"Every man's life is a fairy tale, written by God's fingers."
— Hans Christian Andersen

"Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale. "
— Hans Christian Andersen

"More effectively than any of the other tales, 'The Emperor's New Clothes' established Andersen's reputation as a man who created stories for children — not just in the sense of target audience, but also as beneficiaries of something extraordinary. The lesson embedded in it is so transparent that its title circulates in the form of proverbial wisdom about social hypocrisy. But more importantly, 'The Emperor's New Clothes' romanticizes children by investing them with the courage to challenge authority and to speak truth to power."
— Maria Tatar

"I would call that man a born artist whose soul nature has from the very beginning endowed with an ideal, and for whom this ideal replaces the truth; he believes in it without reservation, and his life's task will be to realize it completely for himself, and to set it forth for the contemplation of others."
— Hans von Marées

"It is through beauty, poetry and visionary power that the world will be renewed."
— Maria Tatar