"Celibacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... head of Economy. The same person added: "The burden was easier to bear, because it became general throughout the whole community, and all bore their share alike." Another member wrote in 1862: "Convinced of the truth and holiness of our purpose, we voluntarily and unanimously adopted celibacy, altogether from religious motives, in order to withdraw our love entirely from the lusts of the flesh, which, with the help of God and much prayer and spiritual warfare, we have succeeded well in doing now for ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... into our province here to discuss at length the religious aspects of the Reformation; but it is interesting to note in passing the more than modern liberality of Luther's views with respect to the marriage question and the celibacy of the clergy, contrasted with the strong mediaeval flavour of his belief in witchcraft and sorcery. In his De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae (1519) he expresses the view that if, for any cause, husband or wife are prevented from having ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... the discipline of the Church, the relationship must terminate. Again, as is perfectly well known, many of the priests, under a thin disguise, lead domestic lives, where a family of children exist under the care of a single mother, who is debarred from the honest name of wife by the laws of celibacy which are stringently held as the inexorable rule ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... am trying to give her some training for her future duties. We can never forget our native land so long as we have her with us, for she is a perfect specimen of the Puritan spinster, though too young in years, perhaps, for determined celibacy. Do you know, we none of us mentioned wages in our conversations with her? Fortunately she seems more alive to the advantages of foreign travel than to the filling of her empty coffers. (By the way, I have written to the purser of the ship that she crossed in, to see if I can ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... before, Saint Paul had stated in his Epistles that it was permitted to the apostles of the Lord to take with them everywhere a sister for charity. The deaconesses date from the first century of the church. But the celibacy of the clergy was not universally and solidly established until about the eleventh century, under the pontificate of Gregory VII. During the preceding century, the celebrated Marozie and Theodore had put their lovers successively upon the chair of St. Peter, and their sons and grandsons, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... betook himself to the serious consideration of the vanity of all earthly things; and rising one night full of those thoughts, prostrated himself in fervent prayer, which he continued till morning, most ardently devoting himself to God in the state of celibacy, and dedicating his whole patrimony to the promoting of his divine honor. He followed Simon of Montfort, general of the holy war against the Albigenses, an heretical sect, which had filled Languedoc with great cruelties, and over spread it with universal desolation. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... an impatient exclamation. "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
... nature and joy; revealed to the man of the Middle Ages, who has hitherto seen in the untrained, diseased, despised body but a deformed piece of baseness, which his priests tell him belongs to the worms and to Satan; who has been taught that the monk living in solitude and celibacy, filthy, sick, worn out with fastings and bleeding with flagellation, is the nearest approach to divinity; who has seen Divinity itself, pale, emaciated, joyless, hanging bleeding from the cross; and who is for ever reminded that ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... argued in the House of Commons, and points were treated of there, said Renard, which a general council could scarcely resolve. At length, by a majority, which exceeded Gardiner's most sanguine hopes, of 350 against 80, the mass was restored, and the clergy were required to return to celibacy.[163] ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... pass the honoured evening of his days; with just a few more thousands, and, as he sometimes thought, perhaps a wife. He had not quite made up his mind; but he had come to the time when a man must forthwith accept matrimony frankly, or, if he be wise, shake hands with bleak celibacy, and content himself for his earthly future with ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... calculated to inspire it.” She wrote in 1767, from Gotham Rectory, “to a female mind, that that can employ itself ingeniously, that is capable of friendship, that is blessed with affluence, where are the evils of celibacy? For my part, I could never imagine that there were any, at least, compared to the ennui, the chagrin, the preclusion, which hearts, cast in the warm mould of passion, must feel in a ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... confessor. Never shocked, you vaguely approve the mental misdeeds which I confess to you. You let me relieve myself and you don't charge me anything for the service. Frankly, that is what you are here for. I spoil you with care and attentions because you are the spiritual vent of solitude and celibacy, but that doesn't prevent you, with your spiteful way of looking at me, from being insufferable at times, as ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... opposition, if we consider, that he who differs from us, does not always contradict us; he has one view of an object, and we have another; each describes what he sees with equal fidelity, and each regulates his steps by his own eyes: one man with Posidippus, looks on celibacy as a state of gloomy solitude, without a partner in joy, or a comforter in sorrow; the other considers it, with Metrodorus, as a state free from incumbrances, in which a man is at liberty to choose his own gratifications, to remove from place to place in quest of pleasure, and to think of nothing ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... are always, more universally than any other class, the scholars of their day—are addressed as women; that the rough, spontaneous conversation of men they do not hear, but only a mincing[41] and diluted speech. They are often virtually disfranchised; and indeed there are advocates for their celibacy. As far as this is true of the studious classes, it is not just and wise. Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it he is not yet man. Without it thought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that they were subject to no such regulation, lived and moved without restraint among the people, and in early days were not infrequently married. Until the time of Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085), the celibacy of the extra-monastic clergy was not at all generally insisted on. Even after the twelfth century, when greater strictness had been enforced by the first and second Lateran Councils, the marriage of the secular clergy ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... of employing the Saxon words. For I should sadly indeed have misled the reader if I had used the word knight in an age when knights were wholly unknown to the Anglo-Saxon and cneht no more means what we understand by knight, than a templar in modern phrase means a man in chain mail vowed to celibacy, and the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the Mussulman. While, since thegn and thane are both archaisms, I prefer the former; not only for the same reason that induces Sir Francis Palgrave to prefer it, viz., because it is the more etymologically correct; ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... problems more profound than that of the courage with which men like him continue their self-imposed penal-servitude until they become too infirm to work and are sent to die in some refuge for aged freres. They have accepted celibacy and poverty, that they may the better devote their lives to the instruction of children. They have no sacerdotal state or ideal, no ecclesiastical nor social ambition to help them. They must be always humble; they must not even be learned, for much knowledge in their case would be considered a dangerous ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... let loose and discharged, and enjoy the free indulgence of their desires, whether they are disposed to live in a married state or not: if they are disposed to live in a married state, this is granted them; but if otherwise, they are conveyed to those who live in celibacy on the side of heaven; such, however, as have indulged the fires of prohibited lust, are cast down. V. The reason why those who live in celibacy are on the side of heaven, is, because the sphere of perpetual celibacy infests the sphere of conjugial love, which is the very essential sphere ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... persons who are wavering between the two systems, or who have made a system for themselves out of parts selected from both. They seem to hold some of the Romish rites and doctrines in high respect. They treat the vow of celibacy, for example, so tempting, and, in later times, so common a subject for ribaldry, with mysterious reverence. Almost every member of a religious order whom they introduce is a holy and venerable man. We remember in their plays nothing resembling ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... au blanc, as it were). 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 ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... overcoming all difficulties. Those Brahmanas that never study the Vedas at hours not intended for study, and that practise penances with devotion, succeed in overcoming all difficulties. Those Brahmanas that betake themselves to a life of celibacy and Brahmacharya, that perform penances, and that are cleansed by learning, Vedic knowledge, and proper vows, succeed in overcoming all difficulties. They that have checked all the qualities that appertain to Passion and Darkness, that are possessed of high souls, and that practise ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... 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 and ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... 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 state also lasts a fortnight; it is arranged as an opportunity for lady 'bus-conductors ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... abhorrence, and we have no doubt Mrs. Jameson does so also. We are well aware of the pernicious effect which this doctrine has exercised on matrimonial purity among the southern nations; that by making chastity synonymous with celibacy, it degraded married faithfulness into a restriction which there were penalties for breaking, but no rewards for keeping. We see clearly enough the cowardice, the shortsightedness, of fancying that man can insure the safety of his soul by fleeing from the world—in ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... He was passionately fond of hunting, and for the enjoyment of that recreation he kept a number of excellent horses, and several packs of hounds, particularly galgos (greyhounds), for some of which he paid 150 or 200 dollars. In the most shameless way he violated the ecclesiastical vow of celibacy, and he was usually surrounded by several of his own children, who called him uncle, addressing him by the appellation of tio, the term usually employed in Peru to express that sort of relationship. The Padre used to boast of his alleged friendship with ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... female slaves in the sugar plantations of Cuba was extremely limited; and what may appear surprising is that a prejudice, founded on religious scruples, opposed the introduction of women, whose price at the Havannah was generally one-third less than that of men. The slaves were forced to celibacy on the pretext of avoiding moral disorder. The Jesuits and the Bethlemite monks alone renounced that fatal prejudice, and encouraged negresses in their plantations. If the census, no doubt imperfect, of 1775, yielded 15,562 female, and 29,366 male slaves, we must not forget that that enumeration ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... that Westermarck in his History of Human Marriage quotes a number of authorities to prove that among many ancient nations marriage was a religious duty incumbent upon all. Among Mohammedan people generally it is still considered a duty. Hebrew celibacy was unheard of, and they have a proverb, 'He who has no wife is no man.' In Egypt it is improper and even disreputable for a man to abstain from marriage when there is no just impediment. For an adult to die unmarried ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... crops, dreams, &c., and have various attributes, which it would require volumes to explain. The Chinese have no regular priesthood, supported by the government; it depends on voluntary contributions and endowments of the rich; it has its monasteries, where numbers of both sexes devote themselves to celibacy; but, in general, it seems, as a body, to have less influence than in most countries. In all rich families, there is a shing-shang, or astrologer, who is consulted on all occasions; he is the tutor, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... 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; misogamist[obs3], misogynist; monogamist; monk. unmarried woman, spinster; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... presence; 2d, celibacy; 3d, monastic vows; 4th, low mass; 5th, auricular confession; 6th, withholding the cup from ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... fast and penance. Even in youth he had never known a schoolboy's love for cousin or playmate. He had resolutely closed up his heart against emotions which he regarded as the allurements of time and sense. He had made a merit of celibacy, and written and published against the entanglement of godly ministers in matrimonial engagements and family cares. It is questionable whether he now understood his own case, or attributed to its right cause the peculiar interest ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 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 so moderate, conscientious, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... the peasants, they cannot like anything or anybody. Their love and feelings are imaginary. Their thoughts and sentiments pass without trace like futile words. My companions, therefore, soon began to violate the regulations of the Order. Then I introduced the condition of celibacy, the entire negation of woman, of the comforts of life, of superfluities, according to the teachings of the Yellow Faith; and, in order that the Russian might be able to live down his physical nature, I introduced the limitless use of alcohol, hasheesh and opium. Now for alcohol I hang my officers ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... insane vows of celibacy; but she laughed at me in her common-sense way, and uttered blunt truths concerning ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... It seems that 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
