“For millions of years flowers have been producing thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating them all the same. And it's not serious, trying to understand why flowers go to such trouble to produce thorns that are good for nothing? It's not important, the war between the sheep and the flowers? It's no more serious and more important than the numbers that fat red gentleman is adding up? Suppose I happen to know a unique flower, one that exists nowhere in the world except on my planet, one that a little sheep can wipe out in a single bite one morning, just like that, without even realizing what he'd doing - that isn't important? If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself 'My flower's up there somewhere...' But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it's as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that isn't important?”

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About Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

French writer, poet, journalist and aviator

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a French writer, poet, journalist, and aviator. He is best known as the author of The Little Prince. His work combines literary writing with the experience of flight, which shaped both his reputation and the tone of his best-known book. He is remembered for prose that moves between travel, reflection, and the wider human concerns that appear in his writing.

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Books by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Le petit prince

1971

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Vol de nuit

1974

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Terre des hommes

1966

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Pilote de guerre

2007

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