"All the ordained ministers of the Latin Church, with the exception of permanent deacons, are normally chosen from among men of faith who live a celibate life and who intend to remain celibate "for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.""

"Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion."

"On the preferred place of committed celibacy, there was complete continuity with the doctrine of patristic times so vigorously set forth by writers like Jerome and Chrysostom. In the new European world, where the monasteries had preserved the remains of Roman culture where the clergy had organized the universities, where the reformers or moral life came from the religious orders, the emphasis on celibacy received an institutional impetus it had lacked in the Roman era. Celibacy was now the established norm for the Western secular clergy. Much of the work of social and intellectual leadership was performed by men who, as secular priests, or monks, or brothers, were bound to observe complete sexual continence. Almost all of the theorizing on marriage and sexuality was done by men both personally and institutionally committed to the ideal of lifelong continence."

"According to Islamic tradition (sunnah), marriage has been deemed to be an essential requirement. Celibacy has been regarded as a malevolent condition fraught with evils."

"If Genesis 1:28 were a ‘command’ that applied to every individual, then Paul would have been disobedient in his apostolic singleness. Paul and everyone else would be obligated to pursue marriage and to order their marriages to produce many descendants."

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

"Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures."

"Virginity is better than marriage, however good. ... Celibacy is ... an imitation of the angels. Therefore, virginity is as much more honorable than marriage, as the angel is higher than man. But why do I say angel? Christ, Himself, is the glory of virginity."

"The long period of the dark ages... is due... in a very considerable degree, to the celibacy enjoined by religious orders on their votaries. Whenever a man or woman was possessed of a gentle nature that fitted ... deeds of charity, to meditation, to literature, or to art... they had no refuge elsewhere than in the bosom of the Church. But the Church chose to preach and exact celibacy. The consequence was that these gentle natures had no continuance, and thus, by a policy so singularly unwise and suicidal that I am hardly able to speak of it without impatience, the Church brutalized the breed of our forefathers. She acted precisely as if she had aimed at selecting the rudest portion of the community to be alone the parents of future generations. She practised the arts which breeders would use, who aimed at creating ferocious, currish, and stupid natures. ... The Church, having first captured all the gentle natures and condemned them to celibacy, made another sweep of her huge nets ... to catch those who were the most fearless, truth-seeking, and intelligent ...and therefore the most suitable parents of a high civilization, and put a strong check, if not a direct stop, to their progeny. Those she reserved... to breed the generations of the future, were the servile, the indifferent, and again, the stupid. Thus, as she ... brutalized human nature by her system of celibacy applied to the gentle, she demoralised it by her system of persecution of the intelligent, the sincere, and the free."

"What happens is that the scandals have an immediate impact. Tradition has weight and validity. Catholic ministers chose celibacy little by little. Up until 1100, some chose it and some did not. After, the East followed the tradition of non-celibacy as personal choice, while the West went the opposite way. It is a matter of discipline, not of faith. It can change."

"She said that she was technically a virgin when she married Rob. That after she and Walt were married, when they first came to making love and she caught sight of his penis, she'd cracked up because it was so big and she couldn't see how in hell they'd manage it. She never said in so many words, "I never had sexual interourse with Walt," e.g. But when I asked her, "So you were technically a virgin when you married Rob" (words to this effect), she said yes. She said that whenever she and Rob made love before a Seth session, or before a class session, that the results for the ensuing session were spectacular. And that sometimes she and Rob would make love for the sake of these results in a session."

"City of sin, it's a pity on a whim Good girls gone bad, the city's filled with them Mommy took a bus trip, now she got her bust out Everybody ride her, just like a bus route "Hail Mary" to the city, you're a virgin And Jesus can't save you, life starts when the church end"

"Ewan Birney, co-director of the European Bioinformatics Institute near Cambridge added: “This is an interesting study where using genetics one can better untangle cause and consequence of a complex human behaviour. Genetics only contributes a small part to age of first sexual intercourse, but the very random nature of each person’s genome means it can be used to trace the impact of this behaviour into later life with less concern about complex correlations confusing cause and consequence."

"George Davey Smith, a clinical epidemiologist at Bristol University, said: “It suggests that earlier puberty does influence early age of sexual debut, which then appears to have other consequences such as, all things being equal, earlier first birth, having more children, less likely to remain childless, and poorer educational outcomes.” While early puberty has been linked to poor educational achievement before, he said, the latest study strengthened the evidence that early puberty was a cause, and not simply a reflection of underlying factors, such as social class."

