quotations about angels
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
I am a believer in angels, though not the picture-book kind with wings and harps. Such angelic accoutrements seem as nonsensical to me as devils sporting horns and carrying pitchforks. To me, angel wings are merely symbolic of their role as divine messengers.
RICHARD PAUL EVANS
The Christmas Box
When the Angels arrive, the devils leave.
EGYPTIAN PROVERB
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
Insight is better than eyesight when it comes to seeing an angel.
EILEEN ELIAS FREEMAN
The Angels' Little Instruction Book: Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers
Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
Angels never attack, as infernal spirits do. Angels only ward off and defend.
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
Arcana Coelestia
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
The greatest thing we can learn from the holy angels is their instant, unquestioning obedience to God's command.
PETER NWARU
"Existence of Angels: What Christians believe", National Mirror, February 28, 2016
Cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from ye door.
WILLIAM BLAKE
"Holy Thursday"
The death of God left the angels in a strange position. They were overtaken suddenly by a fundamental question. One can attempt to imagine the moment. How did they look at the instant the question invaded them, flooding the angelic consciousness, taking hold with terrifying force? The question was, "What are angels?" New to questioning, unaccustomed to terror, unskilled in aloneness, the angels (we assume) fell into despair.
DONALD BARTHELME
"On Angels"
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
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
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
Life is a tapestry: We are the warp; angels, the weft; God, the weaver. Only the Weaver sees the whole design.
EILEEN ELIAS FREEMAN
The Angels' Little Instruction Book: Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers
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"
In pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies; All quit their spere, and rush into the skies! Pride still is aiming at the blessed abodes, Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Man
We are ne'er like angels till our passion dies.
THOMAS DEKKER
The Honest Whore
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
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