Date: 1745

"Thou'lt weep, I know thy gentle Soul, my Fair, / No senseless Steel, no rugged Flint dwells there."

— Whaley, John (bap. 1710, d. 1745)

Date: 1748, 1754

"The sensible Beauty, or Good, is refined from its Dross by partaking of the Moral, and the Moral receives a Stamp, a visible Character and Currency from the Sensible."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1753

"But will you fly the heroe you approve? / And steel your heart against a prince you love?"

— Pitt, Christopher (1699-1748)

Date: 1753

"But when the circling seasons as they roll, / Have cleans'd the dross long-gather'd round the soul; / When the celestial fire divinely bright, / Breaks forth victorious in her native light;""

— Pitt, Christopher (1699-1748)

Date: 1757, 1769

"As thus to touch his iron heart they try'd, / The Cyclops smiling, scornful thus reply'd:"

— Wilkie, William (1721-1772)

Date: 1760

"Whene'er he visits us with Racks of Pain, / And speeds the rapid Fever in each Vein, / Our drossy Souls the potent Fire refines,/ Till the bright Ore in polish'd Beauty shines"

— Langhorne,William (1721-1772)

Date: 1762

"To mine the king of Iniscon,' said Connal, 'heart of steel'"

— Ossian; Macpherson, James (1736-1796)

Date: 1772-1781, 1781

"But, if thy faint springs / Refuse this large supply, steel thy firm soul / With stoic pride"

— Mason, William (1725-1797)

Date: 1787

"But when by various wrongs your bosom's steel'd, / Your groaning country calling to the field, / And 'twixt the foe and you the uncertain scale / Of fight must shew whose fortune shall prevail"

— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)

Date: January 19, 1791

"He must have a heart of adamant who could hear a set of traitors puffed up with unexpected and undeserved power, obtained by an ignoble, unmanly, and perfidious rebellion, treating their honest fellow-citizens as rebels, because they refused to bind themselves, through their conscience, against ...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)