"Writing in the journal Nature Genetics, the scientists mention another genetic variant that seemed to link red hair colour and freckled skin with women, but not men, losing their virginity later than others. Scientists identified the raft of genes from the DNA of more than 125,000 people aged 40 to 69 enrolled on the BioBank project. The most common age for both men and women losing their virginity was 18. Having drawn up the list of 38 gene regions, the team went on to verify their effects in 250,000 other men and women from Iceland and the US. The scientists go on to show how early puberty - often brought on by poor nutrition and, as a consequence, childhood obesity - has a small but direct effect on the age at which people lose their virginity, and the age they have their first child. Each of these in turn appeared to reduce the person’s chances of doing well in education. “This helps to inform us about future preventative efforts to delay puberty in young children,” Perry said."

"“We were able to calculate for the first time that there is a heritable component to age at first sex, and the heritability is about 25%, so one quarter nature, three quarters nurture,” said John Perry, an expert in reproductive ageing and related health conditions at Cambridge University."

"Now piercèd is her virgin zone; She feels the foe within it."

"‘No, no; for my virginity, When I lose that,’ says Rose, ‘I’ll die’: ‘Behind the elms last night,’ cried Dick, ‘Rose, were you not extremely sick?’"

"Because “marriageable” women had to be virgins, American men at the end of the 19th century commonly turned to brothels and “red light districts” for sexual pleasure with “unmarriageable” women. So many new husbands unknowingly brought sexually transmitted infections to their brides on their wedding nights that the birthrate plummeted, especially among the middle class."

"“I have found that amateur status is much like virginity,” Hooks wrote back; “highly praised in theory, highly frustrating in reality, and usually discarded at the first opportunity.”"

"Jabir b. Abdillah reported that once he was on an expedition with the Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa sallam, and when they were close to the city of Madinah, he sped on his mount. The Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa sallam asked him why he was in such a hurry to return home. Jabir replied, “I am recently married!” The Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa sallam asked, “To an older lady or a younger one?” [the Arabic could also read: “To a widow or a virgin?”], to which he replied, “A widow.”The Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa sallam said, “But why didn’t you marry a younger girl, so that you could play with her, and she could play with you, and you could make her laugh, and she could make you laugh?”He said, “O Messenger of Allah! My father died a martyr at Uhud, leaving behind daughters, so I did not wish to marry a young girl like them, but rather an older one who could take care of them and look after them.” The Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa salam replied, “You have made the correct choice.” Jabir continues, “So when we were about to enter the city, the Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa sallam said to me, "Slow down, and enter at night, so that she who has not combed may comb her hair, and she who has not shaved may shave her private area." Then he said to me, "When you enter upon her, then be wise and gentle.”"

"Some say no evil thing that walks by night, In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen, Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine, Hath hurtful power o’er true virginity."

"It is a strange fact. In spite of all the tall talk and all the immense literature, for the last 60 years, about emancipation of labor, no sooner do the working men anywhere take the subject into their own hands with a will, than uprises at once all the apologetic phraseology of the mouthpieces of present society with its two poles of capital and wages-slavery (the landlord now is but the sleeping partner of the capitalist), as if the capitalist society was still in its purest state of virgin innocence, with its antagonisms still undeveloped, with its delusions still unexploded, with its prostitute realities not yet laid bare."

"The superiority of virginity and sexual abstinence was generally taken for granted. But a dark undercurrent of hostility to sexuality and marriage became interwoven with the more benign attitudes towards the body and current as late as the second century. Attitudes diverged, and mainstream Christianity became infected with a pronounced streak of distrust towards bodily existence and sexuality. This permanent 'encratite' tendency was given powerful impetus in the debates about Christian perfection at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth centuries"

"I always thought of losing my virginity as a career move."

"The late Middle Ages also saw a multiplicity of visual representations of virgin martyrs in every medium: stained glass, paintings, miniatures, sculpture. Many are extremely graphic focusing on the mutilation of the female body, including detached body parts (eyes, breasts). These images were available to an illiterate public with no access to more nuanced versions. Visual representations, however, combined with oral tradition, were sufficient to inspire the career of Joan of Arc. Calling herself "La Pucelle" (the virgin or the maid) and claiming inspiration from Catherine and Margaret, Joan led French resistance against the English in the last phases of the Hundred Years' War. She was executed by the English for heresy—an execution indistinguishable from martyrdom, as several contemporaries noted. Her canonization, in 1920, and her worldwide popularity demonstrates a continuing fascination with the image of the virgin martyr. Another late example, that of Maria Goretti, is more disturbing. In 1909, the twelve-year-old Maria, who had been frequently threatened by a neighbor, died after being stabbed by him for resisting his sexual advances. Aware of his intent, Maria did little to avoid the encounter that led to her death. These two examples demonstrate powerfully the different ways in which the example of the virgin martyr could be internalized by real women."

