Quotes from Hans Christian Andersen

"But the emperor has nothing at all on!" a little child declared.

Then they knew that the lady they had lodged was a real Princess, since she had felt the one small pea through twenty mattresses and twenty feather-beds, for it was quite impossible for any one but a true Princess to be so tender.

"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly, "one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."

"But he hasn't got anything on," a little child said.

Enjoy life. There's plenty of time to be dead.

The little live nightingale… had come to sing of comfort and hope. As he sang, the phantoms grew pale, and still more pale, and the blood flowed quicker and quicker through the Emperor's feeble body. Even Death listened, and said, "Go on, little nightingale, go on!"

Just living is not enough... one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.

His own image… was no longer the reflection of a clumsy, dirty, gray bird, ugly and offensive. He himself was a swan! Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan's egg.

We [sea folk] can live to be three hundred years old, but when we perish we turn into mere foam on the sea.

But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.

Where words fail, music speaks.

When the bird of the heart begins to sing, too often will reason stop up her ears.

To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, To gain all while you give, To roam the roads of lands remote, To travel is to live.

Enjoy life. There's plenty of time to be dead.

Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.

Every man's life is a fairy tale, written by God's fingers.

The whole world is a series of miracles, but we're so used to them we call them ordinary things.

Everything you look at can become a fairy tale and you can get a story from everything you touch.

I can give her no greater power than she has already, said the woman; don't you see how strong that is? How men and animals are obliged to serve her, and how well she has got through the world, barefooted as she is. She cannot receive any power from me greater than she now has, which consists in her own purity and innocence of heart. If she cannot herself obtain access to the Snow Queen, and remove the glass fragments from little Kay, we can do nothing to help her.

To be of use to the world is the only way to be happy.

Death walks faster than the wind and never returns what he has taken.

You are a dreamer, and that is your misfortune.

Sharp knives seemed to cut her delicate feet, yet she hardly felt them, so deep was the pain in her heart. She could not forget that this was the last night she would ever see the one for whom she had left her home and family, had given up her beautiful voice, and had day by day endured unending torment, of which he knew nothing at all. An eternal night awaited her.

It doesn't matter if you're born in a duck yard, so long as you are hatched from a swan's egg!