The Little Prince Quotes

The 8 most famous lines from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince (1943), each with its speaker and the scene it belongs to. These are the quotes readers underline, copy into essays and put on walls - gathered in one place, explained in a line.

• “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

  - The fox. The fox's parting secret — the book's most quoted line.

• “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

  - The fox. The ethics of ties, delivered as a goodbye.

• “All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.”

  - The author's dedication. From the dedication to Léon Werth.

• “What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.”

  - The little prince. To the pilot, near the end of their week together.

• “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.”

  - The little prince. His farewell gift — the stars turned into laughter.

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

  - The fox. The fox's secret, told at parting.

• “One only understands the things that one tames.”

  - The fox. The lesson before the secret — why bonds must be made slowly.

• “Words are the source of misunderstandings.”

  - The fox. The fox's warning about language, in the same farewell.

Why these lines survive

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s sentences earn their fame by compression: each line carries the whole book’s argument in a form you can carry in your pocket. Read in order, the 8 quotes above also sketch the novel’s shape - the world it opens, the pressure it applies, the note it ends on. If you meet them before the book, nothing is spoiled beyond mood; if you meet them after, each one lands like a place you have been.

Quote collectors: pair this page with the The Little Prince quiz to see which lines actually stuck, the book club questions when you want to argue about them, or how long the reread takes - about 1 hour and 3 minutes at an average pace. If the lines did their job and you want more of the same nerve, the books like The Little Prince list is next.

Want the whole shelf’s lines? Our Antoine de Saint-Exupéry books in order guide lists every book.

How to use a quotes page

Three honest uses. Before reading: skim the first two quotes to taste the prose - if the voice does not pull you, the book will not either. During: mark which quote you actually reach in the text, because the distance between famous line and lived scene is where a book keeps its secrets. After: pick the one quote you would defend at dinner and check it against the discussion questions - a quote you can argue about is a quote you understood. What a quotes page is not for is replacing the book; five lines of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry are an invitation, not a summary.

More quote collections

The Odyssey quotes, Moby-Dick quotes, Don Quixote quotes, Alice in Wonderland quotes - or browse quotes from all 133 classics. Then see which of them stuck on the original book quiz.

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