These Mermaid quotes will inspire you. In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures around the world, including Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Below you will find our collection of motivating, enthusiastic, and humorous mermaid quotes, mermaid sayings, and mermaid proverbs collected.
Inspirational Mermaid Quotes
- “I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.” ~ Anais Nin
- “Like a mermaid in sea-weed, she dreams awake, trembling in her soft and chilly nest.” ~ John Keats
- “But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.” ~ Hans Christian Andersen
- “A mermaid has not an immortal soul, nor can she obtain one unless she wins the love of a human being. On the power of another hangs her eternal destiny.” ~ Hans Christian Andersen
- “I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin’s back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid’s music.” ~ William Shakespeare -
“The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.” ~ Mark Twain
- “But all the magic I have known I’ve had to make myself.” ~ Shel Silverstein
- “If you were a mermaid, you said, If you were a mermaid, I was the sea.” ~ Francesca Lia Block
- “A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him up for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.” ~ William Butler Yeats
- “If you sing to the mermaids, they come when you’re drowning.” ~ Tori Amos, Mermaid quotes sing
- “I’m always happy when I’m surrounded by water, I think I’m a Mermaid or I was a mermaid. The ocean makes me feel really small and it makes me put my whole life into perspective… it humbles you and makes you feel almost like you’ve been baptized. I feel born again when I get out of the ocean.” ~ Beyonce Knowles
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“Mermaids have no tears, and so they suffer all the more.” ~ Hans Christian Andersen
- “Aye, tough mermaids are, the lot of them.” ~ Blackbeard
- “You got your own style, now let it come through. And remember no matter what, you got to be you.” ~ SebastiAn
- “I address you all tonight for who you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers.” ~ Brian Selznick
- “Old ladies in wheelchairs with blankets over their legs, I don’t think so…retired mermaids.” ~ Milton Jones
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“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.” ~ T. S. Eliot
- “I WAS a mermaid in my past-life! I definitely was. I don’t know why I’m obsessed with them that much, which is why I think that somehow in my past-life I must have just lived underwater or something. Maybe I was a fish or a dolphin, but I do believe in mermaids.” ~ Ella Henderson
- “Souls of poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host’s Canary wine?” ~ John Keats -
“I started early, took my dog, And visited the sea; The mermaids in the basement Came out to look at me” ~ Emily Dickinson
- “But one kiss levitates above all the others. The intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss. The I’ll love you through a brick wall kiss. Even when I’m dead, I’ll swim through the Earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.” ~ Jeffrey McDaniel
- “The safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want.” ~ Charlie Munger, Mermaid quotes desire
- “Even when I’m dead, I’ll swim through the Earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.” ~ Jeffrey McDaniel
- “I’ll always be happy if they’d leave me alone in that delightful and unknown furthest corner, apart from struggles, putrefactions and nonsense; the ultimate corner of sugar and toast, where the mermaids catch the branches of the willows and the heart opens to a flute’s sharpness.” ~ Federico Garcia Lorca
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“I was all in gold sequins for Million Dollar Mermaid, 50 feet in the air” ~ Esther Williams
- “I’ve got a swimming pool and I pretend to be like a mermaid, like in the middle of the night. It kind of de-stresses me.” ~ Rebel Wilson/
- “O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note, to drown me in thy sister’s flood of tears.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “Like a mermaid rising from an ocean of paper, the girl emerged across the room.” ~ Brian Selznick, Mermaid quotes ocean
- “Mississippi Mermaid was a very special experience because we only had the dialogues for the scenes we were shooting the night before.” ~ Catherine Deneuve
