Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.