Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen; often referred to in Scandinavia as H. C. Andersen; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales. Andersen's popularity is not limited to children; his stories, called eventyr in Danish, express themes that transcend age and nationality...
NationalityDanish
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth2 April 1805
CityOdense, Denmark
CountryDenmark
Just living is not enough... one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.
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.
Death walks faster than the wind and never returns what he has taken.
Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.
Don't ask me how I am! I understand nothing more!
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.
It is the power of thought that gives man power over nature.
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.
I never dreamed of so much happiness when I was the Ugly Duckling!
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.
Many, many steeples would have to be stacked one on top of another to reach from the bottom to the surface of the sea.
Mermaids have no tears, and so they suffer all the more.
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.