Antoine de Saint-Exupery quotes:

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  • True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.

  • Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.

  • I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin.

  • The time for action is now. It's never too late to do something.

  • It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.

  • Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you are.

  • Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.

  • The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them.

  • Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

  • He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.

  • Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.

  • A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

  • No single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. It would be a bit too easy if we could go about borrowing ready-made souls.

  • To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.

  • We say nothing essential about the cathedral when we speak of its stones. We say nothing essential about Man when we seek to define him by the qualities of men.

  • I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.

  • Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.

  • Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

  • The injustice of defeat lies in the fact that its most innocent victims are made to look like heartless accomplices. It is impossible to see behind defeat, the sacrifices, the austere performance of duty, the self-discipline and the vigilance that are there - those things the god of battle does not take account of.

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

  • Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

  • A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says 'I was beaten', he does not say 'My men were beaten.'

  • But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you.

  • People where you live grow five thousand roses in one gardenyet they don't find what they are looking for.

  • I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.

  • He who is different from me does not impoverish me - he enriches me. Our unity is constituted in something higher than ourselves - in ManFor no man seeks to hear his own echo, or to find his reflection in the glass.

  • Then, as tonight, he had felt lonely, but soon had learnt the bounty of such loneliness. The music had breathed to him its message, to him alone amongst these ordinary folk, whispered its gentle secret. And now the star. Across the shoulders of these people a voice was speaking to him in a tongue that he alone could understand.

  • And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

  • It's the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so importantPeople have forgotten this truth, but you mustn't forget it. You become responsible forever for what you've tamed. You're responsible for your rose.

  • Het wezenlijke is voor het oog onzichtbaar, alleen met je hart kan je goed zien.

  • If you are to be, you must begin by assuming responsibility. You alone are responsible for every moment of your life, for every one of your acts.

  • The arms of love encompass you with your present, your past, your future, the arms of love gather you together.

  • To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one's comrades. It is to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world.

  • A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says 'I was beaten,' he does not say 'My men were beaten.'

  • Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.

  • A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

  • Once men are caught up in an event, they cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men.

  • The strong are strengthened by reverses; the trouble is that the true meaning of events scores next to nothing in the match we play with men. Appearances decide our gains or losses and the points are trumpery. And a mere semblance of defeat may hopelessly checkmate us.

  • The magic of the craft has opened for me a world in which I shall confront, within two hours, the black dragons and the crowned crests of a coma of blue lightnings, and when night has fallen I, delivered, shall read my course in the starts.

  • Once we are bound together to our brothers by a common good that is outside us, then we can breathe. Experience teaches us that love is not to gaze at one another but to gaze in the same direction. There is no comradeship except through unity on the same rope, climbing towards the same peak.

  • One cannot build life from refrigerators, politics, credit statements and crossword puzzles. That is impossible. Nor can one exist for any length of time without poetry, without color, without love.

  • War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

  • How could drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.

  • And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.

  • Whoever loves above all the approach of love will never know the joy of attaining it.

  • All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming - a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness.

  • Men have forgotten this truth,' said the fox. 'But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.'

  • For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.

  • How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man is to become - to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being.

  • "What place would you advise me to visit now?" he asked. "The planet Earth," replied the geographer. "It has a good reputation."

  • Mad is the man who is forever gritting his teeth against that granite block, complete and changeless, of the past.

  • Even our misfortunes are a part of our belongings.

  • I still fall for your everyday.

  • The notion of looking on at life has always been hateful to me. What am I if I am not a participant? In order to be, I must participate.

  • When I find a woman attractive, I have nothing at all to say. I simply watch her smile. Intellectuals take apart her face in order to explain it bit by bit, but they no longer see the smile.

  • There is no hope of joy except in human relations.

  • For there is but one problem - the problem of human relations. We forget that there is no hope or joy except in human relations.

  • Charity never humiliated him who profited from it, nor ever bound him by the chains of gratitude, since it was not to him but to God that the gift was made.

  • I don't believe you! Flowers are weak creatures. They are naive. They reassure themselves as best they can. They believe that their thorns are terrible weapons...

  • If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

  • Defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom, and above all futility.

  • A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.

  • More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use.

  • Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.

  • What was my body to me? A kind of flunkey in my service. Let but my anger wax hot, my love grow exalted, my hatred collect in me, and that boasted solidarity between me and my body was gone.

  • In order to cure a feeling of malaise, you have to throw light on it.

  • Aimer, ce n'est point nous regarder l'un l'autre, mais regarder ensemble dans la meme direction. English Translation: To love is not to look at each other, But to look together in the same direction.

  • When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter. The body is an old crock that nobody will miss. I have never known a man to think of himself when dying. Never.

  • It is the missed opportunity that counts, and in a love that vainly yearns from behind prison bars you have perchance the love supreme.

  • You're not a man, you're a mushroom!

  • It is always in the midst, in the epicenter, of your troubles that you find serenity.

  • Attitude is a paintbrush. It colors everything!

  • Peace is present when things form part of a whole greater than their sum, as the diverse minerals in the ground collect to become the tree.

  • The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.

  • Experience will guide us to the rules. You cannot make rules precede practical experience.

  • Although human life is priceless, we always act as if something had an even greater price than life... but what is that something?

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

  • What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step

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

  • The aeroplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.

  • I shall never again admire a merely brave man.

  • The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists.

  • We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.

  • If you are to be, you must begin by assuming responsibility.

  • Perfektion ist erreicht, wenn man nichts mehr wegnehmen kann.

  • I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime.

  • You will have five hundred million little bells, and I shall have five hundred million springs of fresh water...

  • But if you tame me, then weshall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, Ishall be unique in all the world.

  • tu es noeud de relations et rien d'autre. Et tu existes par tes liens. Tes liens existent par toi. Le temple existe par chacune des pierres.(chapitre CLXXV)

  • One day,' you said, 'I watched the sunset forty-three times!'And a little later you added:'You know, when one is that sad, one can get to love the sunset.''Were you that sad, then, on the day of the forty-three sunset?'But the prince made no answer.

  • 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.

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

  • The only things you learn are the things you tame

  • And the fox said to the little prince: men have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.

  • If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom.

  • Action and personal happiness have no truck with each other; they are eternally at war.

  • She knew this man's smile, his gentle ways of love, but not his godlike fury in the storm. She might snare him in a fragile net of music, love and flowers, but, at each departure, he would break forth without, it seemed to her, the least regret.

  • Even though human life may be the most precious thing on earth, we always behave as if there were something of higher value than human life.

  • I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams...

  • If a composer suffers from loss of sleep and his sleeplessness induces him to turn out masterpieces, what a profitable loss it is!

  • A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us.

  • If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers...

  • Are wars... anything but the means whereby a nation's problems are set, where creation is stimulated - there you have adventure. But there is no adventure in heads-or-tails, in betting that the toss will come out of life or death. War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

  • It is such a secret place, the land of tears.

  • Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.

  • One can be a brother only in something. Where there is no tie that binds men, men are not united but merely lined up.

  • The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.

  • When one is building a ship, one does not begin with gathering timber and cutting planks, but rather by arousing in people the yearning for the great wide sea.

  • Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures-in this century as in others our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together.

  • True love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have.

  • What do we mean by setting a man free? You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute.

  • Cries of despair, misery, sobbing grief are a kind of wealth.

  • What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.

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

  • Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart.

  • Of what worth are convictions that bring not suffering?

  • If you want to build a ship, don't summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work; teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean.

  • Let your dream devour your life, not your life devour your dream.

  • Every person that comes into our life comes for a reason; some come to learn and others come to teach.

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