"Courtesan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one of his favorites, a clever, ambitious girl, made of the stuff of a Sophie Arnold, and handsome withal, as the handsomest courtesan invited by Titian to pose on black velvet for a model of Venus; although her face, fine about the eyes and forehead, degenerated, lower down, into commonness of outline. Hers was a Norman beauty, fresh, high-colored, ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... but a frivolous objection, as we have seen many inscriptions 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, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... thee." Gish understood the dream. [As] Enki[du] was sitting before the woman, [Her] loins(?) he embraced, her vagina(?) he opened. [Enkidu] forgot the place where he was born. Six days and seven nights Enkidu continued To cohabit with [the courtesan]. [The woman] opened her [mouth] and Spoke to Enkidu: "I gaze upon thee, O Enkidu, like a god art thou! Why with the cattle Dost thou [roam] across the field? Come, let me lead thee into [Erech] of the plazas, to the holy house, the dwelling of Anu, O, Enkidu arise, let ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... Ninus. She accompanied her husband to Bactria on a military campaign, and is said to have instructed the king how that city should be taken. Ninus fell in love with Semiramis, and Onnes, who refused to give her up, went and hanged himself. The fair courtesan then became the wife of ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... the husband of Laurette Taylor and the author of plays in some of which she appears. His drama The Harp of Life has as its theme the love of two women, his mother and a courtesan, for a nineteen-year-old boy, and their willing self-sacrifice that he may go forward unbroken and unsmirched. The interesting thing, aside from the strength of the play and its vivid study of adolescence, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... 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. Such were among the great elegiac poets of Rome, generally devoted to the delineation ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... 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, bitch, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the last word on the subject. You will look about you for something like hope, you will shake the doors of churches to see if they still swing, but you will find them walled up; you will think of becoming Trappists, and destiny will mock at you and for reply give you a bottle of wine and a courtesan. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... 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 ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... related briefly how the Comte d'Herouville had in his youth loved a courtesan, known by the name of La Belle Romaine, who had formerly belonged to the Cardinal of Lorraine. Abandoned by the count before very long, she had died miserably, leaving a child named Gertrude, who had been rescued by the Sisters of the Convent of ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... this, in the first 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. At any ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... 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 will ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... 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. The ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... 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 similar plays Wilde invented in prison, AHAB AND ISABEL ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... the way which Michelangelo and Andrea del Sarto affected, and the cone-shaped head with parted hair is of the type which seems particularly to have pleased the painter. To Giorgione, too, belongs the honour of having created a Venus as pure as the Aphrodite of Cnidos and as beautiful as a courtesan of Titian. ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... Goriot 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 Pierrette 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 In addition, ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac
... 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 company, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... remarks and epithets. So I look closer at the young 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? ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... salary, or the proceeds of an investigation into the till of his employer. In that corner, is the returned soldier, who has just been paid off, and who is now expending the hard-earned pittance of the government upon some bepainted and bedizened courtesan, while perhaps his wife and family are suffering for want of the common necessaries of life. A cry of pain, followed by a burst of brutal laughter, causes us to turn our eyes to the corner, just in time to witness a woman fall to the ground, felled by a blow from the clenched ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... 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. Brandon-Vauvillez."—San ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... fact; he is treated by his 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: ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... call vice was once respected and honored, and the world was as beautiful then as now, and as noble men lived in it. In many ways the world was more moral than when your ideas began to prevail." He asks me to explain, and I tell him that with the degradation of the courtesan the moral standard has fallen, for as we degrade her we disgrace the act of love. We have come to speak of it as part of our lower nature, permissible, it is true, if certain conditions are complied with, but always looked upon askance; ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... holds the mirror to his splendid donna and the Alfonso of Ferrara of the Museo del Prado, that the popular designation of this lovely picture is founded, which probably, like so many of its class, represents a fair Venetian courtesan with a lover proud of her fresh, yet full-blown beauty. Now, however, the accomplished biographer of Velazquez, Herr Carl Justi,[42] comes forward with convincing arguments to show that the handsome insouciant personage, with the crisply curling dark ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... 