"Celibacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by this minister. It was enacted in the parliament of 1539: a vast number of persons were soon after imprisoned for transgressing it; and Cranmer himself was compelled, by the clause which ordained the celibacy of the clergy, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... lord, admitted that it is better to marry than burn," said the Pringle misdemeanant, "and here was I, my lord, married and still burning!" and, "I think you would find, my lord, considering all Charlotte's peculiarities, that the situation was really much more trying than the absolute celibacy St. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... adoption. Estranged, generally speaking, to the professional life, or at least, acting in it only a secondary role, she scarcely gives it a serious thought; she can therefore give all due deliberation to her choice between marriage and celibacy. ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... European monks. They live in monasteries, dress in yellow, go barefoot, their heads and beards being shaved; they have constant services in their chapels, chanting, incense, and candles; erect monuments and temples over the relics of holy men. They place an especial merit in celibacy; renounce all the pleasures of sense; eat in one hall; receive alms. To do these things is incident to a certain ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... race? If we admit that celibacy is better and nobler than marriage, evidently the human race will come to an end. But, if the logical conclusion of the argument is that the human race will become extinct, ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... the Middle Ages, we find conditions curiously involved. The exaltation of celibacy as the true condition for the religious, and the consequent enormous increase of convents, placed fresh barriers in the way of marriage; and the Church having attracted the gentle and devoted among the women and the more intelligent among ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... charming, and since he did not explain that he had purposely dismissed his sister for the day in order to find an excuse for his visit to the hotel, Annette had no present suspicion of him. They had a little playful badinage together, and Laurent, turning mock-sentimental, lamented his celibacy so quaintly that she broke into peals of silvery laughter over him. Paul was pleased with her, and half inclined to be proud of her for the first time in his life, though he had a nervous fear lest her gaiety should topple over like an unskilled ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... why: Forasmuch as man desires immortality, which he attains by the procreation of children, no one should deprive himself of his share in this good. He who obeys the law is blameless, but he who disobeys must not be a gainer by his celibacy; and therefore he shall pay a yearly fine, and shall not be allowed to receive honour from the young. That is an example of what I call the double law, which may enable us to judge how far the addition of persuasion to threats is ...
— Laws • Plato
... 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
... 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
... started to travel, and came to London only at rare intervals. I did write to Selina, asking her to see me, but she always refused, so I became philosophic and took to celibacy also." ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... 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 ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... hated all good things,—which every sensible parent knows well enough is not true of a great many children, to say the least. I have sometimes questioned whether many libels on human nature had not been a natural consequence of the celibacy of the clergy, which was enforced for so long ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sort of rapture. She had never heard of "Faust," but the whole was a New England version of the "Jewel Song." As Marguerite had been tempted to guilty love by jewels, so Sylvia was striving to have Rose tempted by jewels to innocent celibacy. But she was working by methods of which she ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... wives of the clergy or not, I will not presume to answer that question myself; but I may, perhaps, be allowed to record the opinion, emphatically expressed to me, of one who has lived in the East for a great many years, and is by no means in sympathy with the compulsory celibacy of the Roman priesthood. "It is," he remarked, "far too hastily assumed that the fact of the married missionary usually bringing another valuable ally to the work sufficiently determines the question. But I am convinced that, speaking generally, it is to the unmarried missionary that ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... 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 recover ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of exalting the Papal See above all prelates and princes, Gregory, as soon as he became Pope, set about two important reforms,—the enforcement of celibacy among the secular clergy, and the suppression of simony. By the first measure he aimed to effect not only a much-needed moral reform, but, by separating the clergy from all the attachments of home and neighborhood and country, to render them more devoted ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... 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 with such domestic joys as a wife and nursery. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... not personal; but she certainly attracted me. She attracts me still. A man must have some outlet for the natural and instinctive emotions of our common humanity; and if a monastic Oxford community imposes celibacy upon one with mediaeval absurdity—why, Selah Briggs is, for the time being, the only possible sort of outlet. One needn't marry her in the end; but for the moment it is certainly very excellent fooling. Not unsentimental either—for my ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... were to be seized for military service. The profession fell out of fashion then, and there are now comparatively few mendicant dervishes to be seen. Those that still wear the 'ragged robe' do not all appear to follow the rules of poverty, self-denial, abstinence, and celibacy. One there was, a negro from 'darkest Africa,' who attached himself as a charity-pensioner to the British Legation in Tehran, and was to be seen in all weathers, snow and sunshine, fantastically dressed, chattering and chuckling in real Sambo style. He knew that his religious cry of ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... thousand renounce maternity and devote themselves to celibacy to raise the prodigious family of a ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... 