Quotes about angels
page 7

Wallace Stevens photo

“I am the angel of reality,
Seen for a moment standing in the door.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Angel Surrounded by Paysans" (1949)

Miguel de Unamuno photo

“The devil is an angel too.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

Tres novelas ejemplares y un prólogo [Three Exemplary Novels and a Prologue] (1920); Two Mothers

Orson Pratt photo
Lydia Maria Child photo

“Home—that blessed word, which opens to the human heart the most perfect glimpse of Heaven, and helps to carry it thither, as on an angel’s wings.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

1840s, Letters from New York (1843)
Source: Letters from New York http://www.bartleby.com/66/61/12261.html, vol. 1, letter 34

Richard Baxter photo
Anastacia photo
Iltutmish photo
Kage Baker photo
John Calvin photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Mike Tyson photo
Poul Anderson photo

“So I wonder a woman, the Mistress of Hearts,
Should ascent to aspire to be Master of Arts;
A Ministering Angel in Woman we see,
And an Angel need cover no other Degree.
—O why should a Woman not get a Degree?”

Charles Neaves (1800–1876) Scottish theologian, jurist and writer

"O why should a Woman not get a Degree?", pulished in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (1869), p. 227.

Francis Bacon photo
Traci Lords photo

“You say you wake up
In the morning
Feeling used
Like a fallen angel
Tired and bruised
It's got you feeling
So insane
More dead than alive
Love's got you stained
On the inside”

Traci Lords (1968) American mainstream and pornographic actress, producer, film director, writer and singer

Fallen Angel, written by Traci Lords, Ben Watkins, and Johann Bley
Song lyrics, 1000 Fires (1995)

Neil Peart photo

“How I prayed just to get away
To carry me anywhere
Sometimes the angels punish us
By answering our prayers
-- Carnies (2012)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Shane Claiborne photo
Ringo Starr photo

“The world's saddest man will live here in Los Angeles.”

Ringo Starr (1940) British musician, former member of the Beatles

"Fastest Growing Heartache In The West," from Beaucoups Of Blues (1970)

John Fletcher photo

“Man is his own star, and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate.
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”

Epilogue. Compare: "Every man hath a good and a bad angel attending on him in particular all his life long", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part i. sect. 2, memb. 1, subsect. 2.
The Honest Man's Fortune, (1613; published 1647)

David Whitmer photo
Eddie August Schneider photo

“Hey, I want to know for sure before I cut off my motor. Is this the Los Angeles Municipal airport?”

Eddie August Schneider (1911–1940) American aviator

[Jersey City Lad Holds Junior Flying Record for Westward Trip, Ludington Daily News, http://familypedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:Eddie_August_Schneider_in_the_Ludington_Daily_News_on_August_19,_1930.png, Ludington, Michigan, August 19, 1930, Associated Press]
After landing in California on his record breaking trip

Alexander Pope photo

“Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes;
The glorious fault of Angels and of Gods.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Source: The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 13.

Brigham Young photo
Caroline Dhavernas photo

“People have told me it's like Touched by an Angel on acid. I think that's a good description.”

Caroline Dhavernas (1978) Canadian actress

On Wonderfalls in "Caroline Dhavernas works magic" by Olivia Barker at USA Today (9 March 2004) http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2004-03-09-dharvernas-breakout_x.htm

Wesley Snipes photo
George Moore (novelist) photo

“I am filled with pride when I think of the noble and exalted world that must have existed before Christian doctrine caused men to look upon women with suspicion and bade them to think of angels instead.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Apologia Pro Scriptis Meis.
Memoirs of My Dead Life http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8mmdl10.txt (1906)

Richard Francis Burton photo

“"Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!" Angels and Fools have equal claim
To do what Nature bids them do, sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame!”

