Date: 1576

"Ignoraunce [...] maketh him unmeete metall for the impressions of vertue."

— Fleming, Abraham (c. 1552-1607)

Date: 1590?, 1623

"I do desire thee, even from a heart / As full of sorrows as the sea of sands / To bear me company and go with me."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: w. 1592-3 or 1595?, 1623

"Then, Clifford, were thy heart as hard as steel, / As thou hast shown it flinty by thy deeds, / I come to pierce it or to give thee mine."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: w. 1592-3 or 1595?, 1623

"Her sighs will make a batt'ry in his breast, / Her tears will pierce into a marble heart."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: w. 1592-3 or 1595?, 1623

"Look on the boy; / And let his manly face, which promiseth / Successful fortune, steel thy melting heart / To hold thine own and leave thine own with him."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1594

"Listen, fair madam, let it be your glory / To see her tears, but be your heart to them /As unrelenting flint to drops of rain."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1594

"My heart is not compact of flint nor steel"

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1594

"For men haue marble, women waxen mindes / And therefore are they form'd as marble will, / The weake opprest, th'impression of strange kindes / Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1594

"For much imaginary work was there; / Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, / That for Achilles' image stood his spear / Griped in an armed hand; himself behind / Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind: / A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, / Stood for the whole to be imagined"

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1594, 1623

"The splitting rocks cow'red in the sinking sands, / And would not dash me with their ragged sides, / Because thy flinty heart, more hard than they, / Might in thy palace perish Margaret."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)