"Courtesan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... passes for a Siberian, and says that he has been wounded in the Russo-Japanese war. He goes out into society a great deal, and is most commonly seen in the military offices and in the best "salons" of St. Petersburg. One night, when he is asleep at a courtesan's house, he mutters the war-cry of Japan: "Banzai! Banzai!" The courtesan denounces him to a policeman who happens to be there, and the pseudo-captain, who is no other than a colonel in ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... 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
... eve of 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 ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... made the mistake of despising those two social malcontents, Phinuit and Jules, that rogue adventurer Monk, that grasping courtesan Liane Delorme. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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
... had never heard of Clarimonde, celebrated as she was, and I had no idea as to where the Concini Palace was situated. I hazarded a thousand conjectures, each more extravagant than the last; but, in truth, I cared little whether she were a great lady or a courtesan, so that I could ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... life, proved fatal to him; he only climbed high in order to fall the lower. He was remarkable for profligacy even in that heedless and profligate time. Voltaire, in one of his letters, tells a story of a famous London courtesan who exclaimed to some of her companion nymphs on hearing that Bolingbroke had been made Secretary of State, "Seven thousand guineas a year, girls, and all for us!" Even if the story be not true it is interesting and significant as an evidence of the sort of impression which ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... a curious way of arousing one's imagination, stimulating all one's nerves, and making one's pulses beat faster. You put an aureole on vice, provided only if it is honest. Your ideal is a daring courtesan of genius. Oh, you are the kind of man who will corrupt a woman to her ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... Causes of a Courtesan resorting to Men; of the means of Attaching to herself the Man desired, and the kind of Man that it is ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... 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 inexorably severe when ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... fairly real 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
... 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
... or 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, ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... 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
... his griefs, or for 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 ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... 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
... 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... carrying large oval lanterns, also inscribed with the name of the house; and after them came a representative collection of the officials of the proud establishment, a few foxy old women and a crowd of swaggering men, spotty and vicious-looking. The Orian (Chief Courtesan) reached the cross-roads. There, as if moved by machinery or magnetism, she slowly turned to the left. She made her way towards one of a row of small, old-fashioned native houses, on the road down which the Barringtons had come. Here the umbrella was lowered. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... A Bachelor's Establishment The Government Clerks Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Firm of Nucingen The Muse of the Department Cousin Betty The Member for Arcis Beatrix A Man of Business Gaudissart II. The ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... 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. ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... outside of it, which is words, or (as I may term it) diction, it is even well worse; so is that honey-flowing matron eloquence, apparelled, or rather disguised, in a courtesan-like painted affectation. One time with so far-fetched words, that many seem monsters, but most seem strangers to any poor Englishman: another time with coursing of a letter, as if they were bound to follow the method of a dictionary: ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... 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, is ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... 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 ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... 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. And this ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... "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, bony hands either folded as if in prayer, ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... made Spain a Moorish province; And Steno's lie, couched in two worthless lines, Hath decimated Venice, put in peril A Senate which hath stood eight hundred years, Discrowned a Prince, cut off his crownless head, And forged new fetters for a groaning people! Let the poor wretch, like to the courtesan[461] Who fired Persepolis, be proud of this, 450 If it so please him—'twere a pride fit for him! But let him not insult the last hours of Him, who, whate'er he now is, was a Hero, By the intrusion of his very prayers; Nothing of good can come from such a source, Nor would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... 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 ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... doubted my senses. I did not know there was a pure woman outside of a convent, but when I learned to know her I changed my mind. Now comes this accursed Charles Stuart! His house has been a bane to England ever since the spawn of the Scotch courtesan first came to London. But his reign will ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... 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
... form beneath it. Yet she must have been pretty and shapely once. What corrosive had destroyed the feminine outlines? Was it trouble, or vice, or greed? Had she loved too well? Had she been a second-hand clothes dealer, a frequenter of the backstairs of great houses, or had she been merely a courtesan? Was she expiating the flaunting triumphs of a youth overcrowded with pleasures by an old age in which she was shunned by every passer-by? Her vacant gaze sent a chill through you; her shriveled face seemed like a menace. Her voice was like the shrill, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... brush, encircled the soft eyelids, which were threaded with rosy fibres. The pupils of the eyes, extremely bright, though striped with brown rays, gave to her glance the cruel fixity of a beast of prey, and betrayed the cold maliciousness of the courtesan. The eyes were gray, fringed with black lashes,—a charming contrast, which made their expression of calm and contemplative voluptuousness the more observable; the circle round the eyes showed marks ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... of the great leader Pericles, not more by her beauty than by her high mental accomplishments. The story of her life, and of the literary and philosophical circle which she drew around her, is too well known to need repetition. Another famous courtesan, though less well endowed mentally, and evidently on a much lower plane of character, was the famous flute-player Lamia. It was her beauty rather than her intellect that won the great honours which she attained; and a temple dedicated to her as Venus Lamia, as well ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... 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, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... 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 across the street. ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... 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
