"The better angels of our nature."

This is a curious phrase.  I have heard it used only a few times over the years.   Some say that it is a take on having an angel on one shoulder, and a devil on the other.

It was inserted into President Lincoln's 1st Inaugural address to replace "guardian angel" as Lincoln did not want to assert, at that point, that either side clearly in the right.

"We are not enemies, but friends," spoke President Lincoln. "We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield 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."