Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Little Prince

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.

All grown-ups were once children -- although few of them remember it.

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

Oh, little prince! Bit by bit I came to understand the secrets of your sad little life...

It is such a secret place, the land of tears.

Then you shall judge yourself. That is the most difficult thing of all. It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, than you are indeed a man of true wisdom.

I am drinking...so that I may forget...forget that I am ashamed...Ashamed of drinking!

It is the time that you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important. Men have forgotten this truth. But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose...

I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams...

One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed.

"My life is very monotonous," he said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But 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 beneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall have to listen to the wind in the wheat..." [The fox to the little prince] 83

And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. [Little prince to narrator] 104