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Prostitute   Listen
noun
Prostitute  n.  
1.
A woman giver to indiscriminate lewdness; a strumpet; a harlot.
2.
A base hireling; a mercenary; one who offers himself to infamous employments for hire. "No hireling she, no prostitute to praise."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prostitute" Quotes from Famous Books



... consents to sin for the first time, they do it in the plainest fashion. A "galaunt" meets her and tells her that he finds her very pretty, and loves her. "Why, sir," the young lady replies, "wene you that I were a kelle (prostitute)?" Not at all, says the other, but you are so pretty! Shall we not dance together? Shall we ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... I've heard rumors already of a plot to prostitute the law. In Unalaska a man warned Dextry, with terror in his eye, to beware of it; that beneath the cloak of Justice was a drawn dagger whetted for us fellows who own the rich diggings. I don't think there's any truth in it, ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... daggers, not one poison'd bowl; 220 No lightning flashes here, no thunders roll; No guards to swell the monarch's train are shown; The monarch here must be a host alone: No solemn pomp, no slow processions here; No Ammon's entry, and no Juliet's bier. By need compell'd to prostitute his art, The varied actor flies from part to part; And—strange disgrace to all theatric pride!— His character is shifted with his side. Question and answer he by turns must be, 230 Like that small wit in modern tragedy,[88] Who, to patch up his fame—or fill his purse— Still pilfers ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... until the moment in which they became truly despicable. By following those false lights, France has bought undisguised calamities at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal blessings. She has abandoned her interest that she might prostitute ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... into the night and rain to sleep in the "chapel," as the mud cave across the way was called. There several travelers had settled down for the night. A girl of seventeen or so splashed across from it to beg "a jar of water for a poor prostitute," apparently announcing her calling merely as a curious ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... dove." In the other poem, Kuenstlers Erdewallen ("The Artist's Earthly Pilgrimage"), composed in the form of a dialogue, we have equally a draft from Goethe's own experience. To provide for his family needs, the artist is forced to prostitute his genius by painting pictures for the vulgar connoisseur, and he desponds at the prospect of a life spent under such conditions, but the muse whispers consolation: "Thou hast time enough to take delight in thyself, ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... them of the reasonableness of these opinions—I confess that "too great a respect cannot be paid to the honorable part of the profession of the law," but when state-lawyers, attorneys and sollicitors general, & persons advanced to the highest stations in the courts of law, prostitute the honor of the profession, become tools of ministers, and employ their talents for explaining away, if possible the Rights of a kingdom, they are then the proper objects of the odium and indignation of the public.—A very judicious author has observed that "our maladies and dangers ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood, The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see themselves in the ways of him, he strangely transmutes them, They are not vile any more, they hardly know themselves they ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... francs which the old rogue borrowed of me just before he went off; but Madame Roguin will pay them back from her dower. I have advised the poor woman not to be so foolish as to spend her own fortune in paying debts contracted for a prostitute. Of course, it would be well if she paid everything, but she cannot favor some creditors to the detriment of others. You are not a Roguin; I know you," said du Tillet,—"you would blow your brains out rather than ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... prevent that young man's return among our people. You should explain to the father that it cannot be allowed. From what I hear, it would be no loss if the whole family left the parish. I am told that one of the daughters is a—prostitute." ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... from his box; the count fired out of the carriage and missed—the horseman fled. "Your money, rascal!" cried Moor, with his stentorian voice. The count lay like a bullock under the axe: "And are you the rogue who turns justice into a venal prostitute?" The lawyer shook till his teeth chattered again; and a dagger soon stuck in his body, like a stake in a vineyard. "I have done my part," cried the captain, turning proudly away; "the plunder is your affair." And with this ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... to-day this seems a practical fact that already is being accomplished, and not a futile speculation. The re-birth of woman is no dream. At last she is realising the arrest in her development that has followed the acceptance of a position which forces her to be a parasite and a prostitute. ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... of it all. Then another sufferer would appear and she would wipe the tears off her cheeks and get to work again. The third—so an assistant surgeon confided to us—was the mistress of an officer at the front, a prostitute of the Berlin sidewalks, who enrolled for hospital work when her lover went to the front. She Was a tall, dark, handsome girl, who looked to be more Spaniard than German, and she was graceful and lithe even in the exceedingly shapeless costume of blue ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... full of faults and perfections. The tragic is sometimes pushed to the grotesque, but from the depths it brings the pearls of truth. A convict becomes holier than the saint, a prostitute purer than the nun. This book fills the gutter with the glory of heaven, while the waters of ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... perennial poverty;—Be it a young, ugly, unmarried woman, far advanced in pregnancy, and sullenly trooping to the alehouse, to meet the overseer of the parish poor, who, enraged with the unborn bastard, is about to force the parish bully to marry the parish prostitute;—Be it a landlord of a rural inn, with pig eyes peering over his ruby cheeks, the whole machinery of his mouth so deranged by tippling that he simultaneously snorts, stutters, slavers and snores—pot-bellied—shanked ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... of Lower Canada, with the salary of L500 per annum, or a consulate in the United States, sine cura, would be considered by him as a fair discharge of the obligation of the Government to him for his services. Lord Liverpool was not disposed to prostitute such favours upon a mercenary and intriguing vagrant, and referred him to the Government of Lower Canada, then in charge of Sir George Prevost, who had succeeded Sir James Craig. Henry knew the little estimate that was ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... kindred is not considered reprehensible; but it is certain that no Berini has ever been known to be at fault with any one not of her own caste." This last statement is not a little astonishing, inasmuch as in Central India and in Bundelkhand Berni is an equivalent term for a prostitute. A similar diversity of conjugal morality has been noticed between the Bagris of northern India and the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... applicable to others than those-alluded to in the above stanza, as connected with Duns and Bailiffs. They are a dangerous set of wretches, who are capable of committing any villany, as well by trepanning a rich heir into matrimony with a cast-off mistress or common prostitute, as by coupling a young heiress with a notorious sharper, down to the lowest scene of setting debtors for the bailiff and his followers. Smitten with the first glance of the lady, you resign your heart, the conjugal knot is tied, and, like the Copper Captain, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... had always to me been a profound mystery; and as he avoided the subject, I never questioned him. But how he intended to live, after our marriage, I soon became painfully aware. He resolved that I should support him in idleness, by becoming a common prostitute. When he made this debasing and inhuman proposition to me, I rejected it with the indignation it merited; whereupon he very coolly informed me, that unless I complied, he should abandon me to my fate, and proclaim ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... writings we find that free commingling of licentious morals with a taste for religious sublimities which characterized the last years of Louis XIV. The Abbe Chaulieu (1639-1720) earned the appellation of the Anacreon of the Temple, but he did not, like Rousseau, prostitute poetry ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... answered, "but mostly it's a sort of competition with men for the prize. I'll tell you something about us if you like—we are not made of sugar and spice and other pleasant bits, but only of two: prostitute and mother. Not, of course, separately, or in equal parts; some of us have more of one, others more of the other. That girl across the table from you is all prostitute, the married woman you were talking to is both, quite evenly divided; your wife is a mother, even with ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... province before he came to the Caliphate. To the note on Zarka, the blue-eyed Yamamite, I may add that Marwan was called Ibn Zarka, son of "la femme au drapeu bleu," such being the sign of a public prostitute. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... associations, not at all affiliated with the central party organizations. Such important weapons in the struggle of the proletariat are left in the hands of the petty bourgeois ideologists who, in reality, prostitute the labor press. As examples, we have, for instance, 'The Milwaukee Leader,' the 'New York Call,' the Jewish 'Daily Forward,' the 'Appeal to Reason,' and many others scattered throughout the United States, and each contradicting ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... "The people have put the idol named Coppal in a neighboring house; there she is served by priests and Devadichi, or slaves of the gods. These are prostitute girls, whose employment is to dance and to ring little bells in cadence while singing infamous songs, either in the pagoda or in the streets when the idol is carried out in state," writes Letourneau ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... patience as he could command to the principal crown witness, giving such evidence that the tenth part of what he heard should not only have ended the case, but secured condign punishment for perjury—evidence that a prostitute court found good enough to justify the infliction on Poerio, not long before a minister of the crown, of the dreadful penalty of four-and-twenty years in irons. Mr. Gladstone accurately informed himself of the condition of those ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... general biological fact that sexual promiscuity tends to pathological conditions unfavorable to fecundity, that is, fertility, or the birth of offspring. Physicians have long ago ascertained this fact, and the modern prostitute gives illustration of it by the fact that she has few or no children. Among the lower animal species, in which some degree of promiscuity obtains, moreover, powerful instincts keep the sexes apart except at the pairing season. Now, no such instincts ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... You're a fool. I've always thought of you as a fool. You make me want to laugh now. You're a clown. I'll give myself to men. But not to you. I gave myself to Erik Dorn because I love him. If he wants me again I'll come to him not as a lover, because he doesn't love me any more—but as a prostitute. Now do you know me? Well, I want you to. So you'll go way and never ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... himself, from his tricks and his violence, and, above all, his want of truth. Brougham made a speech, in which he belaboured the Ministry generally, and many of them by name, with his usual acrimony. Handley, who had a resolution to move, said he regretted to see the chairman prostitute the cause for which they were assembled by making it the vehicle of abuse of the Government, and thus venting his spite, disappointed ambition, and mortified vanity; on which Brougham rose in a great ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... Jaffeir's Part, And Roman Brutus speaks a Master's Art. But still we often Mourn to see their Phrase An Earthly Vapour, or at Mounting Blaze. A rising Meteor never was design'd, T'amaze the sober part of Human kind. Were I to write for Fame, I would not chuse A Prostitute and Mercenary Muse. Which for poor Gains must in rich Trappings go, Emptily Gay, magnificently Low, Like Ancient Rome's Religion, Sacrifice and Show. Things fashion'd for amusement and surprize, Ne'er move the Head, tho' they divert the Eyes. ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb

... he went on, with a sudden change of tone, "you would rather tell the police when they come; there must be some reason, I suppose, for your bringing that woman, a common prostitute, into my house, and into the presence ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... incorrigible, according to the word of Jer. 2:20: "Thou hast broken My yoke, thou hast burst My bands, and thou hast said: 'I will not serve.' For on every high hill and under every green tree thou didst prostitute thyself." Hence Augustine says (Ep. lxxviii ad Pleb. Hippon.): "From the time I began to serve God, even as I scarcely found better men than those who made progress in monasteries, so have I not found worse than those who in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... deep-rooted modesty of women towards men in courtship is intimately interwoven with the marriage customs and magic rites of even the most primitive peoples, and has survived in many civilized practices to-day.[17] The prostitute must be able to simulate the modesty she may often be far from feeling, and the immense erotic advantage of the innocent over the vicious woman lies largely in the fact that in her the exquisite reactions ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... deserted for drink or left empty because men have no longer the courage to marry, a woman will appear, who comes out from that home and will sit down by your side in the workshop, in the factory, at the office, in the counting house. You don't want her as housewife; and as she refuses to be a prostitute, she will become a woman-worker, a competitor; and finally, because she has more energy than you have, and because she is not a drunkard, she will take ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux

... Heaven knows, I then did, and now do look upon with abhorrence and detestation. I had already forfeited my innocence, and wanted resolution to encounter misery and death. Nevertheless, before I could determine to embrace the condition of a prostitute, I was one day accosted in the Park by an elderly gentleman who sat down by me upon a bench, and, taking notice of the despondence which was evident in my countenance, pressed me to make him acquainted with the nature of my misfortune. So much ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... him to look for a new wife.' If he has a wife who isn't one at all, the best thing for him is to look for another who will prove to be so, otherwise he will search for the nearest public-house and a cheap prostitute. Surely it is better that it be granted his first marriage was a failure and let him try decently ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... is all this scene. Her reverence, it is true, sits behind a curtain; but her virtue uses language which would shame the lowest European prostitute; and which is filthy almost ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... is calling us villains: for no man asks the other to act the villain unless he believes him inclined to be one. No man attempts to seduce the truly honest woman. It is the supposed looseness of her mind that starts the thoughts of seduction, and he who offers it calls her a prostitute. Our pride is always hurt by the same propositions which offend our principles; for when we are shocked at the crime, we are wounded by the suspicion of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... English composers; and from the tall, willing, horse-chested, ham-handed, quasi-gifted ladies who stagger to their legs in gloomy drawing rooms after bad dinners and poison the air with Tosti's Good-bye; and from the low prehensile, godless laryngologists who prostitute their art to the saving of tenors who are happily threatened with loss of voice; and from clarinet cadenzas more than two inches in length; and from the first two acts of Il Trovatore; and from such fluffy, xanthous ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken

