Quotes by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings.

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime.

I remembered the fox. One runs the risk of crying a bit if one allows oneself to be tamed.

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.

No one is ever satisfied where he is.

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...

And the fox said to the little prince: men have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.

Sometimes, there is no harm in putting off a piece of work until another day.

I looked about me. Luminous points glowed in the darkness. Cigarettes punctuated the humble meditations of worn old clerks. I heard them talking to one another in murmurs and whispers. They talked about illness, money, shabby domestic cares. And suddenly I had a vision of the face of destiny. Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as a man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them

Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.

Vivi muito tempo no mundo das pessoas grandes. Vi-as de bem perto.Não fiquei com muito melhor opinião delas.

I am looking for friends. What does that mean -- tame?It is an act too often neglected, said the fox. It means to establish ties. To establish ties? Just that, said the fox. To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But 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....

Good morning, said the little prince.Good morning, said the merchant.This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented to quench thirst. You need only swallow one pill a week, and you would feel no need for anything to drink.Why are you selling those? asked the little prince.Because they save a tremendous amount of time, said the merchant. Computations have been made by experts. With these pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week.And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?Anything you like...As for me, said the little prince to himself, if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.

If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom.

You are beautiful, but you are empty. 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; because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or bloated, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

Mais, dans la mort d’un homme, un monde inconnu meurt, et je me demandais quelles étaient les images qui sombraient en lui.