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

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

John Keats photo
Báb photo
Tom Petty photo

“I saw an angel, I saw my fate.
I can only thank God it was not too late.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Angel Dream (No. 4)
Lyrics, Songs and Music from "She's the One" (1996)

Lydia Maria Child photo

“Misfortune is never mournful to the soul that accepts it; for such do always see that every cloud is an angel’s face. Every man deems that he has precisely the trials and temptations which are the hardest of all others for him to bear; but they are so, simply because they are the very ones he most needs.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

1840s, Letters from New York (1843)
Source: Letters from New York http://www.bartleby.com/66/64/12264.html, vol. 1, letter 39

Omar Khayyám photo

“Would but some wing'ed Angel ere too late
Arrest the yet unfolded Roll of Fate,
And make the stern Recorder otherwise
Enregister, or quite obliterate!”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Lou Reed photo

“When she turned blue, all the angels screamed.”

Lou Reed (1942–2013) American musician

" Run Run Run"
Lyrics

Francis Bacon photo
Henry Clay Work photo
Thomas Brooks photo
Daniel Defoe photo
Muhammad photo

“Whenever the time of each prayer arrives, an Angel announces to the people: (O’ People!) Stand up and extinguish, with prayers, the fire which you have set alight for yourselves.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Biharul Anwar, Volume 82, Page 209
Shi'ite Hadith

Dana Gioia photo

“I want a poetry that can learn as much from popular culture as from serious culture. A poetry that seeks the pleasure and emotionality of the popular arts without losing the precision, concentration, and depth that characterize high art. I want a literature that addresses a diverse audience distinguished for its intelligence, curiosity, and imagination rather than its professional credentials. I want a poetry that risks speaking to the fullness of our humanity, to our emotions as well as to our intellect, to our senses as well as our imagination and intuition. Finally I hope for a more sensual and physical art — closer to music, film, and painting than to philosophy or literary theory. Contemporary American literary culture has privileged the mind over the body. The soul has become embarrassed by the senses. Responding to poetry has become an exercise mainly in interpretation and analysis. Although poetry contains some of the most complex and sophisticated perceptions ever written down, it remains an essentially physical art tied to our senses of sound and sight. Yet, contemporary literary criticism consistently ignores the sheer sensuality of poetry and devotes its considerable energy to abstracting it into pure intellectualization. Intelligence is an irreplaceable element of poetry, but it needs to be vividly embodied in the physicality of language. We must — as artists, critics, and teachers — reclaim the essential sensuality of poetry. The art does not belong to apes or angels, but to us. We deserve art that speaks to us as complete human beings. Why settle for anything less?”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Paradigms Lost," interview with Gloria Brame, ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum (Spring 1995)
Interviews

George C. Lorimer photo
Eugen Drewermann photo
Norman Mailer photo
Mike Patton photo
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola photo

“Oh unsurpassed generosity of God the Father, Oh wondrous and unsurpassable felicity of man, to whom it is granted to have what he chooses, to be what he wills to be! The brutes, from the moment of their birth, bring with them, as Lucilius says, “from their mother’s womb” all that they will ever possess. The highest spiritual beings were, from the very moment of creation, or soon thereafter, fixed in the mode of being which would be theirs through measureless eternities. But upon man, at the moment of his creation, God bestowed seeds pregnant with all possibilities, the germs of every form of life. Whichever of these a man shall cultivate, the same will mature and bear fruit in him. If vegetative, he will become a plant; if sensual, he will become brutish; if rational, he will reveal himself a heavenly being; if intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of God. And if, dissatisfied with the lot of all creatures, he should recollect himself into the center of his own unity, he will there become one spirit with God, in the solitary darkness of the Father, Who is set above all things, himself transcend all creatures.”
O summam Dei patris liberalitatem, summam et admirandam hominis foelicitatem! Cui datum id habere quod optat, id esse quod velit. Bruta simul atque nascuntur id secum afferunt (ut ait Lucilius) e bulga matris quod possessura sunt. Supremi spiritus aut ab initio aut paulo mox id fuerunt, quod sunt futuri in perpetuas aeternitates. Nascenti homini omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitae germina indidit Pater. Quae quisque excoluerit illa adolescent, et fructus suos ferent in illo. Si vegetalia planta fiet, si sensualia obrutescet, si rationalia caeleste evadet animal, si intellectualia angelus erit et Dei filius. Et si nulla creaturarum sorte contentus in unitatis centrum suae se receperit, unus cum Deo spiritus factus, in solitaria Patris caligine qui est super omnia constitutus omnibus antestabit.

