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

The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The opal resembles a fraction of the rainbow softened by a milky cloud. – Charles Blanc, Art in Ornament and Dress, 1875, translated from French

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