Timeless Treasures: 101+ Inspiring Quotes About Pearls

Pearls have always been considered the “queens of all gems and the gems of all queens” – a strong symbol of elegance and nobility.

I have gathered the best quotes about pearls I could find because I believe there is a lot of inspiration regarding the symbolism of the pearls.

Throughout time, pearls have been symbols of things such as femininity, grace, elegance, nobility, royalty, delicacy, and discreet beauty – many meanings related to women. 

No wonder so many women choose to wear pearls as an accessory that enhances their natural grace and beauty.

On the other hand, pearls also are seen as a symbol for rare, special, precious, and expensive things – because, in reality, they are quite hard to find and to obtain. 

As you will see in one of the pearl sayings below, sometimes people can lose their lives in the attempt to get a pearl from the bottom of the ocean! (I will let you find the saying yourself).

Pearls also have symbolism regarding intelligence and intellectual brightness. 

The word “pearl” is often used to describe a very bright person (a genius) or a very smart, life-altering concept or idea. 

Also, the phrase “pearl of wisdom” is often used to describe a saying or proverb full of wisdom and inspiration.

As a fun fact, in my country (Romania), the word “pearl” is sometimes also used when saying something amazingly funny and silly at the same time – something that makes people laugh.

As the symbolism of the pearls is very rich and varied, I invite you to have a look at the following 103 pearl quotes. 

Maybe some of them will inspire you from a spiritual point of view, and you will decide to put them somewhere where you can see them every day, or maybe you can use them in your business of any sort – especially if you own a jewelry store!

Quotes About Pearls For People Who Enjoy Their Beauty

1. “The pearl is the queen of gems and the gem of queens.” – Grace Kelly

2. “My dream is to adorn the neck of all women around the world with pearls.” – Kokichi Mikimoto

3. “I feel undressed if I don’t have my pearls on. My pearls are my security blanket.” – Lady Sarah Churchill

4. “A woman needs ropes and ropes of pearls.” – Coco Chanel

5. “Why wear one string when you can wear two?” – Coco Chanel

6. “As a pearl is formed and its layers grow, a rich iridescence begins to glow. The oyster has taken what was at first an irritation and intrusion and uses it to enrich its value. How can you coat or frame the changes in your life to harvest beauty, brilliance, and wisdom?” – Susan C. Young

7. “There is just one piece of jewelry that is equally becoming to everybody, lovely with almost every ensemble, appropriate for almost any occasion, and indispensable in every woman’s wardrobe…long live the pearl necklace, true or false, from our first date until our last breath!” – Genevieve Antoine Dariaux

8. “Pearls are always appropriate.” – Jackie Kennedy

9. “I had just received La Peregrina from New York on a delicate little chain, and I was wearing it like a talisman.” – Elizabeth Taylor

10. “All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.” – Frederico Fellini

11. “The first place and the topmost rank among all things of price is held by pearls… Their whole value lies in their brilliance, size, roundness, smoothness, and weight… There have been two pearls that were the largest in the whole of history; Cleopatra owned both… they had come down to her through the hands of the kings of the East.” – Pliny

12. “I favor pearls on screen and in my private life.” – Grace Kelly

13. “Age before beauty, and pearls before swine.” – Dorothy Parker

14. “What is important with pearls is the woman who is wearing them.” – Unknown

15. “Always have a good little black dress, pearls and stay in the best hotel, even if you can only have the worse room.” – Tilly Losch

16. “You can’t ever go wrong with pearls. Perhaps pearls are a girl’s best friend after all.” – Ki Hackney

17. “The pearl is an indicator of the health of the planet. Upon its lustrous surface, every typhoon, every change in water temperature, every current caused by a dynamite blast, and every nuance in the cleanliness of the water is recorded. It falls on the highly skilled pearl farmer to act as a steward of creation.” – Joyce Hifler

Inspirational Quotes About Pearls

18. “How could you reach the pearl by only looking at the sea? If you seek the pearl, be a diver.” – Rumi

19. Whatever pearl you seek, look for the pearl within the pearl!” – Rumi

20. “Life is like a precious pearl.” – Lailah Gifty Akita

21. “From a grain of sand in, the pearl comes.” – Confucius

22. “Life is made up of a few moments all strung together like pearls. Each moment is a pearl, and it is up to us to pick the ones with the highest luster.” – Joyce Hilfer

23. “Some give up under pressure, while others rise up and undergo life-transforming experiences. Oyster responds beautifully to external pressure, giving birth to a priceless pearl.” – Mukhtar Aziz

24. “The world is your oyster. It’s up to you to find the pearls.” – Chris Gardner

25. “A word of kindness is seldom spoken in vain, while the witty saying is as easily lost as the pearls slipping from a broken string.” – George D. Prentice

26. “The most extraordinary thing about the oyster is this. Irritations set into his shell. He does not like them. But when he cannot get rid of them, he uses the irritation to do the loveliest thing an oyster ever has a chance to do. If there are irritations in our lives today, there is only one prescription: make a pearl. It may have to be a pearl of patience but make a pearl. And it takes faith, and I love to do it.” – Harry Emerson Fosdick

