The Little Prince

I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you.

If you were to say to the grown-ups:
"I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof," they would not be able to get any idea of that house at all.
You would have to say to them:
"I saw a house that cost $20,000."
Then they would exclaim:
"Oh, what a pretty house that is!"

Men set out on their way in express trains, but they do not know what they are looking for.
Then they rush about, and get excited, and turn round and round...
It is not worth the trouble... But the eyes are blind.
One must look with the heart..

In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night... You — only you — will have stars that can laugh!

"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... But you will sit a little closer to me, every day..."

I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower.
He has never looked at a star.
He has never loved any one.
He has never done anything in his life but add up figures.
And all day he says over and over, just like you:
'I am busy with matters of consequence!'
And that makes him swell up with pride.
But he is not a man — he is a mushroom!

I wonder whether the stars are set alight in heaven so that one day each one of us may find his own again...

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

It was wrong of you to come. You will suffer. I shall look as if I were dead; and that will not be true...

"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.

All these stars are silent. You — you alone — will have the stars as no one else has them.

That man would be scorned by all the others. Nevertheless he is the only one of them all who does not seem to me ridiculous. Perhaps that is because he is thinking of something else besides himself.

"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 of 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."

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.

"I ought not to have listened to her," he confided to me one day.
"One never ought to listen to the flowers.
One should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance.
Mine perfumed all my planet.
But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace.
This tale of claws, which disturbed me so much, should only have filled my heart with tenderness and pity."
And he continued his confidences:
"The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything!
I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words.
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 …"

The stars are beautiful, because of a flower that cannot be seen.