"Courtesan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 like a saint's glory—a glory of shame which ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... 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 character of ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... occasion a courtesan ridiculed from her bed-room window the words of the saint. She fell dead immediately. When he heard of the awful judgement passed on this hapless woman, he ordered her body to be brought to him. Then, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... 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 of the dinner. It was regarded as truly impressive, and inevitably it ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... find a difficulty in 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
... rose giddy and staggering like a drunken man, and at once leaving the Vatican, hurried to his mother, whom he had forgotten before, but sought now in his despair. Rosa Vanozza possessed all the vices and all the virtues of a Spanish courtesan; her devotion to the Virgin amounted to superstition, her fondness for her children to weakness, and her love for Roderigo to sensuality. In the depth of her heart she relied on the influence she had been able to exercise over him for nearly ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the basest metals, stamping them with grotesque figures, or odd devices—such as a sow; a chimerical bird; an imperator in his car, with a monkey behind him; or an old woman's head, Acca Laurentia, either the traditional old nurse of Romulus, or an old courtesan of the same name, who bequeathed the fruits of her labours to the Roman people! As all things were done in mockery, this base metal is stamped with S. C., to ridicule the Senatus consulto, which ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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, she did not love, she adored one of those ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... "I, too, was once in love," and proceeds, after a few lines, to decry the sentiment as harmful to mankind, a something from which God would do well to emancipate it. This may have referred to his first meeting and conversation with a courtesan at Paris, which he describes in one of his papers, but this is not likely from the context, which is not concerned with the gratification of sexual passion. It is of the nobler sentiment that he speaks, and there seems to have been in the interval ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... 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 a pampered ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... Euripides never conceived a story more 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 ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... of his people. Cephas, 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 the crown ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... of Montespan asked the famous Louison D'Arquien, by way of insult, as she pressed too near her, "Comment alloit le metier[O]?" "Depuis que les dames sen melent" (replied the courtesan with no improper spirit,) "il ne vaut plus rien[P]." It may be these syrens have suffered in the same cause; I thought the ardency of their manners an additional proof of their hunger for ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... 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. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... by which it was desolated, and the schisms by which it was torn. Soon, the eagle reappeared, less menacing but not less dangerous; he shook his plumes above the sacred car, which speedily underwent a monstrous transformation. From divers parts of it arose seven heads armed with ten horns; a courtesan was seated in the midst; a giant stood at her side, exchanging with her impure caresses which he interrupted to scourge her cruelly. Then, cutting loose the metamorphosed car, he bears it away, and is lost with it in the ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... 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 ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... 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 ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... illusions into which love may have led him, will 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 ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... 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, on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... at the moment profoundly sorry for Rickman in this marriage of his art with Mordaunt Crawley's. Whatever might be said of Rickman's radiant and impetuous genius it neither lurked nor leered; it was in no way represented by that strange and shameless figure, half Maenad, half modern courtesan, the face foreshortened, tilted back in the act of ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... 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, ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... his 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 ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... years afterwards, and almost entirely re-written—the only notable passage of the early poem that now remains being the passage on lust. It is best described in the simplest phrase, as a man's meditations on the life of a courtesan whom he has met at a dancing-garden and accompanied home. While he sits on a couch, she lies at his feet with her head on his knee and sleeps. When the morning dawns he rises, places cushions beneath her head, puts some gold among her hair, and leaves ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... He would equal Munophis of Elephanta if he could but get me an Indian dancing-girl, and Thygelion of Chaeronea if he could bring me a Greek courtesan; for, oh, ladies! there were Bombardas in Greece and in Egypt. Apuleius tells us of them. Alas! always the same, and nothing new; nothing more unpublished by the creator in creation! Nil sub sole novum, says Solomon; amor omnibus idem, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... 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. Sorrow made ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... 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 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, M. Bianchon narrated the following: ...
