Quotes about angels (1180 quotes, page 12)

“Oh, I'm just trying to explain,
I'm a disbelieving angel.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Singles and rarities
Context: I feel so sorry for you,
Believing because they control.
And of all the guardian angels
They chose me to save your soul!
Oh, I'm just trying to explain,
I'm a disbelieving angel.

“As shines the moon in clouded skies,
She in her poor attire was seen;
One praised her ankles, one her eyes,
One her dark hair and lovesome mien.
So sweet a face, such angel grace,
In all that land had never been.
Cophetua sware a royal oath:
"This beggar maid shall be my queen!"”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

" The Beggar Maid http://home.att.net/%7ETennysonPoetry/tbm.htm", st. 2 (1842)

“God is summoning you. Angels are summoning you. The myriads who have gone before are summoning you. We are surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses."”

Henry Melvill (1798–1871) British academic

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 342.
Context: God is summoning you. Angels are summoning you. The myriads who have gone before are summoning you. We are surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses." The battlements of the sky seem thronged with those who have fought the good fight of faith. They bend down from the eminence, and bid us ascend, through the one Mediator, to the same lofty dwelling.

God

“Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape.”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Beautiful Losers (1966)
Context: What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.

Love , World , Law , Chance

“The hard core, the outlaw elite, were the Hell's Angels…”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1960s, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1966)
Context: The hard core, the outlaw elite, were the Hell's Angels... wearing the winged death's-head on the back of their sleeveless jackets and packing their "mamas" behind them on big "chopped hogs." They rode with a fine unwashed arrogance, secure in their reputation as the rottenest motorcycle gang in the whole history of Christendom.

Hell

“Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic: it has no attributes peculiar to fallen angels. It is not even Machiavellian, for Machiavelli's teaching was graceful, subtle, and colorful.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968), p. 223
Context: Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic: it has no attributes peculiar to fallen angels. It is not even Machiavellian, for Machiavelli's teaching was graceful, subtle, and colorful. Nor is it Neronian. Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns.

Fools , Color , Science

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.”

Paul of Tarsus book First Epistle to the Corinthians

I Corinthians Ch. 13 (KJV) The word "Charity" is here used as a translation of the Latin Caritas, and the original Greek Agape, which were words for "Love", and used to denote the highest and most self-transcending forms of Love.
Variants: Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
I Corinthians Ch. 13 (NKJV)
If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophesy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes in all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tounges, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing. For we know partially and we prophesy partially, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things. At present, we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians Ch. 13 (NASB)
Now, there remain faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13, New World Translation http://www.watchtower.org/e/bible/1co/chapter_013.htm
First Epistle to the Corinthians
Context: Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

Men , Faith , Mountain , Understanding

“Science depresses man; Love exalts the Angel. Science is still seeking, Love has found. Man judges Nature according to his own relations to her; the Angelic Spirit judges it in its relation to Heaven. In short, all things have a voice for the Spirit.”

Honoré de Balzac book Séraphîta

Source: Seraphita (1835), Ch. 3: Seraphita - Seraphitus.
Context: Science is the language of the Temporal world, Love is that of the Spiritual world. Thus man takes note of more than he is able to explain, while the Angelic Spirit sees and comprehends. Science depresses man; Love exalts the Angel. Science is still seeking, Love has found. Man judges Nature according to his own relations to her; the Angelic Spirit judges it in its relation to Heaven. In short, all things have a voice for the Spirit.

Love , Nature , Science

“History has tongues
Has angels has guns — has saved has praised —
Today proclaims
Achievements of her exiles long returned”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Exiles From Their Land, History Their Domicile"
The Still Centre (1939)
Context: History has tongues
Has angels has guns — has saved has praised —
Today proclaims
Achievements of her exiles long returned
Now no more rootless, for whom her printed page
Glazes their bruised waste years in one
Balancing present sky.