6. 24-31; translation by A. Robert Caponigri
Alternate translation of 6. 28-29 (Nascenti homini omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitae germina indidit Pater. Quae quisque excoluerit illa adolescent, et fructus suos ferent in illo.):
The Father infused in man, at birth, every sort of seed and sprouts of every kind of life. These seeds will grow and bear their fruit in each man who will cultivate them.
Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)

Kate Bush photo

“You look like an angel,
Sleeping it off at a station.
Were you only passing through?”

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

Song lyrics, The Kick Inside (1978)

Hans Christian Andersen photo
Richard Fuller (minister) photo
Sher Shah Suri photo
Alfred Noyes photo
Herb Caen photo

“Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live there?”

Herb Caen (1916–1997) American newspaper columnist

Winokur, Jon. The Portable Curmudgeon, p. 174. http://books.google.com/books?id=V0DUAXBkf_0C Plume, 1992. ISBN 0452266688
Attributed

Bruce Schneier photo

“Not being angels is expensive”

Liars & Outliers, Bruce Schneier, ISBN 978-1-118-14330-8, p. 43

John Calvin photo
Bill Clinton photo
Norman Lamm photo
William Blake photo

“I have labour'd hard indeed, & have been borne on angel's wings. Till we meet I beg of God our Saviour to be with you & me, & yours & mine. Pray give my & my wife's love to Mrs Butts & Family, & believe me to remain.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

The Letters Of William Blake https://archive.org/details/lettersofwilliam002199mbp (1956), p. 90
1790s

Alan M. Dershowitz photo
Ali al-Rida photo

“One who offers (suggests) what he doesn't know, will be under the curse of the angels of the heavens and the earth.”

Ali al-Rida (770–818) eighth of the Twelve Imams

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.2, p. 116.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, Religious

Herman Melville photo

“Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!”

Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 19

Joni Mitchell photo
Sinclair Lewis photo

“When he gets uppity about his supposed learning, I just take it on myself to remind him that God and his angels know almost as much as college professors.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright

The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 23

George Eliot photo
Maggie Stiefvater photo

“He was brother to a liar and brother to an angel, son of a dream and son of a dreamer.”

Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer

About Ronan
The Raven Cycle Series, The Dream Thieves (2013)

Richard Lovelace photo
Sergei Prokofiev photo

“This is my best work, but only because The Flaming Angel is my greatest.”

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) Ukrainian & Russian Soviet pianist and composer

He made a rare admission to a visiting musicologist when he was conducting his Third Symphony in Rome in 1934.
time.com http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,864759,00.html

Clive Staples Lewis photo
Francis Bacon photo
Ambrose photo

“Neither angel, nor archangel, nor yet even the Lord Himself (who alone can say "I am with you"), can, when we have sinned, release us, unless we bring repentance with us.”

Ambrose (339–397) bishop of Milan; one of the four original doctors of the Church

As quoted in Many Thoughts of Many Minds (1896) edited by Louis Klopsch

Edward Young photo
John Bunyan photo

“Gaius also proceeded, and said, I will now speak on the behalf of women, to take away their reproach. For as death and the curse came into the world by a woman, Gen. 3, so also did life and health: God sent forth his Son, made of a woman. Gal. 4:4. Yea, to show how much they that came after did abhor the act of the mother, this sex in the Old Testament coveted children, if happily this or that woman might be the mother of the Saviour of the world. I will say again, that when the Saviour was come, women rejoiced in him, before either man or angel. Luke 1:42-46. I read not that ever any man did give unto Christ so much as one groat; but the women followed him, and ministered to him of their substance. Luke 8:2,3. ‘Twas a woman that washed his feet with tears, Luke 7:37-50, and a woman that anointed his body at the burial. John 11:2; 12:3. They were women who wept when he was going to the cross, Luke 23:27, and women that followed him from the cross, Matt. 27:55,56; Luke 23:55, and sat over against his sepulchre when he was buried. Matt. 27:61. They were women that were first with him at his resurrection-morn, Luke 24:1, and women that brought tidings first to his disciples that he was risen from the dead. Luke 24:22,23. Women therefore are highly favored, and show by these things that they are sharers with us in the grace of life.”