— Study of a Woman • Honore de Balzac
... instances of this kind of torture in the Acta Sincere Martyrum, published by Ruinart, p. 160, 399. Jerome, in his Legend of Paul the Hermit, tells a strange story of a young man, who was chained naked on a bed of flowers, and assaulted by a beautiful and wanton courtesan. He quelled the rising temptation by biting off ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... army!" he suddenly remarked. "It has diminished greatly since Smolensk. Fortune is frankly a courtesan, Rapp. I have always said so and I am beginning to experience it. But the Guards, Rapp, the Guards are intact?" he ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... own sex they were still regarded with that calm, unobserving indifference with which the modern lady treats the sister who stands without the pale of reputable society. So far as the "ladies" of Horsford were concerned, the "nigger teachers" at Red Wing stood on the plane of the courtesan—they were seen but not known. The recognition which they received from the gentlemen of Southern birth had in it not a little of the shame-faced curiosity which characterizes the intercourse of men with women whose reputations have been questioned but not ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... character, many a splendid mind, has reached a lofty height and then crumbled before the assaults of this disease upon the brain. Philosopher, poet, artist, statesman, captain of industry, handicraftsman, peasant, courtesan and housewife,—all are lowered to the same level of dementia and destroyed character by the consequences of the thickened meninges, the altered blood vessels and ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... voice rang out through the hollow vault, its passion restrained no more. "WHERE IS HE?—the poor fool, the miserable, credulous dupe, whose treacherous wife played the courtesan under his very roof, while he loved and blindly trusted her? WHERE IS HE? Here, here!" and I seized her hands and forced her up from her kneeling posture. "I promised you should see me as I am! I swore to grow young to-night for your sake!—Now I keep my word! Look at me, Nina!—look ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... 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 God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... Greek courtesan. This class was often highly trained in music and social art, and represented the highest grade of ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... 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 ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... of the church for having married his cousin. He was immediately abandoned. Two faithful domestics alone remained with him, and these always passed through the fire whatever he touched. In a word, the horror which an excommunication occasioned was such, that a courtesan, with whom one Peletier had passed some moments, having learnt soon afterwards that he had been about six months an excommunicated person, fell into a panic, and with great difficulty recovered ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... house. But he had to ring several times before finally the door opened; and each second was a year for me, waiting there with him in the street. And when the door opened he was leaning against it, and so pitched forward into the gloom of the archway. A laugh—the loud, unrestrained laugh of the courtesan—came from ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... the setting of Angouleme. In many references parts one and three are combined under the title Lost Illusions and A Distinguished Provincial at Paris is given its individual title. Following this trilogy Lucien's story is continued in another book, Scenes from a Courtesan's Life. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... "by the upbraiding shore;" rejected once of ungrateful Florence, and forever after passionately longed for. There, in one of the earliest Christian churches in existence, are the fine mosaics of the Emperor Justinian and Theodora, the handsome courtesan whom he raised to the dignity and luxury of an empress on his throne in Constantinople. There is the famous forest of pines, stretching—unbroken twenty miles down the coast to Rimini, in whose cool and breezy glades ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... swords with steel guards were mingled with Scotch claymores with silver hilts, thus giving a masculine character to this hotel of a fashionable lounger, steeped with the odor of ylang-ylang like the little house of a pretty courtesan. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... 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
... 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
... night 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 ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... forthwith proceeded, and proved to be the attempt of a gentleman of fashion to compromise the honor of a lady of the Court whom he had mistaken for a courtesan. The audience laughed at every indelicate artifice of the libertine, and screamed when the demure maiden let fall certain remarks which bore a double significance. Finally, when the lady declared her interest in a cage of birds, and the gentleman drew from his ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... Fishermen by the sea saw Him but once; instantly they left their boats and followed Him. A man sitting at the receipt of custom, a hard man we should suppose, little likely to be swayed by sudden emotions, also sees Him once, and finds his occupation gone. A beautiful courtesan, beholding Him pass by, breaks from her lovers, and follows Him into an alien house, where she bathes His feet with tears and wipes them with the hairs of her head. Mature women without a word spoken ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... 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 shown himself every way sufficient ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... 