quotations about angels
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes; The glorious fault of Angels and of Gods.
ALEXANDER POPE
Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady
Angels, living light most glorious! Beneath the Godhead in burning desire in the darkness and mystery of creation you look on the eye of your God never taking your fill: What glorious pleasures take shape within you!
HILDEGARD OF BINGEN
"O gloriosissimi"
The death of God left the angels in a strange position. They were overtaken suddenly by a fundamental question. One can attempt to imagine the moment. How did they look at the instant the question invaded them, flooding the angelic consciousness, taking hold with terrifying force? The question was, "What are angels?" New to questioning, unaccustomed to terror, unskilled in aloneness, the angels (we assume) fell into despair.
DONALD BARTHELME
"On Angels"
In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Man and Superman
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth -- unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
But all God's angels come to us disguised: sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, one after other lift their frowning masks, and we behold the Seraph's face beneath, all radiant with the glory and the calm of having looked upon the front of God.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"On the Death of a Friend's Child"
We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry VIII
But now that we may lift up our eyes (as it were) from the footstool to the throne of God, and leaving these natural, consider a little the state of heavenly and divine creatures: touching Angels, which are spirits immaterial and intellectual, the glorious inhabitants of those sacred palaces, where nothing but light and blessed immortality, no shadow of matter for tears, discontentments, griefs, and uncomfortable passions to work upon, but all joy, tranquility, and peace, even for ever and ever doth dwell: as in number and order they are huge, mighty, and royal armies, so likewise in perfection of obedience unto the law, which the Highest, whom they adore, love, and imitate, hath imposed upon them, such observants they are thereof, that our Saviour himself being to set down the perfect idea of that which we are to pray and wish for on earth, did not teach to pray or wish for more than only that here it might be with us, as with them it is in heaven.
RICHARD HOOKER
Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
Life is a tapestry: We are the warp; angels, the weft; God, the weaver. Only the Weaver sees the whole design.
EILEEN ELIAS FREEMAN
The Angels' Little Instruction Book: Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers
Angels are winged with God's power.
SOLON
attributed, Day's Collacon
If angels stoop from visions of more than earthly beauty to spells of less than earthly worth, they are but fallen angels, mingling divine utterances with the babblings of madness, and the madness is not the divineness.
EDWIN HUBBELL CHAPIN
Living Words
Even among the angels, there is the sadness of division.
NICOLE KRAUSS
The History of Love
Angels boast ethereal vigor, and are formed from seeds of heavenly birth.
VIRGIL
attributed, Day's Collacon
An angel can illuminate the thought and mind of man by strengthening the power of vision, and by bringing within his reach some truth which the angel himself contemplates.
THOMAS AQUINAS
attributed, Angels: A Joyous Celebration
Cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from ye door.
WILLIAM BLAKE
"Holy Thursday"
The angels may have wider spheres of action, may have nobler forms of duty, but right with them and with us is one and the same thing.
EDWIN HUBBELL CHAPIN
Living Words
We should, can and most of the time do communicate with God directly. To my knowledge, angels are not necessary for anything. But God's creation is abundant, and asking "Why angels?" would be like asking why there are thousands of varieties of trees or stars, when we could get along with so much less. God Himself told us many times that He was sending angels to love and care for us, so He is the one who brought them into our lives. Therefore, even if we don't understand their entire purpose, I vote that we pay attention to them.
JOAN WESTER ANDERSON
interview, Belief Net
We can all be angels to one another. We can choose to obey the still small stirring within, the little whisper that says, "Go. Ask. Reach out. Be an answer to someone's plea. You have a part to play. Have faith." We can decide to risk that He is indeed there, watching, caring, cherishing us as we love and accept love. The world will be a better place for it. And wherever they are, the angels will dance.
JOAN WESTER ANDERSON
Where Angels Walk
Yes, angels are real, just as real as you and I are. Although they are largely unseen by us, they exist in great numbers.
BILLY GRAHAM
"Billy Graham says angels are real and appear as ordinary humans on occasion", Christian Today, January 29, 2016
The greatest thing we can learn from the holy angels is their instant, unquestioning obedience to God's command.
PETER NWARU
"Existence of Angels: What Christians believe", National Mirror, February 28, 2016