The Ugly Duckling.

“The Ugly Duckling” is the title of a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, first published in Danish in the mid-19th century. The story follows a misfit bird mocked for its appearance until it matures into a swan, a narrative often read alongside Andersen’s own life: a poor, awkward provincial youth who faced social humiliation before achieving recognition as a writer. The tale appeared during Andersen’s most productive period of fairy-tale writing, when he increasingly used ostensibly simple children’s stories to explore social cruelty, class prejudice, and the pain of exclusion. As a “quote,” the phrase functions more as a shorthand reference to the whole story and its moral arc than as a spoken line.

As a standalone phrase, “The Ugly Duckling” has become an idiom for someone judged unattractive, inferior, or out of place who later reveals unexpected beauty, talent, or worth. Andersen’s tale complicates the comforting moral by emphasizing how deeply social rejection wounds the protagonist before any transformation occurs; the “ugliness” is largely a label imposed by others. The story’s enduring significance lies in its critique of conformity and its insistence that identity and belonging may be discovered rather than granted by one’s immediate community. In modern usage, the phrase can celebrate late-blooming growth, but it can also invite reflection on the harms of ridicule and the arbitrariness of social standards.

1) “The Ugly Duckling” (common English title)
2) “The Ugly Duck” (less common English variant)
3) “Den grimme ælling” (original Danish title)