... typical literature and art, produced by typically modern males, gives voice with a force no woman has surpassed to the same new ideal. If to the typical modern woman the lifelong companionship of a Tom Jones or Squire Western would be more intolerable than death or the most complete celibacy, not less would the most typical of modern men shrink from the prospect of a lifelong fetterment to the companionship of an always fainting, weeping, and terrified Emilia or a ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... yet a strong hold upon the school. It is only in comparatively recent times that motherhood, which, as Zmigrodzki says, has been the basis of our civilization, has been allowed to exercise its best influence upon the scholastic microcosm. Paternalism and celibacy must be made to yield up the strong grasp which they have upon the educational institutions of the land, and the early years of the life of man must be confided to the care of the mother-spirit, which the individual man and the race alike have deified in their golden ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... rested upon the support of the great nobles, many of whom held their lands by feudal tenure, and constituted the royal Raad, or council. The clergy, fortified by royal privileges, had also risen to influence; but celibacy and independence of the civil courts tended to make them more and more of a separate caste. Education was spreading. Numerous Danes, lay as well as clerical, regularly frequented the university of Paris. There were signs ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... 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 pepper-garden, a sum adequate to the purchase of a wife, married pairs would ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... their daughter and heiress Catherine was married in the year 1756 to Edward Eliot, Esq. (now lord Eliot), of Port Eliot, in the county of Cornwall; and their three sons are my nearest male relations on the father's side. A life of devotion and celibacy was the choice of my aunt, Mrs. Hester Gibbon, who, at the age of eighty-five, still resides in a hermitage at Cliffe, in Northamptonshire; having long survived her spiritual guide and faithful companion Mr. William Law, who, at an advanced age, about the year 1761, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... house Dorriforth had lived before the death of Mr. Horton; nor upon that event had he thought it necessary, notwithstanding his religious vow of celibacy, to fly the roof of two such innocent females as Mrs. Horton and her niece. On their part, they regarded him with all that respect and reverence which the most religious flock shews to its pastor; and his friendly ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... Labor. Usury. Economics. Punishment for Debts. Healing. Peace. Marriage. Celibacy. Adultery. Divorce. Faulty Judgment. Unconvincing. Prohibition. Lack ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... system, I shall have recourse to the Classics, to prove, that the pursuit will confer honour upon its practitioners; for instance, has not Ovid recorded the gallopings of the lovely Atalanta, who, being determined to live in a state of celibacy, positively ran away from the male sex? This establishes the vast antiquity of running, and nothing can possibly stand the test of inquiry, which has not such a voucher as antiquity to bear it out against the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... yet 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 of his spirit, when chewing the cud thereof, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... applied to the manners of these oriental queens. A concubine, in the strict sense of the civilian, was a woman of servile or plebeian extraction, the sole and faithful companion of a Roman citizen, who continued in a state of celibacy. Her modest station, below the honors of a wife, above the infamy of a prostitute, was acknowledged and approved by the laws: from the age of Augustus to the tenth century, the use of this secondary marriage prevailed both in the West and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... Japan. It was founded in 1174 A.D.—by one Honen, according to Griffis; by Genku, according to Rein. Iyeyasu and his successors were adherents and benefactors of this sect. "Its priests strictly insisted upon celibacy, and abhorred the eating of flesh. They taught that the health of the soul depends less upon virtue and moral perfection than upon the strict observance of pious practices" (Rein). See Griffis's account of Buddhism in Japan, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... communities, owing to the vow of celibacy, had become more and more stagnant, while the civil communities increased in power to adapt themselves to the age. All that was virile and creative combined in the towns; all that was inadequate, sterile, useless, coagulated in the monasteries, which thus became cesspools, ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... every sound, healthy person of either sex must get married or at least betake him or herself to the business of propagating the race. That at least is the essence of his singularly offensive dictum that since the celibacy of the Catholic clergy and of members of Religious Orders deprives the State of a number of presumably excellent parents, "if monastic orders and institutions are to continue, they should be open only to the eugenically ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... life of dungeon-like strongholds; for us, the charm of social life and culture; for them, intolerance and tyranny; for us, a ruler who is our father; for them, the darkness of ignorance; for us, letters and instruction as wide-spread as our creed; for them, the wilderness, celibacy, and the doom of the false martyr; for us, plenty, love, ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... branch was Monsieur Hubert de Mauprat, known as the chevalier, because he belonged to the Order of the Knights of Malta; a man just as good as his cousin was bad. Being the youngest son of his family, he had taken the vow of celibacy; but, when he found himself the sole survivor of several brothers and sisters, he obtained release from his vow, and took a wife the year before I was born. Rumour says that before changing his existence in this way he made strenuous efforts to find some descendant of the elder branch ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... we don't do that in Jingalo. No Jingalese Church-woman may throw away her whole life on so problematical a benefit as a religious vow of celibacy. She may lease herself to Heaven for a given number of years, but freeholds ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... the points of faith, not only the scientific accounts the theologians give of them, but mere rules of discipline, and pious opinions also. It is supposed popularly, for instance, to be of Catholic faith that celibacy is essential to the priesthood. This as a fact, however, is no more a part of the Catholic faith than the celibacy of a college fellow is a part of the Thirty-nine Articles, or than the skill of an English naval officer depends on his not having his wife with him on shipboard. Nor again, to take ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... 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
