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, 1796

The "anvil of gnawing conscience is never cool"

— Timaeus, J. J. (1763-1809); Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805)

Date: 1795

"[T]hen here's my hand! for thou art the best soul living; with a heart of gold, and heels of feather, in the service of humanity"

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811); Maria Geisweiler (fl.1799); Kotzebue (1761-1819)

Date: 1795

France "spurning base controul ... pluck'd the iron from her wounded soul [and] O'erthrew her proud Bastile, as with a charm"

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1795

"Disdaining even the thought of flight or fear, / His life, his soul, by steady valor steel'd."

— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)

Date: 1795

"Lady Ruby is the loadstone that draws away every particle of steel that shou'd fortify my heart, and leaves it weaker than a woman's tear."

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

Date: 1795

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

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1795

"--a band, whose steely hearts are rivetted with oaths, will aid thee."

— Morton, Thomas (1764-1838)

Date: 1795

"Still to be serious, Pitt, before we part: / Let Mercy melt the mill-stone of thy heart."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1796

"A plague on stoicks! / I cannot hoop my heart about with iron, / Like an old beer-butt"

— Colman, George, the younger (1762-1836)