Hans Christian Andersen famous quotes

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

#Nature #Philosophical #Flower

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

#Miracle #Ordinary #World

Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Life #Inspiring #Famous Inspirational

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

#Looks #Stories #Fairy Tale

Don't ask me how I am! I understand nothing more!
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Ask Me

To be of use to the world is the only way to be happy.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Happiness #Use #World

But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Mermaid #Suffering #Tears

Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Life #Men #Memorial

Where words fail, music speaks.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Inspirational #Music #Listening

A human life is a story told by God.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Sympathy #Stories #Life Is

Then she saw a star fall, leaving behind it a bright streak of fire. “Someone is dying,” thought the little girl, for her old grandmother, the only one who had ever loved her, and who was now dead, had told her that when a star falls, a soul was going up to God.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Girl #Stars #Fall

Nothing is too high for a man to reach, but he must climb with care and confidence
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Men #Goal #Care

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.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Inspirational #Travel #Moving

My life will be the best illustration of all my work.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Illustration #Being The Best #Creative Process

Enjoy life. There's plenty of time to be dead.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Life #Self Improvement #Enjoy

He found whole figures which represented a written word; but he never could manage to represent just the word he wanted - that word was 'eternity', and the Snow Queen had said, "If you can discover that figure, you shall be your own master, and I will make you a present of the whole world and a pair of new skates." But he could not find it out.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Queens #Snow #World

Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Music #Beautiful #Life Is Like

Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan's egg.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Swans #Eggs #Ducks

If you looked down to the bottom of my soul, you would understand fully the source of my longing and – pity me. Even the open, transparent lake has its unknown depths, which no divers know.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Lakes #Soul #Depth

To travel is to live.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Travel #Adventure

Almighty God, thee only have I; thou steerest my fate, I must give myself up to thee! Give me a livelihood! Give me a bride! My blood wants love, as my heart does!
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Heart #Fate #Blood

Then he rustled his feathers, curved his slender neck, and cried joyfully, from the depths of his heart, 'I never dreamed of such happiness as this, while I was an ugly duckling.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Happiness #Heart #Ugly Duckling

My life is a lovely story, happy and full of incident.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Lovely #Stories #Life Is

Human beings, on the contrary, have a soul which lives forever, lives after the body has been turned to dust. It rises up through the clear, pure air beyond the glittering stars.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Stars #Air #Dust

Most of the people who will walk after me will be children, so make the beat keep time with short steps.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Children #People #Steps

She laughed and danced with the thought of death in her heart.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Heart

It is the power of thought that gives man power over nature.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Positive Thinking #Men #Giving

But shouldn't all of us on earth give the best we have to others and offer whatever is in our power?
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Giving #Earth #Offers

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

#Heart #Bird #Ears

Mermaids have no tears, and so they suffer all the more.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Mermaid #Suffering #Tears

It was clear to me, as I glanced back over my earlier life, that a loving Providence watched over me, that all was directed for me by a higher power.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Providence #Higher Power #Clear

Happy domestic life is like a beautiful summer's evening; the heart is filled with peace; and everything around derives a peculiar glory.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Happiness #Beautiful #Summer

I never dreamed of so much happiness when I was the Ugly Duckling!
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Ugly Duckling #Ugly #Ducklings

Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could fathom it: many church steeples, piled one upon another, would not reach from the ground beneath to the surface of the water above. There dwell the Sea King and his subjects.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Kings #Ocean #Blue

Many, many steeples would have to be stacked one on top of another to reach from the bottom to the surface of the sea.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Ocean #Sea #Steeples

The sun shines upon good and bad alike.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Shining #Sun #Good And Bad

A mermaid has not an immortal soul, nor can she obtain one unless she wins the love of a human being. On the power of another hangs her eternal destiny.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Winning #Destiny #Mermaid

Well, it's not so easy to give an answer when you ask a stupid question!
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Stupid #Giving #Answers

Each time I think that the song is ended ... something higher and better begins for me.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Song #Thinking #Higher

Far away, where the swallows take refuge in winter, lived a king who had eleven sons and one daughter, Elise. The eleven brothers--they were all princes--used to go to school with stars on their breasts and swords at their sides. They wrote upon golden slates with diamond pencils, and could read just as well without a book as with one, so there was no mistake about their being princes. Their sister Elise sat upon a little footstool of looking-glass, and she has a picture-book which had cost the half of a kingdom. Oh, these children were very happy; but it was not to last thus forever.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Daughter #Brother #Stars

Some are created for beauty, and some for use; and there are some which one can do without altogether.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Use

In the middle of a garden grew a rose tree; it was full of roses, and in the loveliest of them all lived an elf. He was so tiny that no human eye could see him. He had a snug little room behind every petal of the rose. He was as well made and as perfect as any human child, and he had wings reaching from his shoulders to his feet. Oh, what a delicious scent there was in his room, and how lovely and transparent the walls were, for they were palest pink, rose petals.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Children #Wall #Eye

There was once a bundle of matches, and they were frightfully proud because of their high origin. Their family tree, that is to say the great pine tree of which they were each a little splinter, had been the giant of the forest.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Tree #Giants #Splinters

I would give gladly all the hundreds of years that I have to live, to be a human being only for one day, and to have the hope of knowing the happiness of that glorious world above the stars.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Stars #Years #Knowing

Every time a good child dies, an angel of God comes down to earth. He takes the child in his arms, spreads out his great white wings, and flies with it all over the places the child loved on earth. The angel plucks a large handful of flowers, and they carry it with them up to God, where the flowers bloom more brightly than they ever did on earth.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Children #Flower #Angel

We cannot expect to be happy always ... by experiencing evil as well as good we become wise.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Wise #Evil #Wells

One cannot quite trust the word of potted flowers," thought the butterfly; "they have too much to do with men.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Flower #Butterfly #Men

There was once a merchant who was so rich that he might have paved the whole street, and a little alley besides, with silver money. But he didn't do it--he knew better how to use his money than that.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Use #Littles #Might

No, the light is too intense; we do not yet have eyes that can see all the glory God has created. But maybe someday we will have such eyes. That will be the most wonderful fairy tale of all, for we ourselves will be part of it.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Eye #Light #Fairy Tale

The naive was only a part of my fairy tales; humor was the real salt in them.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Real #Salt #Aries

Farewell, farewell," said the swallow, with a heavy heart, as he left the warm countries, to fly back into Denmark. There he had a nest over the window of a house in which dwelt the writer of fairy tales. The swallow sang "Tweet, tweet," and from his song came the whole story.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Country #Song #Farewell

‎"Does all the beauty of the world stop when you die?" "No," said the Old Oak; "it will last much longer - longer than I can even think of." "Well, then," said the little May-fly, "we have the same time to live; only we reckon differently.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Thinking #Lasts #Doe

In the days of Moses and the prophets such a man would have been counted among the wise men of the land; in the Middle Ages he would have been burned at the stake.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Wise #Men #Land

Each soldier was the living image of the others, but there was one who was a bit different. He had only one leg, for he was the last to be cast and the tin had run out. Still, there he stood, just as steadfast on his one leg as the others on their two; and he is the tin soldier we are going to hear about.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Running #Two #Soldier

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.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Beautiful #Pain #Home

Brave soldier, never fear. Even though your death is near.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Brave #Soldier #Brave Soldiers

And the Top spoke no more of his old love; for that dies away when the beloved objects has lain for five years in a roof gutter and got wet through; yes, one does not know her again when one meets her in the dust box.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Years #Dust #Doe

I only appear to be dead.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

Now, if we only had as many casks of butter as there are people here, then I would eat lots of butter!
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#People

At first she was overjoyed that he would be with her, but then she recalled that human people could not live under the water, and he could only visit her father's palace as a dead man.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Father #Men #People

She thought, "He whom I love more than my father or mother, he of whom I am always thinking, and in whose hands I would so willingly trust my lifelong happiness. I dare do anything to win him and to gain an immortal soul.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Mother #Father #Thinking

Every step you take will feel as if you were treading upon knife blades so sharp that blood must flow. I am willing to help you, but are you willing to suffer all this?" "Yes," the little mermaid said in a trembling voice, as she thought of the Prince and of gaining a human soul.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Knives #Voice #Blood

To be born in a duck's nest, in a farmyard, is of no consequence to a bird, if it is hatched from a swan's egg.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Swans #Eggs #Ducks

Eighty percent of our criminals come from unsympathetic homes.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Home #Evil #Criminals

But the Emperor has nothing at all on!
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Emperor

I have shed pewter tears! It is too melancholy! Rather let me go to the wars and lose arms and legs! It would at least be a change. I cannot bear it longer! Now, I know what it is to have a visit from one's old thoughts, with what they may bring with them! I have had a visit from mine, and you may be sure it is no pleasant thing in the end; I was at last about to jump down from the drawers.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#War #Tears #Legs

I have gone through the most terrible affair that could possibly happen; only imagine, my shadow has gone mad; I suppose such a poor, shallow brain, could not bear much; he fancies that he has become a real man, and that I am his shadow.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Real #Men #Mad

Death walks faster than the wind and never returns what he has taken.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Taken #Wind #Return

We haven't yet got eyes that can gaze into all the splendor that God has created, but we shall get them one day, and that will be the greatest fairytale of all, for we shall be in it ourselves.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Spiritual #Eye #One Day

He looked at the little maiden, and she looked at him; and he felt that he was melting away, but he still managed to keep himself erect, shouldering his gun bravely. A door was suddenly opened, the draught caught the little dancer and she fluttered like a sylph, straight into the fire, to the soldier, blazed up and was gone! By this time the soldier was reduced to a mere lump, and when the maid took away the ashes next morning she found him, in the shape of a small tin heart. All that was left of the dancer was her spangle, and that was burnt as black as a coal.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Morning #Heart #Gun

I know what you want. It is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess. - The sea witch.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Stupid #Princess #Sea

Travelling expands the mind rarely.
-- Hans Christian Andersen

#Travel #Journey #Mind