Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes
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You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.
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It is not for us to forecast the future, but to shape it.
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I wonder," he said, "whether the stars are set alight in heaven so that one day each one of us may find his own again.
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One's suffering disappears when one lets oneself go, when one yields - even to sadness.
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A man's age represents a fine cargo of experiences and memories.
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It is not a question of living dangerously. That formula is too arrogant, too presumptuous. I don't care much for bull-fighters. It's not the danger I love. I know what I love. It is life itself.
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Peace dies when the framework is ripped apart. When there is no longer a place that is yours in the world. When you know no longer where your friend is to be found.
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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.
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You become responsible for a long time for what you've tamed.
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If some one 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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I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.
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What he had yearned to embrace was not the flesh but a down spirit, a spark, the impalpable angel that inhabits the flesh.
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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.
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Let your dream devour your life, not your life devour your dream.
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Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
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You cannot plant an acorn in the morning, and expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of an oak.
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For I do not want any one to read my book carelessly. I have suffered too much grief in setting down these memories. Six years have already passed since my friend went away from me, with his sheep. If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures.
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The theoretician believes in logic and believes that he despises dreams, intuition, and poetry. He does not recognize that these three fairies have only disguised themselves in order to dazzle him.... He does not know that he owes his greatest discoveries to them.
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The wind in the grain is the caress to the spouse; it is the hand of peace stroking her hair.
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Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas. Defeat may prove to have been the only path to resurrection, despite its ugliness. I take it for granted that to create a tree I condemn a seed to rot. If the first act of resistance comes too late it is doomed to defeat. But it is, nevertheless, the awakening of resistance. Life may grow from it as from a seed.
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How could drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.
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Straight ahead you can't go very far.
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Grown-ups love figures... When you tell them you've made a new friend they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies? " Instead they demand "How old is he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make? " Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.
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If you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world…if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow.