Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes
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The thing that is important is the thing that is not seen.
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On a day of burial there is no perspective--for space itself is annihilated. Your dead friend is still a fragmentary being. The day you bury him is a day of chores and crowds, of hands false or true to be shaken, of the immediate cares of mourning. The dead friend will not really die until tomorrow, when silence is round you again. Then he will show himself complete, as he was--to tear himself away, as he was, from the substantial you. Only then will you cry out because of him who is leaving and whom you cannot detain.
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Nothing can match the treasure of common memories.
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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.
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It is always in the midst, in the epicenter, of your troubles that you find serenity.
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Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses.
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The Beauty of the Mountain is hidden for all those who try to discover it from the top, supposing that, one way or an other, one can reach this place directly. The Beauty of the Mountain reveals only to those who climbed it.
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The house, the stars, the desert -- what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible!
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You're beautiful, but you're empty...One couldn't die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she's the one I've watered. Since she's the one I put under glass, since she's the one I sheltered behind the screen. Since she's the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three butterflies). Since she's the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose.
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You become responsible for a long time for what you've tamed.
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You know... when you are sad you love the sunsets.
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Living is being born slowly. It would be a little too easy if we could borrow ready-made souls.
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Experience will guide us to the rules. You cannot make rules precede practical experience.
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Look at the sky. Ask yourselves: Has the sheep eaten the flower, yes or no? And you will see how everything changes.
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My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.
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The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them in particular caused by what we compare it to: something worse and we feel grateful for what we have; something better and we feel somehow let down.
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I was too young to know how to love her.
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Defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom, and above all futility.
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What sets men at variance is but the treachery of language, for always they desire the same things.
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Sorrow is one of the vibrations that prove the fact of living.
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The essential things in life are seen, not with the eyes but with the heart.
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It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others.
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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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There is no hope of joy except in human relations.