Introductory Lectures on Political Economy

It is not that pearls fetch a high price because men have dived for them; but on the contrary, men dive for them because they fetch a high price.

Richard Whately, Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (1832).

Richard Whately was an English philosopher and theologian, also Archbishop of Dublin.

Doctor Faustus

How am I glutted with conceit of this!
Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,
Resolve me of all ambiguities,
Perform what desperate enterprise I will?
I’ll have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
And search all corners of the new-found world
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates.

Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1592?), Act I, Scene i.

Words spoken by Faustus. The play was not published until 1604. Its earliest known peformance is 1594, but Marlowe was killed in 1593 and there is disagreement over the year in which the play is likely to have been written.