History

“The sick chamber is the place where the most angelic virtues of the human race have ever been called into action.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) (1802–1871) Scottish publisher and writer

Source: Sanitary Economy (1850), p. 15
Context: The sick chamber is the place where the most angelic virtues of the human race have ever been called into action. The meek patience of the sufferer—the endurance and the active benevolence of those who would not barter that sick room, with its gloom and silence, for all the glitter and the grandeur that human ambition displays beyond its walls—are among the finest objects that the philosophic eye can look on. So in every well-regulated household, each deathbed, if it carry with it the memory of broken ties and deserted seats at the social board, calls up also the recollection of duties fulfilled, of charities administered, of overflowing affection, ashamed to speak its strength, showing itself in strong deeds of unwearied assiduity.

“He is asleep. Though his mettle was sorely tried,
He lived, and when he lost his angel, died.
It happened calmly, on its own.
The way night comes when day is done.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Way , Night

“I promised to myself that I will never again obey anyone or any authority, government, gods or angels in anything else than in what I accept as the right or the best possible thing to do.”

Yrjö Kallinen (1886–1976) Finnish politician

God

“And when all things were created as has been described by Moses — both heaven and earth, and the things therein — the twelve angels of the Mother were divided into four principles, and each fourth part of them is called a river — Phison, and Gehon, and Tigris, and Euphrates, as, he says, Moses states. These twelve angels being mutually connected, go about into four parts, and manage the world, holding from Edem a sort of viceregal authority over the world. But they do not always continue in the same places, but move around as if in a circular dance, changing place after place, and at set times and intervals retiring to the localities subject to themselves. And when Phison holds sway over places, famine, distress, and affliction prevail in that part of the earth, for the battalion of these angels is niggardly.”

Hippolytus of Rome Refutation of all Heresies

Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Volume 6: Hippolytus, Bishop Of Rome, Volume 1 p. 187
Refutation of All Heresies

Time , Affliction , Dance , World

“A great man is the unbelieving man; he is without spiritual sight or spiritual hearing; his glory is in understanding his own understanding. It is he who subdues the forest, tames the beasts of the field to service. He goes alone in the dark, unafraid. He follows no man’s course, but, searches for himself; the priests cannot make him believe, nor the angels of heaven; none can subdue his judgment. He says: why permit others even priests, to think for you? Stand on your own feet – be a man. Through his arm are tyrants and evil kings overthrown. Through him are doctrines and religions sifted to the bottom and the falsehood and evil in them cast aside. Who but the Creator could have created so great a man as the unbeliever?”

Kenneth Arnold (1915–1984) American aviator and businessman

Paraphrasing a section from Oahspe: A New Bible by John Ballou Newbrough (1828–1891), p. 361, which he handed out as his " philosophy card http://www.blueblurrylines.com/2017/03/ufos-kenneth-arnold-and-american-bible.html".

Religion , Understanding , Search , Thinking

“Alas, is it your fault, or that of the Creator? Why were you made the angel with the infallible gaze, by whose aid I should make the universe submit? Why is it that you are the one to read a soul through its bodily envelope as one may read a book through a glass! Because you are an angel of purity, Lorenza, and nothing throws a shadow upon your soul. In your radiant and immaculate bosom the divine spark may be enshrined, a place without sullying where it may fitly nestle. You are a seer because you are blameless, Lorenza.”

Alessandro Cagliostro (1743–1795) Italian occultist

Balsamo the Magician (or The Memoirs of a Physician) by Alex. Dumas (1891)

Soul , Reading , Universe , Books

“Perchance your prayers will earn your grace, but then you will see nothing of what comes to pass, as you will rest in the arms of the angels. Pray, lady; continue to pray!”