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 doubt in his time ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... a veiled, clever, discreet and insinuating manner. But each word of the holy woman in cornet made a breach in the indignant resistance of the courtesan. Then the conversation drifting somewhat, the woman with the hanging rosary spoke of the Convents of her Order, of her Superior, of herself, and of her lovely neighbor, the dear Sister Saint-Nicephore. They had been called to Havre ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... acrius. Some dote then more than ever they did in their youth. How many decrepit, hoary, harsh, writhen, bursten-bellied, crooked, toothless, bald, blear-eyed, impotent, rotten, old men shall you see flickering still in every place? One gets him a young wife, another a courtesan, and when he can scarce lift his leg over a sill, and hath one foot already in Charon's boat, when he hath the trembling in his joints, the gout in his feet, a perpetual rheum in his head, "a continuate cough," [4740]his sight fails him, thick of hearing, his breath stinks, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... 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
... its flowing rhythms, its clear daylight, seldom draws a large audience. And I do not doubt that only the propinquity of Rembrandt's Young Saskia to Vermeer's Merry Company (otherwise known as The Courtesan) in the Dresden gallery ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... the house of Epicharis, a courtesan, which is a rendezvous for the dissolute Roman nobles. The guests assembled sing a chorus in praise of the establishment, followed by a scene in which Vindex, the prince of Aquitania, Saccus the poet, Terpander the citharist, and others conspire against Nero. Suddenly Chrysa, ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... six-and-thirty centuries the brand of the courtesan has rested on the brow of Potiphar's wife. The religious world persists in regarding her as an abandoned woman who wickedly strove to lead an immaculate he-virgin astray. The crime of which she stands ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... with these desolating roles, and when the curtain fell on The Baroness, he was resolved to put aside the chance of meeting the actress. Was it worth while to be made ashamed and bitter? She might stand revealed as a coarse and selfish courtesan—a worn and haggard enchantress whose failing life blazed back to youth only when on the stage. Why be disenchanted? But in the end he rose above this boyish doubt. "What does it matter whether she be true or false? She has genius, and genius ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... and forget 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 ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... 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 will give you a bottle of wine and a courtesan. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the grossest superstition. 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 ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... 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
... a Vestal, but her Heart a Messalina. Who that beheld Omnamante's negligent unobserving Air, would believe that she hid under that regardless Manner the witty Prostitute, the rapacious Wench, the prodigal Courtesan? She can, when she pleases, adorn those Eyes with Tears like an Infant that is chid! She can cast down that pretty Face in Confusion, while you rage with Jealousy, and storm at her Perfidiousness; she can wipe her Eyes, tremble and look frighted, till you think yourself ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... whose career is, I believe, at this moment revived into fresh notoriety as the heroine of some drama on the stage of Paris—a woman who, when years paled her fame and reft her spoils, as a courtesan renowned for the fools she had beggared, for the young hearts she had corrupted, sought plunder still by crimes, to which law is less lenient; charged with swindling, with fraud, with forgery, and at last more than suspected as a practised poisoner, she ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thee,—no, not one! None shall hide thee from shame or offer thee comfort,—in the midst of thy lascivious delights shalt thou suddenly perish! ... and my soul shall be avenged on thy sins, thou unvirgined Virgin!—thou Queen-Courtesan!" ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... 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, one ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... an evening of lightsome frolic, and then lose track of the newcomer forever. Instead he found a woman whose youth and beauty attracted him. In the mild light of Carrie's eye was nothing of the calculation of the mistress. In the diffident manner was nothing of the art of the courtesan. He saw at once that a mistake had been made, that some difficult conditions had pushed this troubled creature into his presence, and his interest was enlisted. Here sympathy sprang to the rescue, but it was not unmixed ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... expedition. The meadows of France were covered with tents. As the belligerents were to have remission of all their sins on their arrival in Palestine, hundreds of them gave themselves up to the most unbounded licentiousness. The courtesan, with the red cross upon her shoulders, plied her shameless trade with sensual pilgrims without scruple on either side; the lover of good cheer gave loose rein to his appetite, and drunkenness and debauchery flourished. Their zeal ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... brow and temples, and veiled her voluptuous features and bare bosom, from which the executioner had torn the veil. The yells of the infuriated and deriding populace filled the air, as they danced