27. “A great life is nothing more than a series of well-lived days strung together like a string of pearls.” – Robin S. Sharma

28. “Those who dive into the sea of affliction, bring up rare pearls!” – Charles H. Spurgeon

29. “Collect as precious pearls the words of the wise and virtuous.” – Abdelkader El Djezairi

30. “A pearl is a symbol of strength, beauty, and resilience. It is a reminder that we are all capable of overcoming difficult times and emerging stronger and more beautiful than before.” – Alan Young

31. “God changes caterpillars into butterflies, sand into pearls, and coal into diamonds using time and pressure. He's working on you, too.” – Rick Warren

32. “Impressions are like pearls; ideas are like the string that turns the pearls into necklaces. The string is invisible, but it is not dispensable and cannot be broken.” – Mu Xin

33. “At root, a pearl is a ‘disturbance' a beauty caused by something that isn't supposed to be there, about which something needs to be done. It is the interruption of equilibrium that creates beauty. Beauty is a response to provocation, to intrusion. … The pearl's beauty is made from insult.” – Julia Cameron

34. “People don't want to be bothered if they're not being pressured to change. You have to push people. You have to be the agitator that makes the pearl.” – Marlo Thomas

35. “Like a layer on a pearl, you can't specifically identify the irritant, the moment of the irritant,  but at the end of the day, you know you have a pearl.” – Ken Burns

36. “In diving to the bottom of pleasure, we bring up more gravel than pearls.” – Honore de Balzac

37. “Sacredness grew like a pearl, sometimes around the most unlikely bits of grit.” – S.M. Stirling

38. “The burden of suffering seems like a tombstone hung about our necks, while in reality, it is only the weight that is necessary to keep down the diver while he is hunting for pearls.” – Jean Paul

39. “Dive into the sea of thought, and find there pearls beyond price.” – Moses ibn Ezra

Quotes About Pearl Symbolism

40. “Next to sound judgment, diamonds, and pearls are the rarest things in the world.” – Jean de la Bruyère

41. “But the pearls were accidents, and the finding of one was luck, a little pat on the back by God or the gods both.” – John Steinbeck

42. “My heart resembles the ocean; has storm, and ebb and flow, and many a beautiful pearl lies hidden in its depths below.” – Heinrich Heine

43. “It is the hour of pearl—the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.” – John Steinbeck

44. “The heart of man is very much like the sea; it has its storms, it has its tides, and in its depths, it has its pearls too.” – Vincent Van Gogh

45. “When I’m cold, I just put another rope of pearls on.” – Dorothy Parker

46. “I like the laughter that opens the lips, and the heart shows at the same time the pearls and the soul.” – Victor Hugo

47. “What strikes the oyster shell doesn’t damage the pearl.” – Rumi

48. “The Pearl Principle – no inner irritation, no pearl.” – Surya Das

49. “A seeing eye is better than three hundred blind men's: The eye can distinguish pearls from pebbles.” – Rumi

50. “Does love always form, like a pearl, around the hardened bits of life?” – Andrew Sean Greer

51. “A pearl is a beautiful thing that is produced by an injured life. If we had not been wounded, if we had not been injured, then we will not produce the pearl.” – Stephen Hoeller

52. “A legend grows around a grain of truth, like a pearl.” – Peter S. Beagle

53. “Friendship is a precious gift that can't be bought or sold. Its value is greater than mountains made of gold. If you ask God for a gift, be thankful if he sends not diamonds, pearls, or riches but the love and trust of friends. It is the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.”- Marlene Dietrich

54. “A pure soul is like a fine pearl. No one thinks of admiring it as long as it is hidden in the shell, at the bottom of the sea. But if you bring it into the sunshine, this pearl will shine and attract all eyes. Thus the pure soul, which is hidden from the eyes of the world, will one day shine before the Angels in the sunshine of eternity.” – John Vianney

55. “Were the diver to think on the jaws of the shark, he would never lay hands on the precious pearl.” – Saadi

56. “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

57. “It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster’s shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters.” – Stephen King

58. “My role in life is that of the grain of sand to the oyster—it irritates the oyster, and out comes a pearl.” – H. Ross Perot

59. “Perhaps the sea’s definition of a shell is the pearl.” – Khalil Gibran

60. “Faith is the silver thread upon which the pearls of the graces are to be hung. Break that, and you have broken the string – the pearls lie scattered on the ground.” – Charles Spurgeon

61. “Love it felt like falling raindrop that scatters on a trembling leaf then rolls off its tip in a cascade of pearls.” – Krishna Mira Prabhu

62. “It’s funny how we are often misled as to which oyster houses a pearl—we must stop judging a soul on its vessel.” – Elizabeth Anna

63. “The pearls weren’t really white; they were a warm oyster beige, with little knots in between, so if they broke, you only lost one. I wished my life could be like that, knotted up so that even if something broke, the whole thing wouldn’t come apart.” – Janet Fitch

