French writer and aviator (1900–1944)
Antoine de Saint Exupéry (29 June 1900 – 31 July 1944) was a French writer, poet and aviator.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Alternative Names:
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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Antoine de St. Exupery
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Saint-Exupery
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Saint-Exupéry
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Antoine Marie Roger, Vicomte de Saint-Exupéry
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Antoine Jean-Baptiste Marie Roger de Saint-Exupéry
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Have you looked at a modern airplane? Have you followed from year to year the evolution of its lines? Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but about whatever man builds, that all of man's industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent over working draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity? It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship's keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of a human breast or shoulder, there must be the experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.
Küçük Prens çölü geçerken bir çiçeğe rastladı yalnız.Üç taçyapraklı önemsiz bir çiçekti bu.
-Günaydın, dedi Küçük Prens.
-Günaydın, dedi çiçek.
-İnsanlar nerede? diye kibarca sordu Küçük Prens.
Çiçek eskiden bir kervan görmüştü.
-İnsanlar mı? diye tekrarladı.Galiba altı yedi tane insan var.Yıllar önce görmüştüm.Ama kim bilir şimdi neredeler?Rüzgarla sürüklenmişlerdir.Kökleri yok, hayatları güç oluyor bu yüzden.
-Hoşçakal, dedi Küçük Prens.
-Hoşçakal, dedi çiçek.
"People where you live," the little prince said, "grow five thousand roses in one garden... yet they don't find what they're looking for...
They don't find it," I answered.
And yet what they're looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water..."
Of course," I answered.
And the little prince added, "But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart."
Farewell, eyes that I loved! Do not blame me if the human body cannot go three days without water. I should never have believed that man was so truly the prisoner of the springs and freshets. I had no notion that our self-sufficiency was so circumscribed. We take it for granted that a man is able to stride straight out into the world. We believe that man is free. We never see the cord that binds him to wells and fountains, that umbilical cord by which he is tied to the womb of the world. Let man take but one step too many... and the cord snaps.
Apart from your suffering, I have no regrets. All in all, it has been a good life. If I got free of this I should start right in again. A man cannot live a decent life in cities, and I need to feel myself live. I am not thinking of aviation. The airplane is a means, not an end. One doesn't risk one's life for a plane any more than a farmer ploughs for the sake of the plough. But the airplane is a means of getting away from towns and their bookkeeping and coming to grips with reality.
I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved any one. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: 'I am busy with matters of consequence!' And that makes him swell up with pride. But he is not a man - he is a mushroom!