Antoine de Saint-Exupery
She knew this man's smile, his gentle ways of love, but not his godlike fury in the storm. She might snare him in a fragile net of music, love and flowers, but, at each departure, he would break forth without, it seemed to her, the least regret.Collection: Regret
Surely a man needs a closed place wherein he may strike root and, like the seed, become. But also he needs the great Milky Way above him and the vast sea spaces, though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs.Collection: Stars
I believe that for his escape he took advantage of the migration of a flock of wild birds.Collection: Believe
You know...my flower...I'm responsible for her. And she's so weak! And so naive. She has four ridiculous thorns to defend her against the world.Collection: Flower
It is the missed opportunity that counts, and in a love that vainly yearns from behind prison bars you have perchance the love supreme.Collection: Love
True, it is evil that a single man should crush the herd, but see not there the worse form of slavery, which is when the herd crushes out the man.Collection: Crush
For, to conceited men, all other men are admirers.Collection: Conceited
One day," you said to me, "I saw the sunset forty-four times!" And a little later you added: "You know-- one loves the sunset, when one is so sad..." "Were you so sad, then?" I asked, "on the day of the forty-four sunsets?" But the little prince made no reply.Collection: Sunset
There is no liberty except the liberty of some one making his way towards something. Such a man can be set free if you will teach him the meaning of thirst, and how to trace a path to a well. Only then will he embark upon a course of action that will not be without significance. You could not liberate a stone if there were no law of gravity - for where will the stone go, once it is quarried?Collection: Freedom
Navigating by the compass in a sea of clouds over Spain is all very well, it is very dashing, but - you want to remember that below the sea of clouds lies eternity.Collection: Lying
What sets us against one another is not our aims - they all come to the same thing - but our methods, which are the fruit of our varied reasoning.Collection: Fruit
The job has its grandeurs, yes. There is the exultation of arriving safely after a storm, the joy of gliding down out of the darkness of night or tempest toward a sun-drenched Alicante or Santiago; there is the swelling sense of returning to repossess one's place in life, in the miraculous garden of earth, where are trees and women and, down by the harbor, friendly little bars. When he has throttled his engine and is banking into the airport, leaving the somber cloud masses behind, what pilot does not break into song?Collection: Song
If you want to build a boat, do not instruct the men to saw wood, stitch the sails, prepare the tools and organize the work, but make them long for setting sail and travel to distant lands.Collection: Inspiring
One day, I watched the sun setting forty-four times......You know...when one is so terribly sad, one loves sunsets.Collection: Sunset
If I were to command a general to turn into a seagull, and if the general did not obey, that would not be the general's fault. It would be mine.Collection: Leadership
What was my body to me? A kind of flunkey in my service. Let but my anger wax hot, my love grow exalted, my hatred collect in me, and that boasted solidarity between me and my body was gone.Collection: Love
Perfection is reachednot when there's nothing to add, but when there's nothing to take away.Collection: Perfection
The injustice of defeat lies in the fact that its most innocent victims are made to look like heartless accomplices. It is impossible to see behind defeat, the sacrifices, the austere performance of duty, the self-discipline and the vigilance that are there - those things the god of battle does not take account of.Collection: Lying
To become a man is to be responsible; to be ashamed of miseries that you did not cause.Collection: Men
Friendship is born from an identity of spiritual goals - from common navigation toward a star.Collection: Spiritual
He who never says "no" is no true man.Collection: Men
The tender friendships one gives up, on parting, leave their bite on the heart, but also a curious feeling of a treasure somewhere buried.Collection: Friendship
Sometimes we behave as though there was something more important than life. But what?Collection: Life
True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.Collection: Love
There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories.Collection: Memories
But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.Collection: Heart
One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed.Collection: Running
To live is to be slowly born.Collection: Born
Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas.Collection: Inspirational
Truths may clash without contradicting each other.Collection: Truth
The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.Collection: Winning
Experience will guide us to the rules. You cannot make rules precede practical experience.Collection: Guides
One only really sees with the heart.Collection: Heart
The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.Collection: Winning
Of course, I love you,' the flower said to him. 'If you were not aware of it, it was my fault.Collection: Flower
It is in your act that you exist, not in your body. Your act is yourself, and there is no other you.Collection: Body
To love is not to look at one another: it is to look, together, in the same direction.Collection: Love
If you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world…if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrowCollection: Friendship
No truth is proved, no truth achieved, by argument, and the ready-made truths men offer you are mere conveniences or drugs to make you sleep.Collection: Truth
If a composer suffers from loss of sleep and his sleeplessness induces him to turn out masterpieces, what a profitable loss it is!Collection: Sleep
The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists.Collection: Sheep
I showed the grown ups my maasterpiece, andI 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.Collection: Elephants
I wonder," he said, "whether the stars are set alight in heaven so that one day each one of us may find his own again.Collection: Stars
I saw the sunset forty-four times!Collection: Sunset
Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity, the necessity of being the man you are and not another. You are free to be that man, but not another.Collection: Change
And the little prince broke into a lovely peal of laughter, which irritated me very much. I like my misfortunes to be taken seriously.Collection: Laughter
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.Collection: Believe
Living is being born slowly. It would be a little too easy if we could borrow ready-made souls.Collection: Soul