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 biting ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... very much worried, took them to the commissary of police. Jeanne and her father stayed at a hotel that night. The following day the young man was found in the apartment of a courtesan of the town. His grandfather and mother took him back to "The Poplars" and not a word was exchanged between ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... cataract, in the terror of sight regained, do not dare put one foot before the 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 parade a disgraceful concubinage. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... 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 ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... 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 ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... picture of the inner 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 their feelings and character, still survive among Anglo-Indians, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... 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 ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... pride, and breaks down his haughtiness and dissoluteness, putting in their place modesty and silence and tranquillity and decorum, and makes him constant to one. You have heard of course of the famous courtesan Lais,[139] how she set all Greece on fire with her charms, or rather was contended for by two seas,[140] and how, when she fell in love with Hippolochus the Thessalian, 'she left Acro-Corinthus washed by the green ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... 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 ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... matter to say which of them all knew what was befitting in both the kinds. But Aristophanes is neither grateful to the vulgar, nor tolerable to the wise; but it fares with his poesy as it doth with a courtesan who, when she finds she is now stricken and past her prime, counterfeits a sober matron, and then the vulgar cannot endure her affectation, and the better sort abominate her lewdness and wicked nature. But Menander hath with his charms shown himself every way ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... each other and are fairly connected, but do not compose a history so much as a chronicle. In character, despite his intense verisimilitude, he is not very individual. Robinson himself, Moll, Jack, William the Quaker in Singleton, even Roxana the cold-blooded and covetous courtesan, cannot be said not to be real—they and almost every one of the minorities are an immense advance on the colourless and bloodless ticketed puppets of the Middle Fiction. But they still want something—the ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... was that her husband Don 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 ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... not recant its essential faith. He will keep his sense for the ideal and his power to worship. The further objects by which these gifts will be entertained will vary with the situation. A philosopher, a soldier, and a courtesan will express the same religion in different ways. In fortunate cases love may glide imperceptibly into settled domestic affections, giving them henceforth a touch of ideality; for when love dies in the odour of sanctity people venerate his relics. In other cases allegiance to the ideal may ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... might a Japanese, writing about England, argue from the street-walkers of Portsmouth or Plymouth to the wives, sisters, and daughters of these very authors. In some respects the gulf fixed between virtue and vice in Japan is even greater than in England. The Eastern courtesan is confined to a certain quarter of the town, and distinguished by a peculiarly gaudy costume, and by a head-dress which consists of a forest of light tortoiseshell hair-pins, stuck round her head ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... 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
... his brother, succeeding him, discovered an equally culpable vanity, and erected another, though a less magnificent pyramid. The third was built by King Mycernius according to some, but, according to others, by the celebrated courtesan Rhodope. This structure is rendered still more surprising, by having placed upon its top a head of black marble, 102 feet round the temples, and about 60 feet from the chin to ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... theatrical profession, without exception, as vicious, and of the congregation which passed resolutions condemning Miss Emma Abbott for rising in church and contradicting him, and of the Methodist bishop who likened her to a "painted courtesan," and invoked the aid of the law "for the protection of public worship" against ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... 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 by the galleries according as they utter the word 'suspensive,' ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... waist of a woman is made to disappear by a girdle. To an Oriental a corset, which increases the waist line and the plasticity of the figure, is the extreme of indecency—far worse than nudity. It seems like an application of the art of the courtesan to appeal to sensuality.[1408] Perhaps the most instructive case of all is that of the Tuareg men, who keep the mouth always covered. The cloth has a utilitarian purpose,—to prevent thirst by retarding evaporation from the air passages. "They never ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... of life, unable to make sense of it, Foma questions, and questions vainly, whether of Sofya Medynsky in her drawing-room of beauty, or in the foulest depths of the first chance courtesan's heart. Linboff, whose books contradict one another, cannot help him; nor can the pilgrims on crowded steamers, nor the verse writers and harlots in dives and boozingkens. And so, wondering, pondering, perplexed, amazed, ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... 