... The courtesan who never from the dwelling Of Caesar turned aside her strumpet eyes, Death universal ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... HETAERA. A Greek courtesan. This class was often highly trained in music and social art, and represented the highest grade of culture among ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... 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 them ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Sancho's words, for the truth 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 bad nights and worse days, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... 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, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... hurt anybody with a sense of pageantry and humor. He acted the part for them just as they wanted him to, sitting bolt upright in the howdah like a prince in a fairy story, with jeweled aigrette in his turban and more enormous diamonds flashing on his silken clothes than a courtesan would wear at Monte Carlo. And all the other princes were likewise in degree, only that they rode rather smaller elephants, Akbar having no peer when he was sober ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... of at once violating his conjugal duty and 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 ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Amradarika, "the guardian of the Amra (probably the mango) tree," is famous in Buddhist annals. She was a courtesan. She had been in many narakas or hells, was one hundred thousand times a female beggar, and ten thousand times a prostitute; but maintaining perfect continence during the period of Kasyana Buddha, ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... merely with 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
... so is inexplicable, that it is so is certain; we have not had since Mabel Grey died a courtesan whom a foreign prince, passing London, would visit as a matter of course as he would visit St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey; and yet London has advanced enormously in all that constitutes wealth and civilization. ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... 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 ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... There was in that capital, 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. One day, however, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... how little she was considered by him. And in truth, in this temporary household, the woman was scarcely more than a housekeeper, showing in the management of the gentleman-poet's house the hard shrewdness of her dual nature of peasant and courtesan; and endeavouring, at no matter what price, to render ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... were among the greatest 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 enrolled among ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... confirm it, saying, "What is adultery? Is there any 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 sacred and chastity ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... place, and with the remaining eleven founded the college of the Arval brothers (Fratres Arvales). The tradition that Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf has been explained by the suggestion that Larentia was called lupa ("courtesan'', literally "she-wolf'') on account of her immoral character (Livy i. 4; Ovid, Fasti, iii. 55). According to another account, Larentia was a beautiful girl, whom Hercules won in a game of dice (Macrobius i. 10; Plutarch, Romulus, 4, 5, Quaest. Rom. 35; Aulus Genius vi. 7). The god advised ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a variety of mysteries to be solved. In the first place, he is very simple and very wily. Though he falls into excesses with the readiness of a courtesan, his powers of thought remain untouched. Yet his intellect, which is competent to criticise art, science, literature, and politics, is incompetent to guide his external life. Claude contemplates himself within the domain of his intellectual kingdom, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... they had palled on him; and then there had suddenly come to him, not a desire for further love adventures, but a great curiosity about women. He set out to discover all that was unforeseen, unexpected, and unknown to him in woman. All actresses seemed to him very much the same kind of courtesan, and all courtesans very much the same kind of actress. What attracted him now was the unclassed woman, the woman that bewilders the observer and the oldest Parisian. He often went wandering about at night, vaguely and irresistibly ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... philandering Broadway or Bond Street masher makes the physiological mistake of undervaluing the innate sense of decency inherent in every woman. Gentle courtesy and manners impress a courtesan by reason of the novelty. The inverse is often useful in dealing with ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... 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 ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... religion, or his remorse; and that, debarred by circumstances from all wider and more dangerous fields, it still lavished itself upon trifles unworthy of his powers and puerilities dishonouring his age. Folly is a courtesan whom we ourselves seek, whose favours we solicit at an enormous price, and who, like Lais, finds philosophers at her door scarcely less frequently ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "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 ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... (son) 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 The ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... again to a few; but it is a hard 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 ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... deal of liquor. Athenaeus, says this philosopher, gained the crown of gold which the tyrant of Syracuse had promised him that should empty a certain measure of wine. Diogenes Laertius confirms this last particular. "He had moreover acquired such an empire over his passions, that a very beautiful courtesan (Phryne) who had laid a wager she could subdue his virtue, lost it, though she had the liberty to lie with him, and use all her little toyings to incite him to enjoy her." You see here (adds Mr. Bayle) a triumph as remarkable as that of S. Aldhelme, and some other canonized saints, ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... 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 ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... the apartments of the adulteress ended and that of the divine courtesan began. Haunts of her long, indolent, self-pleasing nights and days, they presented everywhere the impress of Phaedra's luxurious humour. A peculiar glow, such as he had never before seen, like heady lamplight, or sunshine to some sleeper in a delirious dream, hung upon, clung ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... 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 ...