... kind of work you have to do. The very nature of it excludes an ideal. Its only standard is gold—hard, ringing metallic gold! I can't prostitute my talents to a work I don't believe in. A man's work is a revelation of what he is. And what he is will depend at last ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... so credulous of cure, When our most learned Doctors leaue vs, and The congregated Colledge haue concluded, That labouring Art can neuer ransome nature From her inaydible estate: I say we must not So staine our iudgement, or corrupt our hope, To prostitute our past-cure malladie To empericks, or to disseuer so Our great selfe and our credit, to esteeme A sencelesse helpe, when helpe ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... the flower of her kind.—Or becomes it.—For see all she gains on her way: the mere passing from hand to hand; the intense impressionable nature; the process of being moulded—why, even the common prostitute gets a certain manly breadth of mind, such as you other women never arrive at. Each one who comes and goes leaves her something: an experience—a turn of thought—it may be only an intuition—which ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... of other countries is sometimes vice, sometimes crime—among the free of our own, much more aggravated; among slaves, hardly deserves a harsher term than that of weakness. I have heard of complaint made by a free prostitute, of the greater countenance and indulgence shown by society toward colored persons of her profession, (always regarded as of an inferior and servile class, though individually free,) than to those of her own complexion. The former readily obtain employment; are even admitted into families, and ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... not, therefore, be conceived that I mean to degrade or vilify the literary character, when I would only separate the Author from those polluters of the press who have turned a vestal into a prostitute; a grotesque race of famished buffoons or laughing assassins; or that populace of unhappy beings, who are driven to perish in their garrets, unknown and unregarded by all, for illusions which even their calamities cannot disperse. Poverty, said an ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... dumbly at her. That Honor should ask him to take back the woman who had wrecked his life and whom he despised as the commonest prostitute in ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... easy to say. She said, moreover, that but one white person beside her master and mistress was in the conspiracy, and that was an Irish girl known as Peggy, "the Newfoundland Beauty." She had several aliases, and was an abandoned character, being a prostitute to the negroes, and at this time kept as a mistress by a bold, desperate negro named Caesar. This revelation of Mary's fell on the Grand Jury like a bombshell. The long- sought secret they now felt was out. They immediately informed the magistrates. Of course the ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... endeavoured at once to introduce into Scotland the church-government, and to renew, in England, the temporal domination, of his predecessor, Henry VIII. The furious temper of the Scottish nation first took fire; and the brandished footstool of a prostitute[A] gave the signal for civil dissension, which ceased not till the church was buried under the ruins of the constitution; till the nation had stooped to a military despotism; and the monarch to ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott

... Midnight found them still asserting and contradicting. Although they were both agreed now that Kadambini should be got out of the house, although Sripati believed that their guest had deceived his wife all the time by a pretended acquaintance, and Jogmaya that she was a prostitute, yet in the present discussion neither would acknowledge defeat. By degrees their voices became so loud that they forgot that Kadambini was sleeping in ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... penalties on women and letting men go free; and cruel in their application, enrolling women in a degraded class, making their return to virtue almost impossible. I think if I tell you that by these acts a woman can be arrested by a policeman on suspicion of being a prostitute, and subjected to an examination which amounts to a surgical operation, always disgraceful, sometimes injurious, even dangerous, I have made quite clear to an American lady that such a state of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... my head or lose it!" repeated Ibarra thoughtfully. "The dilemma is hard! But why? Is love for my country incompatible with love for Spain? Is it necessary to debase oneself to be a good Christian, to prostitute one's conscience in order to carry out a good purpose? I love my native land, the Philippines, because to it I owe my life and my happiness, because every man should love his country. I love Spain, the fatherland ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... referred had been brought to bear upon it, but it seems as though their only result had been this—that you have not even the common sense to be able to distinguish between a respectable girl and a prostitute. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... procession as an ingenious allegory, to the adaptation of which they were already disposed; and that, like the populace of a later and yet more civilized people, they hailed the goddess while they recognised the prostitute [231]. Be that as it may, the son of Hippocrates recovered his authority, and fulfilled his treaty with Megacles by a marriage with his daughter. Between the commencement of his first tyranny and the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... you intend, so soon as the war is over, to enlarge the Review, without increasing the subscription-price ... and then if Southern patronage ceases to be bestowed chiefly on the flimsy and immoral literature of the North, and Southern pens cease to prostitute themselves for pay by ministering to the vile and sensual literary appetites of the Yankees, then, we say, this Review will rank with the ablest for ability, and far above them for usefulness. But this result can be attained only when we cease to be Yankee-worshipers, and when the semi-traitorous ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... case), turned devotee Prelate on whom Bonaparte intends to confer the Roman tiara Saints supplied her with a finger, a toe, or some other parts Step is but short from superstition to infidelity Suspicion and tyranny are inseparable companions Two hundred and twenty thousand prostitute licenses Usurped the easy direction of ignorance Would cease to rule the day ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger

