Found today at Language Log:
Translated from the Russian —
Also from Language Log, an earlier use of the phrase —
F. C. Burnand's novel My Time and What I've Done with It , Chapter 27,
in Old and New, Volume 8, 1873:
It is thus that ignorant prejudices are fostered ;
and how few of us in afterlife have the time or the will
to sift the rubbish of the dust-bin of history
on the chance of discovering the diamond of truth.