"Celibacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... creation of Christendom proper. The wonder seen is that the northern tribes, impinging on the empire, and settling on its various provinces like vultures, became the matter into which the Holy See, guiding and unifying the episcopate, maintaining the original principle of celibacy, and planting it in the institute of the religious life through various countries depopulated or barbarous, infused into the whole mass one spirit, so that Arians became Catholics, Teuton raiders issued into ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... children by one wife, which is no ordinary blessing, and most of them sonnes. His wife's name was Patience; the name of which I have heard in few wives, the quality in none." As the second married bishop he certainly appears to have supported fully the Protestant opposition to the celibacy of the clergy. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... as soon as needed, And as for Mrs. Dawes, she was too anxious to get into the genteelest of all (Hollingford) society to object to whatever Miss Browning (who, in right of being a deceased rector's daughter, rather represented the selectest circle of the little town) advocated, celibacy, marriage, bigamy, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and this to her was a sort of comfort. When she was dead my knowledge of my own plaguy impressionableness, which seemed to be ineradicable—as it seems still—led me to think what safeguards I could set over myself with a view to keeping my promise to live a life of celibacy; and among other things I determined to forswear the society, and if possible the sight, of women young and attractive, as far as I had the power ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... remarkable instances in which Zoroaster lays aside the prophet, assumes the legislator, and discovers a liberal concern for private and public happiness, seldom to be found among the grovelling or visionary schemes of superstition. Fasting and celibacy, the common means of purchasing the divine favor, he condemns with abhorrence, as a criminal rejection of the best gifts of Providence. The saint, in the Magian religion, is obliged to beget children, to plant useful trees, to destroy ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... suffering inflicted on so large a scale. It compels us to ask ourselves on what we base, and at what we value the moral standard which, if it is to be preserved, must mean a tremendous sacrifice on the part of so large a number of women as is involved in their acceptance of life-long celibacy. ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... the causes of all disease and devastating passion; there were despotism and plutocracy, based on commercial greed; and there was marriage, which irrationally tyrannising over sexual relations, produces unnatural celibacy and prostitution. These threads, and many others, were all taken up in his first serious poem, 'Queen Mab' (1812-13), an over-long rhapsody, partly in blank verse, partly in loose metres. The spirit of Ianthe is rapt by the Fairy Mab in her pellucid car to the confines ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... the work which most conveys his interpretation of the spiritual conditions of his time, is his book, "De Laude Virginitatis," in praise of Celibacy. But for the purposes of literary history, his artistic studies are of more importance than those which are strictly religious and ecclesiastical. Of the greatest interest for us are his Riddles. These are short Latin poems somewhat ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... Catholic as well as Protestant. So, too, the charges are not naturally incredible, because the kind of vice alleged against the monks has unfortunately been far from unknown wherever and whenever numbers of men, young or middle-aged, have lived together in enforced celibacy.] ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... ask her for you—blessed if I don't! I intended to run over and see her in the morning, anyway. Did it ever strike you that matchmaking is the proper business of old maids? They atone for celibacy through vicarious marriage!" ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... again be placed in jeopardy, for events were at length tending towards a conclusion of the weary strife. The views of the reformers had gained general acceptance as the doctrine of the Church. The obligation of clerical celibacy was acknowledged: simony had much diminished; Henry was the only King in Western Europe who still claimed to invest his prelates. Although it was some time before all the great French feudatories yielded to the spirit of reform, the French King himself had abandoned the ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... such words? I do ensure thee I knew nothing at all, save that when I had been good and done as I was told, I should have a pretty little habit like the Sisters, and be called 'Sister' as these grown women were. Is that what God calls a vow?—a vow of life-long celibacy, dragged from a babe that knew not what vow nor celibacy were! 'Doth God lack your lie?' saith Job [Job 13, verse 7]. Yea, the Psalmist crieth, 'Numquid adhaeret Tibi sedes iniquitatis?' [Psalm 94, verse 20]—Wala wa! the only thing I marvel is that He thundereth not down with His ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... On those days she was due home at half-past four or so. On other days she was able to have a late breakfast and to darn her stockings after it, but that meant that she did not get home till very late. Some 'buses, I gather, are called "single 'buses," but in this case the word does not imply celibacy alone. The single 'bus is occupied by one conductor all day Jong for a fortnight. The "double 'bus" is shared by two conductors, one presiding in the morning and the other in the afternoon. The double ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... which Cato as censor (570) laid on this most abominable species of slaves kept for luxury, would not be of much moment, and besides fell practically into disuse a year or two afterwards along with the property-tax generally. Celibacy—as to which grave complaints were made as early as 520—and divorces naturally increased in proportion. Horrible crimes were perpetrated in the bosom of families of the highest rank; for instance, the consul Gaius Calpurnius ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... its cult, and that the greatest possible calamity is to die without leaving a male heir to perform the rites and to make the offerings. The paramount duty of filial piety among the early Greeks and Romans was to provide for the perpetuation of the family cult; and celibacy was therefore generally forbidden,—the obligation to marry being enforced by opinion where not enforced by legislation. Among the free classes of Old Japan, marriage was also, as a general rule, obligatory in the case of a male heir: otherwise, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... vices. Even in some of the religious houses the brothers would meet at night for unseemly revels, splashing the stone floors with wine and shrieking in a delirium of drunkenness. The rules of the Church enjoined temperance, continence, and celibacy; but the decrees of Leo IX. and Nicholas II. and Alexander II. and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... true, that mental and bodily derangement is attributable in part to other deviations from rectitude and nature than those which concern diet. The mistakes cherished by society respecting the connection of the sexes, whence the misery and diseases of celibacy, unenjoying prostitution, and the premature arrival of puberty, necessarily spring; the putrid atmosphere of crowded cities; the exhalations of chemical processes: the muffling of our bodies in superfluous apparel; ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... sympathy, now affords her a most efficient protection. She passes among her fellow-countrymen abroad for a very independent, but a very happy woman; although, as she is by this time twenty-seven years of age, a little romance is occasionally invoked to account for her continued celibacy. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... definite interest, of picturesque arrangement, and of sustained and disciplined power. Schefer is a scholar, and his didactic purpose is plain enough, and well enough managed. The Teutonic character has always instinctively revolted against the practice of celibacy, a form of ascetism quite natural, and sometimes perhaps inevitable, as a reaction against the unbridled sensualism of the Africans and Asiatics, but quite out of place in climes so temperate and races ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... you fat and rosy: if I am a walking satire on celibacy,—you, at least, are a living panegyric ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the sacred ministries of the family state been undervalued and warred upon in other directions; for example, the Romish Church has made celibacy a prime virtue, and given its highest honors to those who forsake the family state as ordained by God. Thus came great communities of monks and nuns, shut out from the love and labors of a Christian home; thus, also, came the monkish systems of education, collecting the young ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is new to you, perhaps," he went on, with gentle tolerance. "You have believed the stories people tell that in my youth I was vowed to celibacy and the priesthood. That is not true. I have always been free to marry, but although to-day we figure as a great progressive nation, many of the thousand-year-old ideas of ancient China have dwelt in my brain and still sit enshrined in my heart. The aristocracy of China has ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... And the priest felt all this, as, melancholy and envious, he turned from the door in that November day, to find himself thoroughly alone. He now began seriously to muse upon those fancied blessings which men wearied with celibacy see springing, heavenward, behind the altar. A few weeks afterwards a notable change was visible in the good man's exterior. He became more careful of his dress, he shaved every morning, he purchased a crop-eared Welsh cob; and it was ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... romance." It is as well documented as any of Scott's, and reposes especially upon the "Colloquies" of Erasmus, the betrothal of whose parents, with their subsequent separation by the monastic vow of celibacy, is the subject of the story. This is somewhat romanticised, but keeps a firm grip upon historical realities. The period of the action is the fifteenth century, yet the work is as far as possible from being a chivalry tale, like the diaphanous fictions of Fouque. "In that ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... asked his friend Melanchthon to pray for him on this account. Then Fate would have it that during these very weeks the restless mind of Carlstadt in Wittenberg fell upon the question of the marriage of priests, and reached the conclusion, in a pamphlet on celibacy, that the vow of chastity was not binding on priests and monks. The Wittenbergers in general agreed—first of all, Melanchthon, whose position in this matter was freest from prejudice, since he had never received ordination and had been ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... of celibacy which the active, well-fed, well-exercised and imaginatively stirred young man of the educated classes is supposed to lead from the age of nineteen or twenty, when Nature certainly meant him to marry, to thirty or ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... them are normal and not morbid; their inheritance as in the Jukes family; epileptics and their nervous instability; insanity; religious rapture; strange views of the insane on individuality; their moody segregation; the religious discipline of celibacy, fasting and solitude (see also 125); large field of study among ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... not that God has sent us the victory, whilst Sa'd is hiding behind the gates of Quadesyeh? He was thinking then of increasing his family and of making his wives mothers, for the wives of Sa'd know not the privations of celibacy." ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... her matutinal devotions. Untoward circumstances, hastened, perhaps, by a wealthier suitor, brought this amour to a disastrous issue, and Father Jose entered a monastery, taking upon himself the vows of celibacy. It was here that his natural fervor and poetic enthusiasm conceived expression as a missionary. A longing to convert the uncivilized heathen succeeded his frivolous earthly passion, and a desire to explore and develop unknown fastnesses continually ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... would smile at it, knowing that it was an accidental effect with no malice in it. If any of you really believe in a working Utopia, why not join the Shakers, and convert the world to this mode of life? Celibacy alone would cure a great many of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... most powerful incentive to matrimony, and there is not perhaps any country on the face of the earth where marriage is more general than here, instances of persons of either sex passing their lives in a state of celibacy being extremely rare. The necessity of purchasing does not prove such an obstacle to matrimony as is supposed. Was it indeed true that every man was obliged to remain single till he had accumulated, from the produce of his ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... in mind this general want of association in family life if we would in any degree understand the sort of soul-celibacy, if we may use the term, which the American woman keeps all through her married life. No more in this second period of her life than in the first does love bear that preponderating part which seems to us Frenchmen an ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Dick, who was in Heaven too, with King Charles and all the Blessed Army of Martyrs. And I have heard, indeed, that the unhappy business of the King's death was the means of so crazing, or casting into a Sad Celibacy and Devouring Melancholy, multitudes of comely young women who were born for love and delights, and to be the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... good chaplain," quoth William, impatiently. He had enough of that language from Lanfranc himself; and, moreover, was thinking more of the Isle of Ely than of the celibacy of the clergy. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... common rooms are perhaps more dreary than of old, in many a college, for lack of the presence of men now translated to another place. As to the "society" of Oxford, that is, no doubt, very much more charming and vivacious than it used to be in the days when Tony Wood was the surly champion of celibacy. ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... was the man of the world of the family. He had been to China and brought home a collection of curiosities; he had made a fortune—or rather he had quintupled a fortune already considerable; he was distinguished by that combination of celibacy, "property," and good humor which appeals to even the most subdued imaginations; and it was taken for granted that he would presently place these advantages at the disposal of some well-regulated young ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... derangement is attributable in part to other deviations from rectitude and nature than those which concern diet. The mistakes cherished by society respecting the connection of the sexes, whence the misery and diseases of unsatisfied celibacy, unenjoying prostitution, and the premature arrival of puberty, necessarily spring; the putrid atmosphere of crowded cities; the exhalations of chemical processes; the muffling of our bodies in superfluous apparel; the absurd treatment of infants:—all these and innumerable other causes contribute ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... case against the monasteries was complete; and there is no occasion either to be surprised or peculiarly horrified at the discovery. The demoralization which was exposed was nothing less and nothing more than the condition into which men of average nature compelled to celibacy, and living as the exponents of a system which they disbelieved, were certain ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... conscience or objection, and that indisputably, for they climax all by the high authority of Popes and councils that cannot be deceived: pious treatises and manuals, verily of flaming heat, for they mingle the yearnings of a constrained celibacy with the fervencies of worship and the cravings after God. Yes, there is meat here for every human mouth; only that, alas for men! the meat is that which perisheth, and not endureth unto everlasting life. Rome, thou wert sagely schemed; and if Lucifer devised thee not for the various ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... passions or partialities, and divest themselves as much as possible of all the wants and demands of our material frame. Zoroaster appears indeed to have preferred morality to devotion, to have condemned celibacy and fasting, and to have pronounced, that "he who sows the ground with diligence and care, acquires a greater stock of religious merit than he who should repeat ten thousand prayers." But his followers at least did not abide by this decision. They found it more practicable to secure to themselves ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... garden, orchard, etc., and get a small house partly finished, so as to inhabit it, it will add to your comfort and health. I can help you in that too. Think about it. Then, too, you must get a nice wife. I do not like you being so lonely. I fear you will fall in love with celibacy. I have heard some very pleasing reports of Fitzhugh. I hope that his desires, if beneficial to his happiness, may be crowned with success. I saw the lady when I was in Petersburg, and was much pleased with her. I will get Agnes or your mother to tell you what ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... these cases we may compare the monastic institutions of the Middle Ages. We are not as a rule able to see whether they were "lay brothers," or had become "clerics," as well as "clerks." But there is no sign of celibacy. Even the priests ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... but touches the heart all the more deeply, perhaps; anyhow, Barty had no doubt as to which of the two voices was the voice for him. His passion was as that of Brian de Bois-Guilbert for mere strength, except that he was bound by no vows of celibacy. There were no moonlit platonics about Barty's robust love, but all the chivalry and tenderness and romance of a knight-errant underlay its vigorous complexity. He was a good knight, though not ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... away from home, there will only be one thing for her father to do, and that will be to marry again," remarked Miss Le Grove, who found the state of forced celibacy unendurable. ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... They are called by the Mongols, by a corruption of the Sanskrit, Ubashi and Ubashanza. Their vows extend to the strict keeping of the five great commandments of the Buddhist Law, and they diligently ply the rosary and the prayer-wheel, but they are not pledged to celibacy, nor do they adopt the tonsure. As a sign of their amphibious position, they commonly wear a red or yellow girdle. These are what some travellers speak of as the lowest order of Lamas, permitted to marry; and Polo may have regarded them in ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Shelley himself can no more bring themselves to commit adultery than to commit any common theft, whilst women who loathe sex slavery more fiercely than Mary Wollstonecraft are unable to face the insecurity and discredit of the vagabondage which is the masterless woman's only alternative to celibacy. But in spite of all this there is a revolt against marriage which has spread so rapidly within my recollection that though we all still assume the existence of a huge and dangerous majority which regards the least hint of scepticism ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... Protestant clergymen will be living in "filthy concubinage"! Consider, in the same way, the problems of education, burial, prison discipline, blasphemy, poor relief, incorporation, mortmain, religious endowments, vows of celibacy. To the above list, as given by Gladstone, one might add many issues, such as birth control, which have arisen since ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... measures, so eloquent its appeals, so unequivocal its resolutions, that it at once gave shape and character to the anti-slavery cause in this section of the Union. In the midst of all these mighty movements, I have wooed "a fair ladye," and won her, have thrown aside celibacy, and jumped body and soul into matrimony, have sunk the character of bachelor in that of husband, have settled down into domestic quietude, and repudiated all my roving desires, and have found that which I have long been yearning to find, a home, a wife, and ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... kind is the life of that extraordinary couple, Harry Tersett and his lady. Harry was, in the days of his celibacy, one of those pert creatures who have much vivacity and little understanding; Mrs. Rebecca Quickly, whom he married, had all that the fire of youth and a lively manner could do towards ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... approve of late marriages, observing that more was lost in point of time, than compensated for by any possible advantages[379]. Even ill assorted marriages were preferable to cheerless celibacy. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... me another ... Night after night I've hammered the thing out, and I can't hit on a better ... Heigh-ho, Dick, this isn't like you,' and he grinned ruefully. 