— A Passion in the Desert • Honore de Balzac
... means of promoting the one aim which held them together—the undermining of Clarendon's power. For this object they were all alike prepared to support the pretensions, and flatter the vanity, of the shameless and grasping courtesan, to ruin the happiness of the wife, to degrade the honour, and send to slumber the scruples, of the King, and to besmirch that Crown, which a flood of unselfish loyalty had restored, only two years before, to the love and ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... 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 ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... officer and Leonora had 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 ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... Zulannah the courtesan peered down upon her from between the silken curtains of her balcony, and clapped her hands twice so that her woman-slaves ran quickly to watch and whisper about this white woman who stood unattended in the open market. They giggled ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... until one recalls that the eighteenth century had no liking for Shakespeare undefiled. The version used by the Theatre Royal was, of course, the adaptation by Thomas Shadwell, in which Chloe appears chiefly in Acts II and III as the maid and confidant of the courtesan Melissa. Both parts were added by Og. The role of Cleon was taken by Quin, later an interpreter of Mrs. Haywood's own plays. But if she formed a connection with either of the London theatres after leaving her husband, the engagement was soon ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... 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 the voices ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... land-tax, and in 1629 he turned brigand, but without conspicuous success during the following ten years. In 1640, he headed a small gang of desperadoes, and overrunning parts of Hupeh and Honan, was soon in command of a large army. He was joined by a female bandit, formerly a courtesan, who advised him to avoid slaughter and to try to win the hearts of the people. In 1642, after several attempts to capture the city of K'ai-feng, during one of which his left eye was destroyed by an arrow, he at length succeeded, chiefly in consequence of a sudden ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... 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 ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Then this noble courtesan, much afflicted, returned to Rome, there to weep for her poor daughter. She set out in the thirty-ninth year of her age, which was, according to some authors, the summer of her magnificent beauty, because then she had obtained the acme of perfection, like ripe fruit. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... after, that men look upon the admonitory events that have happened to others and take warning." All classes of men are to be found there: Harun al-Rashid and his viziers, as well as the baker, the cobbler, the merchant, the courtesan. The very coarseness is a part of the picture; though it strikes us more forcibly than it did those to whom the tales were told and for whom they were written down. It is a kaleidoscope of the errors and failings and virtues of the men whose daily life it ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Rue de la Tour des Dames, for windows there overlooked a bit of tangled garden with a dilapidated statue. 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 arm-chairs and the couches were ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... 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 social life of the Second ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... 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 ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... introduced, the Empress had us conducted to the large drawing-room, where the performance was to take place. The measurements were taken for the platform, and there was to be the flight of steps where Agar had to pose as the unhappy courtesan cursing mercenary love and longing for ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... 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 Poor Clares, the Mother Superior ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... lap full of seventy times seven bundles! Why not bid him sit on my knee, Shameless? But men are ever thus!' She looked round for approval. An Amritzar courtesan near the window ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... Horace 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 Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine 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, M. Bianchon narrated the ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... Now, egad, I 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 on a very new plan; replete with ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... Sarrasine's heart. Although possessed of a certain strength of character, and although nothing that might happen could subdue the violence of his passion, it had not before occurred to him that La Zambinella was almost a courtesan, and that he could not hope to enjoy at one and the same time the pure delights which would make a maiden's love so sweet, and the passionate transports with which one must purchase the perilous favors of an actress. He ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... A Bachelor's Establishment The Government Clerks Modeste Mignon Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Firm of Nucingen The Muse of the Department Cousin Betty The Member for Arcis Beatrix A Man of Business Gaudissart II. The ...