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 the ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... 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 the tents of sin. He did not ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... celibacy; but she laughed at me in her common-sense way, and uttered blunt truths concerning the ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Massinger Shakspeare The Old Dramatists Statesmen Burke Prospect of Monarchy or Democracy The Reformed House of Commons United States of America Captain B. Hall Northern and Southern States Democracy with Slavery Quakers Land and Money Methods of Investigation Church of Rome Celibacy of the Clergy Roman Conquest of Italy Wedded Love in Shakspeare and his Contemporary Dramatists Tennyson's Poems Rabelais and Luther Wit and Madness Colonization Machinery Capital Roman Conquest Constantine Papacy and the Schoolmen Civil War of ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... considered marriage a long slavery and preferred virtuous celibacy enlivened by platonic gallantry. When youth and adorers had passed away, she found consolation in interchanges of wit, congenial conversation, and the cultivation of the mind by study. Making of love a doctrine, a manual of morals or savoir-vivre, has had a refining effect upon ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... who had been invited to balance him in the scale of celibacy by the hostess in her study of her dinner-party, first smiled, and then alleged a very distinguished instance of divorce in which the parties were both of immaculate origin and unimpeachable fashion. "Nobody," she ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... Archbishop Courtenay had a great barefooted procession to St. Paul's to hear a famous Carmelite preacher inveigh against the Wycliffe doctrines. A Lollard, indeed, had the courage to nail to the doors of St. Paul's twelve articles of the new creed denouncing the mischievous celibacy of the clergy, transubstantiation, prayers for the dead, pilgrimages, and other mistaken and idolatrous usages. When Henry Bolingbroke (not yet crowned Henry IV.) came to St. Paul's to offer prayer for the dethronement of his ill-fated cousin, Richard, he paused at the north side of the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... 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
... 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 man, ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... this statement. Why has 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
... 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 making ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... demonstrated, which in earlier or later life led to a fixation of the inversion—among which are exclusive relations with the same sex, companionship in war, detention in prison, dangers of hetero-sexual intercourse, celibacy, sexual weakness, etc. (3) Hypnotic suggestion may remove the inversion, which would be surprising in that of a ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... 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 which ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... among abuses, in the second place, of the celibacy of the clergy, and the manner in which their priests marry and persuade others to marry, are verily matters worthy of astonishment, since they call sacerdotal celibacy an abuse, when that which is directly contrary, the violation of celibacy and the illicit transition to ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous
... turned into that lonely path where the world was going of itself; the path of a celibacy in vain opposed by the laws of the emperors. Down this slope it was hurled headlong by the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... I have found the Utopia of the prophets and poets, an actual place, here in Pennsylvania. We will go there together, shut out the trade-world, and devote ourselves with these lofty enthusiasts to a life of purity, celibacy, meditation,—helpful and loving to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... opinion, is much superior to that inaugurated by Chaka in Zululand, inasmuch as it permits of even more rapid mobilisation, and does not necessitate the employment of the pernicious system of enforced celibacy. Lastly, I have scarcely spoken of the domestic and family customs of the Kukuanas, many of which are exceedingly quaint, or of their proficiency in the art of smelting and welding metals. This science they carry to considerable perfection, of which a good example is to be seen in their "tollas," ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... pauperism is caused by the excess of population, exclusively—have devoted themselves to devising checks. Some wish to prohibit the poor from marrying; thus,—having denounced religious celibacy,—they propose compulsory celibacy, which will ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... that teaching is not that pleasant things are not desirable, but that one is more miserable if one loses them than if one never cares for them at all. The ascetic trains himself to be indifferent about food and drink and the apparatus of life; he aims at celibacy partly because love itself is an overmastering passion, and partly because he cannot bear to engage himself with human affections, the loss of which may give him pain. There is, of course, a deeper strain in asceticism ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... fasting, by the building of temples and cathedrals, by the blood of men and beasts, by forms and ceremonies, by chants, by kneelings and prostrations, by flagellations and maimings, by renouncing the joys of home, by living alone in the wide desert, by the practice of celibacy, by inventing instruments of torture, by destroying men, women and children, by covering the earth with dungeons, by burning unbelievers, by putting chains upon the thoughts and manacles upon the limbs of men, by believing things without evidence and against evidence, by disbelieving and denying ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... nodded agreement. Mr. Sinclair's inveterate celibacy was a standing grievance with the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... great ladies treated her with an annoying condescension as if she had descended from her rank in marrying an artist. Besides, the younger men in the embassies, the attaches of different nationalities, some light, some dark, who sought relief from their celibacy without going outside diplomatic society, were disgracefully impudent as they danced with her or went through the figures of a cotillion, as if they considered her an easy conquest, seeing her married to an artist who could not display an ugly uniform in the drawing rooms. They made cynical declarations ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 Christian kings, savage tribes thrown upon captive provincials coalesced ...
