Date: 1754

"Such high regard on Piety I place, / On pure simplicity of life; a breast / Steel'd against bribes, by naked truth possess'd, / And with a spotless rigid conscience blest"

— Duncombe, John (1729-1786) [pseud.]

Date: 1755

"Had not Guilt steel'd thy Heart, awakening Conscience / Wou'd flash Conviction on thee, and each Look, / Shot from these Eyes, be arm'd with Serpent-Horrors, / To turn thee into Stone!"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: 1755

"His bold Resolves have steel'd ZAPHIRA's Breast / Against thy Love"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: w. 1757, 1758

"What Briton wears a heart, steel'd to the touch / Of gentle Pity? "

— Dodd, William (1729-1777)

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: 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: 1760-7

"Honours, like impressions upon coin, may give an ideal and local value to a bit of base metal; but Gold and Silver will pass all the world over without any other recommendation than their own weight."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"There was the great king Aldrovandus, and Bosphorus, and Capadocius, and Dardanus, and Pontus, and Asius,--to say nothing of the iron-hearted Charles the XIIth, whom the Countess of K***** herself could make nothing of"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1762-3

"Vainly thy precepts are address'd / Where Virtue steels the steady breast."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

Dryden "Gave [Sigismunda] those griefs, which made the Stoic feel, / And call'd compassion forth from hearts of steel"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)