Date: 1780, 1788

"Authority! unfeeling power, / Whose iron heart can coldly doom / The Debtor, dragg'd from Pleasure's bower, / To sicken in the dungeon's gloom."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1788

"So have I heard / The captive finch, in narrow cage confin'd, / Charm all his woe away with cheerful song, / Which might have melted e'en a heart of steel / To give him liberty"

— Hurdis, James (1763-1801)

Date: 1788

"O yes, this is his valet that Lady Jane mentioned, this is her O'Donovan and my Aircourt, but my heart is steel'd against him"

— O'Keeffe, John (1747-1833)

Date: 1788

"With horns, and tail, and hoofs that make folks start; / And in my breast a millstone for a heart!"

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

Date: 1788

"When the sharp iron wounds his inmost soul, / And his strain'd eyes in burning anguish roll; / Will the parch'd negro find, ere he expire, / No pain in hunger, and no heat in fire?"

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1788

"The same warmth which determined her will make her repent; and sorrow, the rust of the mind, will never have a chance of being rubbed off by sensible conversation, or new-born affections of the heart."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1788

"In a state of bliss, it will be the society of beings we can love, without the alloy that earthly infirmities mix with our best affections, that will constitute great part of our happiness."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1788

"But in general, I know of no method of getting money, not even that of robbing for it upon the highway, which has so direct a tendency to efface the moral sense, to rob the heart of every gentle and humane disposition, and to harden it, like steel, against all impressions of sensibility."

— Newton, John (1725-1807)

Date: 1788

""Ah! will you not there hear me? Will you still inhumanly smile; will you still look so gentle, while your heart is harder than the rocks we shall see--colder than the snow that crowns them!--an heart on which even the pen of fire which Rousseau held would make no impression!"

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1788

"But tho' she was immoveably determined against receiving him again as a lover, she had not been able to steel her heart against his melancholy appearance; his palid countenance, his ematiated form, extremely affected her."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)