The questions are diamonds you hold in the light. Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel. The same questions, asked again, bring you just the answers you need just the minute you need them. – Richard Bach, Running From Safety

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

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