Alessandro Cagliostro (1743–1795) Italian occultist

Balsamo the Magician (or The Memoirs of a Physician) by Alex. Dumas (1891)

“I don’t think California is perfect by any means. I’m sure there are a lot of people being oppressed here and not getting a fair shake. But I just feel like maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s the location on the coast with access to all of Asia coming in and the strong immigrant communities here, that makes it different…I feel like in the East Coast, that’s still a thing in certain classes. That said, there are a lot of wealthy people here in California. There’s definitely segregation and classes in Los Angeles…”

Maurene Goo

On how her upbringing in California affected her writing “Maurene Goo on Writing Relatable Characters and her Enduring Love of K Dramas” http://publiclibrariesonline.org/2018/02/goo/ (Public Libraries Online; 2018 Feb 28)

Strong , People , Communication , Perfection

“God ~Since the remotest times, Mankind has always believed in something beyond human understanding, something transcendental that he idolized no matter whether there was question of personified or unpersonified conceptions of God. Anything man was unable to understand or to comprehend was imputed to the powers above such as his intuitive virtue admitted them. In this way, all the deities of mankind, good and evil ones (demons) have been born. As time went on, gods, angels, demiurges, demons and ghosts have been worshiped irrespective of their ever having been alive in reality or their having existed only in fancy.”

Franz Bardon book Initiation Into Hermetics

Source: Initiation Into Hermetics (1956), p. 27

God , Time , Understanding , Question

“A great man is the unbelieving man; he is without spiritual sight or spiritual hearing; his glory is in understanding his own understanding. It is he who subdues the forest, tames the beasts of the field to service. He goes alone in the dark, unafraid. He follows no man’s course, but, searches for himself; the priests cannot make him believe, nor the angels of heaven; none can subdue his judgment. He says: why permit others even priests, to you think for you? Stand on your own feet – be a man. Through his arm are tyrants and evil kings overthrown. Through him are doctrines and religions sifted to the bottom and the falsehood and evil in them cast aside. Who but the Creator could have created so great a man as the unbeliever?”

Kenneth Arnold (1915–1984) American aviator and businessman

Kenneth Arnold's paraphrasing of a section from Oahspe: A New Bible by John Ballou Newbrough (1828–1891), p. 361, which he handed out as his " philosophy card http://www.blueblurrylines.com/2017/03/ufos-kenneth-arnold-and-american-bible.html".

Religion , Understanding , Search , Thinking

“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 (1260–1328) German theologian

Sermon 9, as translated in The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (1999) by Hughes Oliphant Old, Ch. 9: The German Mystics, p. 449

God , Soul , Knowledge , Idea

“I’d call them dangerously loopy heretics who are well down the slippery slope to hell, Bob. A hell of their own creation, even if you don’t believe in the literal sulfur-and-brimstone variety presided over by a big red guy with horns and cloven hooves. Which these people very likely do, but they think they’re on the side of the angels, which makes them doubly bad.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Apocalypse Codex (2012), Chapter 12, “With a Bible and a Gun” (p. 240)

Hell , Bad luck , People , Thinking

“I love that Camilla is trying to figure it out. We tell kids there are no stupid questions. But when you throw race in the mix, there are a lot of questions — some are painful to ask, some are painful to answer and we all say stupid things sometimes. I hope readers feel after reading Cammi’s story that it’s not about one moment or interaction, it’s about staying heart strong and moving forward. Like Maya Angelou used to say, when you know better, you do better.”

Veronica Chambers (1970) writer

On the character arc of Camilla in “Author Interview: Veronica Chambers questions Mexican immigrant stereotypes in ‘The Go-Between’” https://www.hypable.com/author-interview-veronica-chambers-the-go-between/ in Hypable (2017 May 9)