64. “For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real-time, and carry them with us, then like an oyster, we create a pearl around then.” – John Banville

65. “A poor man wants the oyster; a rich man wants the pearl.”- Elvis Presley

66. “True beauty is measured by the number of pearls within you and not around your neck.” – Suzzy Kassem

67. “Praying is precious like pearls.” – Lailah Gifty Akita

68. “Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues.” – Joseph Hall

69. “Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare and precious as a pearl.” – Tahar Ben Jelloun

70. “He who would search for pearls must dive below.” – John Dryden

71. “THIS TORTURE! Why should we tell you our love stories when you spill them together like blood in the dirt? Love is a pearl lost on the ocean floor or a fire we can’t see, but how does saying that push us through the top of the head into the light above the head? Love is not an iron pot so this boiling energy won’t help. Soul, heart, self. Beyond and within those is one saying, How long before I’m free of this torture!” – Rumi

72. “Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.” – Victor Hugo

73. “The liquid drops of tears that you have shed

Shall come again, transformed to orient pearl,

Advantaging their loan with interest

Of ten times double gain of happiness.” – William Shakespeare

74. “I am the glorious sun, the ocean laden with pearls. Within my heart is the grandeur of heaven” – Rumi

75. “The beauty of form affects the mind, but then it must be understood that it is not the mere shell that we admire; we are attracted by the idea that this shell is only a beautiful case adjusted to the shape and value of a still more beautiful pearl within. The perfection of outward loveliness is the soul shining through its crystalline covering.” – Jane Porter

76. “That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms.” – Khaled Hosseini

77. “There are always lessons to be found in the darkest moments. It's a moral obligation to dig deep and find that little glimmer of hope or pearl of wisdom.” – Andrea Pirlo

78. “We follow a path of discovery, strung like pearls on a thread of curiosity, lending richness to our work.” – James Krenov

79. “But, this dark place is not the end. Remember that the darkness of night precedes the dawn. And as long as your heart still beats, this is not the death of it. You don’t have to die here. Sometimes, the ocean floor is only a stop on the journey. And it is when you are at this lowest point you are faced with a choice. You can stay there at the bottom until you drown. Or you can gather pearls and rise back up—stronger from the swim and richer from the jewels.” – Yasmin Mogahed

80. “One pearl is better than a whole necklace of potatoes.” – Etienne Decroux

81. “The mind must be allowed to settle undisturbed over the object to secrete the pearl.” – Virginia Woolf

82. “Can you rework your past, the grit that rubs in you, until it is shiny and smooth as a pearl?” – Anna Funder

83. “Though face and form alter with the years, I hold fast to the pearl of my mind.” – Hanshan

84. “Somewhere along the line, the pearl would be handed to me.” – Jack Kerouac

85. “For the truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.” – Samuel Butler

86. “You must remember that goodbyes are temporary because no one ever really leaves and nothing lasts forever. People are always with us because they are in our hearts and in our memory. The only thing we can depend on is change… Life is just a series of moments — a string of pearls that make up the necklace of your life, and so every once in a while, to complete the circle, you need to end a chapter.” – Amy Poehler

87. “Pearls … have a way of dying when separated from their owner.” – Nina Berberova

RELATED: 60+ Deep And Meaningful Oak Tree Quotes

Proverbs and Sayings About Pearls 

88. “All religions are like precious pearls strung on the golden thread of divinity.” – Samael Aun Weor

89. “Pearls don’t lie on the seashore; if you want one, you must dive for it.” – Chinese Proverb

90. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.” –  Matthew 13:45-46

91. “A pearl is only a pearl once it’s out of its shell.” – Nigerian Proverb

92. “Good words are like a string of pearls.” – Chinese Proverb

93. “Those who look for seashells will find sea shells; those who open them will find pearls.” – Unknown

94. “Pearls are of no value in a desert.” – Indian Proverb

95. “A pearl is worthless as long as it’s in its shell.” – Native American Proverb

96. “He who wants pearls has to dive into the sea.” – Kurdish Proverb

97. “Men grow old, pearls grow yellow, there is no cure for it.” – Chinese Proverb

98. “Don't cast your pearls before swine.” – German Proverb

99. “Love looks through spectacles that make copper look like gold, poverty like riches, and tears like pearls.” – Peruvian Proverb

100. “Those who wear pearls do not know how often the shark bites the leg of the diver.” – African Proverb

101. “Never scatter pearls for the cocks.” – Kashmir Proverb

102. “He who searches for pearls should not sleep.” – Libyan Proverb

103. “To a dog, a bone has more value than a pearl.” – Filipino Proverb

Which is Your Favorite Quote About Pearls?

Pearl quotes vary from quotes that refer to actual pearls to quotes that are actual “pearls of wisdom” or reflect the rich symbolism that pearls have throughout the world.

There are also a lot of sayings and proverbs that use the metaphor of a pearl to express traditional wisdom from various cultures. 

We would love to read your opinion on this article in the comment section below and find out which of these quotes you enjoyed the most!

If you happen to know any other quote about pearls (or saying), we would also like to read it in the comment section below.