C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Angels

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

Shakespeare.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Pope.

Like angel visits, few and far between.

Campbell.

We are never like angels till our passion dies.

Thomas Decker.

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Shakespeare.

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.

Shakespeare.

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen, both when we sleep and when we wake.

Milton.

Angels boast ethereal vigor, and are formed from seeds of heavenly birth.

Virgil.

White wing’d angels meet the child
On the vestibule of life.

Mrs. E. Oakes Smith.

Angels contented with their face in heaven,
Seek not the praise of men.

Milton.

A guardian angel o’er his life presiding,
Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing.

Samuel Rogers.

So dear to heaven is saintly chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so
A thousand liveried angels lackey her.

Milton.

If you woo the company of the angels in your waking hours, they will be sure to come to you in your sleep.

G. D. Prentice.

We cannot let our angels go; we do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in.

Emerson.

The helmed Cherubim,
And sworded Seraphim,
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display’d.

Milton.

In this dim world of clouding cares,
We rarely know, till ’wildered eyes
See white wings lessening up the skies,
The angels with us unawares.

Gerald Massey.

How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence through the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smiled!

Milton.

The angels may have wider spheres of action, may have nobler forms of duty; but right with them and with us is one and the same thing.

Chapin.

The guardian angel of life sometimes flies so high that man cannot see it; but he always is looking down upon us, and will soon hover nearer to us.

Richter.

O, though oft oppressed and lonely,
All my fears are laid aside,
If I but remember only
Such as these have lived and died!

Longfellow.

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

Harriet Beecher Stowe.

For God will deign
To visit oft the dwellings of just men
Delighted, and with frequent intercourse
Thither will send his winged messengers
On errands of supernal grace.

Milton.

But all God’s angels come to us disguised:
Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death,
One after other lift their frowning masks,
And we behold the Seraph’s face beneath,
All radiant with the glory and the calm
Of having looked upon the front of God.

Lowell.

Around our pillows golden ladders rise,
And up and down the skies,
With winged sandals shod,
The angels come, and go, the messengers of God!
Nor, though they fade from us, do they depart—
It is the childly heart:
We walk as heretofore,
Adown their shining ranks, but see them nevermore.

R. H. Stoddard.

Compare a Solomon, an Aristotle, or an Archimedes, to a child that newly begins to speak, and they do not more transcend such a one than the angelical understanding exceeds theirs, even in its most sublime improvements and acquisitions.

South.

Man hath two attendant angels,
Ever waiting by his side,
With him wheresoe’er he wanders,
Wheresoe’er his feet abide;
One to warn him when he darkleth,
And rebuke him if he stray;
One to leave him to his nature,
And so let him go his way.

Prince.

The accusing spirit, which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in; and the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever.

Sterne.

There are two angels that attend unseen
Each one of us, and in great books record
Our good and evil deeds. He who writes down
The good ones, after every action closes
His volume, and ascends with it to God.
The other keeps his dreadful day-book open
Till sunset, that we may repent; which doing,
The record of the action fades away,
And leaves a line of white across the page.
Now if my act be good, as I believe it,
It cannot be recalled. It is already
Sealed up in heaven, as a good deed accomplished.
The rest is yours.

Longfellow.

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