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 shakes his head, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... most boundless extravagance, the most refined luxury, could wish for or suggest. The bedchamber, dressing-room, and boudoir were each fitted up in a style that seemed rather suited for the pleasures of an Eastern sultana or Grecian courtesan than for the domestic comfort ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... "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 the large, ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... termination to the pacific relations between his, 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 Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the earth sent horses. God knows what the army did with them, unless they ate them raw. They used horses as a courtesan uses oil: with both hands. These needed many men. Kurban Sahib appointed me to the command (what a command for me!) of certain woolly ones—Hubshis—whose touch and shadow are pollution. They were enormous ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 the avenue ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... who came along this path he asked about the grove and for the name of the woman, and was told that this was the grove of Kamala, the famous courtesan, and that, aside from the grove, she owned ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... Amradarika, "the guardian of the Amra (probably the mango) tree," is famous in Buddhist annals. See the account of her in M. B., pp. 456-8. She was a courtesan. She had been in many narakas or hells, was 100,000 times a female beggar, and 10,000 times a prostitute; but maintaining perfect continence during the period of Kasyapa Buddha, Sakyamuni's predecessor, she ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... 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
... 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 time ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... devote ourselves to something that is not he, and let that something be a man or an idea, it is betrayal all the same,—these are heights to which common women cannot attain; they know but two matter-of-fact ways; the great high-road of virtue, or the muddy path of the courtesan." ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... neglecting his military glory for the sake of strange women's charms. The founder of the Order of the Garter—the device of which enjoined purity even of thought as a principle of conduct—died in the hands of a rapacious courtesan. Thus, in England, as in France, the ascendancy is gained by ignobler views concerning the relation between the sexes,—a relation to which the whole system of chivalry owed a great part of its vitality, and on the view of which prevailing in the most influential class of any ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... 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 ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... 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 brooking the ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... became aware of a kindred something in herself—of an answering and anarchic energy, a certain menace to the conventional works and ways, and fancied security, of groping, purblind man. The insolence of a great lady, the dangerously primitive instincts of a great courtesan, filled her with an enormous pride, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... appearance, a merry comrade at a banquet, and an excellent captain: he took his pleasure 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 ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... 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 for Hercules.(5) ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Imitation of Anacreon PREFACE (To The Second Book) Friar Philip's Geese Richard Minutolo The Monks of Catalonia The Cradle St. Julian's Prayer The Countryman Who Sought His Calf Hans Carvel's Ring The Hermit The Convent Gardener of Lamporechio The Mandrake The Rhemese The Amorous Courtesan Nicaise The Progress of Wit The Sick Abbess The Truckers The Case of Conscience The Devil of Pope-fig Island Feronde The Psalter King Candaules and the Doctor of Laws The Devil in Hell Neighbour Peter's Mare The Spectacles The Bucking Tub The Impossible Thing The Picture The Pack-Saddle The Ear-maker, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... off suddenly, unable to find a word inclusive enough for all the contempt she wished to crowd into it. He was learning things. She could have ignored a frank courtesan with disdainful aloofness, but discreetly veiled wantonness made her articulate. When she mentioned Ginger her voice took a soft pity, mixed with certain condescension. She was sympathetic, but there were still many things she could ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... her husband, Don Fernando, that she had, as Sancho said, rubbed noses, the crimson in her royal blood came to the surface, and her face turned as red as a beet. Sancho, fearing that the Princess was a courtesan, wanted to save his master the two years' journey to Micomicon, if at the end of it it should turn out that another one than Don Quixote or himself should reap the fruits ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... infinitely dramatic or pathetic, 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 ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... vein of pleasantry a notion may be formed from an anecdote which one of his intimate associates, a juror of the Revolutionary Tribunal, has related. A courtesan who bore a conspicuous part in the orgies of Clichy implored Barere to use his power against a headdress which did not suit her style of face, and which a rival beauty was trying to bring into fashion. One of the magistrates of the capital was summoned and received the necessary orders. Aristocracy, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ask." "That man received it as well as I, but then he could easily return it; one has great expectations from a rich man, old and childless, as he is; whereas in giving the same present to me he really gave more, because he gave it without the hope of receiving any return for it." Just as a courtesan divides her favours among many men, so that no one of her friends is without some proof of her affection, so let him who wishes his benefits to be prized consider how he may at the same time gratify many men, and nevertheless give each one of them ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... courtesans 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 ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... appeared painted and masked, helped to further this practice in daily life. It