Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes
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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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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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I am very fond of sunsets. Come, let us go look at a sunset.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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Surely a man needs a closed place wherein he may strike root and, like the seed, become. But also he needs the great Milky Way above him and the vast sea spaces, though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs.
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No one is ever satisfied where he is.
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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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True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.
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What value has compassion that does not take its object in its arms?
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"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."
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If France is to be judged, judge her not by the effects of her defeat but by her readiness to sacrifice herself.
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The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time. Get into a fist fight, put your mind on the strategy of the fight, and you will not feel the other fellow's punches.
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Horror causes men to clench their fists, and in horror men join together.
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But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference.
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I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.
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You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad.
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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.
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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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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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Trying to be witty leads to lying, more or less.