... but it was not until he was installed in 1518 as preacher in the great cathedral at Zuerich that he clearly denied papal supremacy and proceeded to proclaim the Scriptures as the sole guide of faith and morals. He preached against fasting, the veneration of saints, and the celibacy of the clergy. Some of his hearers began to put his teachings into practice: church edifices were profaned, statues demolished, windows smashed, and relics burned. Zwingli himself ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... them, moreover, to have been untrue to the teaching of Clement and his school, in that coarse and materialist admiration of celibacy which ruined Alexandrian society, as their dogmatic ferocity ruined Alexandrian thought. The Creed which taught them that in the person of the Incarnate Logos, that which was most divine had been proved to be most human, that which was most human had ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude: it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... fields, filled with strange girls and other "things" to make life pleasant. It is this ever-growing expectancy which gives banking a fascination for young men, especially country boys. They cannot see the day of weariness and monotony that is coming, the day of poverty and celibacy, because between that time and the present there is a golden glamor, a flame of luring light. This flame is fanned by the windy tongues of reckless clerks and fed with the "oxygen" that escapes ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... troubled by his celibacy. She had persisted in her desire to have him marry young, his wife being some one of her girl friends. She wished to see Peter set up an establishment, which would presently center around a nursery full of adorable babies who would bring with them that tender and innocent ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... after the Spartan model, at a great public table. There is no union of the sexes, and every Shaker, male and female, is devoted to a life of celibacy. Rumour has been busy upon this theme, but here again I must refer to the lady of the store, and say, that if many of the sister Shakers resemble her, I treat all such slander as bearing on its face the strongest marks of wild improbability. But that they take ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... Dona Carmen de Torrencevara, as that lady passed to 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
... of the Christian era the affection of one sex for the other was considered to be under the special control of the devil. Marriage was to be tolerated; but celibacy was the state most conducive to the near intercourse with heaven that was so dearly sought after. This opinion was doubtless generated by the tendency of the early Christian leaders to hold up the events of the life rather than the ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... much intimacy with a man of merit and genius, without loving him. The delight she enjoyed in his society, she transferred by association to his person. What she experienced in this respect, was no doubt heightened, by the state of celibacy and restraint in which she had hitherto lived, and to which the rules of polished society condemn an unmarried woman. She conceived a personal and ardent affection for him. Mr. Fuseli was a married man, and his wife the acquaintance of Mary. ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... were the times in which these laws were passed? Was it not when virtue was seldom inculcated as a moral duty that we were required to relinquish the most rational of all our amusements, when the clergy were enjoined celibacy, and when the laity were denied the right to read their Bibles? He thought that it must have been from a notion of penance that they erected the drama into an ideal place of profaneness, and spoke of the theatre as of ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... imitate her example, and find contentment in marriage with her cousin. The earnestness with which she presses the point, the very sensible but not very delicate references to the hygienic drawbacks of celibacy, and the fact that the cousin whom she would fain have him marry, had complaisantly assisted them in their past loves, naturally drew the fire ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... ruggedness is perfectly free from vulgarity. Yes, he is a sort of man who might fascinate some women; but he is terribly wrong-headed. If he keeps hoping on until I marry, he has a long spell of celibacy before him. I dare say he will be married himself before two years ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... sinful to skate. Tear off your white chokers, ye 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 startling ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... his knowledge and faith from the Bible, holding that for authority one ought to return to it or to the primitive church. He advocated the abolition of image-worship, and, in addition, the abolition of enforced celibacy, nunneries, and the celebration of the mass. He held, too, that there ought to be a return to local church government, and {386} that all of the cloisters should be converted into schools. He objected to so many days being ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... and theology. Its pleasing falsity could be adapted to useful ends, much in the same way as matrimony excuses love and sexual union. This, however, implies that for the Middle Age the ideal state was celibacy; that is, pure knowledge, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... so all in all to each other, as they left that barren threshold! 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 ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... every thing mortal, have no human 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 ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... other in the same liberal and Christian spirit. In the single year of the revocation, more than two hundred and fifty Huguenot preachers reached the free soil of the United Provinces. Pensions were allowed to them, the married receiving four hundred florins, those in celibacy two hundred. The Prince of Orange attached two French preachers to his person, with many French officers to his army against James II.—thanks to the generous Princess of Orange, who selected several ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... pang at Edith's heart was discernible in her soft, black eyes, turned so quickly toward this candidate for celibacy. ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... in the least frighten the maiden, and she calmly defied him, he had recourse to magic arts. Cutting runes in his stick, he told her that unless she yielded ere the spell was ended, she would be condemned either to eternal celibacy, or to marry some aged frost giant whom she ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... 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
