quotations about angels
The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Intellect", Essays
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
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
We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.
LUCIANO DE CRESCENZO
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing
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
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth -- unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
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
When people think of angels, they think flowing robes and halos. But in the Bible, they also look like ordinary people. Why not today?
JOAN WESTER ANDERSON
In the Arms of Angels
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"
What is all this shit about angels? Have you heard this? Three out of four people now, believe in angels. What're you, fucking stupid? Has everybody lost their f***ing minds in this country? Angels, shit. You know what I think it is? I think it's a massive collective psychotic chemical flashback of all the drugs -- all the drugs -- smoked, swallowed, snorted, shot, and absorbed rectally by all Americans from 1960 to 1990. Thirty years of adulterated street drugs'll get you some f***ing angels, my friend.
GEORGE CARLIN
"Angels", You Are All Diseased
In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Man and Superman
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
All the difference between men and angels is, men are passing through the day of trial that angels have already passed through.
BRIGHAM YOUNG
Journal of Discourses
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
Angels appear to transcend all cultures, races, and systems. They are a part of human history and civilization, sometimes at the forefront, other times in the shadows, but they are always there. They don't belong to any one particular religion, although many modern people try to associate them with Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. No one religion holds total responsibility for the belief in angels. In truth, these religions only support the existence of angels, they didn't create them.
SILVER RAVENWOLF
Angels
The more devils we have within us, the more chance we have to form angels.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS
The Last Temptation of Christ
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 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
Angels may be very excellent sort of folk in their own way, but we, poor mortals in our present state, would probably find them precious slow company.
JEROME K. JEROME
"On Vanity and Vanities", Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
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"