"Celibate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... certain other benefices of the Church should not be given to any one related to him. The people called him Nocens (the Guilty One, or the Harmful One) instead of Innocent, and immortalized the prolific paternity of this saintly celibate in ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... exists at all to indicate his marital relations, and so far as furnishing material for his biographers is concerned, he might as well have remained single all his life. In point of fact, Amerigo Vespucci, though sterling in his friendships, ardent and even affectionate, was a true celibate. He was wedded to Science, his whole nature was absorbed by the pursuits to which he had, perhaps fortuitously, devoted his maturer years. If we contrast him with Columbus, in respect to the higher qualities of his character, we ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... it has been no small part of my life-work to get you happily married,' he began in his playful way. 'A celibate is like the odd half of a pair of scissors, fit only to scrape a trencher. How ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... it over and over, with all the passion and devotion of a celibate's prayer over a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... asserts to have belonged to a lunatic, who wandered for half a lifetime in the Val d'Ema, subsisting precariously upon entirely vegetable food—roots, herbs, and the like; another is the superior part of a convict, hung in Arezzo for numerous offences; a third is that of a very old man who lived a celibate from his youth up, and by his abstinence and goodness exercised an almost priestly influence upon the borghesa. When, by this miscellaneous lecture, he has both amused and edified his hearers, he ingeniously turns the discourse upon his own life, and finally introduces the subject of ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... It is virginity which gives men wings to soar towards heaven." Celibacy raises the Apostle John above the Prince of the Apostles himself. At the funeral of the Virgin Mary, Peter gave John a palm branch, saying: "It becometh one who is celibate to bear the ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... they are absolutely incapable of cherishing the young they bring into the moon; periods of foolish indulgence alternate with moods of aggressive violence, and as soon as possible the little creatures, who are quite soft and flabby and pale coloured, are transferred to the charge of celibate females, women 'workers' as it were, who in some cases possess brains of ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... suitably be stated that sixteenth-century standards in these matters were not so high as those of the present day. 'If gold ruste, what shal iren do?' The highest ecclesiastical authorities were unable to check a nominally celibate priesthood from maintaining women-housekeepers who bore them families of children and were in many cases decent and respectable wives to them in all but name; indeed in Friesland the laity for obvious reasons insisted upon this violation of clerical vows. ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... table in the guests' house, and Ole's charming daughter—the Rose of Westfjord-dalen—did not keep us long waiting. Roast mutton, tender as her own heart, potatoes plump as her cheeks, and beer sparkling as her eyes, graced the board; but emptiness, void as our own celibate lives, was there when we arose. In the upper room there were beds, with linen fresh as youth and aromatic as spring; and the peace of a full stomach and a clear conscience descended ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... experience, allied with the Christian authority, I simply conclude that I am wrong, and the church right; or rather that I am defective, while the church is universal. It takes all sorts to make a church; she does not ask me to be celibate. But the fact that I have no appreciation of the celibates, I accept like the fact that I have no ear for music. The best human experience is against me, as it is on the subject of Bach. Celibacy is one flower in my father's garden, of which I have not been told the sweet ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... system of concubinage which they were unable to prevent—propter duritiem cordis—by which a law of nature was provided for, in defiance of the law ecclesiastical. The question was finally settled by the Council of Trent in 1563, since when the celibate rule has generally been strictly observed in the Roman Church. The absence of such a rule in the Church of England is, of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley |
