Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“You're lovely but you're empty,' he went on. 'One couldn't die for you”

“But I was too young to know how to love her.”

“Où sont les hommes?' reprit enfin le petit prince. 'On est un peu seul dans le désert.''On est seul aussi chez les hommes', dit le serpent.”

“Do you really admire me very much.?" he asked the little prince."What does "admire" mean.?""To admire means that you consider me the handsomest, the best dressed, the richest and the most intelligent man on this planet.""But you are all alone on your planet.!""Do me this kindness. Admire me all the same.!""I admire you," said the little prince with a slight shrug of his shoulders, "but why should that mean so much to you.?"And the little prince went away."Grown- ups are really very odd," he said to himself, as he continued on his journey.”

“At the time, I was unable to understand anything.! I should have based my judgement upon deeds and not words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I should never have run away from her.! I should have guessed at the affection behind her poor little tricks. Flowers are so inconsistent.! But I was too young to know how to love her.”

“A true book is like a net, and words are the mesh. The nature of the mesh matters relatively little. What matters is the live catch the fisherman draws up from the depths of the sea, the flashings of silver that we see gleam within the net.”

“Maybe those sailors will write bad poems, but the same men would have kept dull diaries, too. The problem has to do not with the evidence but with the witness. The point is not the adventure but the adventurer. Reality cannot be directly rendered. Reality is a pile of bricks that can assume many forms.”

“In my mind's eye I can still see the first night flight I made in Argentina. It was pitch-dark. Yet in the black void, I could see the lights of man shining down below on the plains, like faintly luminous earthbound stars. Each star was a beacon signaling the presence of a human mind. Here a man was meditating on human happiness, perhaps, or on justice or peace. Lost among this flock of stars was the star of some solitary shepherd. There, perhaps, a man was in communication with the heavens, as he labored over his calculations of the nebula of Andromeda. And there, a pair of lovers. These fires were burning all over the countryside, and each of them, aven the most humble, had to be fed. The fire of the poet, of the teacher, of the carpenter. But among all these living fires, how many closed windows there were, how many dead stars, fires that gave off no light for lack of nourishment.”

“Inside the narrow skull of the miner pinned beneath the fallen timber, there lives a world. Parents, friends, a home, the hot soup of evening, songs sung on feast days, loving kindness and anger, perhaps even a social consciousness and a great universal love, inhabit that skull. By what are we to measure the value of a man? His ancestor once drew a reindeer on the wall of a cave; and two hundred thousand years later that gesture still radiates. It stirs us, prolongs itself in us. Man's gestures are an eternal spring. Though we [may] die for it, we shall bring up that miner from his shaft. Solitary he may be, universal he surely is.”

“When human beings are involved, statistics become a frightful game that I cannot play. People have said to me: 'But what are a few dozen casualties compared to the whole population?' 'Does it matter that a few churches have burned down since the city has survived?' These measurements I reject. The kingdom of man is not to be surveyed in this way.”

“Tenderness can be born only of respect for individualities. Tenderness builds its nest in little things, in the absurdities of a face, in personal crotchets. When we lose a friend, it is probably his faults that we mourn.”

“Perfektion ist erreicht, nicht, wenn sich nichts mehr hinzufügen lässt, sondern, wenn man nichts mehr wegnehmen kann." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry”

“You’ll be bothered from time to time by storms, fog, snow. When you are, think to yourself, ‘What they could do, I can do.”

“Toutes les grandes personnes ont d'abord été des enfants (mais peu d'entre elles s'en souviennent).”

“It is true that technical progress in modern times has linked men together like a complex nervous system. The means of travel are numerous and communication is instantaneous - we are joined together materially like the cells of a single body, but this body has as yet no soul. This organism is not yet aware of its unity as a whole.”

“How difficult it is to advance at one's own internal rhythm when one is constantly fighting against the inertia of the material world. Everything is always on the verge of stopping.”

“Somewhere along the way we have gone astray. The human anthill is richer than ever before. We have more wealth and more leisure, and yet we lack something essential, which we find it difficult to describe. We feel less human; somewhere we have lost our mysterious prerogatives.”

“Respect for humanity! Respect for humanity! If such respect is rooted in the human heart, humanity will eventually establish a social, political, or economic system that reflects it. A civilization is before all else rooted in its substance. At first this was a blind urge for warmth. Then by trial and error man found the way to the fire.That is probably why, my friend, I have such need of your friendship. I need a companion who - beyond the struggles of reason - respects in me the pilgrim on his way to that fire. I sometimes need to feel the promised warmth ahead of time and to rest somewhere beyond myself in that meeting place that will be ours. [...] Beyond the clumsiness of my words, beyond my defective reasoning, you are ready to see me as a human being. You are ready to honor in me the representative of beliefs, customs, loves. If I differ from you, far from wronging you, I enrich you. You question me as you would a traveler.”

“For those of us who were brought up in the creed of respect for humanity, the simple encounters that can sometimes change into almost miraculous experiences mean a great deal. Respect for humanity...that is the touchstone! When the Nazi respects only what resembles him, he merely respects himself. He rejects the creative contradictions, ruins any hope of advance, and for the next thousand years replaces man with the robot in the anthill.”

“How does life build the vital currents that we live from? Where does the magnetic force that pulls me toward this friend's house originate? What are the essential moments that made this presence into a vital pole for me? What are the secret events that mold particular affections and, through them, love of country? How little stir the real miracles cause! How simple are the most vital events! There is so little to say about the instant I want to recall that I have to relive it in a dream and speak to this friend.”

“The traveler who crosses a mountain in the direction of a star runs the risk of forgetting which is his guiding star if he concentrates too exclusively on the climbing problems. If he only acts for action's sake, he will get nowhere.”

“At night, you'll look up at the stars. It's too small, where I live, for me to show you where my star is. It's better that way. My star will be...one of the stars, for you. So you'll like looking at all of them. They'll all be your friends. And besides, I have a present for you. He laughed again.'Ah, little fellow, little fellow, I love hearing that laugh.''That'll be my present. Just that...'People have stars, but they aren't the same. For travelers, the stars are guides. For other people they're nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they're problems. For my businessman, they were gold. But all those stars are silent stars. You though, you'll have stars like nobody else. 'What do you mean?'When you look up at the sky at night, sincle I'll be living on one of them, since I'll be laughing on one of them, for you it'll be as if all the stars are laughing. You'll have stars that can laugh!And he laughed again....And it'll be as if I had given you, instead of stars, a lot of little bells that know how to laugh.”

“Has the sheep eaten the flower or not?”

“What makes a desert so beautiful is that it hides a well somewhere...”

“It's so mysterious, the land of tears.”

“Het wezenlijke is voor het oog onzichtbaar, alleen met je hart kan je goed zien.”

“If I am attempting to describe him, it is in order not to forget him. It is sad to forget a friend. Not every one has had a friend.”

“Once upon a time there was a little prince who lived on a planet scarcely bigger than himself and who had need for a friend.”

“And he sank into reverie, which lasted a long time.”

“Ma fleur est éphémère, se dit le petit prince, et elle n'a que quatre épines pour se défendre contre le monde! Et je l'ai laissée toute seule chez moi!”

“Die Erfahrung lehrt uns, daß Liebe nicht darin besteht, daß man einander ansieht, sondern daß man gemeinsam in gleicher Richtung blickt.”

“Je mehr du gibst, um so mehr wächst du. Es muß aber einer da sein, der empfangen kann. Und es ist kein Geben, wenn man dabei nur verliert.”

“Das Leben ist weder einfach noch verzwickt, weder klar noch dunkel, weder widerspruchsvoll noch zusammenhängend. Das Leben ist. Die Sprache allein ordnet oder verwirrt es, erhellt oder verdunkelt es, zerstreut oder vereinigt es.”

“Die Vollkommenheit ist unerreichbar. Gewiß ist die Vollkommenheit unerreichbar. Sie hat nur den Sinn, deinen Weg wie ein Stern zu leiten. Sie ist Richtung und Streben auf etwas hin.”

“Quando nos deixamos cativar, é certo e sabido que algum dia alguma coisa nos há de fazer chorar.”

“He did not know how the world is simplified for kings. To them, all men are subjects.”

“If I ordered a general to fly from one flower to another like a butterfly, or to write a tragic drama, or to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not carry out the order that he had received, which one of us would be in the wrong?' the king demanded. 'The general, or myself?”

“Ma vie est monotone. Je chasse les poules, les hommes me chassent. Toutes les poules se ressemblent, et tous les hommes se ressemblent. Je m'ennuie donc un peu. Mais, si tu m'apprivoises, ma vie sera comme ensoleillée. Je connaîtrai un bruit de pas qui sera différent de tous les autres. Les autres pas me font rentrer sous terre. Le tien m'appellera hors du terrier, comme une musique. Et puis regarde ! Tu vois, là-bas, les champs de blé ? Je ne mange pas de pain. Le blé pour moi est inutile. Les champs de blé ne me rappellent rien. Et ça, c'est triste ! Mais tu as des cheveux couleur d'or. Alors ce sera merveilleux quand tu m'auras apprivoisé ! Le blé, qui est doré, me fera souvenir de toi. Et j'aimerai le bruit du vent dans le blé...”

“Will you draw me a sheep?”

“What moves me so deeply, about this little prince who is sleeping here, is his loyalty to a flower — the image of a rose that shines through his whole being like the flame of a lamp, even when he is asleep..." And I felt him to be more fragile still. I felt the need of protecting him, as if he himself were a flame that might be extinguished by a little puff of wind...”

“The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her... I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her...”

“But I, alas, do not know how to see sheep through the walls of boxes. Perhaps I am a little like the grown-ups. I have had to grow old.”

“Ce qui embellit le désert, c'est qu'il cache un puits quelque part.”

“Te juzgarás a ti mismo —le respondió el rey—. Es lo más difícil. Es mucho más difícil juzgarse a sí mismo que juzgar a los otros. Si consigues juzgarte rectamente es que eres un verdadero sabio.”

“Sólo hay que pedir a cada uno, lo que cada uno puede dar”

“Es mucho más difícil juzgarse a sí mismo, que juzgar a los otros. Si consigues juzgarte correctamente es que eres un verdadero sabio.”

“Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...”

“Un jour, j'ai vu le soleil se coucher quarante-trois fois!»Et un peu plus tard tu ajoutais:«Tu sais... quand on est tellement triste on aime les couchers de soleil...- Le jour des quarante-trois fois tu étais donc tellement triste?Mais le petit prince ne répondit pas.”

“that's right," the fox said. For me you're only a little boy just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need for you. And you have no need for me,either. For you I'm only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, we'll need each other. You'll be the only boy in the world for me. I'll be the only fox in the world for you...”

“but the flower continued her beauty preparations in the shelter of her green chamber, selecting her colors with greatest care and dressing quite deliberately,adjusting her petals one by one.She had no desire to emerge all rumpled, like the poppies. She wished to appear only with full radiance of her beauty. Oh yes, she was quite vain!”