Emblem 44

French: He who keeps a whore and drives an ass will never be out of trouble. Latin: Let it be written on the gates: a harlot is the gateway of death. Gluttony, anger, envy, pride, sacrileges, robberies, murders were born on the same day on which the harlot took up her trade. Italian: He who has one foot in the brothel has the other in the hospital. Dutch: He who sets one foot in the whorehouse sets the other in the hospital. Spanish: A beautiful hostess, bad for the purse. i.e. French: A fair hostess, an evil for the purse. French: To drive off the mastiffs one must kill the bitch. He who clings to whores gets moths and worms, and withers away. Sirach 19:2. Do not willingly keep company with loose women, for just as moths come out of clothes, so much evil comes from them. Sirach 42:12. Dutch: Whoever marries a whore is a scoundrel, or will become one. Whores are like birdlime: whatever comes near it loses its feathers. Italian: The horses dig, the dogs pull, and the whores ruin. He who drives an ass and leads a whore never gets out of trouble. Latin: A woman softer than honey, not a maiden but an abyss; the more glittering, the more harmful; while she caresses, she favours herself; while she laughs, she gnaws and scrapes, and that both boastfully and secretly. Dutch: He who courts whores or drives asses — it is a wonder if he stays at peace. Dutch: A caterpillar on a cabbage, a whore in a house. Latin: He who feeds a harlot destroys his own substance, i.e. everything that nourishes and sustains life. Jacques Olivier in his treatise on Women. Latin: The kiss of a crafty concubine is the bite of a deaf asp. German: A woman's eye is a burning-glass. French: Whores empty the purse of money and the mind of reason. See many such things in the 'Theophilosophical Table' on women. Aeneas Sylvius, Letter on the remedy for illicit love: What is a harlot but the plunderer of youth, the plundering of men, the devourer of a patrimony, the ruin of honour, the fodder of the devil, the gate of death, the supplement of hell, the peril of life, a flattering death, gall-like honey, sweet poison, dainty destruction, a self-chosen evil? A harlot is called 'the calamity of the farm' in Terence (Eunuch, act 1, scene 1), as if to say, coarser hail that shatters the stalks, for what we ought to take (says Servius) she intercepts. Certainly that crop scarcely ever raises itself again once that calamity has beaten it down. Theocritus in the 'Reapers' calls a girl who devours another's patrimony a Locust, since she is accustomed to intercept the harvest destined for the farmers. For armed Mars harms far less than naked Venus. Matthaeus Tympius, Theologico-philosophical Table, chapter 29, on lust. French: For the love of a wanton woman one comes to a morsel of bread. Proverbs 6:26. I likewise think a harlot is the sea: that is, whatever you give, it devours, and is never full, etc. Plautus, Truculentus. Plautus, Truculentus: A harlot by her blandishment brought my poor master into poverty, deprived him of goods, of light, of honour and of friends. Ovid: Woman alone exults in the spoils taken from a man; she alone hires out nights, she alone comes to be hired. See the notable verses of Anaxilas in Martinus Delrio, Adagia from the sacred books of the Old Testament, chapter 23, part 2.