Each one of us, whatever may have been his individual initiative, ought also to attribute a considerable portion of his success to his contemporaries… - Marcellin Berthelot

Science is the real moral school; she teaches man the love and respect for the truth, without which all hope is chimerical.

In fact, what we are can only be attributed for a small part to our labour and personal individuality, because we owe it almost entirely to our forefathers, both of blood and mind.

There abides in nature a certain form of matter which, being discovered and brought by art to perfection, converts to itself, proportionally, all imperfect bodies that it touches. ...It rested on the indisputable appearance of an indefinite cycle of transformations, reproducing themselves in chemical operations, without either beginning or end.