Flowers that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their coloring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children – honored as the jewelry of God…. – Thomas De Quincey

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new. – Harriet Beecher Stowe, Old Town Folks, 1869

Now the melancholy God protect thee, and the tailor make thy garments of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is opal. – William Shakespeare, The Twelfth Night

How much art and science, and what attention, what care is necessary to render the sun-beams which are imprisoned in a tiny polyhedron of pure carbon, brilliant and sparkling! – Charles Blanc, Art in Ornament and Dress, 1875, translated from French