Angels

"Angels never attack, as infernal spirits do. Angels only ward off and defend."

"Thomas Daggett: Did you ever notice how in the Bible, when ever God needed to punish someone, or make an example, or whenever God needed a killing, he sent an angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? A whole existence spent praising your God, but always with one wing dipped in blood. Would you ever really want to see an angel?"

"For all we know Of what the Blessèd do above Is, that they sing, and that they love. . . . What know we of the Blest above But that they sing, and that they love?"

"I have no angels left Now, Sweet, to pray to: Where you have made your shrine They are away to. They have struck Heaven's tent, And gone to cover you: Whereso you keep your state Heaven is pitched over you."

"Gabriel: I'm an angel. I kill firstborns while their mamas watch. I turn cities into salt. I even, when I feel like it, rip the souls from little girls, and from now till kingdom come, the only thing you can count on in your existence is never understanding why."

"I know a lot of people who don't believe in angels but I've never met a soul that didn't want to believe in them."

"How do the angels get to sleep when the devil leaves the porch light on?"

"If there is any thing that keeps the mind open to angel visits, and repels the ministry of ill, it is human love."

"Outside the open window The morning air is all awash with angels."

"There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia."

"Sweet souls around us watch us still, Press nearer to our side; Into our thoughts, into our prayers, With gentle helpings glide."

"Could we forbear dispute, and practise love, We should agree as angels do above."

"Whenever an angel says "Be not afraid!" you'd better start worrying. A big assignment is on the way."

"An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; Legions of angels can't confine me there."

"I saw an angel close by me, on my left side, in bodily form. This I am not accustomed to see, unless very rarely. Though I have visions of angels frequently, yet I see them only by an intellectual vision, such as I have spoken of before. It was our Lord's will that in this vision I should see the angel in this wise. He was not large, but small of stature, and most beautiful — his face burning, as if he were one of the highest angels, who seem to be all of fire: they must be those whom we call cherubim. Their names they never tell me; but I see very well that there is in heaven so great a difference between one angel and another, and between these and the others, that I cannot explain it."

"I'll help you. I'm an angel."

"If God will send his angels I sure could use them here right now Well if God would send his angels And I don't have to know how."

"Hey if God will send his angels And if God will send a sign And if God will send his angels Would everything be alright?"

"The Lord will command his angels to take good care of you. They will lift you up in their hands. Then you won't trip over a stone."

"The player is a liar when he says : "Angels are happier than men, because they are better." Angels are happier than men and devils, because they are not always prying after good and evil in one another, and eating the tree of knowledge for Satan's gratification."

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

"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."

"Since a lower power acts in virtue of a higher power, a lower order performs actions proper to a higher order by acting in virtue of that higher power. But the higher orders possess in a more eminent way whatever is proper to the lower orders. Thus all things are in a certain sense common to the various orders. However, they receive their proper names from properties that are characteristic of each order. Nevertheless the lowest order of all retains the common name of angels for itself, for the reason that it acts, as it were, in virtue of all the rest. Furthermore, since the higher naturally influences the lower, and since intellectual action consists in instructing or teaching, the higher angels, in instructing the lower angels, are said to purify, illuminate, and perfect them."

"What is all this shit about angels? Have you heard this? Three out of four people now, believe in angels. What're you, fucking stupid? Has everybody lost their fucking minds in this country? Angels, shit. You know what I think it is? I think it's a massive collective psychotic chemical flashback of all the drugs — all the drugs — smoked, swallowed, snorted, shot, and absorbed rectally by all Americans from 1960 to 1990. Thirty years of adulterated street drugs'll get you some fucking angels, my friend."

"Music is well said to be the speech of angels."

"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly."

"Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of the character, though few can decypher even fragments of their meaning."

"...virginity is better than marriage, however good.... Celibacy is...an imitation of the angels. Therefore, virginity is as much more honorable than marriage, as the angel is higher than man. But why do I say angel? Christ, Himself, is the glory of virginity"

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

"If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse."

"I have a dream, a song to sing, To help me cope with anything. If you see the wonder of a fairy tale You can take the future even if you fail. I believe in angels, something good in everything I see. I believe in angels, when I know the time is right for me, I'll cross the stream, I have a dream."