... world!" he snarled. "Did the world ever give anything to me? And what would they do with this? They would prostitute it to their own selfish ends; it would be just one more means to conquer and kill; and the capitalists would have it in their own dirty hands so that new lines of transportation beyond anything they dared dream ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... was constant, Which made him cast off both his cloake and coate; Like whom should men doe. If yee wish your wives Should leave dislik'd things, seeke it not with rage, 90 For that enrages; what yee give, yee have: But use calme warnings, and kinde manly meanes, And that in wives most prostitute will winne Not onely sure amends, but make us wives Better then those that ne'er ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... it that kept Marie in all really essential ways out of this class of social victims? It was because, in the first place, of the fact that her nature demanded something better than what the life of the prostitute afforded. And it was natural that the greater quality of personality that she possessed should attract the kind of love and social support needed essentially to justify to herself her instincts. When she was very young Marie secured the genuine love of two strong and remarkable personalities; ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... explained only by means of sexual cruelty, and on the other, knowledge of his habits with this regard may, again, help toward the conviction of a criminal. I recall only the case of Ballogh-Steiner in Vienna, a case in which a prostitute was stifled. The police were at that time hunting a man who was known in the quarter as "chicken-man,'' because he would always bring with him two fowls which he would choke during the orgasm. It was rightly inferred that a man who did that sort of thing was capable under similar circumstances ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... considered by them as an incurable leprosy. On arriving at the northern extremity of the province of Canton, one of our conductors had imprudently passed the night in one of those houses where, by the license of government, females are allowed to prostitute their persons in order to gain a livelihood. Here, it seems, he had caught the infection, and after suffering a considerable degree of pain, and not less alarm, he communicated to our physician the symptoms of his complaint, of the nature and cause of which he was entirely ignorant. He ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... happiness, though he uses neither flattery, nor bribery, nor intrigue, nor deceit; instead of loading you with praise, he will point you to the better way. I scoff at Cleon's tricks and plotting; honesty and justice shall fight my cause; never will you find me a political poltroon, a prostitute ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes

... no more engage; Arbuthnot's Wit enlivens not the Page. Thy Muse, that Prostitute abandon'd Jade, Now flounders in the Mire without Swift's Aid. Thy base Invectives Men no more regard; With just Disdain thy Scare-Crow Muse ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted

... said, "if I by any chance numbered myself amongst your friends I would warn you that you yourself are a traitor to your Order. You prostitute a great cause when you stoop to use its machinery to assist your own private vengeance. I ask you for your own sake to consider your words. Lucille is mine—mine she will remain, even though you should descend to something more despicable, more cowardly ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... most absolute of the literary types of English history. There was no great event, political or social, which is not mirrored in his poems; no sentiment or caprice of the age which does not there find expression; no kingly whim which he did not prostitute his great powers to gratify; no change of creed, political or religious, of which he was not the recorder—few indeed, where royal favor was concerned, to which he was not the convert. To review the life of Dryden himself, is therefore to enter into the chronicle ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... dear fellow," said the earl, "who know men, and who have lived all our lives in the world, must laugh behind the scenes at the cant we wrap in tinsel, and send out to stalk across the stage. We know that our Coriolanus of Tory integrity is a corporal kept by a prostitute, and the Brutus of Whig liberty is a lacquey turned out of place for stealing the spoons; but we must not tell this to the world. So, Brandon, you must write me a speech for the next session, and be sure ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... gracious God! how far have we Profaned thy heavenly gift of Poesy! Made prostitute and profligate the Muse, Debased to each obscene and impious use, Whose harmony was first ordain'd above For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love! O wretched we! why were we hurried down This lubrique and adulterate age, (Nay added fat pollutions of our own,) ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... hell, and furies! ha! she comes to seek him!— O prostitute!—and, on her prodigal flesh, She has lavished all the diamonds of the Guise, To set her off, and sell her ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... studies indicate the close relationship between feeble-mindedness and the spread of venereal scourges. We are informed that in Michigan, 75 per cent. of the prostitute class is infected with some form of venereal disease, and that 75 per cent. of the infected are mentally defective,—morons, imbeciles, or "border-line" cases most dangerous to the community at large. At least 25 per cent. of the inmates of our prisons, according ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... admiration, for they assure him that he possesses all the virtues under heaven without having acquired them, or without caring to acquire them; they do not give him their daughters and their wives to be raised at his pleasure to the rank of his concubines, but, by sacrificing their opinions, they prostitute themselves. Moralists and philosophers in America are not obliged to conceal their opinions under the veil of allegory; but, before they venture upon a harsh truth, they say, "We are aware that the people which we are addressing is too superior ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... from whom all heresies derive their origin, has as the material for his sect the following: Having redeemed from slavery at Tyre, a city of Phoenicia, a certain woman named Helena,(38) a prostitute, he was in the habit of carrying her about with him, declaring that she was the first conception [Ennoea] of his mind, the mother of all, by whom he conceived in his mind to make the angels and archangels. For this Ennoea, leaping forth ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... avowed Concubine: All Bavaria was scandalized by her impudent and abandoned conduct. Her feasts vied in luxury with Cleopatra's, and Lindenberg became the Theatre of the most unbridled debauchery. Not satisfied with displaying the incontinence of a Prostitute, She professed herself an Atheist: She took every opportunity to scoff at her monastic vows, and loaded with ridicule the most ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... "twelve have mounted the car of shamelessness." These latter are now called, are compelled to carry out the dead (among whom are their lovers), and to make clean the place of slaughter. Then they are led out and hung: such was the ancient fate of the prostitute in the household. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... false to me and false to the Companies, but after all there is nothing criminal in what you have done. To me, the greatest crime a man can commit is so to forget the manhood with which his Maker endowed him, as to prostitute it for temporary personal advantage, but the law looks upon other lesser crimes as deserving of greater punishment. I cannot tell how much of a lesson this may be to you. It will, of course, be necessary for you to leave New York, as the committee, ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... of a people, have in too many instances abused the confidence they possessed; and assuming the pretext of some public motive, have not scrupled to sacrifice the national tranquillity to personal advantage or personal gratification. The celebrated Pericles, in compliance with the resentment of a prostitute,1 at the expense of much of the blood and treasure of his countrymen, attacked, vanquished, and destroyed the city of the SAMNIANS. The same man, stimulated by private pique against the MEGARENSIANS,2 another nation of Greece, or ...
— The Federalist Papers

