Andersen's Fairy Tales Quotes

The mer-king had been a widower for many years; his mother kept house for him. She was a very intelligent woman but a little too proud of her rank: she wore twelve oysters on her tail; the nobility...

Cupid is a rascal! Don't ever have anything to do with him! Imagine, he once shot your poor old grandmother, right through the heart; it's so long ago that it no longer hurts, but she hasn't forgot...

"You poets are so happy and free. You can fly wherever you want to; the rest of us have a chain around our ankles." "True," the poet replied. "But the other end of that chain is fastened to a bread...

It was late and Councilman Knap, who was getting ready to go home, was so engrossed in thinking about the times of King Hans that he put on the magic galoshes instead of his own. As he stepped out...

The windows were open so that fresh air might enter; but even quicker than the air were the mutilated arms of the beggars and the sound of their whimpering… The walls were decorated with inscript...

The princess was riding by. She was so beautiful that anyone who looked at her forgot how wicked she was; and that's why everyone was now shouting, "Hurrah!" (The Traveling Companion.50)

The more he and the ferrymen talked, the less comprehensible they were to each other. "I can't understand your dialect," he said finally, and turned his back on them. (The Magic Galoshes.20-21)

"We can live until we are three hundred years old; but when we die, we become the foam on the ocean. We cannot even bury our loved ones. We do not have immortal souls. When we die, we shall never r...

"What have I done?" he sighed. "I have sinned as Adam did. Sinned and caused paradise to sink deeper into the earth." (The Garden of Eden.93)