Diamond

“ The diamond is the most crystal clear of stones, and represents the truth in irresistible form. It is futile to oppose the mind of any Present Truth believer, for truth is irrefutable. To those who have it, it imparts the mind of an intellectual giant—the mind of Christ, of God. (1 Cor. 2:16.) Their foreheads are made as diamond. In the light of the sun the diamond sparkles with indescribable beauty. It breaks the sunlight up into its component parts and reflects and refracts in prismatic flashes of rainbow colors. The sun is the Gospel of Divine Love and its embodiment, Jesus Christ. ”

“ The tiny diamond that lies in the hollow of our hands is dear and precious in our sight, whilst we fail to find beauty in the huge boulder that is after all far more worthy of regard, with its lights and shades, its grand ruggedness, and the soft vegetable matter that decks its aged sides, rendering their roughness beautiful. ”

“ The real charm and value of the diamond lie in its remarkable brilliancy, and in the wonderful prismatic display of the bright and beautiful colors, which are constantly fugitive, but perpetually returning, as the learned Abbé Haüy elegantly expresses it. When a ray of light is reflected from the surface of a body, a particular impression is conveyed to the eye, which we may properly term the eclat. ”

“ So, though in the clear air of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamond drop will healthful glow; yet, when the cunning jeweller would show you the diamond in its most impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy ground, and then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some unnatural gases. ”

“ A diamond, carefully cut and perfectly polished, glitters and shines in the sun with exceeding brilliancy. It not only reflects the light, but also absorbs it into itself, so as to shine even in the dark with the light it has absorbed. It actually becomes, as it were, a little sun, shining with its own light. It is thus become a partaker of the sun's nature, while it retains its own peculiar diamond nature and individuality. ”

“ There is no doubt that the five gems—diamond, ruby, emerald, sapphire, and pearl—have grown more fully than all others into our ways of living. They have become, as I shall indicate in this chapter, adornments not only of our persons but of our speech and writing. They are used not only in figures of jewelry but in figures of speech, to express human beauty, or eminence, or virtue. The poet and the orator, as well as the monarch and the lover, have utilized the glamour of the gem.
Diamond
Supreme in human imagination is the diamond, the hardest of all stones. ”

“ The true diamond, however, no matter what may be its hue, has an iridescent brightness which no other gem can counterfeit. This iridescence, coupled with its hardness, forms the test of the diamond; and its absence never fails to reveal the nature of an impostor. If anything can scratch a stone, that stone is not a diamond. The writer, in common with all her schoolmates, once bestowed a great deal of admiration and no small portion of envy upon a young companion on the strength of that young companion's diamond, a lustrous gem of most remarkable size. ”

“ It is an extraordinary thing that the diamond, which is the most limpid and brilliant of all earthly stones, gains a thousand-fold in beauty when you, as it were, soil it with a black tint, while all other light stones, as soon as you touch them with a tint, lose their splendour, and turn black ”

“ It was the old diamond disillusion of childhood repeated—the same disappointment she had felt when she had first seen the chill sparkle instead of the purple splendor she had anticipated. “That’s not my idea of a diamond,” she had said. ”

“ No substance in the Mineral Kingdom displays in miniature such beautiful variety of regular solids as the Diamond, which are as captivating to the connoisseur, as the finest brilliant can be to the wearer. ”

“ A diamond of the finest cut, with its faces and facets so arranged as to secure the greatest degree of brilliancy—whence the name. The name to many conveys the idea of paste, or imitation. A rose diamond may be just as pure, but its depth does not permit it to be made a brilliant of without a much greater loss of substance. ”

“ At last, from out of its silver paper and casing, the jewel lay revealed, and she stood, gazing a little awestruck at its flashing beauty.
It was a diamond star, to be worn as a brooch, and, every spike radiating from the centre diamond of great size and brilliancy, was composed of selected stones. Worked in across the star, in sapphires, were the words "Regina Imperatrix," and [Pg 125] the blue and white lights from sapphire and diamond shone dazzlingly from their satin bed. ”

“ I have shown that a diamond is the outcome of a series of Titanic earth convulsions, and that these precious gems undergo cycles of fiery, strange, and potent vicissitudes before they can blaze on a ring or a tiara. ”

“ As the limpid or white diamond surpasses all other white stones in the power of its lustre and the magnificence of its fire, so do the colored diamonds outrank the emerald, ruby, sapphire, and other gems of like colors. ”

“ The diamond is to the pearl as the sun is to the moon, and we might well call one the “king-gem” and the other the “queen-gem.” The diamond, like a knight of old,—brilliant and resistant, is the emblem of fearlessness and invincibility; the pearl, like a lady of old,—pure and fair to look upon, is the emblem of modesty and purity. Therefore it does not seem unfitting that70 the diamond should be presented as a token to the pearl, and that pearls should go with the diamond. ”

“ He would give to God, he continued, getting down to specifications, the greatest diamond in the world. This diamond would be cut with many more thousand facets than there were leaves on a tree, and yet the whole diamond would be shaped with the perfection of a stone no bigger than a fly. Many men would work upon it for many years. ”

“ Diamonds are so brilliant, the radiance from the facets so bewildering to the eye, that the flaws cannot be seen by the human eye unless the imperfection is pronounced and at the top surface of the diamond. Each facet of a diamond (by reason of the method of cutting) is a window looking down a clearly defined walled chamber, like a hall-way to the culet. ”

“ A first-water diamond, an empty spool, bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. ”

“ Were you to estimate the value of things by their composition, the finest marble and the coarsest chalk would be placed on an equality: or to choose an example from human nature, the wisest philosopher would be no better than the greatest dunce. The diamond is my most precious charge. It surpasses all other gems in hardness and lustre, and its beauty and rarity have rendered it peculiarly attractive to you men. My richest diamond beds are situated in the Brazils and in Bengal, but I have scattered these gems over many parts of the world. ”