Part II, Ch. VIII : The Guests of Gaius
The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part II

Isaac Watts photo

“Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber,
Holy angels guard thy bed!
Heavenly blessings without number
Gently falling on thy head.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Song 35: "A Cradle Hymn".
1710s, Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children (1715)

Martin Farquhar Tupper photo
Adrienne von Speyr photo
Thomas Otway photo
Robert Ardrey photo
Herman Melville photo

“Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity — reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel — Art.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Timoleon http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=libraryscience, Art (1891)

Fulton J. Sheen photo

“One function of the angels is illumination, and the other function is that of being a guardian.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Angels http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaa7I44gkgc
Life Is Worth Living (1951–1957)

Subh-i-Azal photo
Larisa Oleynik photo
Newton Lee photo
Arthur Hugh Clough photo
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto photo
Ellen G. White photo

“The banner of the third angel has inscribed upon it, "The commandments of God and the faith of Jesus."”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Book II, Ch. 49, p. 384
Selected Messages (1958 - 1980)

J. Proctor Knott photo

“Duluth! The word fell upon my ear with a peculiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur of a low fountain stealing forth in the midst of roses, or the soft sweet accent of an angel’s whisper in the bright, joyous dream of sleeping innocence. ’T was the name for which my soul had panted for years, as the hart panteth for the water-brooks.”

J. Proctor Knott (1830–1911) American politician

Speech on the St. Croix and Bayfield Railroad Bill, Jan. 27, 1871; Knott made this satirical speech, sometimes titled as Duluth! or The Untold Delights of Duluth, while serving in the United States House of Representatives; the speech lampooned Western boosterism by portraying Duluth, Minnesota, in fantastical and glowing language.

Wolfram von Eschenbach photo

“Trees have their sap from water. Water fecundates all things made that are called "creature". We see by means of water. Water gives many souls a splendour not to be outshone by the Angels.”

Von wazzer boume sint gesaft.
wazzer früht al die geschaft,
der man für crêatiure giht.
mit dem wazzere man gesiht.
wazzer gît maneger sêle schîn,
daz die engl niht liehter dorften sîn.
Bk. 16, section 817, line 25; p. 406.
Parzival

Oliver Cowdery photo
Adelaide Anne Procter photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Margaret Fuller photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“The slave is a man, "the image of God," but "a little lower than the angels;" possessing a soul, eternal and indestructible; capable of endless happiness, or immeasurable woe; a creature of hopes and fears, of affections and passions, of joys and sorrows, and he is endowed with those mysterious powers by which man soars above the things of time and sense, and grasps, with undying tenacity, the elevating and sublimely glorious idea of a God. It is such a being that is smitten and blasted. The first work of slavery is to mar and deface those characteristics of its victims which distinguish men from things, and persons from property. Its first aim is to destroy all sense of high moral and religious responsibility. It reduces man to a mere machine. It cuts him off from his Maker, it hides from him the laws of God, and leaves him to grope his way from time to eternity in the dark, under the arbitrary and despotic control of a frail, depraved, and sinful fellow-man. As the serpent-charmer of India is compelled to extract the deadly teeth of his venomous prey before he is able to handle him with impunity, so the slaveholder must strike down the conscience of the slave before he can obtain the entire mastery over his victim.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

The Nature of Slavery. Extract from a Lecture on Slavery, at Rochester, December 1, 1850
1850s, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)

Fulton J. Sheen photo

“You have a chance to move in far better society than the Joneses. Why worry about keeping up with the Joneses? Keep up with the Angels and you'll be far wiser and happier.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Angels http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3r701k2dx8
Life Is Worth Living (1951–1957)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Alas! we make
A ladder of our thoughts, where angels step,
But sleep ourselves at the foot: our high resolves
Look down upon our slumbering acts.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)