— The Purse • 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, ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... 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 men with women whose reputations have been ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... first of these motives Pietro della Valle (the most romantic in his adventures of all true travellers) was led abroad, the latter spring set in motion my comical countryman, Tom Coriat, who by the engraver's help has represented himself at one time in full dress, making a leg to a courtesan at Venice, and at another dropping from his rags the all-too ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... 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 ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... announced his arrival, and Feng Tzu-ying came out and ushered him in. Here he discovered Hsueeh P'an, who had already been waiting a long time, and several singing-boys besides; as well as Chiang Yue-han, who played female roles, and Yuen Erh, a courtesan in the Chin Hsiang court. The whole company exchanged salutations. They next had tea. "What you said the other day," smiled Pao-yue, raising his cup, "about good fortune coming out of evil fortune has preyed so much upon ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... 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
... not been able to resist the lures of earthly passion. He had failed to imitate the example set by so many saints, among others by St. Vincent Ferrer with regard, to a certain dissolute lady of Valencia; though, indeed, the cases were dissimilar. For if to flee from the diabolical courtesan in question was an act of heroic virtue in St. Vincent, to flee from the self-abandonment, the ingenuousness, and the humility of Pepita would, in him, have been something as monstrous and cruel as if, when Ruth lay down at the feet of Boaz, saying to him, "I am thy ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... 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 rate, Calpurnia ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... desert flung wide the secret portals of her treasure-house and gave royally like a courtesan of kings. ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... rendering. The wages of the executioners and their assistants were discussed, and differences of opinions led to ferocious arguments. A young and dandiacal fellow told, as a fact which he was ready to vouch for with a pistol, how Cora Pearl, the renowned English courtesan, had through her influence over a prefect of police succeeded in visiting a criminal alone in his cell during the night preceding his execution, and had only quitted him an hour before the final summons. The tale won the honours ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... there be joined an adroit, insinuating, quick mind—an intelligence so marvelous, that in a year she spoke both French and German with the most extreme facility—sometimes even with marked eloquence. Imagine, in fine, a corruption worthy of the courtesan queens of ancient Rome, and audacity and courage above all proof, propensities, diabolical wickedness, and one would have a correct idea of the new servant of Jacques Ferrand—the determined creature who had dared to throw herself into the den of the wolf. ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... 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 ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... Anacreon Another 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 Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... made, the blood of the Maranas spoke; the courtesan returned to her reckless life, a thought the more within her heart. At last she loved, with the violent love of such women, as Henrietta Wilson loved Lord Ponsonby, as Mademoiselle Dupuis loved Bolingbroke, as the Marchesa Pescara loved her husband—but no, ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... 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 a house in ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... existence. This view of him is confirmed by what is known from literature of his subjects. The list includes five figures of Aphrodite, three or four of Eros, two of Apollo, two of Artemis, two of Dionysus, two or three of satyrs, two of the courtesan Phryne, and one of a beautiful human youth binding a fillet about his hair, but no work whose theme is suffering or death is definitely ascribed to him. It is strange therefore to find Pliny saying that it was a matter of ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... represent us in our attitude toward a certain class of ideas and things. It is the expression of our essential immorality—using that word in its conventional sense—having its roots deep down in pruriency, hypocrisy and ignorance. Like the blush on the cheek of the courtesan, it deceives no one, but is none the less a truthful expression, not of the thing it simulates, but of the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... interesting 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
... chaser, and that there was never enough cold-cream for her skin, 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 company, watched her ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... 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
... and Irene, although they were mother and daughter, passed for sisters. Dona Violante, in her better days, had led the life of a petty courtesan and had succeeded in hoarding up a tidy bit as provision against the winter of old age, when a former patron convinced her that he had a remarkable combination for winning a fortune at the Fronton. Dona Violante fell into ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... 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 ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... she was 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 ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... models of style. The scene is throughout at Athens; the imaginary writers are country people, fishermen, parasites and courtesans, who express their sentiments and opinions on familiar subjects in elegant language. The "courtesan'' letters are especially valuable, the information contained in them being chiefly derived from the writers of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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 ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... him up nimbly, seeing the weakness of his argument. "Vittoria, the courtesan! She loves any man, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... during G.J.'s final sleep, and the bedroom was in absolute darkness save for a faint grey gleam over the valance of the window curtains. G.J. could think. He wondered whether he was in love. He hoped he was in love, and the fact that the woman who attracted him was a courtesan did not disturb ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... Doltaire, son of a king, to further your 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
