Hans Christian Andersen Quotes

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

“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.”

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

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

“Every town, like every man, has its own countenance; they have a common likeness and yet are different; one keeps in his mind all their peculiar touches.”

“I only appear to be dead.”

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

“Where words fail, music speaks.”

“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.”

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

“Eighty percent of our criminals come from unsympathetic homes.”

“Each time I think that the song is ended ... something higher and better begins for me.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“It is out of reality that the most peculiar tale of all is born ... Some call me the Elder Granny, others - the Dryad, but my real name is Memory. It is I who sits on a tree that keeps on growing, and growing, it is I who reminisces and tells stories.”

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

“I never dreamed of so much happiness when I was the Ugly Duckling!”

“To travel is to live.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”