Element

Famous quotes containing the word element:

    Lisa Fremont: Surprise is the most important element of attack. And besides, you’re not up on your private eye literature. When they’re in trouble it’s always their girl Friday who gets them out of it.
    L.B. Jeffries: Well, is she the girl who saves him from the clutches of the seductive show girls and the over passionate daughters of the rich?
    Lisa Fremont: The same.
    L.B. Jeffries: That’s the one, huh? But he never ends up marrying her, does he? That’s strange.
    John Michael Hayes (b. 1919)

    In our day the conventional element in literature is elaborately disguised by a law of copyright pretending that every work of art is an invention distinctive enough to be patented.
    Northrop Frye (b. 1912)

    There is probably an element of malice in the readiness to overestimate people: we are laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size.
    Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)