Well, yes: people write poems when they are in love, but a wise man will not print them.
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.
Eighty percent of our criminals come from unsympathetic homes.
Many, many steeples would have to be stacked one on top of another to reach from the bottom to the surface of the sea.
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.
I never dreamed of so much happiness when I was the Ugly Duckling!
Happy domestic life is like a beautiful summer’s evening; the heart is filled with peace; and everything around derives a peculiar glory.
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.
The sun shines upon good and bad alike.
When the bird of the heart begins to sing, too often will reason stop up her ears.
Well, it’s not so easy to give an answer when you ask a stupid question!
Travelling expands the mind rarely.
Now, if we only had as many casks of butter as there are people here, then I would eat lots of butter!
It was clear to me, as I glanced back over my earlier life, that a loving Providence watched over me, that all was directed for me by a higher power.
Brave soldier, never fear. Even though your death is near.
I know what you want. It is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess. – The sea witch.
At first she was overjoyed that he would be with her, but then she recalled that human people could not live under the water, and he could only visit her father’s palace as a dead man.
In the days of Moses and the prophets such a man would have been counted among the wise men of the land; in the Middle Ages he would have been burned at the stake.
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.
I only appear to be dead.