... often approved by the visible interposition of the Deity. The marvellous tales which are so boldly attested by the Basils and Chrysostoms, the Austins and Jeroms, compelled me to embrace the superior merits of celibacy, the institution of the monastic life, the use of the sign of the cross, of holy oil, and even of images, the invocation of saints, the worship of relics, the rudiments of purgatory in prayers for the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... unions (or Leagues, as we should call them now) in Baden, Wurtemburg, Bavaria, and Rhenish Prussia. Later still, the agitation spread to France and Austria. It was only checked by a papal bull issued in 1847, reiterating the final decision of the famous Council of Trent in favor of the celibacy of the priesthood. Few people are aware that this rule has been an institution of slow growth among the clergy of the Church of Rome. Even as late as the twelfth century, there were still priests who set the ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... find 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
... contains eight parish churches, three colleges for students, twenty-eight monasteries of friars, and thirteen nunneries, so that the religions occupy a fourth part of the city; yet, by the quick and plentiful flow of money, and the vast sums bequeathed through the effects of celibacy, they are well endowed. Besides these, there are two hospitals for sick, poor, and disabled; and in which several of our men were kindly looked after. The length of the city from north to south is two miles, and its breadth ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... rich, he have much woman." When an object excites his desire, he consults his head woman, who, without any apparent suspicion of rivalry, gives her assent, and forwards his suit; but she is displeased when not consulted; and it is not uncommon that the object falls a victim to her jealousy. Celibacy is a state almost unknown in Africa; and when it does occur, it is considered ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... with me had been a hope abandoned by her years since. No woman looks forward willingly to a life of cheerless celibacy. In thinking of her future, Mary naturally thought of herself in the character of a wife. Could she fairly expect in the time to come to receive any more attractive proposal than the proposal now addressed to her? Mr. Van Brandt had every personal advantage that a woman ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... Durbelliere. We might tell of the recovery of that modern Paladine, Charles de Lescure, and of the glorious rebuilding of the house of Clisson, of the ecclesiastical honours of Father Jerome, and of the happy marriage, or with more probability, the happier celibacy of the divine Agatha. But we cannot do so with propriety: facts, stern, untoward, cruel facts, stare us in the face, and would make even the novelist blush, were he, in total disregard of well-thumbed history, to attempt so very false ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... country parish, revolving in an actual world of petty details, and in another world of grim theological speculation and absorption in the contemplation of death, must have seldom smiled. The young pastor was bound by no vow of celibacy, but he knew that his life must be brief, and he gladly surrounded himself with children in the guise of pupils, and when he died he left a Bible to his church, a small sum for the education of heathen ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... does not marry, he will suffer no 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 the ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... example. It was this, chiefly, that, in the first ages of the church, filled the mountains and desarts with hermits of all sexes and ages; it was this that gave rise to the religious orders of monks and nuns, and the celibacy of the clergy, which still subsist in Popish countries. But these consequences were pernicious to the publick good, they discouraged marriage, and established that ecclesiastical tyranny, under ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... helpless anger on her account. He wasn't sure why. What was she to him? He'd probably never see her again. A hell of an attractive target, to be sure; and after so much celibacy he was highly vulnerable; but did she ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... the difference between the Church and a religious sect; the respective prerogatives of the Church and the civil power; what the Church claims of necessity, what it cannot dispense with, what it can; what it can grant, what it cannot. A Catholic hears the celibacy of the clergy discussed in general society; is that usage a matter of faith, or is it not of faith? He hears the Pope accused of interfering with the prerogatives of her Majesty, because he appoints an ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... wretch of thy race, art thou not ashamed of affrighting all these monarchs with these numerous false terrors! Thou art the foremost of the Kurus, and living as thou dost in the third state (celibacy) it is but fit for thee that thou shouldst give such counsel that is so wide of morality. Like a boat tied to another boat or the blind following the blind, are the Kurus who have thee for their guide. Thou hast once more simply pained our hearts ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... and that's about all; for a ram is not fit for service till he is two years old. 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
... be ready to observe the law of "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and life for life;" and who, besides, had her naturally warm temper rather spoiled from her continual rencontres with her mistress on such subjects as confession, priests' celibacy, purgatory, and other subjects too profound for the understanding of her mistress to know any thing about them, and too sacred in the eyes of Norry to allow them to be irreverently handled without saying ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... years; and the worship had remained unchanged—no image profaned the Holy of Holies, where the god dwelt, waited on by bare-footed priests with heads shaved, clothed in white linen robes, and vowed to celibacy.[1151] The name of the god occurs as an element in a certain small number of Phoenician names of men—e.g. Bomilcar, Himilcar, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... "simply what I am always repeating in my clinique, that save in the case of those who are really called to celibacy,—the Newmans, the Spencers, and the Nietzsches of this world,—physical and spiritual health is difficult without ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... knew, for instance, that Maria Esmond had lost her heart ever so many times before Harry Warrington found it; but I like to fancy that he was going to keep it; that, bewailing mischance and times out of joint, she would yet have preserved her love, and fondled it in decorous celibacy. If, in some paroxysm of senile folly, I should fall in love to-morrow, I shall still try and think I have acquired the fee-simple of my charmer's heart;—not that I am only a tenant, on a short lease, of an old battered furnished apartment, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Marriage is an honourable state, appointed by Heaven as the regular means of continuing the race of man; and I read not in the Scriptures what human inventions have since affirmed concerning the superior excellence of a state of celibacy. But I am jealous of thee, my child, as a father is of his only daughter, lest thou shouldst throw thyself away upon some one unworthy of thee. Thy parent, I know, less nice in thy behalf than I am, countenances the addresses of that fierce and riotous reveller whom they call ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... that, for reasons of their own, disapproving of the celibacy of the three friends, they had resolved to excite their admiration and interest, that they had followed them immediately after their departure, had crept on them in the night, and divested them of their ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... class, compared with the number who unite in matrimony with the husbands of their choice, is comparatively very small, and it is the duty of society to encourage the increase of marriages rather than of celibacy. If the larger number of females select pursuits or professions which require them to decline marriage, society to that extent is deprived of the advantage resulting from the increase of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... 