"better angels" meaning in English

See better angels in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-better angels.ogg [Australia]
Head templates: {{en-noun|p|head=better angels}} better angels pl (plural only)
  1. (idiomatic) Morally upright or otherwise positive attributes of human character. Tags: idiomatic, plural, plural-only Synonyms: better angels of one's nature
    Sense id: en-better_angels-en-noun-GwagnEW1 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English pluralia tantum

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for better angels meaning in English (2.6kB)

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          "ref": "1861 March 4, Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address",
          "text": "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.",
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          "ref": "1982 December 25, “Opinion: Children at the Window”, in New York Times, retrieved 2016-09-03",
          "text": "A Christmas without children would be like a sleigh ride without snow. What gives this day its special grace is the glimpse it yields of a child's belief in the better angels of a grown-up world. Selfishness recedes, good will and gentleness for a blessed moment prevail.",
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.