Pain , Reading , Question , Strong

“Humanitarianism is the name commonly given to that higher humanity which embraces the whole animal kingdom, or as much of it as gives evidence of feeling. Humanitarianism is the final goal of human sympathy. Starting with the tribe (or the family, or even the individual), the instinct of sympathy has spread from tribe to confederacy, from confederacy to nation, from nation to race, and from race to species. It is constantly growing and deepening among the sub-divisions of the human species and is as constantly extending to the non-human populations of the earth. It is destined finally to reach the remotest shores of the Great Ocean of Feeling. Wherever there are bodies that bleed and souls that mourn, there human sympathy should go, angel-like, with its sweetness and healing down even to those lowly and overlooked but suffering-and-enjoying civilizations beneath our feet, in the grasses and grounds and the crystal deeps.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Some Newer Instincts", pp. 182–183
Savage Survivals (1916), Savage Survivals in Higher Peoples (Continued)

Family , Soul , Grass , Suffering

“All persons exist to society by some shining trait of beauty or utility, which they have. We borrow the proportions of the man from that one fine feature, and finish the portrait symmetrically; which is false; for the rest of his body is small or deformed. I observe a person who makes a good public appearance, and conclude thence the perfection of his private character, on which this is based; but he has no private character. He is a graceful cloak or lay-figure for holidays. All our poets, heroes, and saints, fail utterly in some one or in many parts to satisfy our idea, fail to draw our spontaneous interest, and so leave us without any hope of realization but in our own future. Our exaggeration of all fine characters arises from the fact, that we identify each in turn with the soul. But there are no such men as we fable; no Jesus, nor Pericles, nor Caesar, nor Angelo, nor Washington, such as we have made. We consecrate a great deal of nonsense, because it was allowed by great men. There is none without his foible. I verily believe if an angel should come to chant the chorus of the moral law, he would eat too much gingerbread, or take liberties with private letters, or do some precious atrocity.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nominalist and Realist

Soul , Drawing , Law , Personality

“Origen taught that all souls were created at the beginning of creation as angelic spirits. In this condition they sinned and for their apostasy were transferred into material bodies. It was this view of preexistence which was proclaimed heretical. In any case, heresy thus condemned so long ago need not be regarded today as of major importance. Truth matters a great deal more and a condemned heresy may turn out to be a truth, as happened, for example, when a local church of Rome condemned Galileo’s heliocentric doctrine and forced him to recant. Galileo was right and the church in question was wrong. It is therefore quite legitimate for both clergy and laity of the Christian faith to preach and believe in both preexistence and reincarnation.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

Source: Reincarnation & Christianity https://www.theosophical.org/files/resources/articles/ReincarnationChristianity.pdf (1967)

Soul , Faith , Question , Truth

“The ideal of this brotherhood is to draw angels and men, two branches of the infinite family of God, into close cooperation. The chief purpose of such cooperation is to uplift the human race. To this end the angels, on their side, are ready to participate as closely as possible in every department of human life and in every human activity that holds cooperation in view. Those members of the human race who will throw open heart and mind to their brethren of the other sphere, will find an immediate response, and a gradually increasing conviction of its reality.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

Source: The Brotherhood of Angels and Men https://www.theosophy.world/sites/default/files/ebooks/The%20brotherhood%20of%20Angels%20and%20of%20Men%20-%20Geoffrey%20Hodson.pdf (1927)

Family , God , Drawing , Heart

“In the East the existence of the invisible helpers has always been recognized, though the names given and the characteristics attributed to them naturally vary in different countries; and even in Europe we have had the old Greek stories of the constant interference of the gods in human affairs, and the Roman legend that Castor and Pollux led the legions of the infant republic in the battle of Lake Regillus. Nor did such a conception die out when the classical period ended, for these stories have their legitimate successors in medieval tales of saints who appeared at critical moments… or of guardian angels who sometimes stepped in and saved a pious traveler from what would otherwise have been certain destruction.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Invisible Helpers (1915), Ch. 1

God , Country , Nature , Appearance

“It really was a brutal place, Los Angeles, less a city than a collection of hostile villages united only in their mutual suspicion of each other and a susceptibility to disasters, natural and otherwise. Fires, floods, riots and earthquakes; it was looking more and more like Armageddon-by-the-Pacific.”

