Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Quotes

Why are you drinking? - the little prince asked.
- In order to forget - replied the drunkard.
- To forget what? - inquired the little prince, who was already feeling sorry for him.
- To forget that I am ashamed - the drunkard confessed, hanging his head.
- Ashamed of what? - asked the little prince who wanted to help him.
- Ashamed of drinking! - concluded the drunkard, withdrawing into total silence.
And the little prince went away, puzzled.
'Grown-ups really are very, very odd', he said to himself as he continued his journey.

"I showed the grown ups my masterpiece, and I asked them if my drawing scared them. They answered:"why be scared of a hat?" My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant."

But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference.

He fell as gently as a tree falls. There was not even any sound..

I don't believe you! Flowers are weak creatures. They are naive. They reassure themselves as best they can. They believe that their thorns are terrible weapons...

Fais de ta vie un rêve, et d'un rêve, une réalité.

I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.

"What a queer planet!" he thought. "It is altogether dry, and altogether pointed, and altogether harsh and forbidding. And the people have no imagination. They repeat whatever one says to them . . . On my planet I had a flower; she always was the first to speak . . ."

Conceited people never hear anything but praise.

Sorrow is one of the vibrations that prove the fact of living.

"The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."

And the roses were very much embarassed.

"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you — the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

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 répontit pas.

"You are beautiful, but you are empty", he went on. "One could not die for you."

"What are you trying to say?"
All men have the stars," he answered, "but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they are wealth. But all these stars are silent. You - only you - will have stars that can laugh!"
And he laughed again.
And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure... And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, "Yes, the stars always makes me laugh!" And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you..."
And he laughed again.
It will be as if, in place of the stars, I have given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh..."
And he laughed again."