“In Judaism faith means wrestling with God as Jacob once wrestled with an angel…”

“But God, who is able to prevail, wrestled with him, as the Angel did with Jacob, and marked him; marked him for his own; marked him with a blessing, a blessing of obedience to the motions of his blessed Spirit.”

“I once wrestled with an angel. He won, but I learned a few things.”

“Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling.”

“That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.”

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.”

“It is in this wrestling that Jacob 'prevails with God', and realises that he has seen God face to face. He has overcome not God but his own rivalry. After this mysterious struggle he was able to recognise his wrongdoing and look his brother Esau in the face. Thus he was able to learn to live in peace with his brother—and become Israel, a community of brethren.”

“In my figures [of his famous painting 'Vision After the Sermon'] I have achieved a great simplicity, which is both rustic and superstitious….. In this picture the landscape and the struggle [between Jacob wrestling with the angel ] exist only in the imagination of the people whom the sermon has moved to prayer. That's why there is a contrast between the people, depicted naturally, and the struggle in its unnatural and dis-proportioned landscape.”

“Assurance makes most for your comfort, but holiness makes most for God's honor…Assurance is the daughter of holiness…The surest and shortest way to assurance is to wrestle and contend with God for holiness…”

“This is not to say that I wasn't completely repulsed. I mean, I wasn't exactly proud that my stepbrother
was in there tongue wrestling with the second stupidest person in our class, after himself.”