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 ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... better than words, that their day of influence has closed for ever. Let such unhappy men fly from the scenes of former pleasure and power, of former flirtation and gaiety, to the quieter and surer triumphs of a country town. Here crowds of young women, as certainly devoted to celibacy as the inmates of a nunnery, accustomed from necessity to make beaux out of the most unprecedented materials, and concoct flirtations in the most discouraging circumstances, will welcome him with open arms, underrate his age, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... communion with the sex associated in their minds with the most subtle dangers to which the human soul can be exposed. I became in some degree reconciled to the thought of exclusion from the society of women by seeing around me so many who were self-devoted to celibacy. The thought sometimes occurred to me whether I should not find the best and the only natural solution of the problem of existence, as submitted to myself, in taking upon me the vows which settle the whole question and raise an impassable barrier between the ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... overlook the serious fact that permanent or even prolonged celibacy on the part of large numbers of young men and young women is a great social evil. The consequences of that evil we ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... followers who have taken the vow of Naish.thika Brahmacaris (that is, of perpetual celibacy and chastity) must not knowingly either touch or converse with or ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... an easy, unaffected conduct, can draw the line between prudery and coquetry. It would be no great departure from truth to say that it rarely happens otherwise than that a thorough-paced coquette dies in celibacy, as a punishment for her attempts to mislead others, by encouraging looks, words, or actions, given for no other purpose than to draw men on to make overtures, that they may ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... needed in an abstemious domestic economy (Figure 38); 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
... strong nature, would have liked to be the protectress of a weak man; but, as a result of living in 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 into the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... experiments of a community of goods, which have proved successful in practice, were all based on the more or less complete celibacy of the members of the societies. Compare Hermann, Staatsw. Unters., II, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... Marcus Cato, who did not hesitate to separate from his wife at the request of a friend desirous to marry her, and as little scrupled on the death of this friend to marry the same wife a second time. Celibacy and childlessness became more and more common, especially among the upper classes. While among these marriage had for long been regarded as a burden which people took upon them at the best in the public interest,(59) we now encounter even in Cato and those who shared Cato's sentiments the maxim ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... its ground almost continuously ever since—with the break of a 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 ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... of judgment. They didn't know what it was to have a child look up in their faces and say 'Father!' It will take you a hundred or two more years to get decently humanized, after so many centuries of dehumanizing celibacy. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... two defeats and the language he had heard and read. Charity's conscience was so clean that her reaction was one of wrath. She pondered her future and Jim's. She could not see what either of them had done so vile that they should be sentenced to celibacy for life, or more probably to an eventual inevitable horror of outward conformity ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... one's companion. Keeping that friendship (which I have contracted with thee) in view, I shall speak to thee something. Do thou listen to it. They that have not their souls under control, acquire not merit by leading the four successive modes of life, viz.,—celibacy with study, domesticity, retirement into the woods, and renunciation of the world. That which is called religious merit is said to consist of true knowledge. The wise, therefore, have declared religious merit to be the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... forecast that should have come in naturally, and retreat into a vague abstraction, managing to make it appear (Sally couldn't say how or why) that her own general remarks about man, which meant nothing, were a formal proclamation of celibacy on her part. It is odd how little the mere wording of a conversation may convey, especially girl's conversation. What is there in the above to warrant what came next ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... rising tide of dogmatic Medievalism, with its crassly materialistic view of the Eucharist; its insistence on the saving grace of asceticism and celibacy; and its scarcely veiled contempt for women, overwhelmed the original conception. Certain of the features of the ancient ritual indeed survive, but they are factors of confusion, rather than clues to enlightenment. Thus, while the Grail still retains its character of a Feeding ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... 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 poor ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... confide 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 of his soul, like those which spoke to him from the ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... principal supports, must soon crumble to pieces. Instead of resenting this proposal as an affront upon his honor, the abject mind of Henry was content to purchase repose even by the most humiliating sacrifice. He acceded to the conditions; application was made to Rome for a dispensation from the vows of celibacy imposed on the grand master as the companion of a religious order; and splendid preparations were instantly commenced for the approaching ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... 