Date: 1794

" The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd / The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

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: 1795

"You should not soften, but steel my heart!"

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1796

"There lux'ry spreads profusion wide, / To glut the iron breast of pride!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1797

"Man, lost in ignorance and toil, / Becomes associate to the soil, / And his heart hardens like his native rock."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1797

"Something seemed to lie upon her mind, and she tried almost to the last to tell it; and as she grasped Signora Ellena's hand, she would still look up in her face with such doleful expression as no one who had not a heart of stone could bear."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1798

"Begone, iron-hearted wretch!"

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1800-1803

"And these are the gems of the Human Soul"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1800-1803

"The countless gold of the akeing heart"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1803

"Charms with soft words, and sooths with amorous wiles, / Her iron-hearted Lord,--and Pluto smiles."

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)