Michael Nava (1954) American writer

Source: Henry Rios series of novels, The Death of Friends (1996), p.81

Hostility , Nature

“It was one of those winter days in Los Angeles when the wind has swept away the smog and the air is clear and the light still and everything has the immediacy of a dream. I parked on a street called Overland in the Hollywood Hills. It was lined with white-skinned birch trees. Their nude branches shimmered against the sky. Tattered yellow leaves clogged the gutters and the air was scented with the rainy smell of eucalyptus. There were no cars on the street and the houses were barely visible behind walls and fences and sweeping lawns that had never been trod upon except by gardeners.”

Michael Nava (1954) American writer

Source: Henry Rios series of novels, Goldenboy (1988), p.132

Tree , Housing , Light , Dreams

“The peasant must always be helped technically, economically, morally, and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be a sort of guiding angel who has fallen into the zone, helping the poor always.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. II: 1. The Guerrilla Fighter: Social Reformer

Help

“It was the kind of experience, Molly said, that would grow calluses on an angel’s ass.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Spin

Source: Spin (2005), p. 204

“Golikov was a perfect choice. While he himself likely saw Stalin as a guardian angel, Stalin surely saw in him an individual on whom he could rely completely.”

Filipp Golikov (1900–1980) Soviet general

David E. Murphy

Perfection

“It was the kind of collaboration I dream about actually. His voice sounded, you know, like an angel. Like a gift from God.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

Gary Lucas – Guitarist from NBC Edgewise Tribute on MSNBC from 1997.

God , Dreams

“His voice is an incredible instrument, angelic and powerful and mean at the same time. Tortured. He has been a huge inspiration and influence to me over the last two years. This tune is just unreal.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

Jonny Lang – Blues artist, from Rolling Stone Magazine, issues #820, September 2, 1999

Time

Dan Brown (1964) American author

“The Angel was in the earth, and she led me to fix my eyes in Heaven.”

Bruce Baillie (1931) American film director

And the remnants of the world were renewed by children and it was called Paradise.

“As Mayor of the City of Los Angeles and on behalf of its residents, I commend you for your tireless, lifelong efforts to bring to people in the Los Angeles area and around the world a message of hope, and for providing them inspiration and guidance to find peace within and live fulfilling lives. I am pleased to join with members of the community in recognizing your remarkable achievements and accomplishments throughout the years. With best wishes in all your future endeavors.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

James K. Hahn, Mayor of Los Angeles, California, United States of America, January 12, 2005
About, 2000s

Peace , Future , People , Hope

“Jesus, I thought, I am ripped right straight to the tits. Where am I? Are we going up or down? Somewhere in the back of my brain, I knew I was sitting in a jeep in the parking lot of a night club on an island off the Mexican coast — but how could I really be sure, with another part of my brain apparently convinced that I was looking down on the huge glittering bowl of Los Angeles from the cockpit of a 727? Was that the Milky Way? Or Sunset Boulevard? Orion, or the Beverly Hills Hotel?”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1990s, The Rum Diary (1998)

Way , Night , Parting

“Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

Angels and Fools have equal claim
To do what Nature bids them do, sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame!
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

Fear , Fools

“I had a colonic irrigation in this clinic in Santa Monica, because people in Los Angeles cannot do anything for themselves, much less take a shit.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, The Notorious C.H.O. Tour

People

“I look at those words—gang ties—and I think about all the players I’ve met in the NFL and all of us who come from inner-city neighborhoods like mine in Los Angeles, and I wonder how many of us could honestly say we’re not friends with guys doing the wrong things. I can’t.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

Stardom Doesn’t Change Where You’re From (April 02, 2014)

Guy , Thinking

“But go ahead and judge DeSean for the company he keeps. While you’re at it, judge me, too, because I still live in Los Angeles, and my family does, too. We didn’t run from where we grew up. We aren’t afraid to be associated with the people who came up with us. We brought some of our money back and started charities and tried to help out a few guys who were with us when we were nobodies. I won’t apologize for that, and I suspect neither will DeSean when he’s back on the field doing what he’s always done: grinding through adversity.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

Stardom Doesn’t Change Where You’re From (April 02, 2014)

Money , Family , People , Help

“But yet, since He knew that it would be good, He created both angels and men free to do that which is righteous, and He appointed periods of time during which He knew it would be good for them to have the exercise of free-will; and because He likewise knew it would be good, He made general and particular judgments; each one’s freedom of will, however, being guarded.”