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, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... position at Hawarden, there would then be at once increased ease and increased attraction in the performance of your duties; nor can I overlook the fact that the life of the unmarried man, in this age particularly, is under peculiar and insidious temptations to selfishness, unless his celibacy arise from a very strong and definite course of self-devotion to the service of God and ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... course, is understood to apply only to those unmarried persons whom a mean and Snobbish fear about money has kept from fulfilling their natural destiny. Many persons there are devoted to celibacy because they cannot help it. Of these a man would be a brute who spoke roughly. Indeed, after Miss O'Toole's conduct to the writer, he would be the last to condemn. But never mind, these ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... where the rich are condemned to involuntary idleness, and the poor to enforced misery; where there is a population of some ten thousand ecclesiastics in the prime of life, without adequate occupation for the most part, and all vowed to celibacy; where priests and priest-rule are omnipotent, and where every outlet for the natural desires and passions of men is carefully cut off—if you take in fully all these conditions and their inevitable ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... imperfections; if, on the contrary, they are handsome, that fact argues that their misfortune has some serious cause. It is impossible to say which of the two classes is most deserving of rejection. If, on the other hand, their celibacy is deliberate, if it proceeds from a desire for independence, neither men nor mothers will forgive their disloyalty to womanly devotion, evidenced in their refusal to feed those passions which render their sex so affecting. To renounce the pangs of womanhood is to abjure its poetry and cease to ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... battles than any man of his acquaintance. The average man is usually too vain and too spiritually lazy to fight his inner devils to the death. But Enoch had fought so terribly that it seemed to him that he could surely win this new struggle. Nothing should induce him to break his vow of celibacy. He cursed himself for a weak fool in not obeying Frank Allen's request. Then he gathered together all his resources, ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... perpetually employed in spinning cotton and wool, which they wove into cloth, and then burned along with the bones of white sheep, throwing the ashes into the air in honour of the sun. These women were consecrated to perpetual celibacy, and were put to death if found to be with child, unless they could swear that their child was begotten ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... stages of gregariousness; but in nineteenth century nations and twentieth century empires the determination of every man to be rich at all costs, and of every woman to be married at all costs, must, without a highly scientific social organization, produce a ruinous development of poverty, celibacy, prostitution, infant mortality, adult degeneracy, and everything that wise men most dread. In short, there is no future for men, however brimming with crude vitality, who are neither intelligent nor politically educated enough to be Socialists. So do not misunderstand ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... proud of him," his good wife answered, as he shook his stick. "How could he help taking orders when he was under orders to do so? And his views are sound to the last degree, most strictly correct and practical—at least except as to celibacy." ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... conversion, in spite of their later "backslidings." When, after the Western fashion, the time came for him to forsake his father's farm and seek a new "quarter section" on some more remote frontier, he carried into that secluded, lonely, half-monkish celibacy of pioneer life—which has been the foundation of so much strong Western character—more than the usual religious feeling. At once industrious and adventurous, he lived by "the Word," as he called it, and Nature as he knew it,—tempted by none of the vices or ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... have formed a camp near the fort and seem to be determined to lay close sege to us but I beleive notwithstanding every effort of their wining graces, the men have preserved their constancy to the vow of celibacy which they made on this occasion to Capt C. and myself. we have had our perogues prepared for our departer, and shal set out as soon as the weather will permit. the weather is so precarious that we ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... confiscated by Rome, to abolish the temporal government, which is the prop of hierarchical despotism, to revise the matrimonial discipline, to suppress many religious orders and the solemn vows for all, to modify the absolute rule of celibacy for the clergy, to admit the use of the vernacular in the Liturgy, to allow a larger share to the laity in the management of ecclesiastical affairs, to encourage the education of the clergy at universities, and to renounce the claims of mediaeval ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... on more minute details. Paul allows second marriages to women[217]; but thinks it better for a widow to remain as she is.[218] It is better to marry than to burn; yet would he prefer that men and women should remain in celibacy.[219] The power of the father to arrange a marriage for his daughter was, under Roman law, limited by her consent; but the words of Paul make it clear that it was now to be a Christian precept that a father could determine on his own ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... the Lady who believes her young Lover dead, and has vowed eternal Celibacy, sees him advancing, a portly, well to do, middle aged man: and swears she won't have him: and does ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... priests and others were annually executed in England under these laws, throughout the Queen's reign, but nominally at least they were hanged not as Papists, but as traitors; not because they taught transubstantiation, ecclesiastical celibacy, auricular confession, or even Papal supremacy, but because they taught treason and murder—because they preached the necessity of killing the Queen. It was not so easy, however, to defend or even comprehend the banishment and imprisonment of those who without conspiring against the Queen's ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is a form of monasticism—it is a getting away from the world. Monasticism does not necessarily imply celibacy, but as unrequited or misplaced love is usually the precursor of the monastic impulse, celibacy or some strange idea on the sex problem usually is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... government and the national character, for if it is caused by colonisation or any other temporary and accidental cause, then the remedy itself is evidence of the disease. When Augustus passed laws against celibacy, those laws showed that the Roman empire was already beginning to decline. Citizens must be induced to marry by the goodness of the government, not compelled to marry by law; you must not examine the effects of force, for the law which strives against the constitution ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... belongs to an age of advance with a great upbursting of new power under more favorable conditions. It is to be noticed also that reproduction responds to conditions of advance or decline. In decline marriage and family become irksome. Celibacy arises in the mores. In times of advance sex vice and excess reach a degree, as in the Renaissance, which seems to constitute a social paroxysm. The sex passion rises to a frenzy to which everything else is sacrificed. The notion that mores