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Angels

From Wikiquote, the free quote compendium
For other uses of "Angel", see Angel (disambiguation).
It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God alone. ~ William Blake
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.~ George Eliot
The Wounded Angel, Hugo Simberg, 1903, voted Finland's "national painting" during 2006.

Angels are divine messengers or transcendental beings found in many religions. This page is for quotes about or referring to Angels.


A

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Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm. ~ Joseph Addison
  • So when an angel by divine command
    With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
    Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,
    Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
    And, pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform,
    Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.
  • The people who walk angelically according to their free will and practice discipline in the life of the angels remove themselves completely from the desires of the flesh, beloved brothers; they die daily in the life that belongs to earth, but they live in the life of the angels, just as they share in the life of the Lord.
    • [Athanasius of Alexandria]] “The advanced life of virtue,” Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (1995), p. 314
  • Since a lower power acts in virtue of a higher power, a lower order performs actions proper to a higher order by acting in virtue of that higher power. But the higher orders possess in a more eminent way whatever is proper to the lower orders. Thus all things are in a certain sense common to the various orders. However, they receive their proper names from properties that are characteristic of each order. Nevertheless the lowest order of all retains the common name of angels for itself, for the reason that it acts, as it were, in virtue of all the rest. Furthermore, since the higher naturally influences the lower, and since intellectual action consists in instructing or teaching, the higher angels, in instructing the lower angels, are said to purify, illuminate, and perfect them.
Higher angels purify the lower angels by removing what is wanting to their knowledge. They illuminate them by fortifying the intellects of the lower angels with their own light, thus enabling them to comprehend higher objects. And higher angels perfect lower angels by guiding them to the perfection of higher knowledge. These three operations pertain to the acquisition of knowledge, as Dionysius remarks.
This inequality does not prevent all the angels, even the lowest, from seeing the divine essence. Even though each of the blessed spirits sees God in His essence, some may behold Him more perfectly than others. This should be clear from a previous chapter. However, the more perfectly a cause is known, the more numerous are the effects discerned in it. The divine effects which the higher angels perceive in God more clearly than the other angels, constitute the subject matter in which they instruct the lower angels. But higher angels do not instruct lower angels concerning the divine essence, which they all perceive directly.
  • I answer that, Some assert that the angels are composed of matter and form; which opinion Avicebron endeavored to establish in his book of the Fount of Life. For he supposes that whatever things are distinguished by the intellect are really distinct. Now as regards incorporeal substance, the intellect apprehends that which distinguishes it from corporeal substance, and that which it has in common with it. Hence he concludes that what distinguishes incorporeal from corporeal substance is a kind of form to it, and whatever is subject to this distinguishing form, as it were something common, is its matter. Therefore, he asserts the universal matter of spiritual and corporeal things is the same; so that it must be understood that the form of incorporeal substance is impressed in the matter of spiritual things, in the same way as the form of quantity is impressed in the matter of corporeal things.
But one glance is enough to show that there cannot be one matter of spiritual and of corporeal things. For it is not possible that a spiritual and a corporeal form should be received into the same part of matter, otherwise one and the same thing would be corporeal and spiritual. Hence it would follow that one part of matter receives the corporeal form, and another receives the spiritual form. Matter, however, is not divisible into parts except as regarded under quantity; and without quantity substance is indivisible, as Aristotle says (Phys. i, text 15). Therefore it would follow that the matter of spiritual things is subject to quantity; which cannot be. Therefore it is impossible that corporeal and spiritual things should have the same matter.
It is, further, impossible for an intellectual substance to have any kind of matter. For the operation belonging to anything is according to the mode of its substance. Now to understand is an altogether immaterial operation, as appears from its object, whence any act receives its species and nature. For a thing is understood according to its degree of immateriality; because forms that exist in matter are individual forms which the intellect cannot apprehend as such. Hence it must be that every intellectual substance is altogether immaterial.
But things distinguished by the intellect are not necessarily distinguished in reality; because the intellect does not apprehend things according to their mode, but according to its own mode. Hence material things which are below our intellect exist in our intellect in a simpler mode than they exist in themselves. Angelic substances, on the other hand, are above our intellect; and hence our intellect cannot attain to apprehend them, as they are in themselves, but by its own mode, according as it apprehends composite things; and in this way also it apprehends God (Article 3).

