Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Angels
As the moths around a taper,
As the bees around a rose,
As the gnats around a vapour,
So the spirits group and close
Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose.
E. B. Browning—A Child Asleep.
But sad as angels for the good man’s sin,
Weep to record, and blush to give it in.
Campbell—Pleasures of Hope. Pt. II. L. 357.
What though my winged hours of bliss have been
Like angel visits, few and far between.
Campbell—Pleasures of Hope. Pt. II. L. 375.
Hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee.
Nathaniel Cotton—To-morrow. L. 36.
When one that holds communion with the skies
Has fill’d his urn where these pure waters rise,
And once more mingles with us meaner things,
’Tis e’en as if an angel shook his wings.
Cowper—Charity. L. 439.
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.
Benj. Disraeli—Speech at Oxford Diocesan Conference. Nov. 25, 1864.
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.
Austin Dobson—A Fairy Tale.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize
Or both divide the crown;
He rais’d a mortal to the skies
She drew an angel down.
Dryden—Alexander’s Feast. Last St.
Non Angli, sed Angeli.
Not Angles, but Angels.
Attributed to Gregory the Great on seeing British captives for sale at Rome.
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Hebrews. XIII. 2.
Unbless’d thy hand!—if in this low disguise
Wander, perhaps, some inmate of the skies.
Homer—Odyssey. Bk. XVII. L. 570. Pope’s trans.
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—On the Death of a Friend’s Child. L. 21.
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—The Ballad of Babe Christabel.
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—Comus. L. 249.
The helmed Cherubim,
And sworded Seraphim,
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display’d.
Milton—Hymn on the Nativity. L. 112.
As far as angel’s ken.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. I. L. 59.
For God will deign
To visit oft the dwellings of just men
Delighted, and with frequent intercourse
Thither will send his winged messengers
On errants of supernal grace.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. VII. L. 569.
Then too when angel voices sung
The mercy of their God, and strung
Their harps to hail, with welcome sweet,
That moment watched for by all eyes.
Moore—Loves of the Angels. Third Angel’s Story.
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Pope—Essay on Man. Ep. I. L. 126.
A guardian angel o’er his life presiding,
Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing.
Sam’l Rogers—Human Life. L. 353.
All angel now, and little less than all,
While still a pilgrim in this world of ours.
Scott—Lord of the Isles. (Referring to Harriet, Duchess of Buccleugh.)
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
Hamlet. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 371.
Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.
Macbeth. Act IV. Sc. 3. L. 22.
How oft do they their silver bowers leave
To come to succour us that succour want!
Spenser—Faerie Queene. Bk. II. Canto VIII. St. 2.
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—Hymn to the Beautiful. St. 3.
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—The Other World.
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.
Francis Thompson—A Carrier Song. St. 4.
For all we know
Of what the Blessèd do above
Is, that they sing, and that they love.
Waller. (Quoted by Wordsworth.)
What know we of the Blest above
But that they sing, and that they love?
Wordsworth—Scene on the Lake of Brienz. (Quoted from Waller.)