'You're making yourself a fine argument in favour of celibacy—in time of war, anyhow. What is it ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... To what extent the celibacy of monks and nuns debased the fundamental principles of Christianity there are a number of publications whose authors are eye-witnesses of the orgies practised in their own monasteries, and the writer in his superior office ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... desire to keep our young women pure and to protect them from infection, in the endeavor to make them demand one moral standard for both sexes, our exaggerating reformers are condemning them to lifelong celibacy, which in the case of women often means lifelong neurasthenia ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... libraries, and in private collections dedicated to that particular side of inquiry and learning. In the booksellers' catalogues we sometimes meet with examples, which are recommended to the curious buyer by their illustrations of conventual life, and their exposure of those vices which a state of celibacy is calculated to promote in both sexes. The chained book is not an uncommon feature in the ancient ecclesiastical repositories, and even in certain churches; and apart from the Scriptures, it almost invariably enters into the department of early ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... serious loss of vital power; there will be no tendency to spermatorrhoea or congestion, nor will he be afflicted with any one of those ills which certain vicious writers and quacks would lead many people to believe. Celibacy is perfectly consistent with mental vigor and physical strength. Regularity in the habits of life will always have its good effects on ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... to find people who could prove an unbroken lineage of educated forbears going back more than four hundred years. During the middle ages the monks of the Church were the chief and almost sole depositories of education and learning, and as they were bound by their vows to life-long celibacy there could be no transmission from them to posterity of any of that increased capacity of brain which we are supposing as having been acquired by each individual through his own mental exertion. We know, of course, that there were frequent lapses from the unnatural ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... for Babylon) and its apparent object an elaborate attack upon the Roman Church, which in fact was but a cover for the real onslaught. With the Romans, although perhaps he did not know it himself, he had certain sympathies, for instance, in the matter of celibacy. Nor did he entirely disapprove of the monastic orders. Then he found nothing shocking in the tenets and methods of the Jesuits working for what they conceived to be a good end. The real targets of his animosity ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... man of sense;—without it, though a young lady were beautiful and otherwise lovely beyond comparison, wealthy as the Indies, surrounded by thousands of the most worthy friends, and even talented, let him beware! Better remain in celibacy a thousand years (could life last so long) great as the evil may be, than form a union with such an object. He should pity, and seek her reformation, if not beyond the bounds of possibility; but love her he should not! The penalty will be ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... that vision to do with her real sorrows? That fitting of certain words was a mere chance; the rest was all vague—nay, those words themselves were vague; they were determined by nothing but her brother's memories and beliefs. He believed there was something fatal in pagan learning; he believed that celibacy was more holy than marriage; he remembered their home, and all the objects in the library; and of these threads the vision was woven. What reasonable warrant could she have had for believing in such a vision and acting on it? None. True as the voice of foreboding ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them; the lonely wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamor and clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance, and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... merely patrician caste, but religious customs, which had declined. Temples were erected, and the shrines of gods were restored. Marriage was encouraged, and the morals of the people were regulated by sumptuary laws. Severe penalties were enacted against celibacy, to which the people had been led by the increasing profligacy of the times, and the expenses of living. Restrictions were placed on the manumission of slaves. The personal habits of the imperator were simple, but dignified. His mansion on the Palatine was moderate ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... instance of the extent to which mankind can sometimes be confided in, and to show that celibacy, too, is not without this virtue, you will allow me to relate, briefly, ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... limitation, mutual annulment and mutual exasperation. Home with an atmosphere of contention is worse than none for the child, and it is the interest of the child, and that alone, that will be the test of all these things. I do not think that the arrangement in couples is universally applicable, or that celibacy (tempered by sterile vice) should be its only alternative. Nor can I see why the union of two childless people should have an indissoluble permanence or prohibit an ampler grouping. The question is greatly complicated by the economic disadvantage of women, which makes ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... doctrine and strange brotherhood now forgotten or veiled under some horrible outbreaking of stifling passion and terrible ante-Protestantism. Over this path, on which, in earlier ages, the mitre and rosary and violet robe and confessional, and doctrines of celibacy and monkery and nun-nism, and bell and consecrated taper, and still deeper dogmas or doctrines, wandered from the East into the Church, came also heresies, terrible as Knights Templars', which in due time warred against the Church, and cleft it in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... some one else's wife, married women speak of him as a poor-spirited creature, a man given to low vice, a lover of servant girls. Soon adultery becomes the most respectable form of marriage, and widowhood and celibacy are commonly practised. No one takes a wife unless he takes her away from some one else. Now men vie with one another in wasting what they have stolen, and in collecting together what they have wasted with the ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... put up a barrage of facts which merely show that all countries, and indeed the earth itself, would have been overpopulated long ago if the increase of population had not been limited by certain factors, ranging from celibacy and late marriages to famines, diseases, wars, and infanticide. The truth of these facts is indisputable, but it is nevertheless a manifest breach of logic to argue from the fact of poverty, disease, and war having checked ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... want a wife? Was that what was the matter with him? Was that why he went about all day and every day, these last weeks, feeling as if half of him were asleep? He had always been a strong advocate of the celibacy of the clergy, as far as his own case went. Nothing, he had always assured himself, should ever come between him