusions that lack a solid foundation in reality. This highlights the importance of grounding our thoughts in truth rather than letting our imaginations run unchecked.
In practice
In a motivational speech, one might use this quote to remind the audience of the pitfalls of relying solely on imagination without seeking the truth.
We think only through the medium of words. Languages are true analytical methods. Algebra, which is adapted to its purpose in every species of expression, in the most simple, most exact, and best manner possible, is at the same time a language and an analytical method. The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.
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.
Perhaps... some day the precision of the data will be brought so far that the mathematician will be able to calculate at his desk the outcome of any chemical combination, in the same way, so to speak, as he calculates the motions of celestial bodies.
If everything in chemistry is explained in a satisfactory manner without the help of phlogiston, it is by that reason alone infinitely probable that the principle does not exist; that it is a hypothetical body, a gratuitous supposition; indeed, it is in the principles of good logic, not to multiply bodies without necessity.
It took them only an instant to cut of that head, but it is unlikely that a hundred years will suffice to reproduce a singular one.
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.
The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear.
Feeding the hungry is a greater work than raising the dead
I like imagination -- and the way I think things could be, had been, or should be -- better than reality.
It's a rare and precious thing to be close to suffering because our society - in many ways - tells us that suffering is wrong. If it's our own suffering, we try to hide it or isolate ourselves. If others are suffering, we're taught to put them away somewhere so we don't have to see it.
PILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who [was] not permitted to sing psalms through his nose [in Europe], followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.
How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibilty, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man with low intelligence.
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