Little Mermaid Quotes

“The main courtyard was filled with warriors - mermen with fish tails from the waist down and human bodies from the waist up, except their skin was blue, which I'd never known before.Some were tending the wounded. Some were sharpening spears and swords. One passed us, swimming in a hurry. His eyes were bright green, like that stuff they put in glo-sticks, and his teeth were shark teeth. They don't show you stuff like that in "The Little Mermaid.”
― Rick Riordan, The Last Olympian

“Sharp knives seemed to cut her delicate feet, yet she hardly felt them, so deep was the pain in her heart. She could not forget that this was the last night she would ever see the one for whom she had left her home and family, had given up her beautiful voice, and had day by day endured unending torment, of which he knew nothing at all. An eternal night awaited her. ”
― Hans Christian Andersen

“You've become a queen, a woman with a complicated personality. You have hidden depths and a wisdom and intelligence that all went unnoticed before by an idiot prince whose heart couldn't listen to anything his ears couldn't hear."
Ariel felt a little giddy. "I control storms and the heart of a prince. I like that." If she were in the sea she would have been swooning, thrashing her tail and spinning in circles until she was dizzy.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“Did speaking a word to the outside truly change what took place within?”
― Sara Ella, Coral

“Den lille havfrue måtte tænke på den første gang hun dykkede op af havet og så den samme pragt og glæde, og hun hvirvlede sig med i dansen, svævede, som svalen svæver når den forfølges, og alle tiljublede hende beundring, aldrig havde hun danset så herligt; det skar som skarpe knive i de fine fødder, men hun følte det ikke; det skar hende smerteligere i hjertet.”
― H.C. Andersen, Andersen's Fairy Tales: H. C. Andersen's Magical Narratives

