Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes
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If you want to build a ship, teach the men to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
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I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.
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But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference.
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If a sheep eats bushes does it eat flowers too? a sheep eats whatever it finds even a flower with thorn? even a flower with thorns. then what's the good of thorns?
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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.
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There is a cheap literature that speaks to us of the need of escape. It is true that when we travel we are in search of distance. But distance is not to be found. It melts away. And escape has never led anywhere. The moment a man finds that he must play the races, go the Arctic, or make war in order to feel himself alive, that man has begin to spin the strands that bind him to other men and to the world. But what wretched strands! A civilization that is really strong fills man to the brim, though he never stir. What are we worth when motionless, is the question.
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Where are the people?” resumed the little prince at last. “It’s a little lonely in the desert…” “It is lonely when you’re among people, too,” said the snake.
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No single event can awaken within us a stranger whose existence we had never suspected. To live is to be slowly born.
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Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity, the necessity of being the man you are and not another. You are free to be that man, but not another.
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How is it possible for one to own the stars?" "To whom do they belong?" the businessman retorted, peevishly. "I don't know. To nobody.
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I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower... I think that she has tamed me.
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When faith burns itself out, 'tis God who dies and thenceforth proves unavailing.
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It's quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes. [Fr., Il est tres simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.]
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I am very fond of sunsets. Come, let us go look at a sunset.
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Sitting in the flickering light of the candles on this kerchief of sand, on this village square, we waited in the night. We were waiting for the rescuing dawn - or for the Moors. Something, I know not what, lent this night a savor of Christmas. We told stories, we joked, we sang songs. In the air there was that slight fever that reigns over a gaily prepared feast. And yet we were infinitely poor. Wind, sand, and stars. The austerity of Trappists. But on this badly lighted cloth, a handful of men who possessed nothing in the world but their memories were sharing invisible riches.
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It is as a soldier that you make love and as a lover that you make war.
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Only the children know what they are looking for. They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry.
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True love is visible not to the eyes but to the heart, for eyes may be deceived.
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I will appoint captains to rule my cities, for it is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.
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The important thing is to strive toward a goal which is not immediately visible. That goal is not the concern of the mind, but of the spirit.
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Trying to be witty leads to lying, more or less.
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We are forever responsible for that which we have tamed.
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One is a member of a country, a profession, a civilization, a religion. One is not just a man.
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Commonly, people believe that defeat is characterized by a general bustle and a feverish rush. Bustle and rush are the signs of victory, not of defeat. Victory is a thing of action. It is a house in the act of being built. Every participant in victory sweats and puffs, carrying the stones for the building of the house. But defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom. And above all of futility.