- “She told me her father taught her to live life way beyond the cusp of it, way out in the outer reaches where most people never had the guts to go, where you got hurt. Where there was unimaginable beauty and pain … They were always reminding themselves to stop measuring life in coffee spoons, mornings and afternoons, to keep swimming way, way down to the bottom of the ocean to find where the mermaids sang, each to each. Where there was danger and beauty and light. Only the now.” ~ Marisha Pessl
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“Clark Gable was the first to have called me a mermaid.” ~ Esther Williams
- “Oh love, rose made wet by mermaids and foams, fire that dances and climbs up the invisible stairs and awakens the blood in the tunnel of sleeplessness.” ~ Pablo Neruda
- “You asked me who I thought I was before. I said maybe I was a fish because I love water and you said, you thought a mermaid, maybe. If you were a mermaid, you said, if you were a mermaid, I was the sea.” ~ Francesca Lia Block
- “Shall I part my hair behind Do I dare to eat a peach I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.” ~ T. S. Eliot
- “I’ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall; I’ll slay more gazers than the basalisks; I’ll play the orator as well as Nestor, Decieve more slily that Ulysses could, And like a Sinon, take another Troy. I can add colors to the chameleon, Change shapes with Proteus for advantages And set the murderous Machiavel to school. Can I do this, and cannot get a crown? Tut! were it further off, I’ll pluck it down.” ~ William Shakespeare
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“We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids ?” ~ Isidor Isaac Rabi
- “Tell me the story, Pew. . . . It was a woman. You always say that. There’s always a woman somewhere, child; a princess, a witch, a stepmother, a mermaid, a fairy godmother, or one as wicked as she is beautiful, or as beautiful as she is good. Is that the complete list? Then there is the woman you love. Who’s she? That’s another story.” ~ Jeanette Winterson
- “I’ve always been obsessed with things that are half animal and half human – like mermaids and Minotaurs – because they are trapped in an animal body. And I felt trapped in my own life.” ~ Riccardo Tisci, Mermaid quotes half animal, human
- “I would love to be an Avenger or Wonder Woman. Pretty much any woman who can kick ass and take names, I am down! I have also always wanted to be a sultry mermaid or a badass fairy.” ~ Katrina Law
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“The tail of Emily Windsnap” everyone has a secret. mines a little different. I figured out I am a mermaid.” ~ Liz Kessler
- “I remember that my sisters gave me this beautiful, like, empty book for Christmas. And I would draw all these beautiful women. Most of the time it was mermaids and a Minotaur: half-human, half-animal. I used to be obsessed with Minotaurs when I was a child.” ~ Riccardo Tisci
- “I think I was a mermaid and I used to swim the shores of Hawaii and used to pop up and see coconuts and pineapples everywhere.” ~ Ella Henderson
- “I remember when I was doing Mermaids [1990], I was 16 and they gave me a B12 shot once. My parents weren’t there, and when they did come, they freaked out. They were terrified, because of the Judy Garland stories. I know it’s just vitamin B, but it did give you a boost.” ~ Winona Ryder
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“I would wanna be a mermaid, but I think I’m a little bit more of a unicorn because I’m like a little bit more horsey.” ~ Blake Lively
- “Writing fiction is an inherently political activity because people-even imaginary ones-do not live in vacuums… From Twilight to Romeo and Juliet to The Little Mermaid, no work of the imagination is truly apolitical, because the world and our hopes for it are always part of our stories.” ~ John Green
- “Managing a league club is like making love to a mermaid… you should always be aiming for a top-half finish” ~ Ian Holloway
- “But what he didn’t understand was that this dreamland was preferable, walking through this life half-sleeping, everything at arm’s length or farther away. I understood those mermaids. I didn’t care if they sang to me. All I wanted was to block out all the human voices as they called me name, again and again, pulling me upward into light, to drown.” ~ Sarah Dessen
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“Maybe when I die and I’m thrown overboard, I’ll turn into a mermaid.” ~ Aoife O’Donovan
