Quotes About Pearls

“Ripe summer's sweetness dripped
in pearls from every tree
and into my opened heart
a little drop ran down.”

— Edith Sodergran

“The living carry us inside them like pearls. We survive only so long as they remember us.”

— Kevin Brockmeier

“After all," Anne had said to Marilla once, "I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.”

— L.M. Montgomery

“I wish I was a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls.”

— Daphne Du Maurier

“I must be besotted," he said evenly. "I have the imbecilic idea that you're the prettiest girl I've ever seen. Except for your coiffure," he added, with a disgusted glance at the coils and plumes and pearls. "That is ghastly."
She scowled. "Your romantic effusions leave me breathless.”

— Loretta Chase

“Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun;
Thyself from thine affection
Takest warmth enough, and from thine eye
All lesser birds will take their jollity.
Up, up, fair bride, and call
Thy stars from out their several boxes, take
Thy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and make
Thyself a constellation of them all;
And by their blazing signify
That a great princess falls, but doth not die.
Be thou a new star, that to us portends
Ends of much wonder; and be thou those ends.”

— John Donne

“Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas! / You really are beautiful! Pearls, / harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins!”

— Frank O'Hara

“When you ask God for a gift,
Be thankful if he sends,
Not diamonds, pearls or riches,
but the love of real true friends.”

— Helen Steiner Rice

“Anne Hathaway
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.”

— Carol Ann Duffy

“Cause it's a hard life, with love in the world. and i'm a hard girl, loving me is like chewing on pearls.”

— Lady Gaga

“What i realise now is that the story actually did have a happy ending: the children came back. In spite of everything the adults did to them, the children found their own way home, their pockets full of precious stones and pearls that gleamed and shone in the light.”

— Julia Green

“The large strings hummed like rain, The small strings whispered like a secret, Hummed, whispered-and then were intermingled Like a pouring of large and small pearls into a plate of jade. We heard an oriole, liquid, hidden among flowers. We heard a brook bitterly sob along a bank of sand ... By the checking of its cold touch, the very string seemed broken As though it could not pass; and the notes, dying away Into a depth of sorrow and concealment of lament, Told even more in silence than they had told in sound ... A silver vase abruptly broke with a gush of water, And out leapt armored horses and weapons that clashed and smote- And before she laid her pick down, she ended with one stroke, And all four strings made one sound, as of rending silk.”

— Eiji Yoshikawa

“On, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that's not how it works. A human life is a beautiful mess.”

— Gabrielle Zevin

“And one day, I'd love to see you dressed in nothing but pearls.”

— Kristen Proby

“A few years ago, long after it had been closed, Eli said he saw a girl swimming in it, coming out of the water in a bikini, laughing at her frigthtened boyfriend, seaweed snaking around her. He said she looked like a mermaid.
Deenie always pictured it like in one of those books of mythology she used to love, a girl rising from the foam gritted with pearls, mussels, the glitter of the sea.
"It looks beautiful", her mother had said once when they were driving by at night, its waters opaline. "It is beautiful. But it makes people sick."
To Deenie, it was one of many interesting things that adults said would kill you: Easter lilles, jellyfish, copperhead snakes with their diamond heads, tails bright as sulfur. Don't touch, don't taste, don't get too close.
And then, last week.”

— Megan Abbott

“His mind was like the sea itself: troubled, and too deep for the bravest man's descent, throwing up now and again, for the naked eye to wonder at, treasure and debris long forgotten on the bottom-bones and jewels, fantastic shells, jelly that had once been flesh, pearls that had once been eyes. And he was at the mercy of this sea, hanging there with darkness all around him.”

— James Baldwin

“One might fancy that day, the London day, was just beginning. Like a woman who had slipped off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue and pearls, the day changed, put off stuff, took gauze, changed to evening, and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes, tumbling petticoats on the floor, it too shed dust, heat, colour; the traffic thinned; motor cars, tinkling, darting, succeeded the lumber of vans; and here and there among the thick foliage of the squares an intense light hung. I resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded above the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel, flat, and block of shops, I fade, she was beginning. I disappear, but London would have none of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry.”

— Virginia Woolf

“Now," she said when all was ready and lit the silver sconces on either side of the mirror. What woman would not have kindled to see what Orlando saw then burning in the snow
for all about the looking glass were snowy lawns, and she was like a fire, a burning bush, and the candle flames about her head were silver leaves; or again, the glass was green water, and she a mermaid, slung with pearls, a siren in a cave, singing so that oarsmen leant from their boats and fell down, down to embrace her; so dark, so bright, so hard, so soft, was she, so astonishingly seductive that it was a thousand pities that there was no one there to pt it in plain English, and say outright "Damn it Madam, you are loveliness incarnate," which was the truth.”

— Virginia Woolf

“A painting means as much to you as a string of pearls to an ape.”

— Paul Scofield

“I am not gay, I just like pearls.”

— Julian Eltinge

“Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, 45
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations. 50
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.”

— T.S. Eliot

“Pedro of Portugal's rapt and bizarre declaration of love, in 1356, for the embalmed corpse of his murdered wife, Inez de Castro, who swayed beside him on his travels, leather-brown and skeletal, crowned with lace and gold circlet, hung about with chains of diamonds and pearls, her bone-fingers fantastically ringed.”

— A.S. Byatt

“Think of a musical as a string of pearls. If you don't have a string, you can't put the pearls around your neck.”

— Marsha Norman

“I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls. Wherever thou seest extraordinary holiness and extraordinary power raising and purifying humanity, know thou that I am there.”

