#courtesan

Let those who love me follow me'Cora Pearl, on being the very first person to dye her hair red in 1864 ↗

— Cora Pearl

#fashion #women #love

So sweet and delicious do I become, when I am in bed with a man who, I sense, loves and enjoys me, that the pleasure I bring excels all delight, so the knot of love, however tight it seemed before, is tied tighter still. ↗

— Veronica Franco

#erotic #pleasure #poetry #sex #love

I have never deceived anyone, for I have never belonged to anyone. My independence was all my wealth: I have known no other happiness. ↗

— Cora Pearl

#independence #money #women #money

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. ↗

— Charles Baudelaire

#courtesan #icarus #paramours #beauty