There is a kind of strength that is almost frightening in black women. It's as if a steel rod runs right through the head down to the feet.

-Angelou, Maya originally MayaJohnson
  Television interview, 21 Nov. Collected in Conversations with Maya  Angelou (1989).

Give them the cold steel, boys!

-Armistead, Lewis Addison
  Attributed, during the  American Civil War. US  cyclist.  He  won  theTour  de  France  a  record  six  times  from 1999 to 2004.

   Steel prices cause inflation like wet sidewalks cause rain.

-Blough, Roger M(iles)
  In Forbes,1  Aug.

   They used language concentrating emotion, detail and image until theyarrived at a form of dew-like steel.

-Brautigan, Richard
  On  Japanese poets.  June 30th^ June 30th.

Our Meistersinger, thou set breath in steel; And it was thou who on the boldest heel Stood up and flung the span on even wing Of that great Bridge, our Myth, whereof I sing.

-Crane, (Harold) Hart
  On Whitman and Brooklyn Bridge. The Bridge,'Cape Hatteras'.

'Did they dare, did they dare, to slay Owen Roe O'Neil?' 'Yes, theyslew with poisonhimthey feared tomeet with steel.' 'May God wither up their hearts! May their blood cease to flow! May they walk in living death, who poisoned Owen Roe!'

-Davis,Thomas Osborne
  'Lament for the Death of Owen Roe O'Neil'.

The wounded surgeon plies the steel That questions the distempered part; Beneath the bleeding hands we feel The sharp compassion of the healer's art Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  Four Quartets,'East Coker', pt.4.

Ist es schwer und kann es ein AuÞenseiter begreifen,dass man eine Geschichte von ihrem Anfang in sich erlebt, vom fernen Punkt bis zu der heranfahrenden Lokomotive aus Stahl, Kohl und Dampf, sie aber auchjetzt noch nicht verl a« sst, sondern von ihr gejagt wird und aus eigenem Schwung vor ihr l a« uft, wohin sie nur st o« Þt und wohin man sie lockt. It is so difficult and can an outsider understand that you experience a story within yourself from its beginning, fromthe distant point up to theapproaching locomotive of steel, coal and steam, and you don't abandon it even now, but want to be pursued by it and have time for it, therefore are pursued by it and of your own volition run before it wherever it may thrust and wherever you may lure it.

-Kafka, Franz
Diary entry,  Aug. Collected in Max Brod (ed)  The Diaries of Franz Kafka,1910^1913 (1948).

They dashed on towards that thin red line tipped with steel.

-Russell, Sir William Howard
  Of the Russians charging the British at the Battle of Balaclava,14 Nov1854.The British Expedition to the Crimea.

Sheisso odda blend of Little Nell and Lady Macbeth.It is not so much the familiar phenomenon of a hand of steel in a velvet glove as a lacy sleeve with a bottle of vitriol concealed in its folds.

-Woollcott, Alexander Humphreys
  Of Dorothy Parker.While Rome Burns,'Our Mrs Parker'.