quotations about angels
When angels visit earth, the messengers
Of God's decree, they come as lightning, wind:
Before the throne, they all are living fire.
EMMA LAZARUS
"The Birth of Man: A Legend of the Talmud"
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
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
Angels boast ethereal vigor, and are formed from seeds of heavenly birth.
VIRGIL
attributed, Day's Collacon
Even among the angels, there is the sadness of division.
NICOLE KRAUSS
The History of Love
Man is a mixed being, made up of a spiritual soul and of a fleshly body; the angels are pure spirits, herein nearer to God, only that they are created and finite in all respects, free from decay, free from the power of death, whereas God is infinite and uncreated.
J. C. HARE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Angels and Demons can't cross over into our plane. So, instead we get what I call half-breeds. The influence peddlers. They can only whisper in our ears. A single word can give you courage, or turn your favorite pleasure into your worst nightmare. Those with the demon's touch and those part angel, living alongside us. They call it the balance.
KEVIN BRODBIN, MARK BOMBACK & FRANK CAPELLO
Constantine
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
In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Man and Superman
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
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
Man is his own star, and the soul that can render an honest and a perfect man commands all light, all influence, all fate. Nothing to him falls early, or too late. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
JOHN FLETCHER
The Honest Man's Fortune
Don't be on the side of the angels, it's too lowering.
D.H. LAWRENCE
letter to Rolf Gardiner, Dec. 18, 1927
Make friends with the angels, who though invisible are always with you.... Often invoke them, constantly praise them, and make good use of their help and assistance in all your temporal and spiritual affairs.
ST. FRANCIS DE SALES
Introduction to the Devout Life
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
Ye holy angels bright, who stand before God's throne and dwell in glorious light, praise ye the Lord each one. Assist our song, or else the theme too high doth seem for mortal tongue.
RICHARD BAXTER
Poetical Fragments
Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
But angels come to lead frail minds to rest in chaste desires, on heavenly beauty bound. You frame my thoughts, and fashion me within; you stop my tongue, and teach my heart to speak.
EDMUND SPENSER
Amoretti
The trendiness of angels with the public at large waxes and wanes, but in our time, the big surge of interest in angels began in the early 1990s. Suddenly these beings, which previously had shown up now and then in movies and TV but mostly on cards at Christmas and disappeared for the rest of the year, were everywhere. Why was this? The short answer is that there is something about angels that makes it impossible for people to forget about them for too long. There may be phases during which they sink out of sight, yet those phases always end eventually, and the figure of the angel reemerges, interpreted through the lens of the time in which they have appeared back into the light of human interest.
PTOLEMY TOMPKINS & TYLER BEDDOES
Proof of Angels: The Definitive Book on the Reality of Angels and the Surprising Role They Play in Each of Our Lives
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