Justin Martyr book Dialogue with Trypho

Dialogue with Trypho, chapter CII. In ANF1, that is, Roberts A, Donaldson J and Coxe AC (1885) Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol 1. [Cf chapter LXXXVIII.]

Time , Freedom , Exercises , Men

“Your task as a student of human nature is to recognize and examine the dark side of your character. Once subjected to conscious scrutiny, it loses its destructive power. If you can learn to detect the signs of it in yourself (see the following sections for help on this), you can channel this darker energy into productive activity. You can turn your neediness and vulnerability into empathy. You can channel your aggressive impulses into worthwhile causes and into your work. You can admit your ambitions, your desires for power, and not act so guiltily and stealthily. You can monitor your suspicious tendencies and the projection of your own negative emotions onto others. You can see that selfish and harmful impulses dwell within you as well, that you are not as angelic or strong as you imagine. With this awareness will come balance and greater tolerance for others.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 9 : Confront Your Dark Side
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Selfishness , Imagination , Strong , Help

“Until we fully awaken, the angels that come to free us will appear to us as demons, for it is not their prerogative to give us the unconditionally love that we crave. It is their prerogative to show us what is preventing us from giving and receiving unconditional love.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Love , Appearance , Making love

“Beautiful, moral world created in an angelic way.”

Dionysios Solomos (1798–1857) Greek poet

in Greek: "Όμορφος κόσμος, ηθικός, αγγελικά πλασμένος".
Sarcastic tone; from his poem "to Francesca Freiser"

World , Beauty , Way

“Beautiful, moral world, created in an angelic way.”

Dionysios Solomos (1798–1857) Greek poet

in Greek: "Όμορφος κόσμος, ηθικός, αγγελικά πλασμένος".
Sarcastic tone; from his poem "to Francesca Freiser"

Way , Beauty , World

“We are no longer ambitious for ourselves, but are rather inspired by the vision of a healed world. Inspiration rearranges our energies. It sources within us a new power and direction. We no longer feel like we’re trying to carry a football to the finish line, clutching it to our chest and surrounded by hostile forces. We feel instead as though angels are pushing us from behind and making straight our path as we go.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" (1992), Ch. 7 : Work, §9 : Sales to Service

Hostility , World , Football , Making love

“I have believed in love and work, and their linkage. I have believed that we are neither angels nor devils, but humans, with clusters of potentials in both directions. I am neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist.”

Max Lerner (1902–1992) American journalist and educator

Lerner's summary of his life for "Who's Who in America," quoted in Max Lerner, Writer, 89, Is Dead; Humanist on Political Barricades By Richard Severo, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/06/arts/max-lerner-writer-89-is-dead-humanist-on-political-barricades.html (6 June 1992)

Love , Making love

“She was pointing into the empty, angel-less heavens beyond.
Everything else. The universe.”

Alastair Reynolds book Terminal World

Source: Terminal World (2010), Chapter 30 (p. 550; closing words)

Universe

“When you have a fundamentalist faith you are certain that you are on the side of the angels.”

Michael Malice (1976) American writer

Interview on Rubin Report https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vV1dPMTU0OTIzMTcyOQ&episode=ZWVhMzI3MzQtNDJjZi0xMWVhLWI0NDktNzNmNjkwNTczNWUw&hl=en podcast, accessed 29 January 2020.

Faith

“At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go.”

