The stars shall fade away, the Sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amid the war of elements,
The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds. [ Joseph Addison ]

Humor is one of the elements of genius - admirable as an adjunct; but as soon as it becomes dominant, only a surrogate for genius. [ Goethe ]

It is the height of folly to throw up attempting because you have failed. Failures are wonderful elements in developing the character. [ Anon ]

Where there is a wine-shop, there are the elements of disease and the frightful source of all that is at enmity with the interests of the workmen. [ Count De Montalembert ]

It is a general rule, one at least to which I know no exceptions, that all superior men inherit the elements of their superiority from their mothers. [ Michelet ]

Speech is a laggard and a sloth; but the eyes shoot out electric fluid that condenses all the elements of sentiment and passion in one single emanation. [ Horace Smith ]

All these are elements of happiness - love of nature, acquaintance with the wide earth, congenial intercourse with superior minds, and abiding friendships. [ Charles W. Eliot ]

Monotony, even under circumstances least favourable to the usual elements of happiness, becomes a happiness in itself, growing, as it were, unseen, out of the undisturbed certainty of peculiar customs. [ Lord Lytton ]

Friendship is not a state of feeling whose elements are specifically different from those which compose every other. The emotions we feel toward a friend are the same in kind with those we experience on other occasions; but they are more complex and more exalted. [ R. Hall ]

Just to be good, to keep life pure from degrading elements, to make it constantly helpful in little ways to those who are touched by it, to keep one's spirit always sweet and avoid all manner of petty anger and irritability, - that is an ideal as noble as it is difficult. [ Edward Howard Griggs ]

It seems strange that a butterfly's wing should be woven up so thin and gauzy in the monstrous loom of nature, and be so delicately tipped with fire from such a gross hand, and rainbowed all over in such a storm of thunderous elements. The marvel is that such great forces do such nice work. [ Theodore Parker ]