“The nautilus shell was exquisite, brown and white and perfectly striped. The math that lay like a dazzling creation spell over all who lived in the sea showed clearly in the spiral, each cell as great as the sum of the two previous sections. Everything in the ocean was a thing of beauty and numbers, even in death.
Mermaids could live for a long time, but their bodies became foam that dissipated into nothing when they died.
The poor little mollusk who lived in this shell had a very short life, but his shell could last for centuries.
Ariel sighed and brushed her fingers over it, feeling strangely melancholy despite the triumph she literally held in her hands. Years of being mute could be swept away in a second. Years of frustration, years of silent crying, years of anger.
And then what?
If she destroyed it, what would it change?”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“She sang.
Wordless hymns of the sea: immediate, extemporized passages about waves and sunlight and tides and the constant, beautiful pressure of water on everything. The glory of seaweed slowly swaying, the delicious feeling that foretold a storm in the Dry World and turbulence below.
The music came out of her without pause, driven by years of observing, seeing, listening, enjoying, experiencing the world and unable to express it. The wonder and sadness of being alive. The joy of being a mermaid; the pain of being the only one like herself- the only mermaid who had been mortal, temporarily, and then lost everything.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“Mermaid queens didn't often have a reason to move quickly. There were no wars to direct, no assassination attempts to evade, no crowds of clamoring admirers to avoid among the merfolk. In fact, slowness and calm were expected of royalty.
So Ariel found herself thoroughly enjoying the exercise as she beat her tail against the water- even as it winded her a little. She missed dashing through shipwrecks with Flounder, fleeing sharks, trying to scoot back home before curfew. She loved the feel of her powerful muscles, the way the current cut around her when she twisted her shoulders to go faster.
She hadn't been this far up in years and gulped as the pressure of the deep faded. She clicked her ears, readying them for the change of environment. Colors faded and transformed around her from the dark, heady slate of the ocean bottom to the soothing azure of the middle depths and finally lightening to the electric, magical periwinkle that heralded the burst into daylight.
She hadn't planned to break through the surface triumphantly. She wouldn't give it that power. Her plan was to take it slow and rise like a whale. Casually, unperturbed, like Ooh, here I am.
But somehow her tail kicked in twice as hard the last few feet, and she exploded into the warm sunlit air like she had been drowning.
She gulped again and tasted the breeze- dry in her mouth; salt and pine and far-distant fires and a thousand alien scents.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“Kingdom? Or queendom?"
"What?" Flounder asked, exasperated.
"The mer are ruled by a queen. Shouldn't it be queendom?"
"No, that's- well, I guess so. Maybe. Does it matter?"
"It does if you're the queen," the bird pointed out.
Ariel had to hide her smile; she would have laughed, if she had the voice for it.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“If Eric had just listened to his heart and not someone else's singing, none of this would have happened.
He had fallen in love with the voiceless red-haired girl. He was just too stupid and obstinate to recognize it. He loved everything about her. Her smile, the way she moved, the way she took delight in everything around her. She was impulsive, unmannered, willing to get dirty, a little strange, and extremely hands-on. And beautiful. So different from all the princesses and ladies his parents had introduced him to.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“She was beautiful.
Before, she had been pretty and gorgeous, lively and smiley, all red hair and perfect skin and quick movements. Now her eyes were deeper. He could fall into her face forever and happily drown there, pulled into her depths. There were worlds in her mind that were only just forming before.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“Don't even consider it, young lady."
Ariel raised an eyebrow at him incredulously. Young lady? In the years that had passed since the duel with the sea witch, she had aged. Not dramatically, but far more than a mostly immortal mermaid should have. There was something about her eyes- they were deeper, wiser, and wearier than when she was a young mer who had never been on dry land. Her cheeks weren't quite as plump anymore; the angles of her face were more pronounced. Sometimes she wondered if she looked like her mother... aside from her own unreliable memories, the only physical evidence of the former queen was a statue in the castle of her and Triton dancing together. But it was all pale milky marble, no colors at all. Dead.
Ariel's hair no longer flowed behind her as it once had; handmaidens and decorator crabs kept it braided and coiffed, snug and businesslike under the great golden crown that sat on her temples, like the gods wore. Small gold and aquamarine earrings sparkled regally but didn't tinkle; they were quite understated and professional. Her only real nod to youth was the golden ring in the upper part of her left ear.
"Young lady," indeed.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“She ran her hand through a shell bowl absently, letting the trinkets slide through her fingers. Mostly they weren't cut or polished the way a human jeweler would treat them: they sparkled here and there out of a chunk of brownish rock. A single crystal might shine like the weapon of a god- but be topped by the lumpy bit where it had been prized out of a geode.
Ariel regarded the stones with fascination. Of course they were beautiful. Yet she still found the bits and baubles from the human world, made by humans, far more alluring. Why? Why couldn't she be content with the treasures of the sea the way the ocean had made them? What was wrong with them that they had to be altered, or put on something else, or framed, or forced in a bunch onto a necklace, in perfect, unnatural symmetry?”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“Vanessa was clearly enjoying the bath. Her brown hair flowed around her in slippery wet ringlets that very much brought to mind the arms and legs of a squid. Great quantities of bubbles and foam towered over the top of the tub and spilled out onto the floor, slowly dripping down like the slimy egg sac of a moon snail.
Vanessa was splashing and talking to herself and playing in the bath almost like a child. Ariel remembered, with heat, when she had been in that bath, and was introduced to the wonders of foam that wasn't just the leavings of dead merfolk. The whole experience had been marvelous and strange. Imagine the humans, kings of the Dry World, keeping bubbles of water around to bathe and play in. There was no equivalent under the sea; no one made "air pools" for fun and cleanliness.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“Queen Ariel held the nautilus and considered thoughtfully.
But the little mermaid didn't think. She acted.
Before she realized fully what she was doing Ariel had smashed the nautilus on a sharply faceted rock.
It didn't break like a normal shell. It shattered like a human vessel. Shards flew in all directions equally, unhampered by gravity or luck.
Ariel pitched forward.
She choked, no longer breathing the air of the Dry World. Her arms flailed up like a puppet's. Her torso whipped back and forth, pummeled by unseen forces. Something flew into her mouth, up her nose, and suffused her entire body with a heat that threatened to burn. It rushed into her lungs and expanded, expelling whatever breath she had left, pushing blood to her extremities, pushing everything out that wasn't it, leaving room for nothing else.
Ariel collapsed.
It was over.
It was like the thing, whatever it was, had been absorbed by her body and had now dissipated into her blood and flesh.
She took a breath. Her heart started beating again.
She hadn't been aware it had stopped.
She coughed. A few grains of sand came out.
And then she sang.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“She had the voice of the gods, some had said. The sort of voice that could lure landlubbers to sea and sailors to their deaths, a voice that could launch a thousand ships. She had the voice of the wind and the storm and the crash of the waves and the ancient speech of the whale. She had the voice of the moon as it glided serenely across the sky and the stars as they danced behind. She had the voice of the wind between the stars that mortals never heard, that rushed and blew and ushered in the beginning and end of time.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“Hey, Ariel," Flounder called shyly. "Before you go... could you... could you sing that lullaby? The one you used to sing to me after I lost my mother?"
Her eyes widened. "Flounder, you haven't asked me that in years... even before I lost my voice."
"And I won't ask again! It's just that" - he looked around. Jona politely pretended to watch something out in the sea, over by the far rocks- "we're alone here. No one from Atlantica is going to hear us. I don't know when you're going to have another chance."
And Ariel, who lost her voice for years and had mixed feelings about singing for others, sang more sweetly than she ever had before, or ever would again. And no one heard but one fish, one seagull, the sand and the water and the evening breeze coming over the waves, and the rising moon.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“You are so strange," Attina whispered with something like awe.
"I'm not-"
"You are. Don't you get that? You always have been. As a girl you never liked anything the rest of us liked. We looked for shells, you looked for ship garbage. We swooned over mermen, you lusted after statues of creepy two-legged Dry Worlders. You had this beautiful voice that everyone envied- and you gave it away. You don't like being queen, but you do it willingly and honestly as some sort of penance for what happened to our father. You've never tried to abdicate, though it's pretty obvious you hate it.
"You don't want to be here. You never wanted to be here.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“This fear of needing a man to make us happy is a product of our bullshit Disney princess culture that also taught us a man can fall in love even if a sea witch stole the woman's voice. She was pretty damn awesome as a mermaid first!”
― Ali Rosen, Recipe for Second Chances

“Tell us the one about the mermaid again," said Dree. "That one's so heart-breaking, it must be real.”
― Christina Soontornvat, The Changelings

“Ariel signed.
"I will take these matters into consideration," Flounder translated, "and will either return here myself in three days or send a messenger in my place."
"Understood," the seagull said with a bow.
"Understood, My Queen," Flounder corrected politely.
"My Queen? How does that work with the Law of the Worlds- that of the Dry World and the World Under the Sea?"
Ariel found herself almost rolling her eyes and making that wide, sighing smile she used to with Flounder.
But the little gull looked at her, at her, while she signed. Not at her hands, or Flounder as he had spoken. There was a friendly heart under Jona's direct and inappropriate questions.
Ariel just shook her head and dove back under the water, tossing a sign over her shoulder as she went.
"The Queen says you may call her Ariel," Flounder said. Also, under his breath: "You have no idea what an honor that is.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“She picked up a roundish thing from the ground and shook the sand off. It was the top of an old ceramic jar, once painted bright blue and gold. The humans had so many jars. And amphorae. And vases. And vessels. And kegs. And tankards. So many... things... to put other... things in. Merfolk rarely had a necessity to store anything beyond the occasional rare and fancy comestible, like the sweet golden-wine they used to trade for when she was a child. Merfolk ate when they were hungry, almost never had the need to drink anything, and rarely had a reason to store food for the future.
She dropped the lid and sighed, drifting over to the rock she used to perch on while admiring her collection. Things, so many things. Things she never found out the proper use for in her short time on land. Because she had been too busy mooning over Eric.
In some ways, that was the part of the seagull's story that bothered her the most. She could not believe the reaction her traitor heart had when the bird mentioned his name.
Eric.
Eric remembered something?
He wrote an opera about it? About her?
It wasn't just the flattery of it, though. If Eric remembered enough to compose music about it... would he remember her, too? A little?
She remembered him far too often.
Despite the fact that her life had been ruined because of her pursuit of Eric, when she closed her eyes to go to sleep, her last thoughts were often still of him.
Or when a perfectly handsome, reasonably amusing (and mostly immortal- not an irrelevant point) merman tried to win her affections, and all she could think about was how his hair might look when it was dry. Would it bounce, like Eric's?”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“No one has ever been able to stop you from doing anything you wanted anyway- even when it costs you dearly."
For a moment, Ariel felt her old self surface, the urge to grin and plant a kiss on the little crab's back. He was right. She did have a habit of swimming in where angels feared to tread. No one could dissuade her once her mind was fixed. And it had cost her dearly.
What could it cost her this time?”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“Her voice had been such an important part of her life before. The merfolk celebrated her for it. Her father excused her occasionally questionable behavior because of it. Eric loved the girl who rescued him, because of her singing...
But...
... she'd never really enjoyed singing for anyone else. In fact, she hated audiences. She sang because she liked to sing. She just... felt... something, and had to sing it. If she were happy, or sad, or angry... she would go off by herself and sing to the coral, sing to the seaweed, sing to an audience of sea snails or tube worms (who listened, but never commented). Most of her mergirlhood had been spent swimming around, exploring, singing to herself. Making up little stories in her head and then putting them into song.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“Her thoughts spun. There were objects in the window of a shop that she couldn't quite fathom: possibly candy, possibly gems and crystals. There were so many alien things about this world she still didn't know. There were so many more things in the rest of the world, both above and below the sea, that were yet to be discovered....
"You okay, Ariel? You seem a little, I dunno, worried or spacey or something," Scuttle said.
"I just... I was just thinking about past choices and future possibilities."
"Huh. Deep stuff. Well, the world's your oyster after today.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“Father, I've ruled, and while I might be good at it, I don't like it. I want to do what I've always wanted to do." She pointed out at the dark ocean. "Explore. Meet new people. Learn new languages. Discover new things and the artists who make them. I want to find out what happened to the Hyperboreans. I want to reengage trade with the Tsangalu. I want to know if there's anyone else out there like Ursula..."
Triton- and Sebastian, and Flounder- shuddered.
"Maybe they're not all like her," she said quickly. "Father, the world of the mer has been getting smaller and smaller, consumed with ourselves and our own arts, thoughts, and philosophies for far too long. Humans have conquered most of the Dry World- we need to unite the World Under the Sea, for survival if nothing else.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“Love is sacrifice.”
― Elizabeth D. Marie, Finding Mera

“Kingdom? Or queendom?"
"What?" Flounder asked, exasperated.
"The mer are ruled by a queen. Shouldn't it be queendom?”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“Benny barely even looks at the papers before dropping his signature onto the designated line. I'm reminded of the scene in The Little Mermaid when Ariel signs her voice away to Ursula, and I try to skim for any major life-altering clauses. But I feel the pressure of everyone waiting on me and quickly sign my name, kissing my fins goodbye.”
― Kaitlyn Hill, Love from Scratch

“I can think of no one better than Ariel to find a bridge between our two worlds."
Ariel smiled back at him shyly.
"It'll be a cultural exchange, too." Sebastian raised his claws in delight. "There's nothing that shows off Atlantica better than our music. Shall we have a concert to introduce this young merman to our kingdom?"
"You can play your snarfblatt," said Ariel, still smiling. Then she took Eric's hand, and together they dove--- two worlds meeting, just as the sky meets the sea.”
― Elizabeth Lim, A Twisted Tale Anthology