Famous Quotes & Sayings

John le Carre

Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.

John Barth

Is man a savage at heart, skinned o'er with fragile Manners? Or is savagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts now and again like pimples on an angel's arse?

Jim Leach

Politics has high and low moments. Sometimes it brings out the better angels of our nature; sometimes baser instincts.

George MacDonald

But there are victories far worse than defeats; and to overcome an angel too gentle to put out all his strength, and ride away in triumph on the back of a devil, is one of the poorest.

Emanuel Swedenborg

I have seen a thousand times that Angels are human form, or men, for I have conversed with them as man to man, sometimes with one alone, sometimes with many in company.

Emanuel Swedenborg

Man was so created by the Lord as to be able while living in the body to speak with spirits and angels, as in fact was done in the most ancient times; for, being a spirit clothed with a body, he is one with them

Emanuel Swedenborg

People are unaware that spirits even exist, let alone that angels are present with them.

Emanuel Swedenborg

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

Emanuel Swedenborg

I am well aware that many will say that no one can possibly speak with spirits and angels so long as he lives in the body; and many will say that it is all fancy, others that I relate such things in order to gain credence, and others will make other objections.

Emanuel Swedenborg

Angels can recognize the nature of our unique essence on the basis of nothing more than a brief conversation with us. From hearing the tone of our voice angels sense what we love; and from hearing what we say, angels sense our level of understanding.

Emanuel Swedenborg

Two consorts in heaven are not two, but one angel.

Emanuel Swedenborg

Everything good or true that the angels inspire in us is God's, so God is constantly talking to us. He talks very differently, though, to one person than to another.

Emanuel Swedenborg

Seen in its own right, a loving person's inner spirit is an angel of heaven, and while we are living in the body we are also in the company of angels, even though we are not aware of it; and once we are released from the body we join them.

Emanuel Swedenborg

All our longings for what is loving and true reach out into heaven. They put us in touch with angels who are feeling the same way and unite us with them.

Ellen Hopkins

the not-so-bookish librarian was half angel, half she-devil, so sayeth the rumor mill.

Ellen Hopkins

Something stirred beneath my skin, some being inside I'd only suspected existed, demon or angel, I couldn't say.

Elizabeth Gaskell

I daresay it seems foolish; perhaps all our earthly trials will appear foolish to us after a while; perhaps they seem so now to angels. But we are ourselves, you know, and this is now, not some time to come, a long, long way off. And we are not angels, to be comforted by seeing the ends for which everything is sent.

Elizabeth Gilbert

[Saint Anthony] said, in his solitude, he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company.

John Burroughs

I am not going to advocate ... the abandoning of the improved modes of travel; but I am going to brag as lustily as I can on behalf of the pedestrian, and show how all the shining angels second and accompany the man who goes afoot, while all the dark spirits are ever looking out for a chance to ride.

Lilith Saintcrow

It was stealing her breath, imbecile. Go get a towel." -Christophe, Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow

Leo Tolstoy

And the angel said - "I have learned that every man lives not through care of himself, but by love"...

Lady Gaga

Watch very closely as the magical angel and I are swallowed by the rainbow twister, and left stranded on the glitter way.

Joseph Heller

When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.

Joseph Campbell

Have you ever looked inside one of those things [computers]? It's a whole hierarchy of angels- all on slats. And those little tubes-those are miracles.

Julie Garwood

For though Duncan was a mere mortal, flawed as well, he'd accomplished a daring feat. Aye, he'd captured an angel. And she belonged to him.

Joseph Priestley

Had Mr. Gibbon lived in France, Spain, or Italy, he might with the fame reason have ranked the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the worship of saints and angels among the essentials of Christianity, as the doctrines of the trinity and of the atonement.

Gayle Forman

If I stay. If I live. It’s up to me. All this business about medically induced comas is just doctor talk. It’s not up to the doctors. It’s not up to the absentee angels. It’s not even up to God who, if He exists, is nowhere around right now. It’s up to me.

Ludwig Feuerbach

I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in alliance with falsehood.

Maimonides

For every force charged by God, may He be exalted, with some business is an angel put in charge...

Maimonides

All forces that reside in the body are angels.

Maimonides

Everyone entrusted with a mission is an angel.

Norman Mailer

There's that popular misconception of man as something between a brute and an angel. Actually man is in transit between brute and God.

Norman Reedus

I've always said it's interesting to watch devils cry when angels want to stab you in the back. I like that mixture.