John Donne book Holy Sonnets

No. 7, line 1
Holy Sonnets (1633)

Soul , Death

“Woe to him who has not begged!
There is nothing more exalted than to beg.
God begs. The Angels beg. Kings, Prophets, and Saints beg.”

Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist

Source: Pilgrim of the Absolute (1947), p. 1

God

“We start from scratch, every generation. History does not bend inevitably toward justice, or freedom, or decency, or even stability. History doesn’t do that in Hong Kong, or in Moscow, or in Washington or New York City or Los Angeles. History goes where we push it. And if we don’t push, someone else will.”

Kevin D. Williamson (1972) American writer

2020s
Source: "The End of (Whig) History" https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/the-end-of-whig-history/?taid=5efd8dac17654f00015ab42c&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter (1 July 2020), National Review

Justice , History , Freedom

“When you were here before,
Couldn't look you in the eye.
You're just like an angel,
Your skin makes me cry.
You float like a feather
In a beautiful world.
I wish I was special;
You're so fuckin' specialBut I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here
I don't belong here”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Creep
Lyrics, Pablo Honey (1993)

Hell , Beauty , Cry , World

“I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being abides
from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned campsites
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."”

Stanley Kunitz (1905–2006) poet

Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
Poems, The Layers
Source: "The Layers" by Stanley Kunitz
[Click here for video version on YouTube as read by the author https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk6xW41EFoA ]

Loss , Night , Heart , Way

“I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days. I know that the forces that divide us are deep and they are real. But I also know they are not new. Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we all are created equal, and the harsh ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonization have long torn us apart.The battle is perennial, and victory is never assured. Through civil war, the great depression, World War, 9/11, through struggle, sacrifices, and setbacks, our better angels have always prevailed. In each of these moments, enough of us have come together to carry all of us forward, and we can do that now.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

History , War , Victory , Reality

“She is one from the mountains
She is one from the plains
She is one with the woodlands
And she's at home on the range
And all these things of beauty
They left a kiss on her
I'll tell you, sirI say Lord she's as sweet as one of her pecan pies
Listenin' to her laughter I get hypnotized
Goodness knows I love my Angel Eyes
I love my Angel Eyes oh, yes I do”

Willis Allan Ramsey (1951) American singer-songwriter

Angel Eyes

Home , Mountain , Beauty , Kiss

“Be thy best thoughts to work divine addressed;
Do something,— do it soon — will all thy might;
An angel's wing would droop if long at rest,
And God Himself inactive were no longer blessed.”

Carlos Wilcox (1794–1827) American poet

quoted in Three Thousand Selected Quotations From Brilliant Writers (1909) by Josiah H. Gilbert, p. 3
Poetry

God

“I am not the first Buddha who came upon Earth, nor shall I be the last. In due time, another Buddha will arise in the world - a Holy One, a supremely enlightened One, endowed with wisdom in conduct, auspicious, knowing the universe, an incomparable leader of men, a master of angels and mortals.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Universe , World , Time , Wisdom

“The worth of man lies in his consciousness of the Absolute, and consequently in the integrality and depth of this consciousness; having lost sight of it by plunging himself into the world of phenomena viewed as such, man needs to be reminded of it by the celestial Message. This Message comes finally from "himself", not of course from his empirical "I" but from his immanent Selfhood, which is that of God and without which there would be no "I", whether human, angelic or other; the credibility of the Message results from the fact that it is what we are, both within ourselves and beyond ourselves. In the depths of transcendence is immanence, and in the depths of immanence, transcendence.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2013, From the Divine to the Human, World Wisdom, 127-128, 978-1-936597-32-1]
Miscellaneous, Revelation

God , World

“Nothing in life produce a more powerful joy than a near miss by the Angel of Death.”

Charles Sheffield book Convergence

Source: The Heritage Universe, Convergence (1997), Chapter 26 (p. 516)

Joy , Life , Death