Jo’s Boys

‘If you feel this, I can give you no better advice than to go on loving and studying our great master,’ she said slowly; but Josie caught the changed tone, and felt, with a thrill of joy, that her newfriend was speaking to her now as to a comrade. ‘It is an education in itself, and a lifetime is not long enough to teach you all his secret. Have you the patience, courage, strength, to begin at the beginning, and slowly, painfully, lay the foundation for future work? Fame is a pearl many dive for and only a few bring up. Even when they do, it is not perfect, and they sigh for more, and lose better things in struggling for them.’

Louisa May Alcott, Jo’s Boys (1886)

The words are spoken by the actress Miss Cameron, who is speaking of Shakespeare.

The Spectator

Since on this Subject I have already admitted several Quotations which have occurred to my Memory upon writing this Paper, I will conclude it with a little Persian Fable. A Drop of Water fell out of a Cloud into the Sea, and finding it self lost in such an Immensity of fluid Matter, broke out into the following Reflection: ‘Alas! What an insignificant Creature am I in this prodigious Ocean of Waters; my Existence is of no Concern to the Universe, I am reduced to a Kind of Nothing, and am less then the least of the Works of God.’ It so happened, that an Oyster, which lay in the Neighbourhood of this Drop, chanced to gape and swallow it up in the midst of this humble Soliloquy. The Drop, says the Fable, lay a great while hardning in the Shell, ’till by Degrees it was ripen’d into a Pearl, which falling into the Hands of a Diver, after a long Series of Adventures, is at present that famous Pearl which is fixed on the Top of the Persian Diadem.

Joseph Addison, The Spectator, no. 293 (Tuesday, 5 February 1712), final lines

The Picture of Dorian Gray

A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss. When the Huns lured the king into the great pit, he flung it away – Procopius tells the story – nor was it ever found again, though the Emperor Anastasius offered five hundred-weight of gold pieces for it.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

The original story is told by Procopius, the Greek historian, in his History of the Wars, book 1. Perozes was a Persian king.