B

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The Lord will command his angels to take good care of you. They will lift you up in their hands. Then you won't trip over a stone. ~ The Bible
A tear is an intellectual thing,
And a sigh is the Sword of an Angel King. ~ William Blake
I heard an Angel singing
When the day was springing:
"Mercy, Pity, and Peace
Are the world's release." ~ William Blake
I don't mind if it's dangerous
I don't mind if it's raining
Take me up to the top of the city
And put me up on the angel's shoulders. ~ Kate Bush
I can see angels standing around you.
They shimmer like mirrors in Summer.
But you don't know it.
And they will carry you o'er the walls.
If you need us, just call. ~ Kate Bush
  • O white-robed Angel, guide my timorous hand to write as on a lofty rock with iron pen the words of truth, that all who pass may read.
  • A tear is an intellectual thing,
    And a sigh is the Sword of an Angel King.
  • It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God alone.
  • The player is a liar when he says : "Angels are happier than men, because they are better." Angels are happier than men and devils, because they are not always prying after good and evil in one another, and eating the tree of knowledge for Satan's gratification.
  • If God will send his angels
    I sure could use them here right now
    Well if God would send his angels
    And I don't have to know how.
    • Bono, "If God Will Send His Angels" on Pop (1997); also used in City of Angels (1998).
  • 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. I call it hypocritical bullshit.
  • As the moths around a taper,
    As the bees around a rose,
    As the gnats around a vapour,
    So the spirits group and close
    Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose.
  • We are not this story's author, who fills time and eternity with his purpose. Yet his purpose is achieved in our duty; and our duty is fulfilled in service to one another. Never tiring, never yielding, never finishing, we renew that purpose today: to make our country more just and generous; to affirm the dignity of our lives and every life. This work continues. This story goes on. And an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm.
  • I don't mind if it's dangerous
    I don't mind if it's raining
    Take me up to the top of the city
    And put me up on the angel's shoulders.
  • Aren't we all the same? In and out of doubt.
    I can see angels standing around you.
    They shimmer like mirrors in Summer.
    But you don't know it.
    And they will carry you o'er the walls.
    If you need us, just call.

C

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Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. ~ G. K. Chesterton
If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • But sad as angels for the good man's sin,
    Weep to record, and blush to give it in.
  • What though my winged hours of bliss have been
    Like angel visits, few and far between.
  • 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 fucking 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 fucking angels, my friend.
  • Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
  • Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
    • G. K. Chesterton, "Orthodoxy" (1908), Chapter VII : The Eternal Revolution; this is sometimes paraphrased "The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly".
  • Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of the character, though few can decypher even fragments of their meaning.
  • ...virginity is better than marriage, however good.... Celibacy is...an imitation of the angels. Therefore, virginity is as much more honorable than marriage, as the angel is higher than man. But why do I say angel? Christ, Himself, is the glory of virginity
    • St. John Chrysostom, Homily 19 on First Corinthians, NPNF, s. 1, v. 12, pp. 248–262.
  • We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.
  • If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.
  • When one that holds communion with the skies
    Has fill'd his urn where these pure waters rise,
    And once more mingles with us meaner things,
    'Tis e'en as if an angel shook his wings.

