Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes
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War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.
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The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.
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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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To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.
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No single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. It would be a bit too easy if we could go about borrowing ready-made souls.
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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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True love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have.
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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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He who must travel happily must travel light.
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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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Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.
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It is such a secret place, the land of tears.
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True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.
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For instance, if you come at four in the afternoon, I'll begin to be happy by three. The closer it gets to four, the happier I'll feel. By four I'll be excited and worried; I'll discover what it costs to be happy! But if you come at any od time, I'll never know when I should prepare my heart... There must be rites.
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You risk tears if you let yourself be tamed.
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Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
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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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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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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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Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.
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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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Truth, for any man, is that which makes him a man.
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You'll be bothered from time to time by storms, fog, snow. When you are, think of those who went through it before you, and say to yourself, 'What they could do, I can do.'