Date: 1749

"Philosophy elevates and steels the Mind, Christianity softens and sweetens it."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1751

"This, and to see a succession of Humble Servants buzzing about a Mother, who took too much pride in addresses of that kind, what a beginning, what an example, to a constitution of tinder, so prepared to receive the spark struck from the steely forehead, and flinty heart, of such a Libertine, as ...

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

Date: 1751

"[H]is heart was shod with a metal much harder than iron, which he was afraid nothing but hell-fire would be able to melt."

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1751

"My breast, by wary maxims steel'd, / Not all those charms shall force to yield"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1752

"His Mind was formed of those firm Materials, of which Nature formerly hammered out the Stoic, and upon which the Sorrows of no Man living could make an Impression. "

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"But these golden Ideas presently vanished"

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

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: 1755

"You've plainly shewn your soul was brazen, / And eke your snowy bosom flinty."

— Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616); Smollett, Tobias (1721-1771)

Date: 1756, 1766

"And as to gold's being so yielding and ductile by human art, it is to be observed, that in return it exerts a greater power on the human mind. "

— Amory, Thomas (1690/1-1788)