"Courtesan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reigns. His career exhibits no superfluous expenditure. Its economy was most rigid. No sovereign was ever more scrupulous with the public money. He never had any public or private predilection; no dilapidated Minister for a favourite: no courtesan intrigue. For gaming he had no fondness; and, if his abilities were not splendid, he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... handsome Marcello Capecce, who had been her most ardent suitor. In Mrs. Linton's words, "his love for Violante was that half religious, half sensual passion which now writes sonnets to my lady as a saint, and now makes love to her as a courtesan." But, whatever his mode of procedure, Diana loved him, while he loved only Violante, and he proved to be a masterful man. The duke was away in exile on account of a disgraceful carouse which had ended in a street fight, and Violante was spending the time, practically alone, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... exclaimed the pope. "Shall a Corilla desecrate the spot hallowed by the feet of Tasso and Petrarch? No, I say, no; when art becomes the plaything of a courtesan, then may the sacred Muses veil their heads and mourn in silence, but they must not degrade themselves by throwing away the crown which the best and noblest would give their heart's blood to obtain. This Corilla may bribe you poor earthly fools ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... to extract the corks. Now she fills the glasses with the effervescing beverage, which the waiter again places on the tray, and politely serves to the denizens, in whose glassy eyes, sallow faces, coarse, unbared arms and shoulders, is written the tale of their misery. The judge drinks with the courtesan, touches glasses with the gambler, bows in compliment to the landlady, who reiterates that she keeps the most respectable house and the choicest wine. The moralist ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... pastime and amusement. A good illustration of this last case is to be found in that terrible Athenian ironist, Socrates, of whom Xenophon relates in his Memorabilia that he discovered to Theodata, the courtesan, the wiles that she ought to make use of in order to lure lovers to her house so aptly, that she begged him to act as her companion in the chase, suntherates, her pimp, in a word. And philosophy is wont, in fact, not infrequently to convert itself into a kind of art of spiritual ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... James went out, surprised to find it was so late. The theatres had disgorged their crowds, and Piccadilly was thronged, gay, vivacious, and insouciant. For a moment there was a certain luxury about its vice; the harlot gained the pompousness of a Roman courtesan, and the vulgar debauchee had for a little while the rich, corrupt decadence ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... courtesan ridiculed from her bed-room window the words of the saint. She fell dead immediately. When he heard of the awful judgement passed on this hapless woman, he ordered her body to be brought to him. Then, amidst a death-like silence, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... Father Goriot The Atheist's Mass Cesar Birotteau The Commission in Lunacy Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... flung wide the secret portals of her treasure-house and gave royally like a courtesan ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Piedmontese a status the most nearly approaching respectability among those which the world declines to recognize. During the first year she took the nom de guerre of Aquilina, one of the characters in Venice Preserved which she had chanced to read. She fancied that she resembled the courtesan in face and general appearance, and in a certain precocity of heart and brain of which she was conscious. When Castanier found that her life was as well regulated and virtuous as was possible for a social outlaw, he manifested ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... created by magic. Then she moored the vessel at no great distance from the hermitage of Kasyapa's son, and sent emissaries to survey the place where that same saint habitually went about. And then she saw an opportunity; and having conceived a plan in her mind, sent forward her daughter a courtesan by trade and of smart sense. And that clever woman went to the vicinity of the religious man and arriving at the hermitage beheld the son ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... whose husband was maliciously sent back-by the English, was a frequent visitor to the treasury. On an occasion would be seen assembled there a distinguished scholar and an actor, a celebrated orator and a musician; on another, the treasurer would have payments to make to a priest, a courtesan, and a cardinal. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... regarded with that calm, unobserving indifference with which the modern lady treats the sister who stands without the pale of reputable society. So far as the "ladies" of Horsford were concerned, the "nigger teachers" at Red Wing stood on the plane of the courtesan—they were seen but not known. The recognition which they received from the gentlemen of Southern birth had in it not a little of the shame-faced curiosity which characterizes the intercourse of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... her take off that girdle, first; there is magic in it; she will bewitch you. For that matter, she has no right to come thus tricked out and painted,—just like a courtesan! She ought to ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... of course, not unlike Salome, though it was written in English. It expanded Wilde's favourite theory that when you convert some one to an idea, you lose your faith in it; the same motive runs through Mr. W. H. Honorius the hermit, so far as I recollect the story, falls in love with the courtesan who has come to tempt him, and he reveals to her the secret of the love of God. She immediately becomes a Christian, and is murdered by robbers. Honorius the hermit goes back to Alexandria to pursue a life of pleasure. Two other ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... has been fundamental. They have not invented it as a theory on which to base religion, but they have found it in human life, one and all of them. If Walt Whitman or Swami Vivekananda overlook the difference between virtue and vice, and do honour to the courtesan, it simply means that they are bad thinkers, bad observers. The deeper minds see more clearly and escape the confusion into which the slight and quick, the sentimental, hurl themselves. Above all, when God in any degree grows real to a man, when a ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... of a Country Town A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Modeste Mignon Another Study of Woman The Secrets of a Princess A Daughter of ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... times before finally the door opened; and each second was a year for me, waiting there with him in the street. And when the door opened he was leaning against it, and so pitched forward into the gloom of the archway. A laugh—the loud, unrestrained laugh of the courtesan—came from ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... did not deceive himself on this point. He did not sentimentally exalt a courtesan into an angel, as boys so often do. Mrs. Chepstow had certainly lived very wrongly, in a way to excite disgust, perhaps, as well as pity. Yet within her were delicacy, simplicity, the pride of breeding, ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... A courtesan of the higher class, she is represented by Propertius as possessed of great personal charms and varied accomplishments (i. 2, 30, 'Omnia quaeque Venus quaeque Minerva probat'), combined with many faults of temper and character. She had a house at Rome in the Subura, and we hear of her ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... According to Plutarch, the priest of the temple of Hercules amused himself with playing at dice with the god, the stake or conditions being that if he won he should obtain some signal favour, but if he lost he would procure a beautiful courtesan ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... can be found, the term of "courtesan" applied by the mob to Aspasia came from the fact that she was not legally married to Pericles, and for no other reason. That their union was not legal was owing to the simple fact that Pericles, early in his career, had caused a law to be passed making marriage between an Athenian and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... towards the end of the reign of Charles IV., a grandee of Spain, the Duke of A—-, who professed especial devotion to an image of the Virgin, which he was continually kissing. Having taken under his protection a notorious courtesan, whose house he furnished sumptuously, he ordered an image of the Virgin to be placed in a corner of the staircase, which he never ascended without bestowing his accustomed tokens of affection upon that representation of the object of his devotion. ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... her Heart a Messalina. Who that beheld Omnamante's negligent unobserving Air, would believe that she hid under that regardless Manner the witty Prostitute, the rapacious Wench, the prodigal Courtesan? She can, when she pleases, adorn those Eyes with Tears like an Infant that is chid! She can cast down that pretty Face in Confusion, while you rage with Jealousy, and storm at her Perfidiousness; she can wipe her Eyes, tremble and look frighted, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and to disclose a secret of her beauty. She has laid aside her fine false teeth, and let us see her natural ones, in order that we may see a difference between the queen and Madame Oliva. Confess only, gentlemen, that it is a rare and comical sight to have a queen so like a courtesan, that you can only distinguish the one from the other by ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... marriage of his art with Mordaunt Crawley's. Whatever might be said of Rickman's radiant and impetuous genius it neither lurked nor leered; it was in no way represented by that strange and shameless figure, half Maenad, half modern courtesan, the face foreshortened, tilted back in the ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... this," said Madame de Nucingen. "Formerly a woman might have the voice of a fish-seller, the walk of a grenadier, the face of an impudent courtesan, her hair too high on her forehead, a large foot, a thick hand—she was a great lady in spite of it all; but in these days, even if she were a Montmorency—if a Montmorency would ever be such a creature—she would not be ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... Egypt a hot-bed of vice. Herodotus relates that "the pyramid of Cheops was built by the lovers of the daughter of this king; and that she never would have raised this monument to such a height except by multiplying her prostitutions." History also relates the adventures of that queenly courtesan, Cleopatra, who captivated and seduced by her charms two masters of the world, and whose lewdness surpassed ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... the mistake of despising those two social malcontents, Phinuit and Jules, that rogue adventurer Monk, that grasping courtesan ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... be no reasoning—nothing definite save only an occult and overwhelming restlessness.... Marya may take the veil ... or nurse lepers ... or she may become a famous courtesan.... I do not mean it cruelly. But, in the mystic, the spiritual, the intellectual and the physical seem to be interchangeable, and become ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... many references parts one and three are combined under the title Lost Illusions and A Distinguished Provincial at Paris is given its individual title. Following this trilogy is a sequel, Scenes from a Courtesan's Life, which is set directly following the end of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... have not felt her hand tremble, and because you are too young and too much of a philosopher to judge of the honesty of a woman's face. The same instinct that tells me, doubtless warned Hannibal also that this was not a courtesan, much less an immodest woman well born, and, least of all, a coward who would flee her city, or a traitress who would betray it. You will know more of such things, my Perolla, when you learn to study them less." Then, turning to Marcia, he went on: "What you have ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... earth. Mercury was a thief; and because he was an expert thief he was enrolled among the gods. Bacchus was a mere sensualist and drunkard, and therefore he was enrolled among the gods. Venus was a dissipated and abandoned courtesan, and therefore she was enrolled among the goddesses. Mars was a savage, that gloried in battle and in blood, and therefore he was deified ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... to look for a common swindler, an impudent adventurer, or perhaps even a criminal in him. The day that she had foreseen soon came; the Brazilian's banker "unaccountably" had omitted to send him any money, and so he borrowed some of her. "So he is a male courtesan," she said to herself. The handsome man soon required money again, and she lent it to him again. Then at last he left suddenly and nobody knew where he had gone to; only this much, that he had left Vevey as the companion of an old but wealthy Wallachian lady. So this ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... cousin. He was immediately abandoned. Two faithful domestics alone remained with him, and these always passed through the fire whatever he touched. In a word, the horror which an excommunication occasioned was such, that a courtesan, with whom one Peletier had passed some moments, having learnt soon afterwards that he had been about six months an excommunicated person, fell into a panic, and with great difficulty ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... HETAERA. A Greek courtesan. This class was often highly trained in music and social art, and represented the highest grade of ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... covered with leather[85] were prepared expeditiously for the troops to cross. Cauzi Serauje, with seven of his friends disguised as holy mendicants, proceeded to the roy's camp, and repaired to the quarter where the dancing-girls resided.