D

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  • And because the king saw a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven and saying, ‘Chop down the tree and destroy it, but leave the stump of its roots in the earth, bound with a band of iron and bronze, in the tender grass of the field, and let him be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts of the field, till seven periods of time pass over him,’ this is the interpretation, O king: It is a decree of the Most High, which has come upon my lord the king, that you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. You shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and you shall be wet with the dew of heaven, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, till you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.
  • Daniel 4:23-25
  • For he will give his angels a command concerning you, To guard you in all your ways.
  • It was the beginning of a day in June; the deep blue sky unsullied by a cloud, and teeming with brilliant light. The streets were, as yet, nearly free from passengers, the houses and shops were closed, and the healthy air of morning fell like breath from angels, on the sleeping town.
  • President Barack Obama loves to quote the lyrical closing lines of Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, calling on "the better angels of our nature" to overcome partisan hatreds and political divisions. Obama cited those words in his own inaugural proclamation and rested his hand on Lincoln's Bible when he took the oath of office. He has come back to those angels again and again ever since. … He used the phrase to eulogize Ted Kennedy, to chide a would-be Quran burner in Florida, and to say goodbye to chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Obama, it seems, sees better angels just about everywhere. Even as he traveled in India this week he talked about his efforts to live up to the example of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and, yes, Abraham Lincoln.
    But in light of today's real-world politics, Obama should think a little harder about the context in which Lincoln summoned those better angels on March 4, 1861. Led by South Carolina (now home to Sen. Jim DeMint, seven of 33 states had already seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy at that point. … If, in the end, Lincoln did manage to hold the Union together, it was not because of the better angels of human nature, but because he finally found the killer angels among his generals who could, and did, and at enormous cost, crush the secessionists.
  • Lincoln had an ally then of a kind that Obama could use now. Lincoln's old rival from Illinois, Stephen Douglas, whose party had been split by the fire-eaters and whom Lincoln defeated at the polls, became a wise and vital friend. In the months between the inauguration and Douglas's early death in June 1861, the "little giant," as he was known, spent many long hours talking to Lincoln about how best to preserve the Union — and compromise wasn't part of the picture. … "You do not know the dishonest purposes of those men as I do," he told Lincoln.
    What both of those great politicians understood by then was that there may be better angels in the nature of some people, but there are others who are willing to weaken, even destroy a nation to serve their own self-righteous self-interest, and they will do it in the name of the Constitution. If Obama hasn't learned that yet, perhaps it's time he did.
  • What is the question now placed before society with the glib assurance which to me is most astonishing? That question is this: Is man an ape or an angel? I, my lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence those new fangled theories.
  • In merest prudence men should teach
    * * * * * *
    That science ranks as monstrous things
    Two pairs of upper limbs; so wings—
    E'en Angel's wings! — are fictions.
  • Let old Timotheus yield the prize
    Or both divide the crown;
    He rais'd a mortal to the skies
    She drew an angel down.

E

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When God has sent his angel to me, then I know of a surety. … When God sends his angel to the soul it becomes the one who knows for sure. ~ Meister Eckhart
The soul at its highest is formed like God, but an angel gives a closer idea of Him. That is all an angel is: an idea of God. ~ Meister Eckhart
Knowledge comes through likeness. And so because the soul may know everything, it is never at rest until it comes to the original idea, in which all things are one. And there it comes to rest in God. ~ Meister Eckhart
  • When God has sent his angel to me, then I know of a surety. … When God sends his angel to the soul it becomes the one who knows for sure. Not for nothing did God give the keys into St. Peter's keeping, for Peter stands for knowledge, and knowledge is the key that unlocks the door, presses forward and breaks in, to discover God as he is.
    • Meister Eckhart, in Sermon 9, as translated in The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (1999) by Hughes Oliphant Old, Chapter 9 : The German Mystics, p. 448.
  • The authorities teach that next to the first emanation, which is the Son coming out of the Father, the angels are most like God. And it may well be true, for the soul at its highest is formed like God, but an angel gives a closer idea of Him. That is all an angel is: an idea of God. For this reason the angel was sent to the soul, so that the soul might be re-formed by it, to be the divine idea by which it was first conceived. Knowledge comes through likeness. And so because the soul may know everything, it is never at rest until it comes to the original idea, in which all things are one. And there it comes to rest in God.
    • Meister Eckhart, in Sermon 9, as translated in The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (1999) by Hughes Oliphant Old, Chapter 9 : The German Mystics, p. 449.
  • The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.
  • In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.
  • And these are the names of the holy angels who watch. Uriel, one of the holy angels, who is 3 over the world and over Tartarus. Raphael, one of the holy angels, who is over the spirits of men. Raguel, one of the holy angels who takes vengeance on the world of the luminaries. Michael, one of the holy angels, to wit, he that is set over the best part of mankind and over chaos. Saraqael, one of the holy angels, who is set over the spirits, who sin in the spirit. Gabriel, one of the holy angels, who is over Paradise and the serpents and the Cherubim. Remiel, one of the holy angels, whom God set over those who rise.

F

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How wonderful it must be to speak the language of the angels, with no words for hate and a million words for love! ~ Viktor Frankl
Angels are all around us, all the time, in the very air we breathe. ~ Eileen Elias Freeman
  • “Perhaps you could tell me how many angels may stand on the point of a pin?”…
    De Salcedo snorted. “I’ll tell you. Philosophically speaking, you may put as many angels on a pinhead as you want to. Actually speaking, you may put only as many as there is room for. Enough of that. I'm interested in facts, not fancies.”
  • Angels shine from without because their spirits are lit from within by the light of God.
    • Eileen Elias Freeman, in The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers (1994), p. 4, ISBN 0446671215
  • Angels can fly lightly because they take God seriously.
    • Eileen Elias Freeman, in The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers (1994), p. 5.
  • Angels can fly because they carry no burdens.
    • Eileen Elias Freeman, in The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers (1994).
  • 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, in The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers (1994).
  • Pay attention to your dreams — God's angels often speak directly to our hearts when we are asleep.
    • Eileen Elias Freeman in The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers (1994).
  • Life is a tapestry: We are the warp; angels, the weft; God, the weaver. Only the Weaver sees the whole design.
    • Eileen Elias Freeman in The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers (1994).
  • Angels fly at light speed, because they are servants of the Light.
    • Eileen Elias Freeman in The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers (1994).
  • If angels rarely appear, it's because we all too often mistake the medium for the Message.
    • Eileen Elias Freeman in The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers (1994).
  • Insight is better than eyesight when it comes to seeing an angel.
    • Eileen Elias Freeman in The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers (1994).
  • Angels are all around us, all the time, in the very air we breathe.
    • Eileen Elias Freeman in The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers (1994).
  • When babies look beyond you and giggle, maybe they're seeing angels.
    • Eileen Elias Freeman in The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers (1994).
  • How wonderful it must be to speak the language of the angels, with no words for hate and a million words for love!
    • Eileen Elias Freeman in The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers (1994).
  • God not only sends special angels into our lives, but sometimes He even sends them back again if we forget to take notes the first time!
    • Eileen Elias Freeman in The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers (1994).

G

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When men began to multiply on earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose. Then the Lord said: "My spirit shall not remain in man forever, since he is but flesh. His days shall comprise one hundred and twenty years." At that time the Nephilim appeared on earth (as well as later), after the sons of God had intercourse with the daughters of man, who bore them sons. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown. ~ Genesis 6:1-4
  • When men began to multiply on earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose. Then the Lord said: "My spirit shall not remain in man forever, since he is but flesh. His days shall comprise one hundred and twenty years." At that time the Nephilim appeared on earth (as well as later), after the sons of God had intercourse with the daughters of man, who bore them sons. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.
  • Genesis 6:1-4
  • Non Angli, sed Angeli.
    Not Angles, but Angels.

H

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Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace… ~ Leigh Hunt
  • From the east to the west sped the angels of the Dawn, from sea to sea, from mountain-top to mountain-top, scattering light with both their hands.
  • Unbless'd thy hand! — if in this low disguise
    Wander, perhaps, some inmate of the skies.
    • Homer, Odyssey, Book XVII, line 570. Pope's translation.
  • Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
    Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
    And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
    Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
    An Angel writing in a book of gold…
    • Leigh Hunt, in "Abou Ben Adhem" (or "Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel"), in The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt (1846).

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J

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  • "If 'it is good for a man not to touch a woman', then it is bad for him to touch one, for bad, and bad only, is the opposite of good. But, if though bad, it is made venial, then it is allowed to prevent something which would be worse than bad. ... Notice the Apostle's carefulness. He does not say: 'It is good not to have a wife', but, 'It is good for a man not to touch a woman'. ... I am not expounding the law as to husbands and wives, but discussing the general question of sexual intercourse – how in comparison with chastity and virginity, the life of angels, 'It is good for a man not to touch a woman'.
    • Jerome (c. 347 – 420), commenting on Paul's letter to the Corinthians, "NPNF2-06. Jerome: The Principal Works of St. Jerome". CCEL. Retrieved 7 November 2016 – via Google Books.
  • At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.
    • Jesus, Matthew 22:30 (NIV).

K

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  • On that very night the angel of Jehovah went out and struck down 185,000 men in the camp of the As·syr′i·ans. When people rose up early in the morning, they saw all the dead bodies.

L

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If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg