Varian's AngelDreams: Angels & Angelic Appreciation - AngelSong
Angelic Quotations
updated 2-16-97



Painting by Abbot Handerson Thayer
[AngelSong]
Angelic Quotations
Throughout recorded history, mankind has been touched by angels. He has admired and feared, welcomed and shunned, honored and rebuked, conversed with and ignored them. Angels have been described as stunning, awesome, wondrous to behold, and also so ordinary as to pass unnoticed amidst a crowd. Man has noted warring angels and peaceful angels; they have been declared both improbable and patently undeniable.
Regardless of what any of us may think of angels, the topic has made its way into our poetry and prose in more ways than perhaps only an angel could count. Here then is my collection of angel quotations, excerpts from lyrics and literature through the ages.  It is not intended to be a complete or erudite sampling -- it is intended merely to be enjoyed. :)







Hark! the herald angels sing!







Gabriel blew, and a clean, thin sound of perfect pitch and crystalline delicacy filled all the universe to the farthest star. As it sounded, there was a tiny moment of stasis as thin as the line separating past from future, and then the fabric of the worlds collapsed upon itself...The Last Trump had sounded.
ISAAC ASIMOV






AN ANGEL CAN ILLUMINE THE THOUGHT AND MIND OF MAN BY STRENGTHENING THE POWER OF VISION, AND BY BRINGING WITHIN HIS REACH SOME TRUTH WHICH THE ANGEL HIMSELF CONTEMPLATES.

ST.THOMAS AQUINAS





Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee
All through the night.
Guardian angels God will send thee
All through the night.
(Harold Boulton)




And now were these two men, as 'twere, in Heaven...Being swallowed up with the sight of angels, and with hearing of their melodious notes.  (John Bunyon)







My delight and thy delight
Walking, like two angels white,
In the gardens of the night.

(Robert Bridges)








The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land;
you may almost hear the beating of his wings.

(John Bright)








The Angels were all singing out of tune,
And hoarse with having little else to do,
Excepting to wind up the sun and moon
Or curb a runaway young star or two.

(Lord Byron)




Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbeloving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past--
Oh, never call it loving!

(Robert Browning)







I want to be an angel,
And with the angels stand
A crown upon my forehead,
A harp within my hand.

(Urania Locke Bailey)







Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be.

(John Donne)









We trust in plumed procession
For such the angels go--
Rank after Rank, with even feet--
And uniforms of Snow.

(Emily Dickinson)







Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
(Thomas Carlyle)








The soul at its highest is found like God, but an angel gives a closer idea of Him. That is all an angel is: an idea of God. (Meister Eckhart)







And now it is an angel's song,
That makes the heavens be mute.

(Samuel Taylor Coleridge)







Maybe other angels have dropped into other Elm Street backyards? Behind fences, did neighbors help earlier hurt ones?
Folks keep so much of the best stuff quiet, don't they.

(Allan Gurganus)






... AND THE ANGEL ISRAFEL,
WHOSE HEART-STRINGS ARE A LUTE,
AND WHO HAS THE SWEETEST VOICE
OF ALL GOD'S CREATURES.

THE KORAN












Don't you hear those bells a-ringing?
Don't you hear the angels singing
And it's glory, hallelujah! Jubilee!

"Ring Those Golden Bells"










No wise men come, no shepherds in the field;
Still, angels tend the mother's every need.

Carl Japikse








Laughter is a melody,
a concert from the heart,
a tickling by the angels,
creative living art.

Serene West










A pillow for thee will I bring,
Stuffed with down of angel's wing.

(Richard Crashaw)



Be not forgetful to entertain strangers,
for thereby some have entertained
angels unawares.

(Hebrews 13:2)









Gratitude is the language of the angels.

N. N. Evans








For sure they did not seem
To be begot of any earthly seed,
But rather angels, or of angels' breed


(Edmund Spenser)












Angels descending, bringing from above,       
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

(Fanny J. Crosby)







ANGELS FROM THE REALMS OF GLORY,
WING YOUR FLIGHT O'ER ALL THE EARTH












................................... Like living flame their faces seemed to glow,
Their wings were gold. And all their bodies shone
more dazzling white than any earthly show.

(Dante)















If I have freedom in my love,
  And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
  Enjoy such liberty.

(Richard Lovelace)













Come Eate thy fill of this thy God's White Loafe?
Its Food too fine for Angells, yet come, take
And Eate thy fill. Is Heaven's Sugar Cake.
....................... ..................... Edward Taylor











All God's angels come to us disguised.

(James Russell Lowell)







To the most lovely, the most dear,
The Angel, and the deathless grail
Who fill my heart with radiance clear --
In immortality all hail.

(Charles Baudelaire)







"I think you are an angel from God."
He said it in a broken voice, thinking,
If you said it it was said.
If you believed it you must say it.
If you believed, you believed.

(Bernard Malamud)






All day I have been tossed and whirled in a preposterous happiness:
Was it an elf in the blood? or a bird in the brain? or even part
Of the cloudily crested, fifty-league long, loud uplifted wave
Of a journeying angel's transit roaring over and through my heart?

C.S.LEWIS









Look homeward Angel now,
and melt with ruth

(John Milton)







Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.  

G.K.Chesterton)










None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel
And the giddy stars (so legends tell)
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute

(Edgar Allen Poe)








The Angels' Bread is made
The Bread of man today.

Thomas Aquinas




It is not because angels are holier
than men or devils that makes them angels,
but because they do not expect holiness
from one another, but from God alone.

(William Blake)









The angels laughed.
God looked down from his seventh heaven and smiled.
The angels spread their wings and, together with Elijah,
flew upward into the sky.



(Isaac Bashevis Singer)




It is not known precisely
where angels dwell--
whether in the air, the void,
or the planets.
It has not been
God's pleasure
that we should be informed
of their abode.

(Voltaire)







Bless the Lord, ye his angels,
that excel in strength,
that do his commandments,
hearkening unto
the voice of his word.
(Psalms 103:20)










Good-night, sweet prince,
and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

(Shakespeare)




Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?
And even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,
Which we are just able to endure,
And we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.

(Rainer Maria Rilke)








An angel; or, if not,
An earthly paragon.

(Shakespeare)








For it is not the shape,
but their use,
that makes them angels.

THOMAS HOBBES




Angels, we have heard on high sweetly singing o'er the plains
And the mountains in reply echoing their joyous strains,
Gloria! Gloria! Gloria!

(traditional)





I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements, and an angelic sprite.

(John Donne)







Every blade of grass
has an angel
bending over it
saying, "Grow, grow."

THE TALMUD





I have seen a thousand times that angels are human forms, or men, for I have conversed with them as man to man, sometimes with one alone, sometimes with many in company.  (Emanuel Swedenborg)







O, come, angel band,
Come and around me stand,
O, bear me away on your snow white wings,
To my immortal home.

(traditional)







He rained down manna also upon them for to eat:
and gave them food from heaven.
So man did eat angels' food: for he sent them meat enough.

(Prayer Book 1662)









An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears
Edgar Allan Poe




The guardian angels of life fly so high as to be beyond our sight, but they are always looking down upon us. .......................

..............................

.......................

Jean Paul Richter ....................








Yet I am the necessary angel of earth,
Since, in my sight, you see the earth again...

(Wallace Stevens)










..........................................

DO YOU THINK THAT I CANNOT APPEAL TO MY FATHER, AND HE WILL AT ONCE SEND ME MORE THAN TWELVE LEGIONS OF ANGELS?



Matthew 26:53

........................................................









If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels,
but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

(Saint Paul)












I saw the angel  
in the marble  
and I just chiseled  
until I set him free.
 

Michelangelo  











While gazing on the city, just o'er the narrow flood,
A band of holy angels came from the throne of God,

They bore him on their pinions safe o're the dashing foam,
And joined him in his triumph, Deliverance has come.

Palms of Victory







And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams

     Call to the soul when man doth sleep,

So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,

     And into glory peep.



(Henry Vaughan)





Make friends with the angels, who though invisible are always with you. Often invoke them, constantly praise them, and make good use of their help and assistance in all your temporal and spiritual affairs.

(Saint Francis de Sales)







We not only live among men,
but there are airy hosts,
blessed spectators,
sympathetic lookers-on,
that see and know
and appreciate
our thoughts
and feelings
and acts.

Henry Ward Beecher



.

.




How many angels are there?
One -- who transforms our life --
is plenty.

UNKNOWN



What though my winged hours of bliss have been,
Like angel-visits, few and far between?


(Thomas Campbell)





The man, who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight, has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the world.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson)






There was a pause --
just long enough for an angel to pass,
flying slowly.



(Ronald Firbank)






What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in
apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world!

(William Shakespeare)





......................................................

A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.


(William Wordsworth)

......................





And he dreamed, and behold
a ladder set up on the earth,
and the top of it reached to heaven:
and behold the angels of God
ascending and descending on it.
 

(Genesis 28:12)









How like an angel came I down!

                    How bright are all things here!

             When first among his works I did appear,

                    Oh, how their glory did me crown!



(Thomas Traherne)









I feel that there is an angel inside me whom I am constantly shocking.

(Jean Cocteau)







We are each of us angels with only one wing,
and we can only fly by embracing one another.

(Luciano de Crescenzo)




..............................

..........................

To love for the sake of being loved is human,
but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.

(Alphonse De Lamartine)




So when the Angel of the darker Drink
At last shall find you by the river-brink,
     And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul
Forth to your Lips to quaff -- you shall not shrink.

................................................

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam










The question is this: Is man an ape or an angel?
I am on the side of the angels.

(Benjamin Disraeli)





It is wonderful that every angel,
in whatever directions he turns his body and face,
sees the Lord in front of him.   (Emanuel Swedenborg)









There is joy in the presence of the angels.

(Luke 15:10)






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)









Outside the open window

The morning air is all awash with angels.



(Richard Wilbur)









To transmute a man into an angel was the hope that drove him all over the world and never let him flinch from a meeting or withhold goodbyes for long. This hope insistently divided his life into only two parts, journey and rest.  (Eudora Welty)









AT THE ROUND EARTH'S IMAGINED CORNERS, BLOW

YOUR TRUMPETS, ANGELS, AND ARISE, ARISE



John Donne

















For helping add to this collection,
my thanks to JuliannaA@aol.com and Jennifer@aol.com.












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