quotations about angels
Entertaining angels unawares: It is always we who are to entertain the angels, and never they us. I cannot, however, think that an angel would be a very entertaining person, either as guest or host.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Notebooks
Good angels are fallible ... they sin every day and fall from Heaven like flies.
ANATOLE FRANCE
The Revolt of the Angels
When the Angels arrive, the devils leave.
EGYPTIAN PROVERB
Angels never attack, as infernal spirits do. Angels only ward off and defend.
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
Arcana Coelestia
When I was a child and heard about angels, I was both frightened and fascinated by the thought of these enormous, invisible presences in our midst. I conceived of them not as white-robed androgynes with yellow locks and thick gold wings, which was how my friend Matty Wilson had described them to me--Matty was the predecessor of all sorts of arcane knowledge--but as big, dark, blundering men, massive in their weightlessness, given to pranks and ponderous play, who might knock you over, or break you in half, without meaning to. When a child from Miss Molyneaux's infant school in Carrickdrum fell under the hoofs of a dray-horse one day and was trampled to death, I, a watchful six year old, knew who was to blame; I pictured his guardian angel standing over the child's crushed form with his big hands helplessly extended, not sure whether to be contrite or to laugh.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Untouchable
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
First Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1861
Some reputable scientists deny and others assert that UFOs do appear to people from time to time. Some scientists have reached the place where they think they can prove that these are possibly visitors from outer space. Some Christian writers have speculated that UFOs could very well be apart of God's angelic host who preside over the physical affairs of universal creation. While we cannot assert such a view with certainty, many people are now seeking some type of supernatural explanation for these phenomena. Nothing can hide the face, however, that these unexplained events are occurring with greater frequency around the entire world and in unexpected places.
BILLY GRAHAM
Angels: Ringing Assurance that We Are Not Alone
For truly we are all angels temporarily hiding as humans.
BRIAN L. WEISS
Miracles Happen: The Transformational Healing Power of Past-Life Memories
Six wings he wore, to shade his lineaments divine; the pair that clad each shoulder broad, came mantling o'er his breast with regal ornament; the middle pair girt like a starry zone his waist, and round skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold, and colours dipp'd in heaven; the third his feet shadow'd from either heel with feather'd mail, sky-tinctur'd grain.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?
JOHN PAGE
letter to Thomas Jefferson about the American Revolutionary War, Jul. 20, 1776
Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.
MILAN KUNDERA
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Around our pillows golden ladders rise, and up and down the skies, with winged sandals shod, the angels come, and go, the Messengers of God!
R. H. STODDARD
Hymn to the Beautiful
Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure and are awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Each single angel is terrifying.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Duino Elegies
The very names assigned to angels by their Creator, convey to us ideas pre-eminently pleasing, fitted to captivate the heart, and exalt the imagination; ideas which dispel gloom, banish despondency, enliven hope, and awaken sincere and unmingled joy.
TIMOTHY DWIGHT
Theology Explained and Defended
This is the state of all creatures, whether men or angels; as they make not themselves, so they enjoy nothing from themselves; if they are great, it must be only as great receivers of the gifts of God; their power can only be so much of the divine power acting in them; their wisdom can be only so much of the divine wisdom shining within them; and their light and glory, only so much of the light and glory of God shining upon them.
WILLIAM LAW
A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
2 CORINTHIANS 11:14
Angels have very nasty tempers. Especially when they're feeling righteous.
CLIVE BARKER
Mister B. Gone
Angels have immense auras, extending in some cases, like a mountain Deva, for miles. The historical attribution of wings to angelics is probably the result of the subconscious minds of human seers "clothing" the auras of angels with a form that their conscious minds could comprehend.
DAVID GODDARD
The Sacred Magic of Angels
If angels rarely appear, it's because we all too often mistake the medium for the Message.
EILEEN ELIAS FREEMAN
The Angels' Little Instruction Book: Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers
Be an angel to someone else whenever you can, as a way of thanking God for the help your angel has given you.
EILEEN ELIAS FREEMAN
The Angels' Little Instruction Book: Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers