Showing results by author "Andersen Hans Christian" in All Categories

Have you ever heard the story of the old Street Lamp? It's really not very amusing, but you might listen to it for once. - It was such an honest lamp, which had done its duty for many, many years and which was now going to be discarded. It was the last evening it hung on its post and gave light to the street beneath it. The Lamp felt like an old ballet dancer who is performing for the last time and who knows that tomorrow she will be in a cold garret.

There is nobody in the world who knows so many stories as Ole-Luk-Oie, or who can relate them so nicely. In the evening, while the children are seated at the table or in their little chairs, he comes up the stairs very softly, for he walks in his socks, then he opens the doors without the slightest noise, and throws a small quantity of very fine dust in their eyes, just enough to prevent them from keeping them open, and so they do not see him.

Somewhere in the street stood an old old house; it was almost three hundred years old, as you could tell from the date cut into the great beam. Tulips and hopbines and also whole verses of poetry were carved into the wood as people used to do in those days, and over every window a mocking face was cut into the beam. The second story hung way out over the ground floor, and right under the eaves was a leaden spout with a dragon's head. Rain water was supposed to run out of the dragon's mouth, but it came from his belly instead, for there was a hole in it.

I am a poor lad, and live in one of the narrowest of lanes; but I have plenty of light: my room is high up in the house, and there is a good prospect over the roofs of the opposite houses. During the first few days I lived in the town, I felt very lonely and low-spirited. Instead of the forest and the green hills of the country, I had nothing but black chimney-pots on the horizon of my view. And then I had not a single friend, nor one familiar face to greet me.

In a poet's study, somebody made a remark as he looked at the inkstand that was standing on the table: "It's strange what can come out of that inkstand! I wonder what the next thing will be. Yes, it's strange!"

The storks tell many, many stories to their young ones, all about the bogs and marshes. In general each story is suited to the age and sense of the little storks. While the youngest ones are satisfied with, "Kribble-krabble, plurry-murry," and think it a very fine story, the older ones demand something with more sense to it, or at least something about the family.

The Emperor of China is a Chinaman, as you most likely know, and everyone around him is a Chinaman too. It's been a great many years since this story happened in China, but that's all the more reason for telling it before it gets forgotten.

"It's a dreadful story!" said a hen, and she said it in a part of town, too, where it had not taken place. "It's a dreadful story to happen in a henhouse. I'm afraid to sleep alone tonight; it's a good thing there are many of us on the perch!" And then she told a story that made the feathers of the other hens stand on end and the rooster's comb fall. It's quite true!

There once was a woman who wanted so very much to have a tiny little child, but she did not know where to find one. So she went to an old witch, and she said: "I have set my heart upon having a tiny little child. Please could you tell me where I can find one?"

In the woods, on a high bank near the open seashore, there stood such a very old oak tree. It was exactly three hundred and sixty-five years old, but this long span of years seemed to the tree scarcely longer than as many days do to people like us. A tree's life is not the same as a man's. We are awake during the day, and sleep at night, and we have our dreams.

The Fir-Tree is a literary fairy tale by the Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875). The tale is about a fir tree so anxious to grow up, so anxious for greater things, that he cannot appreciate living in the moment. The tale was first published 21 December 1844 with The Snow Queen, in New Fairy Tales. First Volume. Second Collection, in Copenhagen, Denmark, by C.A. Reitzel. One scholar (Andersen biographer Jackie Wullschlager) indicates that The Fir-Tree was the first of Andersen's fairy tales to express a deep pessimism.

High up in the thin, clear air there flew an angel bearing a flower from the garden of heaven. As he kissed it, a tiny leaf drifted down into the muddy soil in the middle of the wood; it very soon took root there, and sprouted, and sent up shoots among the other plants.

The Flying Trunk is a literary fairy tale by the Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen about a young man who has a flying trunk that carries him to Turkey where he visits the Sultan's daughter. The tale was first published in 1839. A young man squanders his inheritance until he has nothing left but a few shillings, a pair of slippers, and an old dressing-gown. A friend sends him a trunk with directions to pack up and be off. Having nothing to pack, he gets into the trunk himself. The trunk is enchanted and carries him to the land of the Turks.

The Little Mermaid (Danish: Den lille havfrue), sometimes translated in English as "The Little Sea Maid", is a fairy tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. Originally published in 1837 as part of a collection of fairy tales for children, the story follows the journey of a young mermaid princess who is willing to give up her life in the sea as a mermaid to gain a human soul. The Little Mermaid lives in an underwater kingdom with her father, the Sea King, her paternal grandmother, and her five older sisters, each one of them born a year apart.

It was terribly cold and nearly dark on the last evening of the old year, and the snow was falling fast. In the cold and the darkness, a poor little girl, with bare head and naked feet, roamed through the streets. It is true she had on a pair of slippers when she left home, but they were not of much use.

By the high road in the forest lay a lonely peasant's hut; the path to it led right through the farmyard. The sun shone, and all the windows were open, and in the house there seemed a great bustle and movement; but in the garden, in an arbor formed of blooming elder-branches, stood an open coffin. A dead man had been carried out, who on this morning was to be buried. Nobody stood by the coffin looking sorrowfully at the dead; no one shed a tear over him.

Once upon a time, a flea, a grasshopper, and a jumping goose wanted to see which one could jump the highest. They invited the whole world, and even a few others, to come to a festival to watch the test. They were three famous jumpers indeed, and they all met together in a big room.

The Emperor's New Clothes is a literary folktale written by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, about a vain emperor who gets exposed before his subjects. The tale has been translated into over 100 languages. The tale concerns an emperor who has an obsession with fancy new clothes, and spends lavishly on them, at the expense of state matters. One day, two con-men visit the emperor's capital. Posing as weavers, they offer to supply him with magnificent clothes that are invisible to those who are either incompetent or stupid.

In the midst of a garden there grew a rose bush, quite covered with roses, and in the most beautiful of them all there lived an elf—an elf so tiny that no mortal eye could see him. But he was as well made and as perfect as any child could be, and he had wings reaching from his shoulders to his feet. Behind each petal of the rose he had a tiny bedroom. Oh, how fragrant his rooms were, and how bright and transparent the walls, for they were the beautiful pale pink petals of the rose!

"My poor flowers are quite dead," said little Ida. "They were so pretty last evening, but now every leaf has withered and drooped. Why do they do that?" she asked the student who sat on the sofa.