The Great Infidels (1881)
Context: Great virtues may draw attention from defects, they cannot sanctify them. A pebble surrounded by diamonds remains a common stone, and a diamond surrounded by pebbles is still a gem. No one should attempt to refute an argument by pronouncing the name of some man, unless he is willing to adopt all the ideas and beliefs of that man. It is better to give reasons and facts than names. An argument should not depend for its force upon the name of its author. Facts need no pedigree, logic has no heraldry, and the living should not awed by the mistakes of the dead.
Quotes about diamond
page 3
Source: Pleasures of the Harbor (1967), Liner notes; part of this statement is often paraphrased "In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty."
Context: I watched my life fade-away in a flash
A quarter of a century dash through closets full of candles with never a room
For rapture through a kingdom had been captured.
And so I turn away from my drizzling furniture and pass old ladies
Sniffling by movie stars' tombs, yes I must be home again soon.
To face the unspoken unguarded thoughts of habitual hearts
A vanguard of electricians a village full of tarts
Who say you must protest you must protest
It is your diamond duty…
Ah but in such an ugly time the true protest is beauty
And the bleeding seer crawled from the ruins of the empire
And stood bleeding, bleeding on the border
He said, passion has led to chaos and now chaos will lead to order.
Oh I have been away for a while and I hope to be back again soon.
"Introduction"
The Defendant (1901)
Context: Now it has appeared to me unfair that humanity should be engaged perpetually in calling all those things bad which have been good enough to make other things better, in everlastingly kicking down the ladder by which it has climbed. It has appeared to me that progress should be something else besides a continual parricide; therefore I have investigated the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in all of them. I have found that humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the gutter and diamonds into the sea.
Letter to William Short (31 October 1819), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-12_Bk.pdf, pp. 141–142
1810s
Context: The greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill. … The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems, [footnote: e. g. The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, etc. —T. J. ] invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him, is a most desirable object, and one to which Priestley has successfully devoted his labors and learning. It would in time, it is to be hoped, effect a quiet euthanasia of the heresies of bigotry and fanaticism which have so long triumphed over human reason, and so generally and deeply afflicted mankind; but this work is to be begun by winnowing the grain from the chaff of the historians of his life.
“My father has a diamond bigger than the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.”
"The Diamond As Big As The Ritz"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
Context: "The Schnlitzer-Murphys had diamonds as big as walnuts — "
"That's nothing." Percy had leaned forward and dropped his voice to a low whisper. "That's nothing at all. My father has a diamond bigger than the Ritz-Carlton Hotel."
Letter to John Adams, on Christian scriptures (24 January 1814)
1810s
Context: The whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
“The most desired gift of love is not diamonds or roses or chocolate. It is focused attention. ”
“There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.”
Patanjali, in “The Little Red Book of Yoga Wisdom”, p. 135.
Cagliostro’s Letter to the English People (1787)
Speech at the at the 74th UN General Assembly. Statement by Mr. Jair Messias Bolsonaro, President of the Federative Republic of Brazil http://statements.unmeetings.org/GA74/BR_EN.pdf. United Nations PaperSmart (24 September 2019).
B.G.Tilak in "Guru and Chela".
Indira Gandhi, the former Prime Minister of India quoted in [Cahn, R.W., The Coming of Materials Science, http://books.google.com/books?id=CCmJMr_K5NIC&pg=PA234, 16 March 2001, Elsevier, 978-0-08-052942-4, 272]
Rajini acts in front of the camera, never behind it' (22 December 1999)
Martin Samuel, writing in The Times on May 1, 2008. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/european_football/article3851215.ece
It is the question of questions. All that Democracy ever meant lies there: the attainment of a truer and truer Aristocracy, or Government again by the Best.
1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Downing Street (April 1, 1850)
1941, Weird Tales, Vol. 36, p. 105
Haunted Hour
Time Waits for No One (co-written with Keith Richards) on the Rolling Stones' 1974 album It's Only Rock 'n Roll (1973).
Lyrics
Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)
Source: https://www.debeersgroup.com/~/media/Files/D/De-Beers-Group-V2/documents/company-news/2019/MEDIA%20RELEASE%20Dr%20Mokgweetsi%20Masisi%20President%20of%20the%20Republic%20of%20Botswana%20opens%20the%20JCK%20Las%20Vegas%20sho.pdf HIS EXCELLENCY, DR MOKGWEETSI MASISI, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF BOTSWANA OPENS JCK LAS VEGAS SHOW, 31 May 2019, Retrieved 14th January 2022
“Funds raised from diamonds have not just built our roads, but also our people.”
Source: https://www.debeersgroup.com/~/media/Files/D/De-Beers-Group-V2/documents/company-news/2019/MEDIA%20RELEASE%20Dr%20Mokgweetsi%20Masisi%20President%20of%20the%20Republic%20of%20Botswana%20opens%20the%20JCK%20Las%20Vegas%20sho.pdf HIS EXCELLENCY, DR MOKGWEETSI MASISI, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF BOTSWANA OPENS JCK LAS VEGAS SHOW, 31 May 2019, Retrieved 14th January 2022
From the Cardroom Amalgamation