and his work. A wife would be a perpetual distraction: she would want money, and amusement, and a thousand things that he never thought about; and she would interfere with his ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... of limone learned in the law, a D.D. Mohammed did his best to abolish the priest and his craft by making each Moslem paterfamilias a pontifex in his own household and he severely condemned monkery and celibacy. But human nature was too much for him: even before his death ascetic associations began to crop up. Presently the Olema in Al-Islam formed themselves into a kind of clergy; with the single but highly important difference that they must (or ought to) ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... love you; but she is freakish, and at times inclined to strain at her bit. Perhaps Annie Lipton has been putting ideas into her head against marriage in general. She may have frightened her, and they may have sworn celibacy together in the watches of the night. Girls hatch more mischief when they ought to be asleep. They are ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... spinsterhood. But, to do her justice, this regrettable state of single blessedness was far from being her own fault. If her good fortune had but equalled her courage and energy she should have relinquished celibacy years ago. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... "If neither of them existed it wouldn't affect the other's chances in the least. Their only merit is that they both enhance the charms of celibacy!" ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... its elaborate vocal worship accomplished much for the cause of music, but also, with its vast encouragement to the monastic life and to celibacy, coerced a great number of musicians to be monks. This banishes them from a place here—not by any means because their being monks prevented their having love affairs, but because it greatly prevented ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... popular man among women, but more so as a general than a special favourite. Living as a fellow at Oxford, marriage with him had been out of the question, and it may be doubted whether he had ever allowed his heart to be touched. Though belonging to a Church in which celibacy is not the required lot of its ministers, he had come to regard himself as one of those clergymen to whom to be a bachelor is almost a necessity. He had never looked for parochial duty, and his career at Oxford was utterly incompatible ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... posterity. Hence it is that bed and board, eonnubium and commercium, have, from time immemorial, been considered correlative ideas; and, to all the more logical socialists, a community of wives (or celibacy)(512) is as dear as a community of goods.(513) ( 245.) And in practice, the greater number of nations of hunters, who, according to our conceptions, have no knowledge of a real family and no knowledge of property, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... the prospect of so great a role. Oh, there was no going back! But he perceived he must be very clever about it. He must make it all as easy as possible for her. His heart contracted with tenderness as he took vows that could not have been more religious if they had been made concerning celibacy instead of concerning marriage. He regretted he was an Atheist. He had felt this before in moments of urgency, for blasphemy abhors a vacuum, but now he wanted some white high thing to swear by; something ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... year of her death died Fothadh, the last Celtic bishop of St Andrews, and the Celtic clergy were gradually superseded and replaced by monks of English name, English speech, and English ideas—or rather the ideas of western Europe. Scotland, under Margaret's influence, became more Catholic; the celibacy of the clergy was more strictly enforced (it had almost lapsed), but it will be observed throughout that, of all western Europe, Scotland was least overawed by Rome. Yet for centuries the Scottish Church was, in a peculiar ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... living and new fulnesses of life in every direction. During that time, four hundred years of it roughly, there was a huge development of family life; to marry and rear a quite considerable family became the chief business of everybody, celibacy grew rare, monasteries and nunneries which had abounded vanished like things dissolving in a flood and even the priests became Protestant against celibacy and took unto themselves wives and had huge families. The natural checks upon increase, famine and pestilence, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... though Mr. Scarborough might have succeeded with his entail; but yet he was aware that his present income was chiefly dependent on his uncle's good-will. To be reduced to live on his fellowship would be very dreadful. And that income, such as it was, depended entirely on his celibacy. And he had, too, as he was well aware, engendered habits of idleness during the last two years. The mind of a young man so circumstanced turns always first to the Bar, and then to literature. At the Bar he did not think that there could be any opening for him. In the first place, it was late ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Religion, which preserves so many ancient and primitive conceptions of life, has consecrated this conception also, and Christianity—though, as I will point out later, it has tended to enlarge the conception—at the outset only offered the choice between celibacy on the one hand and on the other marriage ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... other profession, it is overstocked; there are too many struggling for the same prizes. The fact is, that England is over-populated. Now, if a law were to be passed compelling one-half of the adult males in this country to remain in a state of celibacy for the space of fifteen years——" but here he stopped short in his soliloquy and smiled; for was not the one desire of his life at present to marry Beatrice Miller immediately? And how was the extra population to be stayed if every one of the doomed quota of marriageable males ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... your mind is set on celibacy, and you feel able to set off by contrasting charms the bliss of matrimony, encourage the friendship of the boys. You need their friendliness just as they need yours. You require their steadiness of purpose, their decision, their frankness, their slower ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... others after him, observe; that Virginity[629] is a more perfect state than marriage, as the Fathers taught; that the Romish Church preserved the ancient discipline of the Western Church with regard to the celibacy of the Priests; that Jesus Christ himself taught[630] that such as lived in celibacy were more proper for the ecclesiastical functions; that the African Church agreed in this point with that of Rome; and that, besides, ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... Celibacy. — N. celibacy, singleness, single blessedness; bachelorhood, bachelorship[obs3]; misogamy[obs3], misogyny. virginity, pucelage[obs3]; maidenhood, maidenhead. unmarried man, bachelor, Coelebs, agamist[obs3], old bachelor; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... is not on such mere sentimental grounds that the Chinese nation has condemned in this wholesale manner the clergy of China. Did the latter carry out even to a limited extent their vows of celibacy and Pythagorean principles of diet, they would probably obtain a fair share of that questionable respect which is meted out to enthusiasts in most countries on the globe. The Chinese hate them as double-dyed hypocrites who extort money ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... ceremonies; we will have "an 'auto-da-fe,' of all the books and symbols of the faith of Moses."