— 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
... is covered with confusion, confesses his mistake, and by his manly attitude gains the mother's heart and the daughter's hand. Ergaste, the rejected suitor, proves to be an uncle of Dorante, and in a spirit of self-abnegation, well nigh superhuman, devotes himself to celibacy and his fortune to the lovers. Lisette plays the role of the intrigante and temptress of her mistress. The comic of the piece is in the hands of Lubin, a peasant in the service of the family, who is bribed by each party to spy ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... proud, and I'll scrap the plan if you can show 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 the ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... Primitive Church has not lasted up to the present day. And you do not seem to realise, dear Doctor, that by persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. Men should be more careful; this very celibacy leads weaker ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... The question of celibacy is too large and complicated to be here discussed in its moral and sociological aspects. It is a condition that confronts us, must be accepted, and the best made of it. Whether by economic compulsion or personal preference, it is a fact that a large number of American ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... further, and had thus no idea of the effect which his words produced upon her. It was only when he saw her extreme depression and sorrow that he surmised something of the truth, with that instinct which is characteristic of men, who, themselves separated from the world by the stern law of celibacy, devote all their attention to the spiritual and temporal concerns ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... which to judge what the ultimate effect of woman's higher education will be. If the higher education of woman is going to lead to a large per cent of the best and most intellectual women in society leading lives of celibacy, then, of course, ultimately the higher education of woman will be disastrous to the race. But probably the relative infrequency of marriage among women who are college graduates is a transitory phenomenon due to the fact that neither women nor men are as yet adjusted ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... crusade against the Church. In truth, as we have seen, it was a strictly private performance, and could be no signal for a public movement. La Religieuse was undoubtedly an expression of the strong feeling of the Encyclopaedic school about celibacy, renunciation of the world, and the burial of men and ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... capillary, captious, cardinal, carnal, carnivorous, castigate, cataclysm, catastrophe, category, causality, cavernous, celebrity, celibacy, censorious, ceramics, cerebration, certitude, cessation, charlatan, chimerical, chronology, circuitous, circumlocution, citation, clandestine, clarify, clemency, coadjutor, coagulate, coalesce, coercion, cogency, cognizant, cohesion, coincidence, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... to himself, in a flash of suspicion. "Surely she's not thinking of the Vicar! Surely Maggie isn't after all!" He did not conceive it possible that the Vicar, who had been to Cambridge and had notions about celibacy, was thinking of Maggie. "Women are queer," he said to himself. (For him, this generalisation from facts was quite original.) Fancy her staring after the Vicar! She must have been doing it quite unconsciously! He had supposed that her attitude towards the Vicar was precisely ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... they reached its vicinity. Here they stayed for three weeks and kept up their preaching and teaching. During their stay Titu Cusi, who had not wished to bring them here, got his revenge by annoying them in various ways. He was particularly anxious to make them break their vows of celibacy. Calancha says that after consultation with his priests and soothsayers Titu Cusi selected as tempters the most beautiful Indian women, including some individuals of the Yungas who were unusually attractive. It is possible that these women, who ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... celibacy of the Fellows of Trinity College, Dublin, became an active law in that University, the Board proceeded to enforce it, by summoning to their presence all the individuals who it was well known had transgressed the regulation, and among ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... Apaecides there was no retreat. He had taken the vows of celibacy: he had devoted himself to a life that at present seemed to possess all the austerities of fanaticism, without any of the consolations of belief It was natural that he should yet cling to a yearning desire to reconcile ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... ride, to shoot the bow, and to 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 ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... time with any one whom she loves, and she does 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 ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... Marriage was instituted by God in Eden [Gen. 2:13] and was sanctioned by Christ, who performed His first miracle at a wedding. [John 2:1-11] It is a holy estate. Celibacy is not a holier estate than marriage, as the Roman Catholic Church maintains. ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... you are the last man alive who should indulge in melancholy forebodings. You have led a peaceful and happy life, graced with the reputation of many good deeds, and you are generally beloved by the people of whom you have charge. Then, though celibacy is your appointed lot, heaven has given you a niece as dear to you as any child of your own could be, who has won a pre-eminent place among the world's great artists, and is moreover endowed with beauty and distinction. What more can ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... earth may never be scourged with celibacy, but the ever-increasing variety of bachelors, male and female, creates in me a feeling of apprehension. Nor can I make out whether a bachelor of arts is bigger and better than bachelors of science and pedagogy. The arts folks claim that they are, and proceed to ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... silence ensued. I remembered that his business was to save souls. This old man loved that young girl whom he had watched growing up, defenceless in her own home; he loved her with a great strength of paternal instinct that no vow of celibacy can extinguish, and with a heroic sense of his priestly duty. And I was not to say him nay. The sea—so be it. It was easier to think of her dead than to think of her immured; it was better that she should be the victim ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... ever reached their eyes.[243] In another field of labor, to which the Landgrave of Hesse called him, Francois Lambert performed services far more important than any he was permitted to render his native land. As the first French monk to throw aside his habit—above all, as the first to renounce celibacy and defend in a published treatise the step he had taken (1523), no French reformer, even among those of far greater abilities and wider influence, was regarded by the adherents of the Roman Catholic Church with so intense ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... after death, are 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 of ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... 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. ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... bishops alone possessed the faculty of spiritual generation: and this extraordinary privilege might compensate, in some degree, for the painful celibacy which was imposed as a virtue, as a duty, and at length as a positive obligation. The religions of antiquity, which established a separate order of priests, dedicated a holy race, a tribe or family, to the perpetual service of the gods. Such ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... and were probably obeyed by large numbers. The rule of continence was far less strict than in the Catholic 'religious' life; but Empedocles, according to Hippolytus, advised abstinence from marriage and procreation, and the tendency to regard celibacy as part of the 'philosophic life' increased steadily. The Cynic Antisthenes is quoted by Clement of Alexandria as having expressed a wish to 'shoot Aphrodite, who has ruined so many virtuous women'. But the asceticism of the early Cynics and of some Stoics was based not on ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... am vowed to celibacy, and Adeline de Courval is leman where she should be wedded dame. Methinks I fret at that thought even more than ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... relations with Elizabeth Throckmorton were not in themselves without excuse. To be the favourite of Elizabeth, who had now herself attained the sixtieth summer of her immortal charms, was tantamount to a condemnation to celibacy. The vanity of Belphoebe would admit no rival among high or low, and the least divergence from the devotion justly due to her own imperial loveliness was a mortal sin. What is less easy to forgive in Raleigh than ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... 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, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of 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, where ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... many of whom are very powerful. Then there are noblemen of different ranks, who are chiefly employed as officers under the crown, or governors of imperial domains. Next to them are the Sintoo and Buddhist priests, the latter of whom are under a vow of celibacy. The soldiers come after the priests in rank. Their dress is very similar to that of civilians, but they wear the embroidered badge of their respective chiefs. The fifth class consist of medical men and literati, as ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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. It was all over with me, anyway, When I ran the needle in my hand While ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... short time we found his home. There it is that George should be seen. Away he is full of precious light, but home is his setting. To Narcissus, who found it in that green period when all youngsters take vehement vows of celibacy, and talk much of 'free love,' all ignorant, one is in charity persuaded, of what they quite mean, that home was certainly as great and lasting a revelation as the first hour of 'Poetry's divine first finger-touch.' It was not that his own home-life had been unhappy, for it was ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... 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 you are today, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... statement to female chastity is evident from what he adds farther on: "There is no fact in Irish history more singular than the complete and, I believe, unparalleled absence among the Irish priesthood of those moral scandals which in every Continental country occasionally prove the danger of vows of celibacy. The unsuspected purity of the Irish priesthood in this respect is the more remarkable, because, the government of the country being Protestant, there is no special inquisitorial legislation to insure it, because of the almost unbounded influence ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... a general way, that you were going in for money and celibacy and selfishness,—just as you have ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... Mrs. Windsor, "that is what I always think. There is something so beautiful in not eating and drinking, and not marrying, and all that; but at least we must acknowledge that celibacy is quite coming into fashion. Our young men altogether refuse to marry nowadays. Let us hope that is a step ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... 