"But sad as angels for the good man's sin, Weep to record, and blush to give it in."

"Aren't we all the same? In and out of doubt. I can see angels standing around you. They shimmer like mirrors in Summer. But you don't know it. And they will carry you o'er the walls. If you need us, just call."

"A tear is an intellectual thing, And a sigh is the Sword of an Angel King."

"Gabriel before me Raphael behind me Michael to my right Uriel on my left side In the circle of fire."

"Lincoln had an ally then of a kind that Obama could use now. Lincoln's old rival from Illinois, Stephen Douglas, whose party had been split by the fire-eaters and whom Lincoln defeated at the polls, became a wise and vital friend. In the months between the inauguration and Douglas's early death in June 1861, the "little giant," as he was known, spent many long hours talking to Lincoln about how best to preserve the Union — and compromise wasn't part of the picture. … "You do not know the dishonest purposes of those men as I do," he told Lincoln. What both of those great politicians understood by then was that there may be better angels in the nature of some people, but there are others who are willing to weaken, even destroy a nation to serve their own self-righteous self-interest, and they will do it in the name of the Constitution. If Obama hasn't learned that yet, perhaps it's time he did."

"I don't mind if it's dangerous I don't mind if it's raining Take me up to the top of the city And put me up on the angel's shoulders."

"I heard an Angel singing When the day was springing: "Mercy, Pity, and Peace Are the world's release.""

"An angel can illuminate 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."

"What is the question now placed before society with the glib assurance which to me is most astonishing? That question is this: Is man an ape or an angel? I, my lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence those new fangled theories."

"In merest prudence men should teach * * * * * * That science ranks as monstrous things Two pairs of upper limbs; so wings— E'en Angel's wings! — are fictions."

"Heaven, too, was very near to them in those days. God's direct agency was to be seen in the thunder and the rainbow, the whirlwind and the lightning. To the believer, clouds of angels and confessors, and martyrs, armies of the sainted and the saved, were ever stooping over their struggling brethren upon earth, raising, encouraging, and supporting them."

"Let old Timotheus yield the prize Or both divide the crown; He rais'd a mortal to the skies She drew an angel down."

"When God has sent his angel to me, then I know of a surety. … When God sends his angel to the soul it becomes the one who knows for sure. Not for nothing did God give the keys into St. Peter's keeping, for Peter stands for knowledge, and knowledge is the key that unlocks the door, presses forward and breaks in, to discover God as he is."

"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."

"The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone."

"In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's."

"And these are the names of the holy angels who watch. Uriel, one of the holy angels, who is 3 over the world and over Tartarus. Raphael, one of the holy angels, who is over the spirits of men. Raguel, one of the holy angels who takes vengeance on the world of the luminaries. Michael, one of the holy angels, to wit, he that is set over the best part of mankind and over chaos. Saraqael, one of the holy angels, who is set over the spirits, who sin in the spirit. Gabriel, one of the holy angels, who is over Paradise and the serpents and the Cherubim. Remiel, one of the holy angels, whom God set over those who rise."

"“Perhaps you could tell me how many angels may stand on the point of a pin?”… De Salcedo snorted. “I’ll tell you. Philosophically speaking, you may put as many angels on a pinhead as you want to. Actually speaking, you may put only as many as there is room for. Enough of that. I'm interested in facts, not fancies.”"

"President Barack Obama loves to quote the lyrical closing lines of Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, calling on "the better angels of our nature" to overcome partisan hatreds and political divisions. Obama cited those words in his own inaugural proclamation and rested his hand on Lincoln's Bible when he took the oath of office. He has come back to those angels again and again ever since. … He used the phrase to eulogize Ted Kennedy, to chide a would-be Quran burner in Florida, and to say goodbye to chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Obama, it seems, sees better angels just about everywhere. Even as he traveled in India this week he talked about his efforts to live up to the example of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and, yes, Abraham Lincoln. But in light of today's real-world politics, Obama should think a little harder about the context in which Lincoln summoned those better angels on March 4, 1861. Led by South Carolina (now home to Sen. Jim DeMint, seven of 33 states had already seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy at that point. … If, in the end, Lincoln did manage to hold the Union together, it was not because of the better angels of human nature, but because he finally found the killer angels among his generals who could, and did, and at enormous cost, crush the secessionists."