[2134] But, of all these various juggling machines, the worst is the Catholic, the most hostile to nature due to the celibacy of its priesthood, the most opposed to reason in the absurdity of its dogmas, the most opposed to democracy, since its powers are delegated from above downwards, the best protected from civil authority because its head is outside of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... has been already mentioned, derived the right to limit the ecclesiastical prerogatives, from this among other grounds, that there were Christian churches in which they were altogether rejected, for instance the rule as to the celibacy of the clergy was not accepted by the Greeks. He inferred too, that, as no one disputed the claim of the Greek Church to be Christian, the conception of the universal Church must be different from that which Romanism asserts. Both countries also found ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... like his face—the face of an old female devotee, whitened by celibacy, and ravaged by stern observance of the rites; and so, as Don Vigilio—his head weary and his hands burning with fever—had not resumed his work, the young man ventured to question him. Oh! Abbe Paparelli, he was a man of the liveliest faith, who from simple humility remained in a modest post ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... its decay that affected the entire life of the Church during these centuries. The superior sanctity attached to the unmarried state, that brought about the celibacy of the priests, gradually changed the active beneficent existence of the old-time deaconesses into the cloistral life of nuns. Statutes were passed forbidding her to marry. Gradually grew up the dangerous superstition of the marriage of the individual soul with Christ, that made of ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... marriage has been!" he ejaculated at last. "But I doubt if I should ever have found a woman who would have understood me enough to be all in all to me. For a man of my temperament there is nothing but celibacy." ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... gallows-birds out of the dens in town here, and they're all to be transported into the country to start a new Arcadia. A few men and women like himself, but the bulk is from the dens, I tell you. All start fair, level ground, perpetual celibacy, mutual trust, honor, rise according to the stuff that's in them,—pah! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... many herds and flocks, and treasures of gold, God gives him poverty and sickness; the fast, the vigil, the scourge, take place of the palaces of cedar and the luxuriant couch; marriage gives way to celibacy; and long life is a privilege in order that in many years we may suffer much, and not that we may enjoy much. Such is the ordinary course of the Divine dealings with the soul since the Cross received its full mysterious ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... general fund of the Order. This organisation was thus monarchical—despotic; the Abbot of Clugny was a pope of monasticism. The movement acquired enormous influence on the Church as a whole, getting control of the papacy, insisting that the Church should be independent of the State, and that celibacy of the clergy should be practically enforced. But the Cluniacs instead of withdrawing from the world began to dominate it, losing many of the essential features of monasticism. Hence another reform movement arose about 1100, that of the Cistercian Order, which is associated with the name ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... of a Married Woman. He who tries to interfere with the married rights of another, shall be punished by inability to contract a valid marriage himself. [This punishment of compulsory celibacy is, according to Dahn, derived neither from Roman nor German law, but is possibly due to Church influence.] The offender who has no hope of present or future matrimony[610] shall be punished by confiscation of half his property; or, if a ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... teacher of sex-hygiene for adolescent girls; and a positive menace to older unmarried women who, if free from absorbing work, may spend their leisure in becoming more or less restless under the unsocial, if not unphysiologic, conditions of unwelcome celibacy. This is no imaginary danger. The reader of this will not be interested in details, but the author has received from physicians and others reliable information concerning several extremely abnormal women of the above-described ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... and virginal content, this innocent union of souls, this celibacy taken for marriage, was not displeasing ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Reverends, and throw away your pestles ye apothecaries, and be like the apostles. Shall we have checker-boards in heaven? No, brother, I presume not. Neither shall we marry, nor be given in marriage; but pray don't condemn us to celibacy on that ground while we remain upon earth. "Would you play chess on your death-bed?" Probably not, my friend. Neither would I put on my boots, or do a great many other very innocent things. Death stands out in ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... delirium incessantly repeated her guardian's name. Miss Woodley journeyed to her at once, and so did Dorriforth, who, through the death of his cousin, Lord Elmwood, had acquired his title and estates. On this account he had received a dispensation from his vow of celibacy, and was enjoined to marry. His ward felt a pleasure so exquisite on hearing this that the agitation of mind and person brought with it the sensation of exquisite pain; but, to her cruel grief, she found that he was, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... no African explorer, for instance, yet ventured to announce the fact,—at once interesting and important,—that if a traveler in the central regions of that continent could be accompanied by his wife, the chances of his success would be greatly improved? In the apparent celibacy of explorers, barbarous races perceive simply an absence or perversion of the masculine instinct, which at once ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... them. The painter made friends in plenty, only to break with them because of some fancied slight. Chopin was of umbrageous nature, Liszt tells us. Watteau never married, and never, as far as is known, had a love affair. He is an inspired painter of women. (Perhaps, because of his celibacy.) He loved to depict them in delicious poses, under waving trees in romantic parks or in the nude. A gallant artist, he was not a gallant man. He had the genius of friendship but not the talent for insuring its continuity. Like Arthur Rimbaud, he suffered from ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... neither celibacy nor marriage, study nor