Top 99 Celibacy Quotes & Sayings

It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.

Celibacy bestows on a man the qualified freedom of a besieged city where one sometimes has to eat rats.

Celibacy is the worst form of self-abuse.

Everyone agrees the celibacy rule is just a Church law dating from the 11th century, not a divine command.

The church may hold whatever it holds with regard to clerical celibacy.

Celibacy is not natural to men or to women; all bodily needs require their legitimate satisfaction, and celibacy is a disregard of natural law.

Celibacy used to offend family-values conservatism; now it offends equally against the opposite spirit.

I consider my greatest accomplishment to be lifelong celibacy.

I think that one of the qualifications of artists should be a vow of celibacy. They should be confined to ruining only their own lives.

Try to force celibacy upon yourself and your dreams will become sexual, they will have a quality of sexuality.

To gain victory over the flesh was the purpose of fasting and celibacy, which denied the pleasures of this world for the sake of reward in the next.

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

I lived in a community where celibacy was the rule. My I saw many people asked to leave the ashram for so much as looking intensely at a member of the opposite sex.

Various Eastern fathers referred to the practice of married priests in their churches, offering each one of us elements for a further careful evaluation of the choice of the Latin church to connect celibacy to ordained priesthood.

I've tried everything but celibacy, and I really want to know what it feels like to be touched by someone with a mental touch and not a physical touch.

Unlike celibacy, which people choose, asexuality is an intrinsic part of who we are.

There is a line between sexualityand promiscuity, and the line is closer to celibacy than not.

A man may be cheerful and contented in celibacy, but I do not think he can ever be happy; it is an unnatural state, and the best feelings of his nature are never called into action.

I'd also gone through an entire year of celibacy based on my feeling that lust was the direct cause of birth which was the direct cause of suffering and death.

I expect celibacy of any person that is not married.

For both Protestants and Catholics, and whether or not absolute continence is demanded of the clergy, celibacy remains a blessed spiritual state.

To those who say that they are Christian and gay, what we must keep in mind is that absent in that kind of lifestyle is a call to holiness, a call to celibacy and integrity. Obviously, it is a capitulation toward one's desires and the sexual sins that the Bible so strongly condemns.

Asceticism and celibacy can conceal many incapacities.

The truly longstanding tradition in the church is that some are called to celibacy. Some feel called to it. But the church has never supported that celibacy be mandated for someone not called to it. It's never imposed on someone.

I took a vow of political celibacy.

Celibacy is one of the most unnatural things. It has destroyed so many human beings - millions - Catholic monks, Hindu monks, Buddhist monks, Jaina monks, nuns. For centuries they have been teaching celibacy; and the most amazing thing is, even in the twentieth century, not a single medical expert, physiologist, has stood up and said that celibacy is impossible, that in the very nature of things, it cannot happen.

Good God. I don’t believe St. Vincent and the word ‘celibacy’ have ever been mentioned in the same sentence before.

The ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy.

To me, the most obscene word in our language is celibacy.

You know, in some ways, the celibacy tradition goes back to the tribe of Levi and, certainly, sacrifice and the notion of sacrifice. In the Old Testament, the shedding of blood was for a man to perform. It was not for the woman, who gave life.

I never cheated on my wife. I took seriously those vows of celibacy.

Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond.

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent

Celibacy is not a matter of compulsion. Someone is accepted as a priest only when he does it of his own accord.

Most people that commit to a life of celibacy weren't leaving that much on the table in the first place.

Italian women are some of the most beautiful in the world. This is why the Vatican is in Italy. If a man can walk across Italy and retain his celibacy, he's got what it takes to be a priest - or an interior decorator.

If, hypothetically, Western Catholicism were to review the issue of celibacy, I think it would do so for cultural reasons, not so much as a universal option.

Out of the doctrine of original sin grew the crimes and miseries of asceticism, celibacy and witchcraft; woman becoming the helpless victim of all these delusions.

That clerical celibacy doesn't guarantee asceticism is obvious, any more than attending Mass guarantees prayerfulness (trust me on that one). But it preserves the call even when the system is corrupted.

In the name of celibacy, sex has been repressed for centuries and you have become just full of sexuality. Rather than transcending it you are boiling within.

A world filled with temptations needs priests who are totally dedicated to their mission. Accordingly, they are asked in a very special way to open themselves fully to serving others as Christ did by embracing the gift of celibacy.

I took the vow of celibacy in 1906. I had not shared my thoughts with my wife until then, but only consulted her at the time of making the vow. She had no objection.

I would like to sit still for a while but I'm restless you know and sitting still is only an ideal like celibacy and complete cleanliness.

Yes, hypothetically, western Catholicism could revise the theme of celibacy. ... But for the moment, I am in favor of maintaining celibacy, with the pros and the cons it has, because we have ten centuries of more good experiences than bad ones.

Celibacy can only be spontaneous, there is no other type of celibacy. If it is not spontaneous, it is not celibacy. You can force it. you can control your sexuality, but that is not going to help. You will not be celibate, you will be only more and more sexual. Sex will spread all over your being. It will become part of your unconscious. It will move your dreams, it will become your motivation in dreams, it will become your fantasy. In fact, you will become more sexual than you ever were before. You will think more about it and you will have to repress it again and again.

Celibacy is exhausting.

Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horse pond.

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.

Priestly celibacy has been guarded by the Church for centuries as a brilliant jewel, and retains its value undiminished even in our time when the outlook of men and the state of the world have undergone such profound changes.

When I was nine, I wrote a vow of celibacy on a piece of paper and ate it.

the most grievous wrong of that day ... was to be found in the establishment of the celibacy of the clergy. ... This hideous doctrine of a celibate priesthood was maintained only by a constant struggle against the better and truer instincts of the heart.

The vow of celibacy is a matter of keeping one's word to Christ and the Church. a duty and a proof of the priest's inner maturity; it is the expression of his personal dignity.

Celibacy is not just a matter of not having sex. It is a way of admiring a person for their humanity, maybe even for their beauty.

Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary.

I think when you embrace celibacy other elements of the relationship have to come forth. There isn't an opportunity for you to be blinded by your sexual desires there is an opportunity to see things more clearly.

In this modern world, the celibacy of the medieval learned class has been replaced by a celibacy of the intellect which is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the complete facts.

Celibacy goes deeper than the flesh.

But Rosa soon made the discovery that Miss Twinkleton didn't read fairly. She cut the love-scenes, interpolated passages in praise of female celibacy, and was guilty of other glaring pious frauds.

Celibacy is a great help, inasmuch as it enables one to lead a life of full surrender to God.

Couples should abstain from sexual relations at least 2 or 3 days a week. Gradually try to reach a stage of celibacy most days.