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.
Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.
Where, if not in the Divine Mercy, can the world find refuge and the light of hope?
How individuals of the same species surpass each other in these sensations and in other bodily faculties is universally known, but there is a limit to them, and their power cannot extend to every distance or to every degree.
The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend to all the happiness of man.
Things in which we do not take joy are either a burden upon our minds to be got rid of at any cost; or they are useful, and therefore in temporary and partial relation to us, becoming burdensome when their utility is lost; or they are like wandering vagabonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of our recognition, and then passing on. A thing is only completely our own when it is a thing of joy to us.
Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man.
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