warfare, long attracted him. The conditions about him seemed beyond his remedy, and, like many others, he retired from a sinful world to the harshnesses and austerity of a hermit's life. Fasting did for ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... to the world that Hazelhurst knew only his outer husk, and that Mr. Amidon was inwardly proud of his psychological hinterland whereof his townsmen knew nothing. To Hazelhurst his celibacy was the banker's caution, waiting for something of value in the matrimonial market: to him it was a bashful and palpitant—almost maidenly—expectancy of the approach of some radiant companion ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... from a pit which they themselves had excavated. To prove that their ideas on the nature of marriage, and the emancipation of women, were pure from any selfish or sensual calculations, they imposed upon themselves the law of celibacy. Morning and evening they nourished their mind with the words of the father, or, in the lives of the Christian saints read aloud, they found example, encouragement, and precept. Hymns, the music of which one of their members had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... by the oath of celibacy, but not equally constrained by it apparently, was at the very moment when Beulah was so successfully repulsing the familiarity of the high cheek-boned young man in the black and white striped tie, occupied in encouraging a familiarity of a like nature. That is, he was holding the ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... point in my religious training I perceived the nonsense of celibacy, and the Apostle's injunction: "Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband." (I Cor. 7:2.) But the teachings of my childhood caused me to believe that it would ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... huts to the rear of the temple of MFunya MPopo, but outside the sacred enclosure, lived his wives who, although forbidden to their husband, were permitted a royal promiscuity. Just within the precincts was a small replica of the temple where dwelt a young chief, also bound to celibacy, whose duties were to keep the royal fire burning as long as the king should reign. No one was allowed to converse with the king, save on matters of state, except this man; through him was spoken the royal will—what there was left of it—to the council which sat in a long rectangular ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... especially in not fatiguing themselves through over-exertion. With the monks the case was different. In this quiet retreat, where man reigned alone, as Adam in the Garden of Eden; where the cares and anxieties of married life were unknown within the sacred walls of celibacy, a single representative of the other sex existed in the ubiquitous shape of a "maid of all work;" and as Eve caused the first trouble in the world, so the monastery "maid" disturbed the otherwise ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... with the wild passion of their age trampled him under foot in the mire. The outrage ended in fever, and Dunstan rose from his sick-bed a monk. But the monastic profession was then little more than a vow of celibacy and his devotion took no ascetic turn. His nature in fact was sunny, versatile, artistic; full of strong affections, and capable of inspiring others with affections as strong. Quick-witted, of tenacious memory, a ready and fluent speaker, gay and genial ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... in the dry, staccato tone of one who repeats a French exercise, and I knew that as far as Millie McKillop was concerned, Wumples was devoted to a lifelong celibacy. ...
— Reginald • Saki
... bad; but the bad were by degrees so multiplied, that men truly holy and devoted to God appeared more rarely; and the pious few were almost oppressed by the vicious multitude." Of their doctrines he says: "Fictions, of early origin" (about saint veneration and relics, a purifying fire, celibacy, &c., &c.), "now so prevailed as in course of time almost to thrust true religion aside, or at least to exceedingly obscure ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... she said, reproachfully, "what is this? A meeting with a lover, and within these holy precincts dedicated to celibacy, chastity and sacred things! What will your father, the Count of Monte-Cristo, say when your conduct is reported to him? You are young, and allowance must be made for youthful blood and passionate impulses; but still you have done wrong, very wrong! Is this man, who signs himself Giovanni ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... themselves too diffident and shy. They could easier deny themselves than incur any reproach from a woman; for a woman was like their mother, and they were full of the sense of their mother. They preferred themselves to suffer the misery of celibacy, rather than ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... her, and could have not even the faintest idea of the truth. It must therefore be, as she saw it, that this obstacle could only be one which was in connection with himself. And what could that be? Was he a priest under vows of celibacy? She smiled at the preposterous idea. Was he engaged to be married in England, and was he now on the way to his bride? Could this be it? and was his anguish the result of the conflict between love and honor in his breast? This may have been the ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... pointing out pretended revelations, false miracles, etc. To these are to be added "fornications," corporeal and spiritual, in a mass of superstitions added to, or supplanting divine ordinances; together with vows of celibacy, monkeries and nunneries,—followed by public license of brothels. And finally,—"thefts." By these are to be understood the illegal exactions and oppressive impositions, by which the nations of Christendom have been plundered of their revenues to ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... the capital, the capital had altered her superficially. Parisian polish became rust on this coarsely tempered soul. Gifted with a cunning which had become unfathomable, as it always does in those whose celibacy is genuine, with the originality and sharpness with which she clothed her ideas, in any other position she would have been formidable. Full of spite, she was capable of bringing discord ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... been as great as George Eliot But for an untoward fate. For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit, Chin resting on hand, and deep—set eyes— Gray, too, and far-searching. But there was the old, old problem: Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity? Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me, Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel, And I married him, giving birth to eight children, And had no time to write. ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... month now and a month then, up to 1829, and, after that date, without any break at all—was more or less connected, in my mind, with the notion that my calling in life would require such a sacrifice as celibacy involved; as, for instance, missionary work among the heathen, to which I had a great drawing for some years. It also strengthened my feeling of separation from the visible world, of which I have ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Baring-Gould says that "the idea, that man without woman and woman without man are imperfect beings, was the cause of the great repugnance with which the Jews and other nations of the East regarded celibacy." (Legends of the Old Testament, vol. i, p. 22.) But this, I think, is not very probable. The aversion of Asiatics from celibacy is rather to be ascribed to their surroundings in primitive times, when neighbouring clans were almost constantly at war with each other, and those chiefs and ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... their silent hospitality to the wayfarer, who was refreshed in a separate apartment; the lands around their buildings turned from a wilderness into a garden, and, above all, labor exalted and ennobled by their holy hands, and celibacy, forever, in the eye of the vulgar, a proof of separation from the world and a sacrifice to heaven—these were the things that arrested the attention of the barbarians of Europe, and led them on ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Hence it follows that a primary condition of its utility is that the clerisy should contribute to the support of the other organs of the community. They must not be the subjects of a foreign power, nor, as he argues at length, subject to the desocialising influence of celibacy. It follows that the Roman church is unfitted to be ever a national church, although, if that danger be sufficiently obviated, no political disqualifications should be imposed upon Romanists. And thus, too, the Church Catholic is essentially a body which has no ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... permanent status is indeed remarkable, for in two ways it was repugnant to the sentiments of the governing classes to say nothing of the differences in temper and outlook which divide Hindus and Chinese. Firstly, its ideal was asceticism and celibacy; it gave family life the lower place and ignored the popular Chinese view that to have a son is not only a duty, but also essential for those sacrifices without which the departed spirit cannot have peace. Secondly, it was not merely ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... their color is ascribed to the singeing which they got in the flames of hell. They do not believe in disease; but, like the Mundurucus on the Tapajos, say that death is always caused by the sorceries of an enemy. They usually bury in the church or in the tambo of the deceased. Celibacy and polygamy, homicide and suicide, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... sufficient with moderate exertion on his own part for the sustenance of life. Happiness consists in living conformably to the constitution of our organization. Wealth is a misfortune, primogeniture a relic of barbarism, celibacy a reprehensible practice. Our animal nature demands food, shelter, clothing, and the companionship of woman. These are the essentials of happiness; but for its perfection we require both reason and sentiment. These theses are the tolerable portions, being discussed with some coherence. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... a man whose person and qualifications are every way suited to one's liking:—Natura is certainly such as I should wish a husband to be, if I were inclined to marry again;—I have not taken a vow of celibacy, and have nobody to controul my actions':—'then,' said she again, 'what foolish imaginations comes into my head; perhaps he has not the least thought of me in the way I am dreaming of;—no, no, he has suffered ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... Whereupon the distraction of Jesus' grief being removed from the cenoby, the Essenes fell to talking again of the great schism and what came of it. Are our brothers happier in wedlock than we are in celibacy? was the question they often put to each other on the balcony; and a sudden meeting of thoughts set them comparing the wives beyond Jordan with the ewes of the hills. Which are the most fruitful? they asked themselves; ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... the answer which the angel of light had written. Both of these she copied verbatim, thinking probably that the original documents were too precious to be intrusted to the post; and then ended by saying that an additional year of celibacy, passed under a closer espionage, and with more severe moral training, might still perhaps make Mary Snow fit for the high destiny which ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... people, which condemned injustice and extortionate money-making even more energetically than did Jesus. Medieval Christianity sincerely assented to the principle that private property is a danger to the soul and a neutralizer of love. Every monastic community tried to cut under sex dangers by celibacy, and property dangers by communism. This was an enormous misinterpretation of Christianity, but it shows that men took the teachings on the dangers of private property seriously. The modern Christian world ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... advanced by Luther, while pushing further his inquiries into the moral and social regulations and condition of the Church, is the abolition of the celibacy of the clergy. If Popes and bishops wish to impose upon themselves the burden of an unmarried life, he has nothing to say to that. He speaks only of the clergy in general, whom God has appointed, who are needed by every Christian community ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... merely, but also wife and children as well in order to enter the priesthood; in Deuteronomy xxxiii. 9 this is adduced only as an extreme instance of the spirit of self-sacrifice. In any case it is not to be inferred that celibacy was demanded, but only that the priestly office was often barely sufficient to support the man, not to speak ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... groan in my prayers, that Thou wouldest help me; but my spirit was wholly intent on learning, and restless to dispute. And Ambrose himself, as the world counts happy, I esteemed a happy man, whom personages so great held in such honour; only his celibacy seemed to me a painful course. But what hope he bore within him, what struggles he had against the temptations which beset his very excellencies, or what comfort in adversities, and what sweet joys Thy Bread had for the hidden mouth ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... advancement of learning. Why should not a fellowship be made into a career for life, beginning with little, but rising like the incomes of other professions? Why should the grotesque condition of celibacy be imposed on a fellowship, instead of the really salutary condition of—No work, no pay? Why should not some special literary or scientific work be assigned to each fellow, whether resident in Oxford or sent abroad on scientific missions? Why, instead of having ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... homage before the Emperor, as he passed them on his way to a pagoda or Poo-ta-la, a kind of temple or monastery, where a great number of priests, clothed in yellow, lived together in a state of celibacy; and here he made his burnt-offerings. The mystical rates performed, presents were brought out for the Embassador and suite, and also for the King of Holland, consisting of little purses, flimsey silks, and a coarse stuff somewhat similar to that known by seamen under the name of bunting; ...
— 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 |