[86] Here the cauzi pretended to be enraptured with a courtesan, and was guilty of a thousand extravagances to support his character. In the evening the girl, having adorned herself in her richest ornaments, prepared to go out, on which the cauzi, like a jealous ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... guards were mingled with Scotch claymores with silver hilts, thus giving a masculine character to this hotel of a fashionable lounger, steeped with the odor of ylang-ylang like the little house of a pretty courtesan. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... with other men, and was so impressionable a character that he enjoyed a virtuous project as well as any plan for a debauch; in love he was most susceptible, and jealous to the point of madness even about a courtesan, had she once taken his fancy; his prodigality was princely, although he had no income; further, he was most sensitive to slights, as all men are who, because they are placed in an equivocal position, fancy that everyone who makes any reference to their origin ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... "A courtesan, ensnared by the devil of unchastity," murmured the elder of the two—a man of long, lank figure, pale, pock-marked face, the broad high forehead shaded with but little hair, the watery blue eyes turned upward, as if in pious ecstasy, and ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... to this there was ever any doubt as to its significance and its purpose, which is to pander to prurient appetites and arouse libidinous passions. Always, too, from those days to this, its performers have been the most abandoned of the courtesan class. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... exhibited some very remarkable qualities. The natural powers of her mind were considerable. She had a strong will, and a certain grasp of circumstances. Her disposition was generous, and her sympathies very large. These qualities raised the courtesan to a singular position. She became a political influence; and exercised a fascination over sovereigns and ministers more widely extended than has perhaps been possessed by any other member of the demi-monde. She ruled a kingdom; and ruled it, moreover, with dignity ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... deliberately provocative; on hers, recklessly vehement—instructed him in much that he had desired to learn. It was made clear to him that a long combat of wills and desires had been in progress between the crafty courtesan and the half wily and the half brutal soldier, with a baffling of Heliodora's devices which would never have come to his knowledge but for this outbreak of rage. How far the woman had gone in her lures, whether she had played ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... himself into the sins of the flesh. She had awakened desire in him, and he had once approached the house of Thais. But he stopped on the threshold of the courtesan's house, partly restrained by the natural timidity of extreme youth—he was then but fifteen years old—and partly by the fear of being refused on account of his want of money, for his parents took care that he ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... woman absolutely devoid of moral conscience, she styled herself an actress, yet was one only by courtesy. By dint of pulling all kinds of wires she contrived from time to time to get a part to play, but her stage activities were really only a blind to conceal her true vocation. A cold-blooded courtesan of the most brazen and unscrupulous type, she was, notwithstanding, one of the most popular women in the upper Tenderloin. She dressed with more taste than most women of her class, and her naturally happy disposition, her robust spirits and spontaneous gaiety had won her many friends. ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... frolic, and then lose track of the newcomer forever. Instead he found a woman whose youth and beauty attracted him. In the mild light of Carrie's eye was nothing of the calculation of the mistress. In the diffident manner was nothing of the art of the courtesan. He saw at once that a mistake had been made, that some difficult conditions had pushed this troubled creature into his presence, and his interest was enlisted. Here sympathy sprang to the rescue, but it was not unmixed with selfishness. He wanted to win Carrie because he thought ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... squandering vast sums she goes to the East, and stories spread that she had captivated a viceroy and gained a great fortune in Russia. Her return to Paris is speedily followed by her death from small-pox. In this novel the life of the courtesan class is dealt with by Zola with unhesitating frankness; there are many vivid studies of theatrical manners; and the racecourse also comes within its scope. The work was intended to lay bare the canker which was eating into the ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... shepherdess Felismena, in Montemayor's "Diana." But Shakespeare may have taken some hints also from Warner. Opheltes (Proteus) married (not betrothed) to the virtuous Alcippe (Julia), goes to "Sardis," where he becomes acquainted (in the same manner as Greene's Francesco) with the courtesan Phoemonoe (Greene's Infida). Alcippe hears of it, and wants at least to be able to see her husband; she enters the service of the courtesan, and there suffers a moral martyrdom. Opheltes is ruined, and, in words which Greene nearly copied, "Phoemonoe not ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... instance, to such a man. They did not know how he would receive it,—or against whom the first weight of his resentment and rage would fall. Finally, after much hesitation and debate, they concluded to employ a certain female for the purpose,—a courtesan named Calpurnia. Calpurnia was a favorite and companion of Claudius, and as such they thought she might perhaps have an opportunity to approach him with the subject under such circumstances as to diminish the danger. ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... last feel that my consent was sheer depravity? Marriage is based on esteem, on sacrifices on both sides; but neither Octave nor I could esteem each other the day after our reunion. He would have disgraced me by a love like that of an old man for a courtesan, and I should for ever feel the shame of being a chattel instead of a lady. I should represent pleasure, and not virtue, in his house. These are the bitter fruits of such a sin. I have made myself a bed where I can only toss on ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... nude. Ovid, again, is never weary of dwelling on the sexual charm of the feminine foot. He represents the chaste matron as wearing a weighted stola which always fell so as to cover her feet; it was only the courtesan, or the nymph who is taking part in an erotic festival, who appears with raised robes, revealing her feet.[17] So grave a historian as Strabo, as well as AElian, refers to the story of the courtesan Rhodope whose sandal was carried off by ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Duc Alphonse de A Bachelor's Establishment A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Letters of Two Brides ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... other. But with what a brutal hand the operation had been performed! So that great artist with the glorious name, that pure and untamed beauty the sight alone of whom had troubled him like an apparition, was only a courtesan. Mme. Jenkins, that stately woman, of bearing at once so proud and so gentle, had no real title to the name. That illustrious man of science with the open countenance, and a manner so pleasant in his welcome, had the impudence thus to ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... now torn this legend to shreds. Under his pitiless analysis of the facts, nothing is left but the story of a contemptible adventurer, who was "a robber, a murderer, and a poltroon," mated to a grasping, heartless courtesan. Both were alike infamous. The ignoble careers of both from the cradle to the grave do not, in reality, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... rakehell[obs3], fast man; intrigant[obs3], gallant, seducer, fornicator, lecher, satyr, goat, whoremonger, paillard[obs3], adulterer, gay deceiver, Lothario, Don Juan, Bluebeard[obs3]; chartered libertine. adulteress, advoutress[obs3], courtesan, prostitute, strumpet, harlot, whore, punk, fille de joie[Fr]; woman, woman of the town; streetwalker, Cyprian, miss, piece[Fr]; frail sisterhood; demirep, wench, trollop, trull[obs3], baggage, hussy, drab, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the image of a condition that I respect, 'tis the sign and summary of a state that is inevitable, that is woful, and that I pity with all my heart. But my gorge rises, and in spite of the scented air that follows her, I turn my eyes from the courtesan, whose fine lace head-gear and torn cuffs, white stockings and worn-out shoes, show me the misery of the day in company with the opulence of last night. Such would my house have been, if the imperious scarlet had not forced all into harmony with itself. I had two engravings ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... more real because it is France, impure, the country of light loves and immodest passions, where all that is sensual comes to the surface, and the courtesan is the queen of ignoble fancy, that has brought forth this most perfect embodiment of purity among the nations. This is of itself one of those miracles which captivate the mind and charm the imagination, the living paradox in which the soul delights. How did she come out ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... man on the floor—for young man it is. He has a long head and smooth face, with a deathly white pallor over it, big mouth and lips as thick as a negro, a conical shaped forehead, and eyes that glitter with excitement like a courtesan's, but from which at times all signs of intelligence have apparently fled. He has a companion whose general appearance is like his own, but whose head is large and round, with a high forehead and full moon face. Who are they? Well, they are part of Billy McGlory's outfit, and that is all I can say ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... undoubtedly antique, in which the orthography is false, either from the ignorance or carelessness of the sculptor. Others suppose, not without reason, that this statue is a representation of the famous Phryne, the courtesan of Athens, who at the celebration of the Eleusinian games, exhibited herself coming out of the bath, naked, to the eyes of the whole Athenian people. I was much pleased with the dancing faun; and still better with the Lotti, or wrestlers, the attitudes of which ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... advertising in frosted letters the popular brands of whisky. And it stood alone in the darkening street, piercing the night with an unwinking stare like an evil spirit, offering its warm, comfortable bars to the passer-by, drawing men into its deadly embrace like a courtesan, to reject them afterwards babbling, reeling, staggering, to rouse the street with quarrels, or to snore in the ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... the public the day following the death of the most celebrated musician in Europe, the king of the French school? Why, nothing less than this wonderful piece of news: "Mademoiselle Mire, of the Opera, more celebrated as a courtesan than as a danseuse, has interred her lover; on his tomb are engraven ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... were born to be virtuous women, they say; and many women called virtuous were born to be courtesans—is that not so? Now, Madame Samoris, who was born a courtesan, had a daughter born a virtuous woman, ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... not knowing her for a courtesan—talks of her purity in burning words, that seem to glow and enhance his love from his convictions of her virtue; then suddenly falls into silent abstraction, looking like a man whose eyes are filled with visions of Paradise. No pains takes ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... supplies; And join'd in league with strong necessity, Pleasure must fly, or else by famine die. 460 Flaminius, whom a consulship had graced, (Then Censor) from the Senate I displaced; When he in Gaul, a Consul, made a feast, A beauteous courtesan did him request To see the cutting off a pris'ner's head; This crime I could not leave unpunished, Since by a private villany he stain'd That public honour which at Rome he gain'd. Then to our age (when not to pleasures bent) ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... this kind of torture in the Acta Sincere Martyrum, published by Ruinart, p. 160, 399. Jerome, in his Legend of Paul the Hermit, tells a strange story of a young man, who was chained naked on a bed of flowers, and assaulted by a beautiful and wanton courtesan. He quelled the rising temptation by ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... known all about the passion, which had been quite a real passion and had lasted for several years. You see, poor Edward's passions were quite logical in their progression upwards. They began with a servant, went on to a courtesan and then to a quite nice woman, very unsuitably mated. For she had a quite nasty husband who, by means of letters and things, went on blackmailing poor Edward to the tune of three or four hundred a year—with threats of the Divorce Court. And after this lady came Maisie Maidan, ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... faithfulness be expected to understand its opposite? You have lived like a monk, almost, and I—I have lived like a courtesan." ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... [Footnote: Born B.C. 51.] was, on the contrary, the most eager of all the flatterers of Augustus,—a man of wit and pleasure, whose object or idolatry was Cynthia, a poetess and a courtesan. He was an imitator of the Greeks, but had a great contemporary fame, [Footnote: Quint., x. 1. Section 93.] and shows great warmth of passion, but he never soared into the sublime heights of poetry, like his rival. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the fiery spirit has developed itself—expanded—and behold its precious fruits. Observe this ingenuousness—how nicely it has changed into effrontery;—this tenderness of soul—how it displays itself in dalliance with coquettes, in susceptibility to the blandishments of a courtesan! See this fiery genius, how in six short years it hath burnt out the oil of life, and reduced his body to a living skeleton; so that passing scoffers point at him with a sneer and exclaim—"C'est l'amour qui a fait cela." Behold this bold, enterprising spirit—how it conceives ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... centuries the brand of the courtesan has rested on the brow of Potiphar's wife. The religious world persists in regarding her as an abandoned woman who wickedly strove to lead an immaculate he-virgin astray. The crime of which she stands accused is so unspeakably awful that even after the lapse of ages we cannot refer ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... like dirt from a fine statue, taking away nothing from its symmetrical surface, and leaving us only to wonder how the author himself should have soiled it with such disfigurements. Pierre is a miserable conspirator, as Otway first painted him, impelled to treason by his love of a courtesan and his jealousy of Antonio. But his character, as it now comes forward, is a-mixture of patriotism and excusable misanthropy. Even in the more modern prompt-books, an improving curtailment has been introduced. ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... Ascension Day M. Manzoni introduced me to a young courtesan, who was at that time in great repute at Venice, and was nick-named Cavamacchia, because her father had been a scourer. This named vexed her a great deal, she wished to be called Preati, which was her family name, but it was all in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... shipwrecked sailors thrown on her coasts—the cruel, moonstruck huntress, who brings not only sudden death, but rabies, among the wild creatures that Diana was to be presented, in the person of a famous courtesan. The aim at an actual theatrical illusion, after the first introductory scene, was frankly surrendered to the display of the animals, artificially stimulated and maddened to attack each other. And as Diana was also a special ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... fell over her brow and temples, and veiled her voluptuous features and bare bosom, from which the executioner had torn the veil. The yells of the infuriated and deriding populace filled the air, as they danced exultingly around the aristocratic courtesan. But the shrieks of the unhappy victim pierced shrilly through them all. She was frantic with terror. Her whole soul was unnerved, and not one emotion of fortitude remained to sustain the woman of pleasure through her dreadful doom. With floods of tears, and gestures ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Courtisanes, trying with one hand to write a novel of Parisian manners, with the other a romance of mystery, and to do full justice to both. Trompe-la-Mort, the Napoleon of crime, and Esther, the inspired courtesan, represent the romance, and Balzac sets himself to absorb the extravagant tale into a study of actual life. If he can get the tale firmly embedded in a background of truth, its falsity may be disguised, the whole book may even pass ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... malignantly scrutinised; and tales were told about his libertinism which went on growing till they became too absurd for the credulity even of party spirit. At last, long after he had been condemned to flannel and chicken broth, a wretched courtesan, who had probably never seen him except in the stage box at the theatre, when she was following her vocation below in a mask, published a lampoon in which she described him as the master of a haram more costly than the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the form of a pretty woman. When he wants to create a charming phantom of this kind, he picks up an old horse-bone or cow-bone, and holds it in his mouth. Presently the bone becomes luminous; and the figure of a woman defines about it,—the figure of a courtesan or singing-girl.... So the village query about the man who marries a strange wife, "What old horse-bone has he picked up?" signifies really, "What wanton has bewitched him?" It further implies the suspicion that the stranger may be of outcast blood: a certain ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... path with its teeming throngs. Madison Square lay smiling in the sunshine like a happy courtesan, with no hint of its real use as Wayside Inn for all the old, the poor, the derelict, whose tired feet could find refuge there. The vista of ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... of the ages of the history of religion. Even among the profligate Greeks, the mysteries of Eleusis, celebrated in the temple of Ceres, were always respected. Care should be taken, however, not to confound these remnants of pure Nature-worship with that of the courtesan Venus, whose adoration, during the degenerate days of Greece, represented only the lowest and most corrupt conception of the ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... be the place to introduce another long descriptive poem, if the nature of its theme rendered it fit for translation. It relates the visit of a student to what he calls the Templum Veneris; in other words, to the house of a courtesan. Her attendants are sirens; and the whole poem, dealing with a vulgar incident, is ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... set of categories, according to which he filed away the various faces he saw was that of their ruling passions. There was the scholar, the sport, the miser, the courtesan, the little shopkeeper, the clerk, the housewife, the artist, the brute, the hypocrite, the clergyman, the bar-hound, the gambler. The charm of this classification was that the categories were not mutually exclusive, and permitted ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... not engage in any immorality there; Aulus Gellius, Noct. Attic. iv, 14, where an action at law is cited, in which the aedile Hostilius had attempted to force his way into the apartments of Mamilia, a courtesan, who thereupon, had driven him away with stones. The result of the trial is as follows: "the tribunes gave as their decision that the aedile had been lawfully driven from that place, as being one that he ought not to have visited with his officer." If we ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... The courtesan may scourge it with a whip of nettles back into life; but the innocent woman may wet it for ever with her tears, she ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... it otherwise. It may offend some artistic consciences that Butterfly, the Japanese courtesan, should sob out her lament in music which is purely Italian in character and colour; but what a piece of melody ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Birotteau A Bachelor's Establishment A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Government Clerks A Start in ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... XVIII., Louis-Stanislas-Xavier The Chouans The Seamy Side of History The Gondreville Mystery Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Lily of the Valley Colonel Chabert ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... any of these plays, even the lightest. For the congregation to which it was delivered