Date: 1752

"In this Chapter there are some Passages that may serve as a Kind of Touchstone, by which a young Lady may examine the Heart of her Lover/"

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1754

"How often has that tender bosom, whose glory it would have been to melt at another's woe, and to rejoice in acts of kindness and benevolence to her fellow-creatures, been armed by herself ... not with defensive, but offensive, steel"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1759

"Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient; every thing floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second stone cast into the water effaces and confounds the circles of the first."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1792

"I must steel my heart, Fairfax, when I go to the encounter; must recapitulate all my wrongs."

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1792

"I know it to be folly, and I will endeavour to steel my heart against this as well as other mistakes."

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1793

"She said she foresaw that, if his heart was not steel and adamant, he would be ruined; that she had read his mind thoroughly, and plainly saw that the only vice he had in the world was want of deceit."

— Dibdin, Charles (bap. 1745, d. 1814)

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: 1796

"Wouldst thou again with amorous rage
Inflame my bosom? Steeled by age, Vain boy, to pierce my breast thine arrows are too weak."

— Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818)

Date: 1796

"The climate's heat, 'tis well known, operates with no small influence upon the constitutions of the Spanish ladies: but the most abandoned would have thought it an easier task to inspire with passion the marble statue of St. Francis than the cold and rigid heart of the immaculate Ambrosio."

— Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818)