ANGEL QUOTES III
quotations about angels
For when God said, "Let there be light, and there was light," if we are justified in understanding in this light the creation of the angels, then certainly they were created partakers of the eternal light which is the unchangeable Wisdom of God, by which all things were made, and whom we call the only-begotten Son of God.
ST. AUGUSTINE
City of God
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
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 the Angels arrive, the devils leave.
EGYPTIAN PROVERB
[Angels] aid us in our personal mission. We have to learn to listen, for if we block the angels out, they become only the fairy beings of dreams and pleasant stories.
SILVER RAVENWOLF
Angels
Angels are winged with God's power.
SOLON
attributed, Day's Collacon
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 never attack, as infernal spirits do. Angels only ward off and defend.
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
Arcana Coelestia
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
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
Even among the angels, there is the sadness of division.
NICOLE KRAUSS
The History of Love
I have need of angels. Enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. But finally understand this--I have burned up one hundred thousand human lives already, from the strength of my pain.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Lettres a Genica Athanasiou
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
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth -- unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
Nobody's perfect. We're all just one step up from the beasts and one step down from the angels.
JEANNETTE WALLS
Half Broke Horses
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
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
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
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
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"