exultingly around the aristocratic courtesan. But the shrieks of the unhappy victim pierced shrilly through them all. She was frantic with terror. Her whole soul was unnerved, and not one emotion of fortitude remained to sustain the woman of pleasure through her dreadful doom. With floods of tears, and gestures of despair, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... live in Athens, and there gained the affections 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 ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... retire to some favorite spot, where, amid every species of sensual indulgence they would revel until the morning twilight. At such times the chiefs would lay aside their authority, and mingle with the lowest courtesan in every ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... Milton's Paradise Lost to speak plainly and clearly, it is a | Book XII discovery of all operations and pos- | sibilities of operations from immortality | (if it were possible) to the meanest | mechanical practice. And therefore | knowledge that tendeth but to satisfaction | is but as a courtesan, which is for | pleasure and not for fruit or generation. | And knowledge that tendeth to profit or | profession or glory is but as the golden | ball thrown before Atalanta{44}, which | 44. The Atalanta myth is treated by while she goeth aside and stoopeth to take | Bacon in DE SAPIENTIA VETERUM ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... symmetrical surface, and leaving us only to wonder how the author himself should have soiled it with such disfigurements. Pierre is a miserable conspirator, as Otway first painted him, impelled to treason by his love of a courtesan and his jealousy of Antonio. But his character, as it now comes forward, is a-mixture of patriotism and excusable misanthropy. Even in the more modern prompt-books, an improving curtailment has been ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... 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, the attitudes of which ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... by Thais, the noted courtesan, but they were not thought legitimate. Leontiscus, the eldest, we afterwards hear of fighting bravely against Demetrius; of the second, named Lagus after ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... husband of donna Victoria. He gave the deeds of his wife's estate to donna Laura, a courtesan, and Victoria, in order to recover them, assumed the disguise of a man, took the name of Florio, and made love to her. Having secured a footing, Florio introduced Gaspar as the wealthy uncle of Victoria, and Gaspar ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... in 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
... favourable 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 reverence of ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... 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, ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... of other names that never 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
... The courtesan who never from the dwelling Of Caesar turned aside her strumpet eyes, Death universal and the vice ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... 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
... 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, she had been born ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... Salisbury, came to be accused 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 ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... de Paris marks the beginning and the end of Elodie's acquaintance with the smart world. She hates it with a fierce jealousy, knowing that it is a sphere beyond her ken. Herein lay a fundamental principle of her character. The courtesan, with her easy adaptability to the glittering environment which she craves, and Elodie, essentially child of the people, proud, and virtuous according to her lights, were worlds apart. A bit of a socialist, Elodie, she stuck fiercely to her class. People she was. People she would ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... 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 ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... 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 of a chaste wife's bed, And ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... be somewhat doubtful on the point. Farewell for this while. When you walk abroad in our garden, which is open to you, be pleased to array yourself in the dress of our country, and not in that of a courtesan of Egypt.'" ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... 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, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... in Edlington Park. She was of the family of Chancellor Heald, to whose memory there is a marble tablet, on the north wall of the chancel of St. Mary's Church. She had a nephew, who was an officer in the fashionable regiment of the Guards. He became enamoured of the once famous courtesan, Lola Montez, who had been mistress to the King of Bavaria, attracted by her beauty, it was said, as she drove, and he rode, along Rotten Row, the resort of fashion, in Hyde Park, London. She wished to make the most of the opportunity to regain a respectable ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... Celia 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 trap and her patron ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... not deceive himself on this point. He did not sentimentally exalt a courtesan into an angel, as boys so often do. Mrs. Chepstow had certainly lived very wrongly, in a way to excite disgust, perhaps, as well as pity. Yet within her were delicacy, simplicity, the pride of breeding, even a curious reserve. She had still a love of fine things. She ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... leather[85] were prepared expeditiously for the troops to cross. Cauzi Serauje, with seven of his friends disguised as holy mendicants, proceeded to the roy's camp, and repaired to the quarter where the dancing-girls resided.[86] Here the cauzi pretended to be enraptured with a courtesan, and was guilty of a thousand extravagances to support his character. In the evening the girl, having adorned herself in her richest ornaments, prepared to go out, on which the cauzi, like a jealous and distracted lover, falling at her feet, ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... Nashville, Tenn., who, from his pulpit, denounced the 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" ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the gallery, where two halberdiers and two ushers stood, a pair of curtains had quickly parted, and out came a slender young man all velvet, silk, gold, and jewels; with the legs and the walk of a woman; with face painted like a courtesan's; a very slight beard on his chin, and a weak growth of hair on his upper lip; with a look half brazen, half shamefaced; with eyes half wistful, half malicious; his pear-shaped face expressing some love of the beautiful, some wit, some cynicism, much personal vanity, vicious inclinations ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... rather far away for foot travel, the Bois might be considered a driving park for the rich. It fairly blazed with the ostentatious splendor of the Second Empire; the shoddy Duke with his shady retinue, in gilded coach-and-four; the world-famous courtesan, bedizened with costly jewels and quite as well known as the Empress; the favorites of the Tuileries, the Comedie Francaise, the Opera, the Jardin Mabille, forming an unceasing and dazzling line of many-sided frivolity from the Port de Ville to the Port St. Cloud, circling round La Bagatelle ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... morality in politics, as well as in private 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 ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... 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 ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... means by which we may 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 his Catholic majesty to rouse himself to assert once ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Mysteries,82 at which hundreds of people 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 of savages is a parallel, or as a consequence ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... she looked back from afar with an envious eye at the brilliant world from which she had been exiled, and longed for better days. All hope was not at an end for her. By a strange law which does not speak well for human nature, vice finds success easier to attain than virtue. There is no courtesan, no matter how low she has fallen, who cannot find a dupe ready to defend against the world an honour of which no vestige remains. A man who doubts the virtue of the most virtuous woman, who shows himself inexorably severe when he discovers the lightest inclination ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... thumb—what should I do then—where should I go to?" There was nowhere. "I don't want to work—or carve out my own path. I want ease and any amount of nursing in the lap of luxury. There is only one thing I'm fitted for, and that is to be a great courtesan." But she did not know how to go about it. She was frightened to go into the streets—she heard of such awful things happening to those women—men with diseases—or men who didn't pay—besides, the idea of a strange man every night—no, that was out of the question. "If I'd the ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... have 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
... went out, surprised to find it was so late. The theatres had disgorged their crowds, and Piccadilly was thronged, gay, vivacious, and insouciant. For a moment there was a certain luxury about its vice; the harlot gained the pompousness of a Roman courtesan, and the vulgar debauchee had for a little while the rich, corrupt decadence of ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... a brother 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 ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... true adoration—the deification of persons—was out of the question. But there was no reason why a Greek or Roman should not have indulged in servile flattery and hypocritical praise for the selfish purpose of securing the carnal favors of a mercenarily coy courtesan. He was capable of adulation but not of adoration, for one cannot adore a slave, a drudge or a wanton. The author of the Lover's Lexicon claims, indeed, that "love can and does exist without respect," ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... 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, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... And use my wits to flatter with the king. If any in private conference name the king, I straight inform his grace they envy him. Did Sinon live, with all his subtlety He could not tell a flattering tale more cunningly. Sometime I move the king to be effeminate, And spend his time with some coy courtesan. Thus with the king I curry favour still, Though with my heart I wish him any ill: And sometime I can counterfeit his hand And seal, and borrow money of the commonalty; And thus I live and flaunt it with the best, And dice and card inferior unto ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... 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
