The human mind adjusts itself to a certain point of view, and those who have regarded nature from one angle, during a portion of their life, can adopt new ideas only with difficulty.

Nothing is born, nothing dies.

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.

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.