Hans Christian Andersen citations

“Il n’y a pas de mal à être né dans une basse-cour lorsqu’on sort d’un œuf de cygne.”

“Bien des gens reçurent de cette funeste poussière dans l'œil. Une fois là, elle y restait, et les gens voyaient tout en mal, tout en laid, et tout à l’envers.”

“Crois-tu que la flamme de l’âme puisse périr dans les flammes du bucher?”

“Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.”

“You are a dreamer, and that is your misfortune.”

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

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

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

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

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

“She laughed and danced with the thought of death in her heart.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Brave soldier, never fear.
Even though your death is near.”

“Never had she danced so beautifully; the sharp knives cut her feet, but she did not feel it, for the pain in her heart was far greater.”

“Under each arm he carries an umbrella; one of them, with pictures on the inside, he spreads over the good children, and then they dream the most beautiful stories the whole night. But the other umbrella has no pictures, and this he holds over the naughty children so that they sleep heavily, and wake in the morning without having dreamed at all.”

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

“To travel is to live.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“My life will be the best illustration of all my work.”

“‎"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.”

“His own image; no longer a dark, gray bird, ugly and disagreeable to look at, but a graceful and beautiful swan. 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.”

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

“I only appear to be dead.”

“They could see she was a real Princess and no question about it, now that she had felt one pea all the way through twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds. Nobody but a Princess could be so delicate.”

“Travelling expands the mind rarely.”

“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.”