- “Peter was not with them for the moment, and they felt rather lonely up there by themselves. He could go so much faster than they that he would suddenly shoot out of sight, to have some adventure in which they had no share. He would come down laughing over something fearfully funny he had been saying to a star, but he had already forgotten what it was, or he would come up with mermaid scales still sticking to him, and yet not be able to to say for certain what had been happening. It was really rather irritating to children who had never seen a mermaid.” ~ James M. Barrie
- “In my own writing, I’ve mostly abandoned end-rhyme, but wordplay is still a huge part of my process. I’ve written a series of mermaid poems in the last few years. The first one was called “The Straightforward Mermaid” which arose from my delight in that word combination. After that, I decided that future mermaid poems would have to be words ending in “d” or “t,” which led to “The Deadbeat Mermaid,” “The Morbid Mermaid” and so forth . . .” ~ Matthea Harvey
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“Lots of models have played mermaids throughout history and it is, kind of, a funny rite of passage.” ~ Gemma Ward
- “Maybe I would become a mermaid… i would live in the swirling blue-green currents, doing exotic underwater dances for the fish, kissed by sea anemones, caressed by seaweed shawls. I would have a dolphin friend. He would have merry eyes and thick flesh of a god. My fingernails would be tiny shells and my skin would be like jade with light shining through it I would never have to come back up” ~ Francesca Lia Block
- “Well, in Colombia everybody’s very voluptuous, and you’re supposed to be. You don’t want to be skinny when all of your cousins are mermaids. You grow up thinking that’s how beauty is.” ~ Sofia Vergara
- “When I was six I wanted to be a ballerina. By the time I was eight I was fairly sure this plan wasn’t panning out. I began aspiring to be an “Aquamaid” at a resort called “Aquarena Springs” in my hometown of San Marcos: Aquamaids got to wear mermaid tails and feed milk bottles underwater to Ralph the Swimming Pig for an audience submerged in a “submarine”.” ~ Elizabeth Crook
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“It was like falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool full of mermaids.” ~ Hunter S. Thompson
- “You don’t know what it is to live and laugh and love and run a man through! You’ve never tasted salty air on your tongue or waved heartily at a mermaid!” ~ Gideon Defoe
- “Alas, poor Yorick!” he said. “She heard mermaids, so it follows that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. I have caught an everlasting cold, but luckily I am terribly dishonest. I cling to that.” ~ Diana Wynne Jones
- “Every step you take will feel as if you were treading upon knife blades so sharp that blood must flow. I am willing to help you, but are you willing to suffer all this?” “Yes,” the little mermaid said in a trembling voice, as she thought of the Prince and of gaining a human soul.” ~ Hans Christian Andersen
- “The other day when we were reading The Little Mermaid again, at the part where it says that only human souls can go up to heaven and mermaids can’t, you (Daria) said, ‘See that’s like Papa. He lives in heaven. With the angels'” ~ Ekaterina Gordeeva
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“…now and then a giggling trail of mermaids appeared in our wake. We fed them oatmeal.” ~ Tove Jansson
- “As I look out at all of you gathered here, I want to say that I don’t see a room full of Parisians in top hats and diamonds and silk dresses. I don’t see bankers and housewives and store clerks. No. I address you all tonight as you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers.” ~ Brian Selznick
- “There walked warlocks in all their bat-winged, cat-eyed glory, and here, as they swung out over the river, she saw the darting flash of multicolored tails under the silvery skin of the water, the shimmer of long, pearl-strewn hair, and heard the high, rippling laughter of the mermaids.” ~ Cassandra Clare
- “Most people think of Ariel when they think of mermaids. What they don’t know is that she’s surrounded by really hot-tempered mermaids.” ~ Edward Kitsis
- “And unless I’m remembering it wrong, mermaids don’t sing and sirens don’t swim.” “Ariel sang in ‘The Little Mermaid’,” Corey said. Sam came over to join us. “Do I even want to know why you remember her name?” ~ Kelley Armstrong
- “THIRD WATCHER Let her speak. Don’t interrupt. She knows words that mermaids taught her…I’m falling asleep in order to hear her…Go on, sister, go on…My heart aches because I wasn’t you when you dreamed at the seashore.” ~ Fernando Pessoa
