quotations about angels
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.
WILLIAM BLAKE
"A Vision of the Last Judgement"
Angels are not beings of earth but of a "somewhere else": one that lies above the earth (not in the simple geographical sense, of course, for angelic reality transcends the three-dimensional existence in which we are, for the moment, situated, and by whose rules we have to communicate), and when they appear here, they rock the bearings of the world in a way we are not used to.
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
Death makes angels of us all & gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven's claws
JIM MORRISON
An American Prayer
Guardian angels are not merely extensions of our will, doing what human beings want, fetching us what we desire, accommodating our every manipulation.
DUKE TUFTY
"Voices of Faith: Does everyone have a guardian angel, even bad people?", Kansas City Star, March 4, 2016
There's times an angel can't be trusted, or so many wouldn't have lost themselves.
AMELIA E. BARR
A Singer from the Sea
We are all "qualified" to see angels because we are God's children. If we see angels, it is because we are permitted to do so by our Father. I do not believe it is something we can will on our own, although I think it is good to have hearts and minds open to the possibility of experiencing the Divine. Angels are sent according to our Father's will, and the ability to see them/encounter them is a precious and uniquely individual gift.
JENNIFER WILDER MORGAN
"Do Angels Still Help People? Author Shares Real-Life Encounters That Strengthened Her Faith", The Christian Post, February 28, 2016
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
"Janet's Repentance", Scenes of Clerical Life
Hark! the music of the angels floating onward still we hear; blessed music, sweetest chorus ever sung to mortal ear.
FANNY CROSBY
Music of the Angels
One likes to imagine the angels are always triumphant. One does not like to think of the ancient and terrible scales balancing the infernal and divine as wobbling back and forth. Tilting freely, to and fro. One does not like to think that sometimes it is the angel that falls.
HOLLY BLACK
A Flight of Angels
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.
MEISTER ECKHART
Sermon 9, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church
Have you ever felt a comforting presence even though no one else was around or noticed a light in the corner of your eye, even though there was no beam of light when you turned towards the light? Angels are among us. These moments are just a few of the amazing signs that we are in the presence of one.
LESLI WHITE
"Signs You've Encountered An Angel", beliefnet, February 25, 2016
Where lambs have nibbled, silent moves the feet of angels bright; unseen they pour blessing, and joy without ceasing, on each bud and blossom, and each sleeping bosom.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Night
If guardian angels do exist exclusively for Christians that would mean 70 percent of the world's population would be discriminated against and get short-shrift. Bad God.
DUKE TUFTY
"Voices of Faith: Does everyone have a guardian angel, even bad people?", Kansas City Star, March 4, 2016
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
"Notebook B", Aphorisms
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.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
attributed, Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
A question arises regarding the angels who dwell with us, serve us and protect us, whether their joys are equal to those of the angels in heaven, or whether they are diminished by the fact that they protect and serve us. No, they are certainly not; for the work of the angels is the will of God, and the will of God is the work of the angels; their service to us does not hinder their joy nor their working. If God told an angel to go to a tree and pluck caterpillars off it, the angel would be quite ready to do so, and it would be his happiness, if it were the will of God.
MEISTER ECKHART
"True Hearing", Selected Sermons
Angels are endowed with the noblest created Attributes. They are endowed with wonderful Power. This perfection of Angels is forcibly indicated by the fact that the name Power, or Might, is in several places given to them in the Gospel. No stronger testimony of their high possession of this attribute can be conveyed by a single word; for it is a direct declaration that their nature is power itself.
TIMOTHY DWIGHT
Theology Explained and Defended
Angels have no gender. Their true form lies far beyond our current ability to fully understand, being somewhat akin to complex geometric patterns, incandescent like fire-works. But angels do take on forms that we can grasp. They do this for two reasons: so that we can perceive them on a level closer to our own; and to veil, or step down, the intensity of their vibrations so that we can endure them.
DAVID GODDARD
The Sacred Magic of Angels
It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.
JOHN STEINBECK
East of Eden
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.
GEORGE ELIOT
Silas Marner