Date: 1792

"I must steel my heart, Fairfax, when I go to the encounter; must recapitulate all my wrongs."

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1792

"I know it to be folly, and I will endeavour to steel my heart against this as well as other mistakes."

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1793

"She said she foresaw that, if his heart was not steel and adamant, he would be ruined; that she had read his mind thoroughly, and plainly saw that the only vice he had in the world was want of deceit."

— Dibdin, Charles (bap. 1745, d. 1814)

Date: 1794, 1797

"If you have reduced me to the necessity of again debating the same painful and gloomy question, if you cannot give that elasticity to my mind which will animate it to despise difficulty and steel it against injustice, however good your intentions may have been, I fear you have but imposed misery...

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1796

"Wouldst thou again with amorous rage
Inflame my bosom? Steeled by age, Vain boy, to pierce my breast thine arrows are too weak."

— Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818)

Date: 1796

"The climate's heat, 'tis well known, operates with no small influence upon the constitutions of the Spanish ladies: but the most abandoned would have thought it an easier task to inspire with passion the marble statue of St. Francis than the cold and rigid heart of the immaculate Ambrosio."

— Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818)

Date: 1854

"By nonsense he meant fancy; and truly it is probable she was as free from any alloy of that nature, as any human being not arrived at the perfection of an absolute idiot, ever was."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1992

"Only behind a waterfall of brutal and pleasurable sensations, thought Patrick, accepting the leather-clad menu without bothering to glance up, could he hide from the bloodhounds of his conscience. . There, in the cool recess of the rock, behind that heavy white veil, he would hear them yelping a...

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"And all his scattered thoughts came rushing together, like loose iron filings as a magnet is held over them and draws them into the shape of a rose."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"Or--he must stop thinking about it--or [his consciousness seemed] like a solution of saturated copper sulphate under the microscope, when it suddenly transforms and crystals break out everywhere on its surface."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)