grow either better or worse by virtue of ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Damasus, maker of lapidary epigrams; Jerome, translator of the Vulgate, and his adversary Vigilantius, who attacks the cult of saints and the abuse of miracles and fastings, and already preaches, with arguments which future ages were to repeat, against the monastic vows and celibacy ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Surely, if his grandmother wished to cultivate a grand passion, she might have chosen a more sightly object of devotion. Not that there was much to be said for Yossel's taste either. When after seventy-five years of celibacy the fascinations of the other sex began to tell upon him, he might at least have succumbed to a less matriarchal form of femininity. But perhaps his grandmother had fascinations of another order. Perhaps she had money. He put the question to ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... history, one may generalise and say that we see human beings continually troubled by the conditions under which they live. I can think of no time in the world when there was not some Question or other getting fussed about: at one time episcopal celibacy, at another time the Pict and Scot problem, and so on. Always a crumpled rose-leaf. Hence reform movements. Now, reforms move slowly, and by the time these reforms come about, the people whom they would have made happy, and who fussed and encountered ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... darlings! How mistaken we are in them! You are an old bachelor, Cummins; but if you should ever take it into your head to repent of celibacy, don't marry a dove-eyed darling, if you don't want to be defied all the days of ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... her own that she would scorn him from the outset. This dilemma, imposed by the rigidity of her smaller dignities, that were never mastered or overshadowed either by her sentiment or her passion, not only involved a life of celibacy, but was a constant justification of it, and made it eminently easy to be borne. There are not a few maiden ladies who are thus lightered over the shoals of a solitary existence by the buoyancy of their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... next to you—whoever he is—to give me this chance," the artist declared. "Ha, Ralph, my boy, how did you pull it off? That's what we're all of us wondering." He leaned over to give Marvell's hand the ironic grasp of celibacy. "Well, you've left us lamenting: he has, you know. Miss Spragg. But I've got one pull over the others—I can paint you! He can't forbid that, can ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... 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 peaceful existence ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Mortemart, was so unfortunate as to fall in love with a young Knight of Malta, doomed from his birth and by his family to celibacy. Having set out upon his caravans,—[Sea-fights against the Turks and the pirates of the Mediterranean.]—he was killed in combat ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... They were insistent in their condemnation of pleasure and luxury, and, in their search after purity, were induced to approve reluctantly that institution of marriage which they were compelled to tolerate. A state of celibacy was regarded as the nearest approach to the divine perfection, and there were in the primitive church a great number of persons devoted to the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... organized a town; moved later to Indiana, where they purchased 25,000 acres; and ten years afterward returned to Pennsylvania, and bought 5000 acres in another place,—all the time holding to their belief in a community of goods and a speedy coming of Christ, as well as the duty of practicing celibacy,—without exciting their neighbors or arousing their enmity. The Wallingford Community in Connecticut, and the Oneida Community in New York State, practised free love among themselves without persecution, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... are to be found, after pairing-time, single, and of each sex: but whether this state of celibacy is matter of choice or necessity, is not so easily discoverable. When the house-sparrows deprive my martins of their nests, as soon as I cause one to be shot, the other, be it cock or hen, presently procures a mate, and so ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... of the mother; it must impose it as a duty never to bring children into the world unless the conditions for their fair nurture and development are present. Regarding it as hopeless, as well as mischievous, to preach asceticism, and looking on the conjunction of nominal celibacy with widespread prostitution as inevitable, from the constitution of human nature, scientific Materialism—quite rationally and logically—advises deliberate restriction of the production of offspring, while sanctioning the exercise of the sexual instinct within the limits imposed ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... Eadmund's train, threw him from his horse as he passed through the marshes, and 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 in address, an artist, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... connexion, I may also refer to the sexual life of Catholic priests. It is certain that some of these exhibit homosexual tendencies. It is often suggested that it is their repulsion from heterosexual intercourse which leads such men to take the Catholic vow of celibacy. But there is another possible factor which must not be overlooked. It is not unlikely that certain persons, not homosexual, but in whom sexual inclination towards women is primarily wanting, may incline to enter the priesthood. Yet another possibility is pointed out by a Catholic priest who ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... speak the truth. To prize the pursuits of agriculture and horticulture, was a part of their religion. They allowed a plurality of wives, and concubines with them; but there was one wife to whom precedence belonged. Voluntary celibacy in man or woman was counted ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... 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 ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... social rank, are exempt from taxes, but do not practice celibacy or asceticism. Their ranks are recruited by heredity or from the nobility; and it is not uncommon for a prince to surrender his claim of succession to assume the office ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... illustration of the axiom which has so often been laid down,—that, of all the means that ever were devised to degrade religion in the persons of its teachers, the compulsory celibacy of the clergy is the most effectual. In Hernskrietchen and Auffenberg, it is very true, that no such lamentable results have followed; but what then? At the former place a most deserving man is ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... abroad upon the world, and see men shaving their heads, and wearing nasty hair shirts, and shutting themselves up in cells, and living lives of celibacy, and when I see women retiring from the world which they were sent to adorn, populate, and bless, and Shakers driving around in square wagons and studiously ugly garments, and Christians who should know better abandoning all the bright and cheerful ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... 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 |
