Date: 1770

"Sylvia, if you persist to steel your heart, / Expect a mansion in that dire abode."

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: 1770

"Mean while, the duties of a man revolve, / And steel thy bosom with the firm resolve"

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: 1797, 1810

"For pressure but new-springs the generous mind; /As gold by Vulcan's torture is refined."

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: July 1797, 1810

"See, while his thunders iron hearts assail, / The tyrants of each hemisphere turn pale!"

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: 1810

The poor live "'midst luxury, wanting daily bread: / While hard unfeeling instruments of state, / With iron bosoms aggravate their fate"

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: 1810

"The fiend, consistent, who had steeled all hearts / Against their feeling for ingenuous arts,"

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: 1810

"But I thank the hard steel that environs my heart; / The steel that has grown, by salabrious time, / Who corrects the wild ardour of love, and of rhyme:"

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: 1810

"Though shields of gold protect their hearts of steel: / In rags, his best, his noblest friend, can see / If virtue warms his heart, and keeps him free."

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)