John Ruskin

“ Was any woman, do you suppose, ever the better for possessing diamonds? but how many have been made base, frivolous, and miserable by desiring them? Was ever man the better for having coffers full of gold? ”

“ Well, but, you know, if there were a real Valley of Diamonds, somebody MUST have seen it.
L. You cannot be so sure of that, Isabel. Many people go to real places, and never see them; and many people pass through this valley, and never see it.
FLORRIE. What stupid people they must be!
L. No, Florrie. They are much wiser than the people who do see it. ”

“ The practical, immediate office of the earthquake and pestilence is to slay us, like moths; and, as moths, we shall be wise to live out of their way. So, the practical, immediate office of gold and diamonds is the multiplied destruction of souls (in whatever sense you have been taught to understand that phrase) ; and the paralysis of wholesome human effort and thought on the face of God's earth: and a wise nation will live out of the way of them. ”

“ MAY. Oh, please never mind that, Isabel, just now; I want to hear about the valley.
L. So the entrance to it is very wide, under a steep rock; only such numbers of people are always trying to get in, that they keep jostling each other, and manage it but slowly. Some weak ones are pushed back, and never get in at all; and make great moaning as they go away: but perhaps they are none the worse in the end. ”

“ Men say it is more like their own tongue to the English than it is to any other nation; but the only record of it is by an Italian, who heard the king himself cry it as a war cry, "Pape Satan, Pape Satan Aleppe." ”

“ These, in my hand, look as if they had been swept down with the gravel and gold; only we can trace the gravel and gold to their native rocks, but not the diamonds. Read the account given of the diamond in any good work on mineralogy;--you will find nothing but lists of localities of gravel, or conglomerate rock (which is only an old indurated gravel) . Some say it was once a vegetable gum; but it may have been charred wood; but what one would like to know is, mainly, why charcoal should make itself into diamonds in India, and only into black lead in Borrowdale. ”

“ The money which the English habitually spend in cutting diamonds would, in ten years, if it were applied to cutting rocks instead, leave no dangerous reef nor difficult harbor round the whole island coast. Great Britain would be a diamond worth cutting, indeed, a true piece of regalia. ”

“ You said there was a way through the valley, and out of it.
L. Yes; but few find it. If any of them keep to the grass paths, where the diamonds are swept aside; and hold their hands over their eyes so as not to be dazzled, the grass paths lead forward gradually to a place where one sees a little opening in the golden rocks. You were at Chamouni last year, Sibyl; did your guide chance to show you the pierced rock of the Aiguille du Midi? ”

“ The moment we can use our possessions to any good purpose ourselves, the instinct of communicating that use to others rises side by side with our power. If you can read a book rightly, you will want others to hear it ”

“ Every other temptation is at last concentrated into this: pride, and lust, and envy, and anger all give up their strength to avarice. The sin of the whole world is essentially the sin of Judas. Men do not disbelieve their Christ ”