... remarkable," Dufour observes, "that the prostitutes of ancient Rome would have blushed to say an indecent word in public. The little tender words used between lovers and their mistresses were not less correct and innocent when the mistress was a courtesan and the lover an erotic poet. He called her his rose, his queen, his goddess, his dove, his light, his star, and she replied by calling him her jewel, her honey, her bird, her ambrosia, the apple of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... bourgeois Englishman! And he laughed in his sleeve, and soothed away those dangerous influences of the magician. By the God of heaven, Robert Moray and I have work to do! And you—you, with all the gifts of the perfect courtesan—" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a certain grey-haired fop, who sat behind Aratoff, with the face of a courtesan from Revel,—one of Moscow's well-known first-nighters and rounders. The fop was stupid and intended to utter a bit of nonsense ... but he had spoken the truth! Aratoff, who had never taken his eyes from Clara since she had made her ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... 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 ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... shyness,(4) whereas the lover in his agony, the tender husband at the -accouchement-, the loving sister by the death-bed in the -Eunuchus- and the -Andria- are very gracefully delineated; in the -Hecyra- there even appears at the close as a delivering angel a virtuous courtesan, likewise a genuine Menandrian figure, which the Roman public, it is true, very properly hissed. In Plautus the fathers throughout only exist for the purpose of being jeered and swindled by their sons; with Terence in the -Heauton Timorumenos- the lost son is reformed by his father's wisdom, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... his eyes on the youth than he becomes blind. The royal physicians tell him that only the Rose of Bakawali can restore his sight, and the four other sons of the king set out together to procure this wonderful flower. They fall victims to the wiles of a courtesan, who wins all their money at play and ultimately imprisons them in her house. In the meantime Taj al-Maluk has started on the same errand; he outwits the courtesan, obtains the liberation of his brothers, and then journeys to Jinnistan, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... 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
... 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 led on by one of those creatures ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... fate, and all on account of the handsome Marcello Capecce, who had been her most ardent suitor. In Mrs. Linton's words, "his love for Violante was that half religious, half sensual passion which now writes sonnets to my lady as a saint, and now makes love to her as a courtesan." But, whatever his mode of procedure, Diana loved him, while he loved only Violante, and he proved to be a masterful man. The duke was away in exile on account of a disgraceful carouse which had ended in a street fight, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... detaining him a little longer in Rome.—He remained, but not in idleness. The restless intriguer had already formed close relations with the most important personage in France, Diana of Poitiers.—This venerable courtesan, to the enjoyment of whose charms Henry had succeeded, with the other regal possessions, on the death of his father, was won by the flatteries of the wily Caraffa, and by the assiduities of the Guise family. The best and most sagacious statesmen, the Constable, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... of Slaughter—the Taurian goddess who demands the sacrifice of the shipwrecked sailors thrown on her coasts—the cruel, moonstruck huntress, who brings not only sudden death, but rabies, among the wild creatures that Diana was to be presented, in the person of a famous courtesan. The aim at an actual theatrical illusion, after the first introductory scene, was frankly surrendered to the display of the animals, artificially stimulated and maddened to attack each other. And as Diana was ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... Roualt.' So that the terrible mocker of the bourgeois has written a book which is directly inspired by the spirit of the 1840 bourgeois. Their recriminations against romanticism 'which rehabilitates and poetises the courtesan,' against George Sand, the Muse of Adultery, are to be found in acts and ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... 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
... Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes, trying with one hand to write a novel of Parisian manners, with the other a romance of mystery, and to do full justice to both. Trompe-la-Mort, the Napoleon of crime, and Esther, the inspired courtesan, represent the romance, and Balzac sets himself to absorb the extravagant tale into a study of actual life. If he can get the tale firmly embedded in a background of truth, its falsity may be disguised, the whole book may even pass for a scene of the human ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... in the temple [of Apollo], as contesting for the prize when Tarpa presides as judge, nor can have a run over and over again represented in the theatres. You, O Fundanius, of all men breathing are the most capable of prattling tales in a comic vein, how an artful courtesan and a Davus impose upon an old Chremes. Pollio sings the actions of kings in iambic measure; the sublime Varias composes the manly epic, in a manner that no one can equal: to Virgil the Muses, delighting in rural scenes, have granted the delicate ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... 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
... made himself utterly despised. At the last he retreated to Catana without having achieved anything, save that he demolished Hyocara, a humble town of the barbarians, out of which the story goes that Lais the courtesan, yet a mere girl, was sold amongst the other prisoners, and carried ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... short cut. A servant 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 my mind, both by day and night, that the moment I received your summons ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin |
