Date: 1842

None "can I find / No sterling unadulterated mind; / None that abides the crucible like mine"

— Frere, John Hookham (1769-1846)

Date: 1842

"I think thy breast is meade o' brass"

— Blamire, Susanna (1747-1794)

Date: 1842

"Small cause of triumph can the bravest feel, / For never yet were brave hearts made of steel."

— Blamire, Susanna (1747-1794)

Date: March 1843

"It was the sad confession and continual exemplification of the shortcomings of the composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and working in matter, and of the despair that assails the higher nature at finding itself so miserably thwarted by the earthly part."

— Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864)

Date: 1845

"No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: 1845

"Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: 1845

"I then presented an appearance enough to affect any but a heart of iron."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: 1850

"The characters of the narrative would not be warmed and rendered malleable by any heat that I could kindle at my intellectual forge."

— Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864)

Date: 1854

"By nonsense he meant fancy; and truly it is probable she was as free from any alloy of that nature, as any human being not arrived at the perfection of an absolute idiot, ever was."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay."

— Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)