“ In this world, sir, it is not rare for hidden nobility to deceive the eye: though the diamond does not shine in the dark, yet it is a diamond. He is, I assure you, a nobleman of ancient race, and, forgive me, a bit of a philosopher. ”

“ In this matter the poor onyx-stone holds its own triumphantly against the diamond; it is elevated to such a value by the hand of man, that it has been deemed worthy of the choicest setting—a setting in which diamonds are only used as auxiliaries to its beauty—its beauty, the genius of fine workers in past times. ”

“ A diamond flashes many colours as its facets catch the light. So, in this context, the Apostle seems to be haunted with that thought of 'inheriting' and 'inheritance,' and he recurs to it several times, but sets it at different angles, and it flashes back different beauties of radiance. ”

“ The peculiar virtue of the diamond, however, admits of the trying of a simple experiment, by which you can at once distinguish one stone from another, and it is this. You take your tint & rub both stones with it; your true diamond grows in brilliance & beauty, the other becomes deadened and splendourless. And this test suffices without trying the test of hardness too, but if you rubbed the two stones together you would soon find out the diamond. Though the sapphire is so much harder than the ruby & the emerald, it is a thousand times less so than the diamond. ”

“ The diamond is a stone possessed by many among ourselves, especially by jewellers and lapidaries, and the stone is so hard that it can be wrought neither by iron nor fire, nor, they say, by anything at all except goat’s blood. ”

“ By what strange law of mind is it that an idea long overlooked, and trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles out in new light, as a discovered diamond? ”

“ These amazing, beautiful CORODITE diamonds positively match genuine diamonds in every way—same blazing flash and dazzling play of living rainbow fire. They, alone, stand the diamond tests, including terrific acid test of direct comparison. Life time experts need all their experience to see any difference. ”

“ But there was something in her higher than what surrounded her. There was in her the glow of the real diamond among glass imitations. This glow shone out in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The weary, and at the same time passionate, glance of those eyes, encircled by dark rings, impressed one by its perfect sincerity. Everyone looking into those eyes fancied he knew her wholly, and knowing her, could not but love her. ”

“ A typical diamond is thus described in a Hindu gem-treatise:82
A six-pointed diamond, pure, without stain, with pronounced and sharp edges, of a beautiful shade, light, with well-formed facets, without defects, illuminating space with its fire and with the reflection of the rainbow, a diamond of this kind is not easy to find in the earth.
According to a wide-spread superstition, the talismanic power of a diamond was lost if the stone were acquired by purchase; only when received as a gift could its virtues be depended on.83 The same belief is noted regarding the turquoise. ”

“ In another place, under the charge of the giants, is a rare and costly diamond. None so large ever has been seen by human eyes. Request this youth to procure the diamond for you, and when he has failed you will be free to marry me. ”

“ The word Diamond is a corruption of, and synonymous with, Adamant, derived from the Greek adamas, untamable, infrangible, not to be subdued, in accordance with the prefix a, without, and damas, to tame, to subdue. As every one must be aware, the diamond is capable of resisting fire. ”

“ Although a finely developed diamond, ruby, or other crystal is sometimes found and used for jewelry, the beauty of a precious stone generally remains hidden within a rough and unsightly exterior until the lapidary’s art reveals the gem. ”

“ The precision and speed of his improvisation revealed him. He had twenty other diamonds like this one. He kept them for those Sundays when the sun comes up in the west. Of course—often! Some day he was going to melt a diamond and eat it. Then you sparkled all over in the dark, ever after. ”

“ The greatest flashing gem ever made. Has same dashing beauty as the finest genuine diamonds. They stood acid and fire tests—fool everybody. Only trusted diamond men with testing lens can tell the difference. ”

“ Sense is our helmet, wit is but the plume;
The plume exposes, ’tis our helmet saves. 1260
Sense is the diamond, weighty, solid, sound;
When cut by wit, it casts a brighter beam;
Yet, wit apart, it is a diamond still. ”

“ The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen, if the eye is too near. ”

“ Said the old priest, “A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight.” Now that is literally scientifically true, that a diamond is an actual deposit of carbon from the sun. The old priest told Ali Hafed that if he had one diamond the size of his thumb he could purchase the county, and if he had a mine of diamonds he could place his children upon thrones through the influence of their great wealth. ”

“ But remember, that manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world. Like a great rough diamond, it may do very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value ”

“ A very large per cent. of the light that falls upon the surface of a diamond at any low angle is reflected, hence the keenness of its luster. If a diamond and some other white stone, say a white sapphire, are held so as to reflect at the same time images of an incandescent light into the eye of the observer, such a direct comparison will serve to show that much more light comes to the eye from the diamond surface than from the sapphire surface. ”

“ As the diamond does not appear to have been known to the ancients and is not given in any of the lists of birth-stones before the last century, and as diamonds, like gold and platinum, may easily be used as accessories to other stones, would it not perhaps be better to omit the diamond from the list of the stones of the months, and rather use these gems as a bordering or other ornate addition to the stone of the month? ”

“ Because the diamond is a gem possessing a greater refractive power than any other precious stone, and reflects every atom of light which falls upon it at an angle of incidence greater than twenty-four and a half degrees, even before being cut. ”

“ DIAMOND, a mineral universally recognized as chief among precious stones; it is the hardest, the most imperishable, and also the most brilliant of minerals. [1] These qualities alone have made it supreme as a jewel since early times, and yet the real brilliancy of the stone is not displayed until it has been faceted by the art of the lapidary (q.v.) ; and this was scarcely developed before the year 1746. The consummate hardness of the diamond, in spite of its high price, has made it most useful for purposes of grinding, polishing and drilling. ”