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 the kingdom of this Godhead ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... 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, were ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... 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 Huguenot dames as ladies of honor. One ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and saw the doors of the one open to his resolute tread, and anticipated the glorious sepulchre which heart and brain should win him in the other. John Ardworth has never married. When Percival rebukes him for his celibacy, his lip quivers slightly, and he applies himself with more dogged earnestness to his studies or his career. But he never complains that his lot is lonely or his affections void. For him who aspires, and for him who loves, life may lead through the thorns, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mysticism there is often among them a perfect holiness of life, adapting itself to all circumstances, climates, and associations. The same heart of a young maiden is capable of embracing a married life or of devoting itself to religious celibacy; and in either case the duties of each are performed with the most perfect simplicity and the highest sanctity. Hence, how often does a ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... And when it is said by Plato, that the soul of Orpheus, out of disgust to womankind, led the life of a [186]swan, the meaning certainly is, that he retired from the world to some cloister, and lived a life of celibacy, like a priest. For the priests of many countries, but particularly of Egypt, were recluses, and devoted themselves to [187]celibacy: hence monkery came originally from Egypt. Lycophron, who was of Egypt, and skilled in antient terms, styles Calchas, who was the priest of Apollo, a swan. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... that more than one Papal edict was issued forbidding them to keep houses of bad repute or to act as panders.[3] Among the aphorisms of Pius II. is recorded the saying that if there were good reasons for enjoining celibacy on the clergy, there were far better and stronger arguments for ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... still more before they will act. Spiritualism has its significance, as an appeal from the gross materialism and heathen ideas of another life so commonly entertained. Mormonism has its logic, as an appeal from the enforced celibacy of one sex, and to the Oriental Abrahamic instincts of the other. Homoeopathy has its fraction of sanity, as a protest against that odious tendency of physicians to give nauseous stuff to people because they are ailing, which sickened the pages of old pharmacopoeias ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... 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 society they not only ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... 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
... considered in the Middle Ages that tithes might be applied to any church purpose, and were not the exclusive right of the actual parish priest, provided he obtained a sufficient maintenance, which in those days of celibacy was not very expensive. The bishops and other patrons thus assigned the great tithes of corn of many parishes to religious foundations elsewhere, only leaving the incumbent the smaller tithe from other crops—an arrangement which ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... you are right,' said Mrs. Lahens. 'It is not well that anything should outlive its day. But sometimes it happens so. But look,' she exclaimed, laughing nervously, 'how Agnes is listening to St. Clare. Those two were made for each other. Celibacy and Work. Which is ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... either wives or betrothed in the old home; and among the later arrivals there was a preponderance of young unmarried men. It was not to be expected that the immediate future would bring an adequate number of young unmarried women unless some special means were adopted; but this forced celibacy could not continue without danger of unpleasant social developments in a community that aimed at uniting absolute freedom with the strictest morality. In Taveta and Masailand, a few isolated cases of intrigue with native girls and wives had occurred. At the Kenia, our young people had, without exception, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... On the other hand the utterly artificial life of civilization, which debauches even the monkeys in "the Zoo," and which expands the period proper for the reproductory process from the vernal season into the whole twelvemonth, leaves to the many, whose lot is celibacy, no bodily want save one and that in a host of cases either unattainable or procurable only by difficulty and danger. Hence the prodigious amount of mental excitement and material impurity which is found wherever civilization ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 as to the beauty and holiness of marriage as infamous and abhorrent, ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... not 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 Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... why I would not yield her, O mighty Asad," he said. "Thyself hast thou oft and rightly reproached me with my celibacy, reminding me that it is not pleasing in the sight of Allah, that it is unworthy a good Muslim. At last it hath pleased the Prophet to send me such a maid as I could take ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... in a monotony that was broken by only three incidents in as many years. The first was the death of poor Eleanor, whose worthless husband had died of excess some months before; the second incident was the marriage of Elizabeth Brudenell to the old pastor of her parish, who repented of his celibacy because he had become infirm, and took a wife because he required a nurse; and the third was the visit of the Countess of Hurstmonceux and Mr. Brudenell, who came and spent a few months among their friends in America, and then returned to their delightful ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... 