Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes
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The one thing that matters is the effort.
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A pilot's business is with the wind, and with the stars, with night, with sand, with the sea. He strives to outwit the forces of nature. He stares with expectancy for the coming of the dawn the way a gardener awaits the coming of spring. He looks forward to port as a promised land, and truth for him is what lives in the stars.
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What do we mean by setting a man free? You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute.
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It is such a secret place, the land of tears.
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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.
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One man may hit the mark, another blunder; but heed not these distinctions. Only from the alliance of the one, working with and through the other, are great things born.
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Confuse not love with the raptures of possession, which bring the cruellest of sufferings. For, notwithstanding the general opinion, love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love's opposite.
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Perfection is attained, not when no more can be added, but when no more can be removed.
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What sets us against one another is not our aims - they all come to the same thing - but our methods, which are the fruit of our varied reasoning.
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You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
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You're beautiful, but you're empty.... No one could die for you.
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The seed haunted by the sun never fails to find its way between the stones in the ground. And the pure logician, if no sun draws him forth, remains entangled in his logic.
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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.
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War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.
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What torments me is not the humps nor hollows nor the ugliness. It is the sight, a little bit in all these men, of Mozart murdered.
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The one thing that matters is the effort. It continues, whereas the end to be attained is but an illusion of the climber, as he fares on and on from crest to crest; and once the goal is reached it has no meaning.
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We must not subject him who creates to the desires of the multitude. It is, rather, his creation that must become the multitude's desire.
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Once you are my friend, I am responsible for you.
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What have you come to Earth for?' 'I'm having difficulties with a flower,' the little prince said. 'Ah!' said the snake. And they were both silent.
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I'll look as if I'm dead, and that won't be true.' I said nothing. 'You understand. It's too far. I can't take this body with me. It's too heavy.' I said nothing. 'But it'll be like an old abandoned shell. There's nothing sad about an old shell...' I said nothing. 'It'll be nice, you know. I'll be looking at the stars, too. All the stars will be wells with a rusty pulley. All the stars will pour out water for me to drink...' I said nothing. 'And it'll be fun! You'll have five-hundred million little bells; I'll have five-hundred million springs of fresh water...' And he, too, said nothing more.
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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.
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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.
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And they heard the roaring thunder of a third brilliantly lighted express. "Are they pursuing the first travelers?" demanded the little prince. "They are pursuing nothing at all," said the switchman. "They are asleep in there, or if they are not asleep they are yawning. Only the children are flattening their noses against the windowpanes." "Only the children know what they are looking for," said the little prince. "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..." "They are lucky," the switchman said.
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Good taste" is a virtue of the keepers of museums. If you scorn bad taste, you will have neither painting nor dancing, neither palaces nor gardens.