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Lettre à un otage

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Top 10 Best Quotes

“The real miracles make no noise. The crucial events in a life are unobtrusive.”

“I am grateful to you for taking me as you find me. What do I want with a friend who judges me?”

“True pleasure is the pleasure of sharing.”

“The traveler who crosses a mountain in the direction of a star runs the risk of forgetting which is his guiding star if he concentrates too exclusively on the climbing problems. If he only acts for action's sake, he will get nowhere.”

“So, my friend, I need you as I need a high place where I can breathe freely. I need to sit beside you, once more...celebrating a smile as calm as the day itself.”

“Respect for humanity! Respect for humanity! If such respect is rooted in the human heart, humanity will eventually establish a social, political, or economic system that reflects it. A civilization is before all else rooted in its substance. At first this was a blind urge for warmth. Then by trial and error man found the way to the fire. That is probably why, my friend, I have such need of your friendship. I need a companion who - beyond the struggles of reason - respects in me the pilgrim on his way to that fire. I sometimes need to feel the promised warmth ahead of time and to rest somewhere beyond myself in that meeting place that will be ours. [...] Beyond the clumsiness of my words, beyond my defective reasoning, you are ready to see me as a human being. You are ready to honor in me the representative of beliefs, customs, loves. If I differ from you, far from wronging you, I enrich you. You question me as you would a traveler.”

“If I differ from you, far from wronging you, I add something to you.”

“I needed to believe that those on whom I depended for my orientations were more fixed and enduring that myself. So as to know where to return to. So as to continue existing.”

“For those of us who were brought up in the creed of respect for humanity, the simple encounters that can sometimes change into almost miraculous experiences mean a great deal. Respect for humanity...that is the touchstone! When the Nazi respects only what resembles him, he merely respects himself. He rejects the creative contradictions, ruins any hope of advance, and for the next thousand years replaces man with the robot in the anthill.”

“Tomorrow's truth grows out of yesterday's error.”

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