... 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 ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... understanding how Schiller, writing to Wieland, could represent the poem of Voltaire as a great obstacle in his way. As little had we received our impression of Joan d'Arc from Shakspeare's tragedy of the First Part of Henry VI., where she is represented as a mere witch and courtesan, represented, in fact, in the vulgar aspect in which she still probably appeared to an English populace. The subject was with us, when Schiller wrote, new and open; we had received our impression only from history, and history had spoken well ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... but the stimulus of its suggestion, Mary utilized the arts among which she dabbled as a bed for artificial immoralities. In this bed she had managed for several years to remain an adroitly chaste courtesan. Her pride was almost concentrated in her chastity. She guarded it with a precocious skill, parading it through conversation, hinting slyly of it when its existence seemed for the moment to have become unimportant. Her chastity, ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... across their 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
... 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 ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... 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 of savages is a parallel, or as a consequence ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... all hoax their fathers, and be ready to shed crocodile tears upon their mothers' breasts; but generally they believe in nothing, blaspheme women, or play at modesty, and in reality are led by some old woman or an evil courtesan. They are all equally eaten to the bone with calculation, with depravity, with a brutal lust to succeed, and if you plumbed for their hearts you would find in all a stone. In their normal state they have the prettiest ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... "Medea" 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... 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 ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... of life constitute one of the worst moral forces in the community. They keep in existence to pander to their desires large numbers of subordinates whose lives are also worthless and without any productive value. It is because of them that the life of a courtesan seems to offer golden prizes to some, and the hope of reaping such prizes deludes many. Because this is a materialistic age their money gives them powers to which they have no moral right, and no more wholesome thing could happen to the whole community ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... a courtesan visited Jesus and had her sins remitted. According to the Mahavaggo, Gotama was visited by a harlot whom he instructed in things divine.[1] In Matthew, Jesus is depicted as a glutton and a wine-bibber. In the Mahavaggo, the picture of Gotama is the same.[2] In ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... 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
... 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 remove the veil, on ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... centuries had sapped the foundations of Christianity found their fulfilment. Do we not detect an echo of the Toledot Yeshu in the blasphemies of the Marquis de Sade concerning "the Jewish slave" and "the adulterous woman, the courtesan of Galilee?" And in the imprecations of Marat's worshippers, "Christ was a false prophet!" a repetition of the secret doctrine attributed to the Templars: "Jesus is not the true God; He is a false prophet; He was not crucified for the salvation of humanity, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... realised the immensity of the gulf which separated my outlook from that of this successful courtesan. To her to be not particular was to give oneself without a due return in money: to me——! Well, I needed all my control at that moment not to let her see what I felt. I have never been conscious of so deep ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... 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; and continuing the same strain of argument, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... 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 ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... gormandising with me, no handsome slaves in waiting, and at my table your sons saw more seemliness than at head-quarters. No man can say without lying that I ever took a farthing as a present or put anyone to expense. I was there two years; and if a single courtesan ever crossed my doors, or if proposals from me were ever made to anyone's slave-pet, set me down for the vilest and most infamous of men. And if I was so scrupulous towards slaves, you may judge what my life must have ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... to accomplish. When he calculates that the reader is on the verge of pitying him, he takes care to throw him back the defiance of laughter, as if to let him know that all the Poet's pathos is but the sentimentalism of the drunkard between his cups, or the relenting softness of the courtesan, who the next moment resumes the bad boldness of her degraded character. With such a man, who would wish either to laugh or to weep?"—Eclectic Review (Lord Byron's Mazeppa), August, 1819, vol. xii. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... 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, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... themselves dared 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 ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... thoughts; the city of a hundred thousand tales, the head of the universe. But to those few, Paris is sad or gay, ugly or beautiful, living or dead; to them Paris is a creature; every man, every fraction of a house is a lobe of the cellular tissue of that great courtesan whose head and heart and fantastic customs they know so well. These men are lovers of Paris; they lift their noses at such or such a corner of a street, certain that they can see the face of a clock; they tell a friend ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac |
