Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond.
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.
As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent
Celibacy is the worst form of self-abuse.
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.
A celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity.
Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
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.
Celibacy is not a matter of compulsion. Someone is accepted as a priest only when he does it of his own accord.
The church may hold whatever it holds with regard to clerical celibacy.
How deep a wound to morals and social purity has that accursed article of the celibacy of the clergy been! Even the best and most enlightened men in Romanist countries attach a notion of impurity to the marriage of a clergyman. And can such a feeling be without its effect on the estimation of the wedded life in general? Impossible! and the morals of both sexes in Spain, Italy, France, and. prove it abundantly.
I consider my greatest accomplishment to be lifelong celibacy.
Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the differentiation between man and woman—all is Atman! Give up the identification with the body, and stand up!
God has set the type of marriage through creation. Each creature seeks its perfection in another.
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.
It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
To suppose such a thing possible as a society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great part of the women, to be compelled to lead a life of celibacy, for fear of having children to be starved; to suppose such a thing possible is monstrous.
That's why real awareness always leads you beyond sex, and celibacy happens on its own accord. Because to be in sex you have either to be identified with the male or identified with the female. A real celibate is one who has gone beyond, who is neither.
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
What happens with your sex energy depends on how you use it. What it can become does not depend on it alone, but on your understanding and on how you live your life. Have you not observed that it becomes brahmacharya, the state of celibacy when it is transformed? bramhacharya is not hostile to passion; brahmacharya is the purification, the transcendence, the sublimation of passion. In the same way, the energy that manifests itself in violence becomes peace, serenity and tranquility. It is only a question of transformation.
or simply: