Hans Christian Andersen Quotes - Page 2

My life is a lovely story, happy and full of incident.

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

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

Time is so fleeting that if we do not remember God in our youth, age may find us incapable of thinking of him.

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

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

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

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

To travel is to live.

It is the power of thought that gives man power over nature.

The naive was only a part of my fairy tales; humour was the real salt in them.

How little do the wisest among us know of that which is so important to us all.

Well, yes: people write poems when they are in love, but a wise man will not print them.

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

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

Don't ask me how I am! I understand nothing more!

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.

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.

Mermaids have no tears, and so they suffer all the more.

I covet honour in the same way as a miser covets gold.

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.

Eighty percent of our criminals come from unsympathetic homes.

We haven't yet got eyes that can gaze into all the splendour that God has created, but we shall get them one day; and that will be the finest fairy tale of all, for we shall be in it ourselves.

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.

I only appear to be dead.