Courtesans Quotes

The demi-monde does not represent the crowd of courtesans, but the class of declassed women It is divided from that of honest women by public scandal, and divided from that of the courtesans by money.

Glory is sometimes a low courtesan who on the road entices many who did not think of her. They are astonished to obtain favors without having done anything to deserve them.

With a goose-quill and a few sheets of paper, I mock myself of the universe. They say I am the son of a courtesan; it may be so, but I have the heart of a King. I live free, I enjoy myself, I can call myself happy.

Mother went out again tonight, looking like a courtesan.

How is it that one woman is…enough…for three men?” “I don’t know.” “She must be a very talented courtesan.” “Callie.” “Well, that was what she was. Wasn’t it?” “Yes.” “How very fascinating!” She smiled brightly. “I’ve never met a courtesan, you know.” “I could have surmised as such.” “She looked just as I imagined they did! Well, she was rather prettier.” Ralston’s eyes darted around the room as though he was looking for the quickest escape route. “Callie. Wouldn’t you rather gamble than talk about courtesans?

If I had to fall from Cassiel's grace, at least I know it took a courtesan worthy of Kings to do it.

One of my big inspirations was Céleste Mogador. She was a courtesan who wrote her memoirs in order to pay off her debts, which is a hilarious gesture.

She had the underwear of a thirteen-year-old, as well, he thought. He glanced back at her. But the shoes of a courtesan.

I'll live as a courtesan, not as a woman. I'll embrace any man that comes my way. It's not hard giving your body and not your heart. And I'll take revenge. To all those rich nobles, I'll get revenge for all the pain I received. No...even more. Then I'll get revenge on you, Head Mistress. Breaking my love and making me a courtesan, will not be a good thing for you.

It is something, I thought, when a king can put a courtesan to the blush.

History is the history of human behavior, and human behavior is the raw material of fiction. Most people recognize that novelists do research to get the facts right - how a glove factory works, for example, or how courtesans in imperial Japan dressed.

There is no more defiant denial of one man's ability to possess one woman exclusively than the prostitute who refuses to redeemed.

The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan.

Public opinion is a courtesan, whom we seek to please without respecting.

The only difference between them and my girls is that my girls gave a man his money's worth.

Oh, you are the kind of man who will corrupt a woman to her very last fiber.

The women who take husbands not out of love but out of greed, to get their bills paid, to get a fine house and clothes and jewels; the women who marry to get out of a tiresome job, or to get away from disagreeable relatives, or to avoid being called an old maid -- these are whores in everything but name. The only difference between them and my girls is that my girls gave a man his money's worth.

You have 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 very last fiber.

If a woman hasn't got a tiny streak of harlot in her, she's a dry stick as a rule.

By dint of making sacrifices, a man grows interested in the person who exacts them. Great ladies, like courtesans, know this truth by instinct.

Take up something that you know will never bring you any returns except pleasure-in other words, allow yourself to live the way brilliant eighteenth century courtesans lived. Don't be afraid of having a decorative life, even if all the decorations come from you.

Although the many virtues that courtesans possessed were employed to defy circumstances, the role they played depended on the same circumstances over which they triumphed- conditions which to, fortunately for modern women, no longer exist.

If they are ignorant, they are despised, if learned, mocked. In love they are reduced to the status of courtesans. As wives they are treated more as servants than as companions. Men do not love them: they make use of them, they exploit them, and expect, in that way, to make them subject to the law of fidelity.

The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture

The slot machines sit there like young courtesans, promising pleasures undreamed of, your deepest desires fulfilled, all lusts satiated.

Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man

We have retained the forms and phrases of a republic, but in reality we are living under an oligarchy, not of courtesan, but of bureaucrats.

I have seen purer liqors, better segars, finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier women courtesans here in San Francisco than in any other place I have ever visited.

Her delight in the smallest things was like that of a child. There were days when she ran in the garden, like a child of ten, after a butterfly or a dragon-fly. This courtesan who had cost more money in bouquets than would have kept a whole family in comfort, would sometimes sit on the grass for an hour, examining the simple flower whose name she bore.

It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.

For most practical purposes Tarbean had two pieces: Waterside and Hillside. Waterside is where people are poor. That makes them beggars, thieves, and whores. Hillside is where people are rich. That makes them solicitors, politicians, and courtesans.

I love this word decadence, all shimmering in purple and gold. It suggests the subtle thoughts of ultimate civilization, a high literary culture, a soul capable of intense pleasures. It throws off bursts of fire and the sparkle of precious stones. It is redolent of the rouge of courtesans, the games of the circus, the panting of the gladiators, the spring of wild beasts, the consuming in flames of races exhausted by their capacity for sensation, as the tramp of an invading army sounds.

If Courtezans and Strumpets were to be prosecuted with as much Rigour as some silly People would have it, what Locks or Bars would be sufficient to preserve the Honour of our Wives and Daughters?

In the religion of Love the courtesan is a heretic; but the nun is an atheist.

When prostitution is a crime, the message conveyed is that women who are sexual are "bad," and therefore legitimate victims of sexual assault. Sex becomes a weapon to be used by men.

The art of war is like the art of the courtesan; indeed they might be called sisters, since both are slaves of desperation.

The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word.

Laments of an Icarus The paramours of courtesans Are well and satisfied, content. But as for me my limbs are rent Because I clasped the clouds as mine. I owe it to the peerless stars Which flame in the remotest sky That I see only with spent eyes Remembered suns I knew before. In vain I had at heart to find The center and the end of space. Beneath some burning, unknown gaze I feel my very wings unpinned And, burned because I beauty loved, I shall not know the highest bliss, And give my name to the abyss Which waits to claim me as its own.

A fat lot of good it would do if I told you that Titian's courtesans make you want to caress them. Some day you'll see the Titians for yourself, and if they have no effect on you, then you don't understand the first thing about painting. And I wouldn't be able to help you.