is certain that it was widespread, and that the countrywomen vied in this respect with their sisters in the towns. It was vain to preach that such decorations were the mark of the courtesan; the most honorable matrons, who all the year round never touched paint, used it nevertheless on holidays when they showed themselves in public. But whether we look on this bad habit as a remnant of barbarism, to which the painting ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... constraining custom, fears no reproach of man. What she wills, that has the force of a law. Being Beauty, her deeds are lovely and worshipful. Therefore Phryne, whom men, groping in darkness and the dull ways of earth, dubbed courtesan, shone in a Court of Law before the assembled nobles of Athens, naked and undismayed in the blaze of her fairness. And Athens discerned the goddess and trembled. Yes, and more; even as Aphrodite, whose darling she was, arose pure ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... and with their help drags her out and brings her back in triumph to earth. The play concludes with the restoration of the goddess to her ancient honours, the festivities of the rustic population and the nuptials of Trygaeus with Opora (Harvest), handmaiden of Peace, represented as a pretty courtesan. ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... 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
... bowed her head to circumstances and she departed, accepting, 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
... it was 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. It was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can be, ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... think the worst alteration is in the nicety of the audience!—No double-entendre, no smart innuendo admitted; even Vanbrugh and Congreve obliged to undergo a bungling reformation! Sneer. Yes, and our prudery in this respect is just on a par with the artificial bashfulness of a courtesan, who increases the blush upon her cheek in an exact proportion to the diminution of her modesty. Dang. Sneer can't even give the public a good word! But what have we here?—This seems a very odd— Sneer. Oh, that's a comedy ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... 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 ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... monsters that ever walked the 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 and ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... ever since the doors are open to every one there has been much talk of unknown and unrecognized genius. When, twelve years earlier, Ingres' "Courtesan," and that of Sigalon, the "Medusa" of Gericault, the "Massacre of Scio" by Delacroix, the "Baptism of Henri IV." by Eugene Deveria, admitted by celebrated artists accused of jealousy, showed the world, in spite of the denials of criticism, that young and vigorous palettes existed, no ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... here my hand and faithful heart to gage. That I will never tempt you more to sin: This my request is—since your husband dotes Upon a lewd, lascivious courtesan— Since he hath broke the bonds of your chaste bed, And, like a murd'rer, sent you to your grave, Do but go with me to my mother's house; There shall you live in secret for a space, Only to see the end of such lewd lust, And know the difference ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... increase the number of our adherents. Some are swayed by one feeling, and some by another. We have contrived to throw no small odium upon the usurper and betrayer of his wife's father, by exposing and magnifying, indeed, the sums of money which he has lavished upon his courtesan, Mistress Villiers, now, by his heretic and unsanctified breath, raised into the peerage by the title of Countess of Orkney. All these items added together, form a vast sum of discontent; and could we persuade ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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
... way, the man of rank and station at one side, the courtesan with his bland smiles at the other, Lorenzo had not seen the black poniard that was to cut the cord of his downfall,—it had remained gilded. He drank copious draughts at the house of licentiousness, became infatuated with the soft music that leads the way of the unwary, until ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... A Bachelor's Establishment A Start in Life A Woman of Thirty The Commission in Lunacy The Government Clerks A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Firm of Nucingen A Man of Business ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... examinations of the witnesses were falsified, has already been proved in the revision of the cause; but as the indictment did not contain one article that could affect his life, they invented the following stratagem. A courtesan, a mistress of Baron Rippenda, who was a member of the court-martial, was bribed, and made oath she was the daughter of Count Schwerin, Field-marshal in the Prussian service, and that she was in bed with the King of Prussia, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... July, 1830, the error of the materialism of the Restoration. To plant a government in the hearts of a nation it is necessary to bind INTERESTS to it, not MEN. The government-clerks being led to detest the administrations which lessened both their salaries and their importance, treated them as a courtesan treats an aged lover, and gave them mere work for money; a state of things which would have seemed as intolerable to the administration as to the clerks, had the two parties dared to feel each other's pulse, or had the higher salaries not succeeded in stifling ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... laughed and caressed the wench. The crone was la Falourdel; the girl was a courtesan; the young ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... powerful and so deep that it resounded through the cave like the last vibrations of an organ in a church. The man, understanding the importance of his caresses, redoubled them in such a way as to surprise and stupefy his imperious courtesan. When he felt sure of having extinguished the ferocity of his capricious companion, whose hunger had so fortunately been satisfied the day before, he got up to go out of the cave; the panther let him go out, but when he had reached the summit of the hill ...
— A Passion in the Desert • Honore de Balzac
... twenty or thirty yards farther up the street, they alighted. He was just behind them, and formed the same judgment of them which a man much more charitable to the sex must unavoidably have done, concluding that Miss Jennings was a young courtesan upon the look-out, and that Miss Price was the mother-abbess. He was, however, surprised to see them have much better shoes and stockings than women of that rank generally wear, and that the little orange girl, in getting out of a very high coach, showed one of the handsomest legs ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... simple prescriptions. 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 their comparative usefulness ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... is heard of again, Amenaide Brecourt has become Jeanne de la Cour. Jeanne de la Cour is a courtesan. She has tried commerce, acting, literature, journalism, and failed at them all. Henceforth men are to make her fortune for her. Such charms as she may possess, such allurements as she can offer, she is ready to employ without ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... 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 to make the most of the opportunity ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... 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 ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... 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, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 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 ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... as he was making sadly for home, the courtesan Zanetta, who was bathing in the canal, hung on to his gondola and gazed amorously into his eyes. In the days of his prosperity he had had her one night into his Palace and had treated her very kindly, for he was of a ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... pride it was to Rome. Men are 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
... successes of Alexander now began to dazzle his judgment and to inflame his passions. He became a slave to debauchery, and his caprices were as cruel as they were ungrateful. In a fit of drunkenness, and at the instigation of Thais, an Athenian courtesan, he set fire to Persepolis, the wonder of the world, and reduced it to a heap of ashes; then, ashamed of the deed, he set out with his cavalry in pursuit of Darius. Learning that Bessus, the Bactrian satrap, held him a prisoner, he hastened his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... moment do I dwell. Let a new island be discovered, I fly to it ere man can set foot there; though it be but a rock encircled by the sea, I am there in advance of men who will dispute for its possession. I lounge, at the same instant, on a courtesan's couch and on the perfumed beds of emperors. Hatred and envy, pride and wrath, pour from my lips in simultaneous utterance. By night and day I work. While men ate burning Christians, I luxuriate voluptuously in baths perfumed with roses; I race in chariots; ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... very old at Rome. In his account of the numerous representations of the [Greek: Charites], he seems to throw some light upon a passage in Xenophon's Memorabilia, which, as far as we know, has escaped the notice of the commentators. It is in the dialogue between Socrates and the courtesan Theodote. She wishes that he would come to her, to teach her the art of charming men. He replies, that he has no leisure, being hindered by many matters of private and public importance; and he adds, "I have certain mistresses which will not allow me to be absent from them day nor night, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... mistake of despising those two social malcontents, Phinuit and Jules, that rogue adventurer Monk, that grasping courtesan ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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, present ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... judgment. It is you whom I have to thank for the closing of the theatre and the failure of Herdrine,—you who are responsible for the fact that these women look at me with insolence and the men as though I were a courtesan. How strange it must seem to them to see us together—the wolf and the lamb! Well, never mind. Take me somewhere and give me some tea; you owe me that, ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