... poverty and neglect which drives a girl into prostitution usually has its source in a family too large to be properly cared for by the mother, if the girl is not actually subnormal because her mother bore too many children, and, therefore, the more likely to become a prostitute. Labor is oppressed because it is too plentiful; wages go up and conditions improve when labor is scarce. Large families make plentiful labor and they also provide the workers for the child-labor factories as well as the armies of unemployed. That population, swelled ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... of these female characters. "I am a common woman—fallen. Is it devilry in me—is it a wicked comfort—what is it—that induces me to be always tempting other women down, while I hate myself!" This next, with as much truth in it, goes deeper than the last. "The prostitute who will not let one certain youth approach her. 'O let there be some one in the world, who having an inclination towards me has not gratified it, and has not known me in my degradation!' She almost ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... and he grew painfully sad. The difference between what he had been then and what he was now, was enormous—just as great, if not greater than the difference between Katusha in church that night, and the prostitute who had been carousing with the merchant and whom they judged this morning. Then he was free and fearless, and innumerable possibilities lay ready to open before him; now he felt himself caught in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life, out of which he saw no means ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... woman, considered after Demosthenes in her three-fold character, prostitute for pleasure, concubine for service ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... and you see where their promises have landed me, in a lodging up two pair of stairs, with a sixpenny dinner from the cook's shop. Well, I suppose this promise will go after the others, and fortune will jilt me, as the jade has been doing any time these seven years. 'I puff the prostitute away,' " says he, smiling, and blowing a cloud out of his pipe. "There is no hardship in poverty, Esmond, that is not bearable; no hardship even in honest dependence that an honest man may not put up with. I came out of the lap of Alma Mater, puffed ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... such as neither his situation nor his character could enable him to support; and a letter, signed with the name of Honorius, was immediately despatched to the praetorian prefect, granting him a free permission to dispose of the public money, but sternly refusing to prostitute the military honors of Rome to the proud demands of a Barbarian. This letter was imprudently communicated to Alaric himself; and the Goth, who in the whole transaction had behaved with temper and decency, expressed, in the most outrageous language, his lively ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... a prostitute which must be sent about her business with kicks when one is in the right. [To her friend Adolphe Gueroult. La ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... ye hendecasyllables, as many as may be, from every part, all of ye, as many soever as there be! A shameless prostitute deems me fair sport, and denies return to me of our writing tablets, if ye are able to endure this. Let's after her, and claim them back. "Who may she be," ye ask? That one, whom ye see strutting awkwardly, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... prostitute who is unthinkable. She is only the tragic figure in the center of a devil's drama. It is society's attitude to her that is unthinkable. By men she is used for their pleasure and then despised and ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray

... will you daily guide this shallow-hearted fool to some commendable action. I bid you live as other folk do hereabouts. Coax! beg! cheat! wheedle! lie!" he barked like a teased dog, "and play the prostitute for him that wears my crown, till you achieve in part the task which is denied me. This doom I dare adjudge and to pronounce, because we are royal and ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... still very hard for him at this time. He has given us a moving sketch of it in his story entitled: "Once in Autumn." The hero, who is none other than the author himself, passes the night under an old, upturned boat, in the company of a prostitute who is just as poor and just as abandoned as himself. They have broken into a booth in order to steal enough bread to keep them from starving. Gorky is sad; he wants to weep; but the poor girl, miserable as she is, consoles him and covers him ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... to which Nash was frequently reduced by "the keenest pangs of poverty."[b] He confesses he was often obliged "to pen unedifying toys for gentlemen." When Harvey denounced him for "emulating Aretino's licentiousness" he admitted that poverty had occasionally forced him to prostitute his pen "in hope of gain" by penning "amorous Villanellos and Quipasses for new-fangled galiards and newer Fantisticos." In fact, he seems rarely to have known what it was to be otherwise than the subject of distress and need. As an example ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash

... and peaceful old priest he would find the ever growing flock of wretched ones; the little fledglings who had fallen from their nests, and whom he found pale with hunger and shivering with cold; the households of abominable misery in which the father drank and the mother became a prostitute, while the sons and the daughters sank into vice and crime; the dwellings, too, through which famine swept, where all was filth and shameful promiscuity, where there was neither furniture nor linen, nothing but purely animal life. And then there would also come the cold ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... is your word worth? The prostitute in the street is sooner to be believed. She has the honesty to say what she is, but you—Where were you yesterday when you were not at your sister's? ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... or a prostitute [connected with the temple neither can marry] to whom her father has given a dowry and a deed therefor, but if in this deed it is not stated that she may bequeath it as she pleases, and has not explicitly stated that she ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... with the theogonies of the Far East. She no longer sprang from biblical traditions, could no longer even be assimilated with the living image of Babylon, the royal Prostitute of the Apocalypse, garbed like her in jewels and purple, and painted like her; for she was not hurled by a fatidical power, by a supreme force, into ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... who had deferred their conversion from time to time, now on the sudden gave themselves up to God, and even renounced the world. The most inveterate enemies were sincerely reconciled, and the most impudent harlots abandoned their prostitute way of living. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... turned on him. She was evidently in a prostitute's tantrum of malicious deviltry. Presently she would begin to lash ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... the girl would be that of a prostitute. She might be married by the temple priests to the god Khandoka, as thousands of widows had been, and thus become a nun of the temple, a prostitute to the celibate priests. Knowing all this, and that Bootea was what she was, her face and eyes holding all that sweetness ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... to literature, science, art, and politics!" exclaimed Blondet. "La Torpille is the only common prostitute in whom I ever found the stuff for a superior courtesan; she has not been spoiled by education—she can neither read nor write, she would have understood us. We might have given to our era one of those magnificent Aspasias without which ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... thou make me the tenant of thy lust, To toil, and for my labour take the dregs, The juicy vintage being left for thee? No: she's an infamous, lewd prostitute: I loath ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... and in Pegu. They are but men, and men will fight. If they were perfect in their faith, the race would have died out long ago. They have fought, but they have never fought in the name of their faith. They have never been able to prostitute its teachings to their own wants. Whatever the Burmans have done, they have kept their faith pure. When they have offended against the laws of the Buddha they have done so openly. Their souls are guiltless of hypocrisy—for whatever that may avail them. They have known the difference ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... a prostitute,' said he, in a voice of thunder, 'and you shall undergo the punishment of prostitutes! Branded in the eyes of the world you invoke, try to prove to that world that you ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... men have such an ignoble way of thinking, that, if they debauch their hearts, and prostitute their persons, following perhaps a gust of inebriation, they suppose the wife, slave rather, whom they maintain, has no right to complain, and ought to receive the sultan, whenever he deigns to return, with open arms, though his have been polluted ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... not, dear father, descend from my noble imaginings. What I want in a husband is a soul, not a fortune. I will die single rather than prostitute my own mind in a union with a being with whom I have no sympathies. Brought up from my infancy in connection with the great men of all ages—familiar with lofty ideas and illustrious examples—have ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... had conquered thee, And changed the object of thy will, It had been lethargy in me, Not constancy, to love thee still. Yea, it had been a sin to go And prostitute affection so; Since we are taught no prayers to say To such as must ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... Simon Magus! woe to you, His wretched followers! who the things of God, Which should be wedded unto goodness, them, Rapacious as ye are, do prostitute For gold and silver in adultery! Now must the trumpet sound for you, since yours Is the third chasm. Upon the following vault We now had mounted, where the rock impends Directly o'er the centre of the foss. Wisdom Supreme! how wonderful the art, Which thou ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... by evil passions from the madness produced by brandy. A prisoner affirmed that the witnesses who appeared against him were not entitled to credit. One of them, he said, was a Papist, and another a prostitute. "Thou impudent rebel," exclaimed the Judge, "to reflect on the King's evidence! I see thee, villain, I see thee already with the halter round thy neck." Another produced testimony that he was a good Protestant. "Protestant!" ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... The play's intention was to show a typical Russian working-class family. There were the old father, constantly drunk on vodka, alternately maudlin and scolding; the old mother; two sons, the one a Communist and the other an Anarchist; the wife of the Communist, who did dressmaking; her sister, a prostitute; and a young girl of bourgeois family, also a Communist, involved in a plot with the Communist son, who was of course the hero ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... was made severer. Tiberius decreed that no woman, whose grandfather, father or husband had been or still was a Roman Knight, could prostitute herself for money. Married women, who caused themselves to be entered in the registers of prostitutes, were condemned to banishment from Italy as adulteresses. Of course, there were no such punishments for the men. Moreover, as Juvenal reports, even ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... fryar," a kind of ecclesiastical Falstaff. A most immoral, licentious Dominican, who for money would prostitute even the Church and Holy Scriptures. Dominick helped Lorenzo in his amour with ...
— 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.