there is a sermon in Toto chez Tata, perhaps the piece in which, above all others, the Muse seems Gallic and egrillarde. That is a touch of real truth, and so of a true morality, where Tata, the fashionable courtesan, leaning over her stairs as Toto the school-boy bears off her elderly lover, and laughing at him, cries out, "Toi, mon petit homme, je te repincerai dans quatre ou cinq ans!" And a cold and cutting stroke it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... for the windows there overlooked a bit of tangled garden with a few dilapidated statues. It was Marshall of course who undertook the task of furnishing, and he lavished on the rooms the fancies of an imagination that suggested the collaboration of a courtesan of high degree and a fifth-rate artist. Nevertheless, our salon was a pretty resort—English cretonne of a very happy design—vine leaves, dark green and golden, broken up by many fluttering jays. The walls were stretched with this colourful cloth, and the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... remarked. "It has diminished greatly since Smolensk. Fortune is frankly a courtesan, Rapp. I have always said so and I am beginning to experience it. But the Guards, Rapp, the Guards are intact?" ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... one! None shall hide thee from shame or offer thee comfort,—in the midst of thy lascivious delights shalt thou suddenly perish! ... and my soul shall be avenged on thy sins, thou unvirgined Virgin!—thou Queen-Courtesan!" ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... salt was seen without its being said, "Halloa! these come from Megara," and their being instantly confiscated. Thus far the evil was not serious, and we were the only sufferers. But now some young drunkards go to Megara and carry off the courtesan Simaetha; the Megarians, hurt to the quick, run off in turn with two harlots of the house of Aspasia; and so for three gay women Greece is set ablaze. Then Pericles, aflame with ire on his Olympian height, let loose ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... beautiful in the cropped bloom of youth, idealise the hero of romance—if Michelangelo's Penseroso translate in marble the dark broodings of a despot's soul—if Della Porta's Julia Farnese be the Roman courtesan magnificently throned in nonchalance at a Pope's footstool—if Verocchio's Colleoni on his horse at Venice impersonate the pomp and circumstance of scientific war—surely this Medea exhales the flower-like graces, the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Edlington Park. She was of the family of Chancellor Heald, to whose memory there is a marble tablet, on the north wall of the chancel of St. Mary's Church. She had a nephew, who was an officer in the fashionable regiment of the Guards. He became enamoured of the once famous courtesan, Lola Montez, who had been mistress to the King of Bavaria, attracted by her beauty, it was said, as she drove, and he rode, along Rotten Row, the resort of fashion, in Hyde Park, London. She wished ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... appearance of reason. In fact, he found here neither the banter, nor the orgies, nor the reckless expenditure, nor the depravity, nor the scorn of social decencies, nor the insolent independence which had brought him to grief alike with the actress and the singer. He was spared, too, the rapacity of the courtesan, like unto the thirst of ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... cherished hopes. He rose giddy and staggering like a drunken man, and at once leaving the Vatican, hurried to his mother, whom he had forgotten before, but sought now in his despair. Rosa Vanozza possessed all the vices and all the virtues of a Spanish courtesan; her devotion to the Virgin amounted to superstition, her fondness for her children to weakness, and her love for Roderigo to sensuality. In the depth of her heart she relied on the influence she had been able to exercise ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and the emotional side of native life in India, sufficiently tinged with romantic colouring. The fascination which professional dancers often exercise over natives of the highest rank is a well-known feature of Indian society; and although the dancer is always a courtesan, yet to invest her with a capacity for tender and honourable affection is by no means to overstep the limits of probability. We have noticed this book because it proves that the study of native manners, and sympathetic insight into ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... or—thanks to my Hebraic blood—so suffused with tragic irony. I shall make a very effective tableau at the death; on some forbidding stony hill near Jerusalem I shall plant my crucified hero, and near him a converted courtesan—ah! what a master of the theatre I am!—in company with a handful of faithful disciples. The others have run away to save their cowardly skins in the tumult. The mobs that hailed him as King of the Jews now taunt him, after the manner of all mobs. His early life I shall borrow ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... He had cultivated her health as an enthusiastic gardener might cultivate a rare flower. Yet, to all appearance, the Marquise had quietly accepted Arthur's skill and care with the egoism of a spoiled Parisienne, or like a courtesan who has no idea of the cost of things, nor of the worth of a man, and judges of both by ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... horses, the "Ho, ho!" of the pages, showed plainly that some great prince hot with love, was about to arrive. In fact, a moment afterwards the Cardinal of Ragusa, against whom the servants of Imperia had not dared to bar the door, entered the room. At this terrible sight the poor courtesan and her young lover became ashamed and embarrassed, like fresh cured lepers; for it would be tempting the devil to try and oust the cardinal, the more so as at that time it was not known who would be pope, three aspirants having resigned their hoods for the benefit of Christianity. ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... not an emotion. Yet it is base, inasmuch as it generally shows, that a man is affected by excessive hatred, anger, pride, avarice, &c. He who, by reason of his folly, knows not how to return benefits, is not ungrateful, much less he who is not gained over by the gifts of a courtesan to serve her lust, or by a thief to conceal his thefts, or by any similar persons. Contrariwise, such an one shows a constant mind, inasmuch as he cannot by any gifts be corrupted, to his own ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... nor of patchouli for her handkerchiefs. She loaded herself with bracelets, rings, and necklaces. When he was coming she filled the two large blue glass vases with roses, and prepared her room and her person like a courtesan expecting a prince. The servant had to be constantly washing linen, and all day Felicite did not stir from the kitchen, where little Justin, who often kept her ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... expectations, entreated her not to institute an action for divorce, promising to leave her free, and to accept all the consequences of such an agreement. Madame Roguin thus became sovereign mistress of the situation, and treated her husband as a courtesan treats an elderly lover. Roguin soon found his wife too expensive, and like other Parisian husbands he set up a private establishment of his own, keeping the cost, in the first instance, within the limits of moderate expenditure. In the beginning he encountered, at no great expense, grisettes ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... The Purse A Bachelor's Establishment The Government Clerks Modeste Mignon Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Muse of the Department Cousin Betty The Member for Arcis Beatrix A Man of Business Gaudissart II. The Unconscious ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... without a murmur, the loneliness that Jean's action brought upon her. She carried her fidelity to the end, for she would have slain herself sooner than become [hesitating out of respect for Mme. de Ronchard] a courtesan. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... is the hero of the opera, which, after a prologue in a typically German beer-cellar, follows his adventures through three scenes, each founded upon one of his famous tales. In the first we see him fascinated by the mechanical doll Olympia, in the second he is at the feet of the Venetian courtesan Giulietta, while in the third we assist at his futile endeavours to save the youthful singer Antonia from the clutches of ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... taken up again years afterwards, and almost entirely re-written—the only notable passage of the early poem that now remains being the passage on lust. It is best described in the simplest phrase, as a man's meditations on the life of a courtesan whom he has met at a dancing-garden and accompanied home. While he sits on a couch, she lies at his feet with her head on his knee and sleeps. When the morning dawns he rises, places cushions beneath her head, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Rachel produced "Rosemonde," a tragedy by M. Latour de St. Ybars, which failed completely. Other plays written for her were the "Valeria" of MM. Lacroix and Maquet, in which she personated two characters—the Empress Messalina and her half sister, Lysisca, a courtesan; the "Diane," of M. Augier, an imitation of Victor Hugo's "Marion Delorme;" "Lady Tartuffe," a comedy by Madame de Girardin; and "La Czarine," by M. Scribe. She appeared also in certain of the characters originally contrived for Mademoiselle Mais, such as La Tisbe in Victor Hugo's "Angelo," and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... for her. There, also, lies Dante, in his tomb "by the upbraiding shore;" rejected once of ungrateful Florence, and forever after passionately longed for. There, in one of the earliest Christian churches in existence, are the fine mosaics of the Emperor Justinian and Theodora, the handsome courtesan whom he raised to the dignity and luxury of an empress on his throne in Constantinople. There is the famous forest of pines, stretching—unbroken twenty miles down the coast to Rimini, in whose cool and breezy glades Dante and Boccaccio walked ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... massive production at the Hudson Theater. Jane Shore was dragged, willy-nilly, from history almost as though she were the heroine of a so-called popular novel, and two ladies, Mrs. Vance Thompson and Lena R. Smith, propelled her toward 1905. While, on moral grounds, we may inveigh against the courtesan, when we meet her in everyday life, the fact remains that for the stage there is no character in greater demand by "star" actresses and "romantic" playwrights. They seem to find a peculiar interest in ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... amour with a bourgeois Englishman! And he laughed in his sleeve, and soothed away those dangerous influences of the magician. By the God of heaven, Robert Moray and I have work to do! And you—you, with all the gifts of the perfect courtesan—" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... A Distinguished Provincial at Paris. The three parts of The Thirteen—Ferragus, The Duchess of Langeais, and The Girl with the Golden Eyes—are given under the general title. The fourth part of Scenes from a Courtesan's Life, Vautrin's Last Avatar, which until the Edition Definitive had been published separately, is here merged into its final place. But the three parts of The Celibates —Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours and A Bachelor's Establishment, being ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... lady-love with obvious superiority; and breaks with her. An interlude with a "magistrate's" wife, on less proper and more Crebillonish lines, is not more successful. So one day meeting by the seashore a beautiful courtesan, Erigone, he determines, in the not contemptible language of that single-speech poetess, Maria del Occidente, to "descend and sip a lower draught." He is happy after a fashion with her for two whole months: but at the end of that time he is beaten in a chariot race, and, going to Erigone ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... my pleasant duty to put the paper to bed alone. A King or courtier or a courtesan or a Community was going to die or get a new Constitution, or do something that was important on the other side of the world, and the paper was to be held open till the latest possible minute in ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... courtesan who had been enfranchised by her master Volumnius. The name of Volumnia was dear to the Romans as that of the wife of Coriolanus, to whose entreaties he had yielded when he drew off his army ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... in the least too far," he retorted. "To appear half nude on the stage and in some voluptuous scene exhibit one's personal charms to those who in an hour or so take their leave as they would of some courtesan after paying the usual fee! A charming ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... my pleasant duty to put the paper to bed alone. A King or courtier or a courtesan or a community was going to die or get a new Constitution, or do something that was important on the other side of the world, and the paper was to be held open till the latest possible minute in order to catch the telegram. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... in East Morgraunt whose name was Maulfry. She lived in Tortsentier, a lonely tower hidden deep in the woods, and had an unwholesome reputation. She was held to be a courtesan. Many gentlemen adventurous in the forest, it was said, had found dishonourable ease and shameful death at her hands. She would make them great cheer at first with hunting parties, dancing in the grass- rides, and love everywhere: so much had been seen, the rest was surmise. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... have been so much longer," said my friend, "for Desiree is soon going to America. Who is she? No one knows. What is she? Well, she is all things to some men, and some things to all men. She is a courtesan among queens and ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... about the meaning of this passage, which Kaltwasser has mistranslated. It is rightly explained in Schaefer's note, and the learned Lambinus has fully expounded it in a note on Horatius (Od. i. 13): but in place of [Greek: adektos] he has a wrong reading [Greek: adekto] . Flora was not the only courtesan who received the distinction mentioned in the text. The gilded statue of Phryne, the work of Praxiteles, was placed in the temple at Delphi, presented by the lady ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... Fernando had now and then, when the others were not looking, gathered from her lips some of the reward his love had earned, and Sancho seeing this had considered that such freedom was more like a courtesan than a queen of a great kingdom; she, however, being unable or not caring to answer him, allowed him to proceed, and he continued, "This I say, senor, because, if after we have travelled roads and highways, and passed bad nights and worse days, one who is now enjoying himself in this inn is ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... he rolled his eyes, went barefooted, and wore a dirty old cloak. He spent his time chiefly in the market-place, talking with everybody, old or young, rich or poor,—soldiers, politicians, artisans, or students; visiting even Aspasia, the cultivated, wealthy courtesan, with whom he formed a friendship; so that, although he was very poor,—his whole property being only five minae (about fifty dollars) a year,—it would seem ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... previously they have asked of their favorite deputy "at what hour they must come, whether all goes on well, and whether he is satisfied with those fools of parsons (calotins) and the aristocrats." Others consist of low women under the command of Theroigne de Mericourt, a virago courtesan, who assigns them their positions and gives them the signal for hooting or for applause. Publicly and in full session, on the occasion of the debate on the veto, "the deputies are applauded or insulted ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... evil in it? Does not the like occur between husband and wife? Cannot offspring be born of it, too? Cannot a woman receive more than one without harm? How does anything spiritual enter into this?" So thinks the understanding which is then the courtesan of the will. So stupid is it made by debauchery with the will that it is unable to see that marital love is spiritual and heavenly love itself, a reflection of the love between the Lord and the church from which it is derived; is in itself ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... known to the world. The author has sought his end by means of a fictitious autobiography. This was of course. No unusual faculty in the selection of methods was necessary to the choice; for only in the autobiographical form could the inner life of a courtesan be so revealed as to present a truthful and living picture of her soul's experience. A fine novel of this kind would be a great book, and one productive of much good; not, indeed, directly to the wretched class that would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... whom a critic remarked that his forte was the analysis of the souls and bodies of a type half virgin and half courtesan, is now available in a volume of selections admirably translated by R.I. ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... and extraordinary contrasts which were so dear to Beddoes' heart. While Marcello, the second brother, is meditating over his wretched fate, Orazio, the third, comes upon the stage, crowned and glorious, attended by a train of singing revellers, and with a courtesan upon either hand. 'Wine in a ruby!' he exclaims, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... the great-grandfather of Horace, lived in the time of Mademoiselle de L'Enclos, a very celebrated courtesan, and it is said by some that he was the author of the portrait of her which exists at this day, but it is proved that he never left Argnon, where he lived as an artist. The grandfather of the subject of this sketch—Claude-Joseph Vernet—studied in Rome, and became a distinguished ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... It was in allusion to this that Lucius Philippus,[191] a consular man, when he was speaking in favour of Pompeius, said it was nothing strange if he who was Philippus loved Alexander. They used to report that Flora the courtesan, when she was now advanced in years, always spoke with pleasure of her intimacy with Pompeius, and said that she could never leave the embrace of Pompeius without bearing marks[192] of the ardour of his passion. Besides this, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... civilization. "It is remarkable," Dufour observes, "that the prostitutes of ancient Rome would have blushed to say an indecent word in public. The little tender words used between lovers and their mistresses were not less correct and innocent when the mistress was a courtesan and the lover an erotic poet. He called her his rose, his queen, his goddess, his dove, his light, his star, and she replied by calling him her jewel, her honey, her bird, her ambrosia, the apple of her eye, and never with any licentious interjection, but only 'I will love!' ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the brilliant world from which she had been exiled, and longed for better days. All hope was not at an end for her. By a strange law which does not speak well for human nature, vice finds success easier to attain than virtue. There is no courtesan, no matter how low she has fallen, who cannot find a dupe ready to defend against the world an honour of which no vestige remains. A man who doubts the virtue of the most virtuous woman, who shows himself ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not awed and moved as once they were by local and material splendours. The pride of life, it is true, is still eagerly coveted; but by those at least who are most familiar with it, it is courted and sought for with a certain contempt and cynicism. It is treated like a courtesan, rather than like a goddess. Whilst as to the higher enthusiasm that was once excited by external things, the world in its present state could no more work itself up to this than a girl, after three seasons, could again go for dissipation to her dolls. She might look back to the time of dolls with ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... country and Spain, succeeded in detaining him a little longer in Rome.—He remained, but not in idleness. The restless intriguer had already formed close relations with the most important personage in France, Diana of Poitiers.—This venerable courtesan, to the enjoyment of whose charms Henry had succeeded, with the other regal possessions, on the death of his father, was won by the flatteries of the wily Caraffa, and by the assiduities of the Guise family. The best and most sagacious ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... vanity which aided a trifle in fortifying your illusion? In truth it would be a strange sort of vanity, that of being loved by such a woman; but men are so vain, that they are flattered by the love of the most confirmed courtesan. In any case undeceive yourself. A woman who is deserted, when she is a woman like your beauty, has nothing in view in her sorrow but her own interest. She endeavors by her tears and her despair, to persuade ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation. |
