Quotes by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.

It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.

People have forgotten this truth, the fox said. But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose.

Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.

Youre beautiful, but youre empty...One couldnt die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since shes the one Ive watered. Since shes the one I put under glass, since shes the one I sheltered behind the screen. Since shes the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three butterflies). Since shes the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since shes my rose.

If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers...

True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.

Love consists of not looking each other in the eye, but of looking outwardly in the same direction.

Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien quavec le cœur. Lessentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

When someone blushes, doesnt that mean yes?

For millions of years flowers have been producing thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating them all the same. And its not serious, trying to understand why flowers go to such trouble to produce thorns that are good for nothing? Its not important, the war between the sheep and the flowers? Its no more serious and more important than the numbers that fat red gentleman is adding up? Suppose I happen to know a unique flower, one that exists nowhere in the world except on my planet, one that a little sheep can wipe out in a single bite one morning, just like that, without even realizing what hed doing - that isnt important? If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, thats enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself My flowers up there somewhere... But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him its as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that isnt important?

I am beginning to understand, said the little prince. There is a flower... I think that she has tamed me...

Please-tame me! he said.I want to, very much, the little prince replied. But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.One only understands the things that one tames, said the fox. Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me.What must I do, to tame you? asked the little prince.You must be very patient, replied the fox. First you will sit down at a little distance from me-like that-in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day...

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...

No single event can awaken within us a stranger whose existence we had never suspected. To live is to be slowly born.

That is the hardest thing of all. It is much harder to judge yourself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself, its because youre truly a wise man.

You will have five hundred million little bells, and I shall have five hundred million springs of fresh water...

What makes the desert beautiful, said the little prince, is that somewhere it hides a well...

The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.

People where you live, the little prince said, grow five thousand roses in one garden... yet they dont find what theyre looking for...They dont find it, I answered.And yet what theyre 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.