‘Ho, ho, my dainty, my little pearl! No lady loves her hound, monkey, or parakeet as I do thee.’ Thus speaks a mother to her child in The Witch of Edmonton, by Rowley, Dekker, and Ford. ‘Pearl’ has been applied to a person...

He who searches for pearls should not sleep. (Libyan) Neither cast your pearls before swine....

A pearl is a hard, rounded object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk. Just like the shell of mollusks, a pearl is composed of [[calcium carbonate] in minute crystalline form, which has been deposited in...