Top 90 Hans Christian Andersen Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Where words fail, music speaks.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

Featured in: Music Quotes

2. “To travel is to live.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

Featured in: Short Quotes About Life, Live Life Quotes, Short Inspirational Quotes, Travel Quotes, Adventure Quotes

3. “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.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

Featured in: Sweet Quotes, Life Is Short Quotes, Carpe Diem Quotes, Moving Quotes, Travel Quotes

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

Featured in: Enjoy Life Quotes, Joy Quotes, Self-Improvement Quotes

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

Featured in: Beautiful Quotes

7. “Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

Featured in: Happy Sunday Quotes, Positive Good Morning Quotes, Life is Beautiful Quotes

8. “A human life is a story told by God.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

12. “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.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

13. “Nothing is too high for a man to reach, but he must climb with care and confidence.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

14. “We haven’t yet got eyes that can gaze into all the splendor that God has created, but we shall get them one day, and that will be the greatest fairytale of all, for we shall be in it ourselves.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

17. “Every man’s life is a fairy tale written by God’s fingers.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

22. “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.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

23. “It is only with the heart that one can see clearly, for the most essential things are invisible to the eye.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

24. “The sun shines upon good and bad alike.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

25. “Almighty God, thee only have I; thou steerest my fate, I must give myself up to thee! Give me a livelihood! Give me a bride! My blood wants love, as my heart does!”

— Hans Christian Andersen

26. “Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan’s egg.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

28. “Well, it’s not so easy to give an answer when you ask a stupid question!”

— Hans Christian Andersen

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

30. “Travelling expands the mind rarely.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

31. “Happy domestic life is like a beautiful summer’s evening; the heart is filled with peace; and everything around derives a peculiar glory.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

34. “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.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

35. “Don’t ask me how I am! I understand nothing more!”

— Hans Christian Andersen

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

37. “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.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

38. “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.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

39. “I never dreamed of such happiness as this, while I was an ugly duckling.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

41. “There was once a bundle of matches, and they were frightfully proud because of their high origin. Their family tree, that is to say the great pine tree of which they were each a little splinter, had been the giant of the forest.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

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

— Hans Christian Andersen

43. “The wiser a man becomes, the more he will read, and those who are wisest read most.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

44. “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.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

45. “No, the light is too intense; we do not yet have eyes that can see all the glory God has created. But maybe someday we will have such eyes. That will be the most wonderful fairy tale of all, for we ourselves will be part of it.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

46. “But the Emperor has nothing at all on!”

— Hans Christian Andersen

47. “The naive was only a part of my fairy tales; humor was the real salt in them.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

48. “I only do His will, replied Death. I am his gardener. I take all His flowers and trees, and transplant them into the gardens of Paradise in an unknown land. How they flourish there, and what that garden resembles, I may not tell you.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

49. “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. He now felt glad at having suffered sorrow and trouble, because it enabled him to enjoy so much better all the pleasure and happiness around him; for the great swans swam round the newcomer and stroked his neck with their beaks, as a welcome.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

50. “And, above all, beware of the cat.”

— Hans Christian Andersen