... not by lowering it for the woman; and the fact that society must recognize its duty in no shape or way relieves, not even to the smallest degree, the individual from doing his or her duty. Sentimentality which grows maudlin on behalf of the willful prostitute is a curse; to confound her with the entrapped or coerced girl, the real white slave, is both foolish and wicked. There are evil women just as there are evil men, naturally depraved girls just as there are naturally depraved young men; and the right and wise thing, the just thing, to them, and the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... prostituted themselves for their honor, who were compared with Christ ascending Calvary:—friends who deceived their friends out of devotion to them:—glorified triangular relations:—heroic cuckoldry: (the cuckold, like the blessed prostitute, had become a European commodity: the example of King Mark had turned the heads of the poets: like the stag of Saint Hubert, the cuckold never appeared without a halo.) And Christophe saw also lovely damsels torn between passion and duty: ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... made her the victim of the most odious assault. He has degraded her—he has brought her, so to speak, into contact with the woman of the streets. He has created between her and that common woman I know not what mysterious relationship. It is the poisoned blood of the prostitute which poisons my daughter and her child; that abject creature, she lives, she lives in us! She belongs to our family—he has given her a seat at our hearth! He has soiled the imagination and the thoughts of my poor child, as he has soiled her body. He has united forever in her soul the idea of love ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair

... women full human beings, trained and useful in some form of work; the class of busy idlers, who run about forever "entertaining" and being "entertained" will disappear as utterly as will the prostitute. No woman with real work to do could have the time for such petty amusements; or enjoy them if she did have time. No woman with real work to do, work she loved and was well fitted for, work honored and well-paid, would take up the Unnatural ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... When straight awakend with a crie And bitter groan, again reposes, Again a deep sigh interposes. And now she heares a trembling voyce: Ah! can there ought on earth rejoyce! Why weares she this gay livery, Not black as her dark entrails be? Can trees be green, and to the ay'r Thus prostitute their flowing hayr? Why do they sprout, not witherd dy? Must each thing live, save wretched I? Can dayes triumph in blew and red, When both their light and life is fled? Fly Joy on wings of Popinjayes To courts of fools, where as your ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... a better, share with us," said Joshua. So now we had a reformed burglar and a reformed prostitute ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... portraits after Sonia, the saintly prostitute, that of Nastasia Philipovna in The Idiot is the most lifelike and astounding. The career of this half-mad girl is sinister and tragic; she is half-sister in her temperamental traits to Paulina in the same master's admirable story The Gambler. Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov is another ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... to shackle the virtuous hands of Ellen Craft, a wife and mother, whom her Georgian "owner" wished to sell as a harlot at New Orleans! A meeting was summoned at Faneuil Hall, and Boston answered, "Yes, here is the chain. Let the woman-hunter capture Ellen Craft, make her a Prostitute at New Orleans. She is a virtuous wife and mother,—but no matter. Slavery is king and commands it. Let the ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... unite, and unmask this monster, and show the public its true nature. And this can be accomplished in no better way than through a study of the object of the laws which the secret nostrum manufacturers are now endeavoring to prostitute for their own advantage, and the teaching of the public what these laws were ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... desires had conquer'd thee, And chang'd the object of thy will, It had been lethargy in me, Not constancy to love thee still. Yea it had been a sin to go And prostitute affection so, Since we are taught no prayers to say To such as ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various

... in the Endeavour, it was generally done in a private manner, and the men did not seem to interest themselves much in it. But now, I was told, they were the chief promoters of a shameful traffic, and that for a spike-nail, or any other thing they value, they would oblige the women to prostitute themselves, whether they would or no; and even without any regard to that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr



Words linked to "Prostitute" :   street girl, whore, sporting lady, sell, slattern, adult female, street-walk, cyprian, bawd, tart, floozy, woman of the street, working girl, streetwalk, harlot, cocotte, streetwalker, lady of pleasure



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