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 ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... this morning. Old Delashelwilt and his women still remain they 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 fear by ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... carried on outside marriage. 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
... doors of his apartments, to his presses, his other articles of furniture-in fact, to every thing and place in the house; but nothing was found that tended to compromise him, except an essay against the celibacy of priests, and two sheets of paper whereon were written in another hand than his, some love-poems in the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... 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
... evident that Windham knew nothing whatever about 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? ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... 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 ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... those who dwelt in regular communities, under a fixed government. But the three names at first were interchangeable; the three modes of life alternated, often in the same man. The life of all three was the same,—celibacy, poverty, good deeds towards their fellow-men; self-restraint, and sometimes self-torture of every kind, to atone (as far as might be) for the sins committed after baptism: and the mental food of all three was the same likewise; continued meditation upon the ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... view of this subject, that Knowlton intended to reconcile with marriage the prevention of over-population. Upon the perusal of this work, I cannot bring myself to doubt that he honestly believed that the remedies he proposed were less evils than even celibacy or over-population on the one hand, or the prevention of marriage on the other hand—in that honesty of intention I entirely concur. But whether, in his desire to reconcile marriage with a check on over-population, he did not overlook one very important consideration ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... rate, things change. There are manners and customs evolved that would seem strange to you. There come laws and religions, all made to match current requirements. Celibacy and sterility become a crime. Virginity becomes a disgrace, a something to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... orthodox and pure, which was so 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 dead, and the tremendous mystery of the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, which ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... mutual, and ripened apace, but his want of "prospects" induced the prudent parents to break off the intimacy. The expectant fellowship indeed would have afforded him sufficient means, but a barbarous statute was in force which imposed celibacy upon the fellows, and barred his hopes. If this disappointment had happened to a man of strong resolute will it would, in all likelihood, after the first shock was over, have thrown him back upon his studies more determinedly than ever, but ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... offence. I agree to put my handkerchief up to my nose when I sneeze in his presence, and he contracts not to wipe muddy boots on my sofa. I undertake not to shock his wife by parading my hideous immorality before her eyes, and he binds himself not to aggravate my celibacy by beating her or kissing her when I am paying a call. I agree, by wearing an arbitrarily fixed costume when I dine with him, to brand myself with the stamp of a certain class of society, so that his guests shall receive me without question, and he in return gives me a ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... 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 foremost of all things and not the passage ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was written, and of supplying whatever was not"—Hist. Eng- land, vol. ii. p. 74. 5. See the statute of the Six Articles (31 Hen. VIII. c. 14), which de- clared that transubstantiation, communion in one kind, celibacy of the clergy, vows of widowhood, private masses, and auricular confession, were part of the law of England. 6. In the year 1606, when the Jesuits were expelled from Venice, Pope Paul V. threatened to excommunicate that republic. A most violent quarrel ensued, which was ultimately settled by the ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... 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 judgment, their more ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... all the lower orders of Angels? Does the man who considers gold more precious than silver say that silver is nothing at all? Are we insulting the stars when we admire and praise the sun? And do we despise marriage because we put celibacy above it? ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... 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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