"Women have … by imitating the life condition of men, surrendered a very strong position of their own. Men are afraid of virgins, but they have a cure for their own fear and the virgin’s virginity: fucking. Men are afraid of crones, so afraid that their cure for virginity fails them; they know it won’t work. Faced with the fulfilled crone, all but the bravest men wilt and retreat, crestfallen and cockadroop."

"Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance. Old age is similarly a waiting room, where you go after life’s over and wait for cancer or a stroke. The years before and after the menstrual years are vestigial: the only meaningful condition left to women is that of fruitfulness."

"He took her virginity with the gentle care of love, and with love’s glorious violence."

"Virginity is the ideal of those who want to deflower."

"It is regarded as normal to consecrate virginity in general and to lust for its destruction in particular."

"Instead of this tired concept, we need a new language of sexual experience, one which is fully inclusive, and which is able to express the full macrocosm of sex, never prioritizing or privileging one individual act over another. We need a language which leaves room for gradations of experience, always recognizing that our knowledge and understanding of sexuality is never—and will never be—fully complete. Our language of sexual experience must contain multitudes because sex contains multitudes: there is always another frontier, whether it’s new preferences, positions, or partners, or perhaps changes to your own body; sex feels different after childbirth, for example, as I’m sure it does after menopause. Becoming “sexually experienced” doesn’t begin and end with penetration, and it doesn’t happen overnight: It’s a long and gradual process, with infinite potential for new discoveries. If you’re lucky, it can last a lifetime."

"While we’re on the topic of bodies, now seems as good a time as any to remind you that there is no biological basis for the notion of virginity: it is not a scientific term used to describe the transition from one state of being to another, and, despite what some shady doctors may try and sell you, it is literally impossible to gauge a person’s level of sexual experience by inspecting their genitalia. There is no test for virginity (just ask the World Health Organization); how could there be, when engaging in the act of penetrative sex does nothing to alter the physical body in any permanent, discernible way. The hymen—that thin layer of tissue which surrounds and partly covers most (but not all) vaginal openings, and which can be (but isn’t always) torn the first time the vagina is penetrated, which sometimes (but not every time) results in bleeding—can be ruptured in a number of ways which involve no sexual contact whatsoever, such as inserting a tampon, doing gymnastics, or riding a bicycle. The notion of “virginity” is not scientific; it is a wholly and entirely social construct, existing only within our collective imaginations."

"What actually is “virginity”? Of course, it means different things to different people, but for the most part the prevailing consensus (and the definition given by the Oxford English Dictionary) is still that “virginity” refers to a state of sexual inexperience—specifically, inexperience of heteronormative sexual intercourse, a.k.a. penile-vaginal penetration. This immediately throws up some problems."

"A better understanding of the genetic underpinnings of reproductive timing could inform other kinds of research, said Paige Harden, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, who was also not involved with the study. Researchers, for instance, have reported that people who lose their virginity earlier in life are more likely to have future psychological problems such as depression, and “many studies have been very quick to conclude that what’s happening is the sexual relationship is damaging or risky for teenagers in some way,” Harden said. But other studies, she said, have found that depression and a predisposition to having sex earlier could have common genetic roots. Past studies from Perry’s group and others have found that people who go through puberty earlier face higher risks of some cancers, heart disease, and diabetes. The new study, Perry said, also found a tie between early puberty and the age at which people first have sex and have a child, as well as lower levels of education."

"Which people desire to lose what they possess? A sick man his fever, a tormented husband his wife, a gambler his debts, and a girl—her virginity."

"If any one saith, that the marriage state is to be placed above the state of virginity, or of celibacy, and that it is not better and more blessed to remain in virginity, or in celibacy, than to be united in matrimony; let him be anathema."

"...virginity is better than marriage, however good.... Celibacy is...an imitation of the angels. Therefore, virginity is as much more honorable than marriage, as the angel is higher than man. But why do I say angel? Christ, Himself, is the glory of virginity."

"He has the special quality of virginity, most and least ambiguous of states: ignorance, yet at the same time, power in potentia, and furthermore, unknowingness, which is not the same as ignorance."

"Finally, women and men who thought of virginity loss as a step in a process were typically frank about their virginity status, seeing it as a cause for neither pride nor shame. Almost all of these respondents told their virginity-loss partners that they were virgins, which may have facilitated later discussions of awkward or unpleasant aspects of virginity loss. In fact, people who interpreted virginity loss as part of a process proved to be the best-equipped to work through physically or emotionally negative experiences by talking with their partners, generally in ways that helped ensure more positive sexual experiences later on. For example, Jennifer (25, heterosexual) expected virginity loss with her boyfriend of three months to be physically and emotionally enjoyable. Instead, she found sexual intercourse to be so unpleasant and tedious that she had no desire to have sex again. She had, however, enjoyed losing her virginity on an emotional level; this, plus her boyfriend's support and encouragement were crucial in convincing her that the physical aspects of sex would improve over time."

