“‘Men have forgotten this truth,’ said the fox. ‘But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.'” -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I was reading a little Antoine de Saint-Exupery earlier and remembered this paper cutting I did a very long time ago –sometime in 2008, I think. If you can’t tell, it’s supposed to be a fox jumping between two hands. The background was part cut paper, part coffee stains, part photoshop coloring. I wish I could achieve that look using only paper — maybe one of these days I’ll do some experimenting and figure it out. Anyway, “The Little Prince” is one of my all time favorite books. Even though I had my first copy when I was a kid, I didn’t ‘get it’ until I reread it a few years ago. Here’s a few more quotes from Saint-Exupery:
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
“True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.”
“In giving you are throwing a bridge across the chasm of your solitude.”
“That is the hardest thing of all. It is much harder to judge yourself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself, it’s because you’re truly a wise man.”
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
“What he had yearned to embrace was not the flesh but a down spirit, a spark, the impalpable angel that inhabits the flesh.”
“Behind all seen things lies something vaster; everything is but a path, a portal or a window opening on something other than itself. ”
“I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.”
And here’s one more quote, one of my very first paper cuttings that I made when I was still cutting on a piece of wood.. These old ones are some of the most meaningful to me. I still have them.