— Anonymous.

“At first I followed her deliberately soft voice, which had the timber of a zurna,* and listened to her speech, which resembled embroidery or a string of pearls, words and phrases completely different from those of the townspeople, somewhat withered yet ornate, with the aura of those old chambers and something enduring.”

— Mesa Selimovic

“My style was nostalgic and involved pearls and penny loafers, always with the pennies in them.”

— Mia Sara

“A new doctor had been sent for, Lazzaro of Pavia, who had administered to Lorenzo a pulverized mixture of diamonds and pearls. This hitherto infallible medicine had failed to help.”

— Irving Stone

“Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.”

— Joseph Addison

“Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the marketplace. It may not be purchased of the merchants, for can it be weighed out in the balance for gold.”

— Oscar Wilde

“And the more I thought of what had happened, the wilder and darker it grew. I reviewed the whole extraordinary sequence of events as I rattled on through the silent gas-lit streets. There was the original problem: that at least was pretty clear now. The death of Captain Morstan, the sending of the pearls, the advertisement, the letter,-we had had light upon all those events. They had only led us, however, to a deeper and far more tragic mystery. The Indian treasure, the curious plan found among Morstan's baggage, the strange scene at Major Sholto's death, the rediscovery of the treasure immediately followed by the murder of the discoverer, the very singular accompaniments to the crime, the footsteps, the remarkable weapons, the words upon the card, corresponding with those upon Captain Morstan's chart,-here was indeed a labyrinth in which a man less singularly endowed than my fellow-lodger might well despair of ever finding the clue.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

“You still cry too easily, but without your tears, at least, everything would burn. You are Spring in your jeans, in the laughing leaves. I think pearls melted over your bones.”

— Francesca Lia Block

“Girls are pearls, ladies are rubies, mothers are moulders, and women are wonderful.”

— Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

“Beautiful Hannah. If you were mine, I'd lay you on silk sheets and wrap you up in ropes of pearls, and feed you honey from a silver spoon. Of course, you wouldn't be able to make all your high-minded judgments if you were a fallen woman ... but you wouldn't care. Because I would pleasure you, Hannah, every night, all night, until you forgot your own name. Until you were willing to do things that would shock you in the light of day. I would debauch you from your head down to your innocent little toes-"
"Oh, I despise you ...”

— Lisa Kleypas

“And we laughed, at the world. They can have their diamonds, And we'll have our pearls”

— Jill Sobule

“In our methodical American life, we still recognize some magic in summer. Most persons at least resign themselves to being decently happy in June. They accept June. They compliment its weather. They complain of the earlier months as cold, and so spend them in the city; and they complain of the later months as hot, and so refrigerate themselves on some barren sea-coast. God offers us yearly a necklace of twelve pearls; most men choose the fairest, label it June, and cast the rest away.”

— Thomas Wentworth Higginson

“That's what I love about music ... all these banalities suddenly turn into these beautiful, effervescent pearls.”

— Mark Ruffalo

“Learn to recognize the false dawn from the true; distinguish the color of the wine from the color of the cup. Then it may be that patience and time may produce, out of the spectrum-viewing sight, true vision, and you will behold colors other than these mortal hues, you will see pearls instead of stones. Pearls, did I say? Nay more, you will become a sea, you will become a sun traveling the sky.”

— Rumi

“Quotations are the gold mine of human mind, the silver pearls of the wisdom ocean, and the cool drops of the rain of intelligence.”

— Mehmet Murat Ildan

“For a hungry man, green peas are more shiny than gleaming pearls.”

— Mehmet Murat Ildan

“You have to remember that goodbyes are temporary because no one ever really leaves and nothing lasts forever. People are always with us, because they are in our hearts and in our memory. The only thing we can depend on is change ... Life is just a series of moments
a string of pearls that make up the necklace of your life and so every once in a while, to complete the circle, you need to end a chapter.”

— Amy Poehler

“These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.”

— James Russell Lowell

“His sumptuous tents, and those of his satraps, afforded an immense booty to the conqueror; and an incident is mentioned which proves the rustic but martial ignorance of the legions in the elegant superfluities of life. A bag of shining leather, filled with pearls, fell into the hands of a private soldier; he carefully preserved the bag, but he threw away its contents, judging that whatever was of no use could not possibly be of any value.”

— Edward Gibbon

“The rarest things in the world, next to a spirit of discernment, are diamonds and pearls.
[Fr., Apres l'esprit de discernement, ce qu'il y a au monde de plus rare, ce sont les diamants et les perles.]”

— Jean De La Bruyere

“I like the laughter that opens the lips and the heart, shows at the same time the pearls and the soul.”

— Victor Hugo

“The Cinderella of the church today is the prayer meeting. This handmaid of the Lord is unloved and unwooed because she is not dripping with the pearls of intellectualism, nor glamorous with the silks of philosophy; neither is she enchanting with the tiara of psychology. She wears the homespuns of sincerity and humility and so is not afraid to kneel!”

— Leonard Ravenhill

“Come o'er the eastern hills, and let our winds Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls Upon our love-sick land that mourns for thee.”

— William Blake

“But pearls are fair; and the old saying is:
Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies' eyes.”

— William Shakespeare

“Man is not to drown himself in the well of the Shastras, but he is to dive in their broad ocean and bring out pearls.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

“The sea hath its pearls
The heaven hath its stars
But my heart, my heart
Has its love.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Remember God's bounty in the year. String the pearls of His favor. Hide the dark parts, except so far as they are breaking out in light! Give this one day to thanks, to joy, to gratitude!”

— Henry Ward Beecher