"In contrast, participants who saw virginity as a stigma were extremely reluctant to admit their virginity to anyone they knew. Many worked to disguise their virginity, either actively- by falsifying their sexual histories- or passively- by allowing or encouraging others to assume they were no longer virgins. Not surprisingly, people who interpreted virginity as a stigma were the most likely to conceal their virginity from their virginity-loss partners. For instance. Bill (31, heterosexual) decided not to tell his partner that he was a virgin because "It was so obvious to me that she wasn't [a virgin], that I felt demeaned by, if I had [told her]." Indeed, many respondents in this group lost their virginity with relative strangers, from whom they might more easily conceal their sexual status. Most clandestine virgins avoided detection by their partners; however, the three respondents whose partners either ridiculed them as virgins or as sexually incompetent were profoundly dissatisfied with the manner in which they lost their virginity (albeit relieved to have expunged their stigma). Men were less successful than women at concealing their virginity and sexual inexperience, perhaps due to popular stereotypes of men as sexually active and women as sexually passive. Respondents who lost their virginity at relatively advanced ages were also less successful at concealment, apparently because their similarly-aged partners were already sexually experienced. The desire of adherents to the stigma frame to avoid being stigmatized as virgins also affected their use of contraceptives. Of the group least likely to employ a form of contraception (59% did), a number of these respondents declined to discuss contraception- or to insist on practicing safer sex- precisely in order to avoid appearing inexperienced or foolish to their partners."

"From a policy perspective, encouraging young people to interpret virginity as a gift- a stance consistent with many abstinence-only sex education programs- is a double-edged sword, protecting against one potential negative consequence of sexual activity (pregnancy and/or STD transmission) but increasing the likelihood of another deleterious consequence (emotional distress due to partner's nonreciprocation), In contrast, even adherents to the stigma frame whose partners ridiculed them experienced virginity loss as positive on balance, inasmuch as they lost their stigma. Participants who saw virginity loss as a process achieved the goal of gaining knowledge merely through losing their virginity, thus their partners could in practice wield little power over them."

"Before losing their virginity, respondents who viewed virginity as a gift typically spoke openly about their virginity status with people they knew. In fact, they were often quite proud of being virgins. These men and women invariably discussed their virginity with their sexual partners, in part to ensure that their partners realized what a special gift they were about to receive. Self-disclosure also served as a way to encourage reciprocity. Bryan (18, heterosexual), who had made a point of discussing his virginity with his girlfriend before they had sex, explained. "If you feel as though you're not loved as much as... you love this other person, I think you kind of feel slighted." Communication about virginity status may have been facilitated by the nature of the relationship adherents to the gift frame had with their virginity-loss partners. They were the group most likely to lose their virginity in serious dating relationships and to be in love with their partners or to describe them as "soulmates." Respondents who interpreted virginity as a gift were the most likely to use contraceptives when they lost their virginity (79% did), a tendency apparently related to both willingness to communicate and the relationship between partners... On the downside, however, the five respondents (all women) whose partners failed to reciprocate described their virginity-loss experiences as emotionally devastating and diminishing their value as persons. The norm of reciprocity effectively empowers recipients at the cost of givers; therefore, participants who saw virginity as a gift were particularly vulnerable to distressing virginity-loss experiences precisely because they framed virginity as a gift."

"Virginity: you don't get that back, because you were in such a big hurry to get rid of it in the first place."

"There is a “diaspora,” a dispersion, even within ourselves. If Jesus were to ask me, as He did that poor demoniac in the Gospel: “What is your name?” I too would have to reply: “My name is legion, for there are many of us” (Mk 5:9). There are as many of us as there are desires, plans and regrets which we harbor, each one different from and contrary to others which pull us in opposite directions. They literally distract us, drag us apart. Virginity is a powerful aid to progress toward interior unity, in virtue of the fact that it enables us to live united to the Lord, and able to devote ourselves to Him “without distractions.”"

"While we honour marriage we prefer virginity which is the offspring of marriage. Will silver cease to be silver, if gold is more precious than silver?"

""If 'it is good for a man not to touch a woman', then it is bad for him to touch one, for bad, and bad only, is the opposite of good. But, if though bad, it is made venial, then it is allowed to prevent something which would be worse than bad. ... Notice the Apostle's carefulness. He does not say: 'It is good not to have a wife', but, 'It is good for a man not to touch a woman'. ... I am not expounding the law as to husbands and wives, but discussing the general question of sexual intercourse – how in comparison with chastity and virginity, the life of angels, 'It is good for a man not to touch a woman'."

"It is not disparaging wedlock to prefer virginity. No one can make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil."

"Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is. Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this."